CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
After they drove past many motels and hotels, Toya realized they were out of Baltimore and heading straight to Grayson’s mansion. But she knew he didn’t allow anyone to stay in his home overnight. Why would he let her be an exception? He didn’t even know her like that.
But then she remembered seeing what looked like guest houses in the back of the main house.
Would he put her in one of those homes, which seemed so isolated and dark?
But then she had another thought: Why was she letting him “put” her anywhere?
She wasn’t his prisoner. He went out of his way to free her from that.
Once they stop, why wouldn’t she just get out of his car and leave?
She could leave, she knew, but go where?
Back to her mama’s house and all that craziness with Keisha?
Especially now that she was blaming Toya for what Bam did at that gas station.
She didn’t want to be around that energy either.
And she was flat broke. Almost all of her savings were given to her mama when she first came back to town, except for gas money and a little food money.
But now she didn’t even have a car since that police chase crashed it and totaled it out. She was a thirty-one-year-old woman who, as her mother would have said, didn’t have a pot to piss in, a window to throw it out of, or a car to sleep in! Grayson Carrington, she hated to admit, was all she had.
But yet she wanted to get out of his limo and leave.
Where was she going? When she went inside the house to get her suitcase, even her mama was on her case.
Even her mama was upset with her for not bringing Bam back home.
As if the criminal justice system left it up to her.
And Keisha and that fight she started but Toya finished. Did she truly want to go back to that?
That was why she changed her tune and decided that wherever he put her, she had better be grateful.
When the limo drove past the main house and made its way around to the servants’ entrance, she decided he was putting her off to stay the night with what she assumed would be his live-in maids and butlers and other household workers like that.
But when the limo kept going, past the servants’ quarters, and all the way around to the far backside of the main house, she was surprised to see an entrance in the back that was identical to the entrance up front.
Which amazed her. “This looks like the front of your house,” she blurted out, “but it’s the back of your house.”
What she did like about Grayson was that he never treated her offhand comments as stupid or ignorant-revealing the way other upper-crust people would. He always answered her. “Two main entrances,” he said. “I live back here. This is my private residence.”
“So the front entrance is for your home office only?”
He nodded. “That is correct.”
“The whole front wing of your house is your home office?”
“That is also correct.”
“I thought a home office was one office. Yours is like an entire company.”
“I employ a lot of people.”
“But can’t y’all just go into the office? I saw your office complex. It’s humongous.”
“They work where I work for that day. Sometimes I work in the office. Sometimes I work from home. It depends on how much sleep I’m able to get the night before.”
Toya found that an odd thing to say as the driver opened the back passenger door for them. “You don’t get a lot of sleep?” she asked him.
“I try to,” he responded, “but it rarely comes in buckets. More like frying pans.”
“Not a lot, but a little?”
Grayson nodded. He liked how quickly she picked up on his often odd way of speaking. “Exactly,” he said. And then they got out of the limo.
He placed his overcoat over her shoulders again as soon as they got out of the limo, as the chill factor had picked back up again. But instead of allowing her to include him in the comfort, he walked ahead of her until they made it up the steps and to the front double doors.
She expected the butler or assistant butler to open those doors before he could even touch the knob, but it didn’t happen. Grayson pressed in a code and opened it himself. And then he stepped aside and allowed Toya to walk in ahead of him.
Grayson still felt perplexed and very unsure of himself as they entered his house.
He was so out of character that he wondered if something was wrong with him.
Why did he believe her preposterous story?
Why did he put his own name and reputation on the line when he promised that state’s attorney something he had little to no chance of delivering, but he did it anyway because he wanted Latoya away from that jailhouse that badly?
Why didn’t he leave her at her mother’s house and be done with her for the night?
Why did he bring her to his home, something he never did.
Having anybody in his private residence had always been verboten.
But suddenly he was voluntarily bringing her into his personal space?
It seemed so far-fetched to him that it worried him.
But there was no denying it. When he heard her voice on that phone call, he could feel her distress to the depths of his soul.
It was as if he was experiencing exactly what she was experiencing.
And when he saw her at that detention center, and the anguish on her face, he knew then and there that he was going to try to move mountains to get her out of there.
He was not leaving without her. And when he saw where she was living, and the danger he sensed all around her, even in her own home with that provocative sister of hers, he knew he couldn’t leave her there either. He just knew it.
He also knew it was all so contradictory.
Because his reaction to her had him questioning everything.
Including his own sanity! But the one thing he didn’t question at all was her sincerity, and his strong need to make certain she was going to be okay.
It was arrogant. It was protective. Perhaps it was even a tad misogynistic.
But he couldn’t help it. He had to look out for her.
He felt it was his responsibility, not anybody else’s, to protect her when, oddly enough, he didn’t have a protective bone in his body.
Not one. He never even had a lady friend he went out of his way to help, let alone protect.
But with Latoya? Something was different.
Something was brewing inside of him that he couldn’t even name.
Was it love? Lust? Both? Neither? He was clueless!
When they entered his home, Grayson took his coat from her and hung it in the foyer.
Toya began looking around. She was impressed with the simple elegance of it.
The front side of his house, his home office, looked like a palace with lots of corridors and offices and people in and out of it.
But this space was empty of everybody. There were no servants or executives from his corporation anywhere.
It looked normal on this side of the house.
It looked like somebody’s well-appointed open floor plan home with the living room and the kitchen and the dining room all in one huge space.
It was big, but it was cozy too. Toya immediately felt relaxed there.
She felt comfortable there. She couldn’t even imagine why Grayson would have trouble sleeping in a place so peaceful.
“This is beautiful,” she said to him as they walked further in.
“Thank you.” Grayson was proud of his home. It was his calming space. That was why he immediately felt uncomfortable having somebody else in such a private place.
“Have a seat,” he said to her as he removed his suit coat jacket, tossed it on the back of a chair, and began heading for his kitchen. “What would you like to drink?”
She had no clue what she wanted to drink.
She wasn’t much of a drinker at all. “Whatever you’re having,” she said as she sat down on the sofa.
That was when she saw his driver enter the home with her suitcase and garment bag.
He made his way across the back side of the living area to a room at the opposite end of the space.
It was obvious that he sat them in that room and came right back out because he was in and out of the private residence within a minute of his arrival.
But what was curious to Toya was how did he know which room she was going to stay in? Nothing had even been discussed. And being her curious self, she had to ask. “Miss Javits said you don’t allow anybody inside of your home.”
“That can’t be accurate because she was saying it while she, and you, were inside of my home.”
Toya laughed. She realized she had misspoken. “I meant she said you didn’t allow anybody to spend the night in your home.”
“That’s correct.”
“But yet your driver just came in with my luggage and put them in that room over there. How would he know which room to put them in?”
“That’s his job to bring my luggage in after I return to town from a trip. Since you had luggage, it was his job to bring it in. He’s not spending the night. He’s doing his job and then he’ll go on home.”
“But how would he have known which room to put my luggage in?”
“It’s the only bedroom down here. It’s my room. There are other rooms upstairs. Many others.”
She expected him to say that he’d take her luggage on upstairs to one of those other rooms later, but he didn’t say any such thing. He simply prepared two drinks and made his way back into the living room. He handed her one of them.
“Thanks.” It looked like wine.
He sat in the chair that flanked the sofa. Although he sat upright with his arms on the arms of the chair and his legs crossed, she could tell how exhausted he was.
“Where did you go?” she asked him.
He looked at her. “Pardon me?”
“Your clothes. Looks like you just stepped out of Carnegie Hall or somewhere like that.”
“Ah. Yes. It was opera night.”
Opera. That was so foreign to Toya that it wasn’t even funny. “You like operas, Toya?” he asked her.