CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It looked like the typical small town to Don and Wyatt as they rode along the streets of Dillon, Georgia on their way to Maude’s apartment.
They were in a waiting Chevy Tahoe that a local dealership that Don contacted agreed to loan to them for a handsome fee.
Wyatt was the driver, while Don sat on the front passenger seat, and Edmund and Maude sat in back.
But what Edmund saw wasn’t typical to his way of life.
Dillon looked more like Hard Times USA to him with paint peeling from buildings or mole covering the paint job or general disrepair of nearly every shop they passed.
Even Main Street, which was usually the hub of the town, looked rundown to Edmund too.
And when Wyatt pulled over and stopped the Tahoe in front of a five-story apartment building, it was par for the course as far as Edmund was concerned.
It wasn’t as bad as many of the other businesses and houses they’d passed, but it wasn’t great either.
And this was where Maude lived? He wondered, to his horror, if his sister lived in that building too?
Don opened the door of the Tahoe and they stepped out.
Don buttoned his suit coat and then placed his hand, once again, on Maude’s back.
Which looked like possessiveness to Don and Wyatt, but they weren’t about to comment on it.
Don walked in front of them to the apartment’s entrance, opened the door for them, and then followed them in as Maude escorted them up the stairs.
All the while they were walking, Maude was hoping that Sam, her landlord, didn’t show his narrow red face and demand payment the way he had been doing seemingly every single time he saw her.
But unfortunately for her, his downstairs apartment door crept open and he showed that face again. “Alright, Maude,” he said in his heavy Georgia accent. “You got one more week.”
Maude rolled her eyes. “Why you keep bringing that up, Sam? I know how much time I got left.”
“You wouldn’t have another day if it was left up to me.”
“It’s not left up to you.”
“They signed off on that extension over my objection. The owner gave you that extra time. Not me.” Then he added: “I can’t wait to get your kind out of here.”
That little comment prompted Edmund and Don to glance at him. What your kind was he referencing, Edmund wondered? But Don already knew. He would be considered in the your kind category to that landlord too.
But none of them, including Maude, wasted their breathe and went on up the stairs.
When Maude pulled out her key, Edmund took it from her hand, which she wasn’t accustomed to anybody doing, and unlocked her door.
She even glanced at Edmund, as if to say that was kind of rude, but she didn’t say anything.
And he motioned for her to go on into her own apartment ahead of him.
He went in behind her and closed the door.
Don remained outside of the apartment on guard duty.
As soon as the door closed inside and Edmund’s large blue eyes began surveying her small apartment, Maude felt self-conscious.
She knew it would never be up to his standards of luxury because there was nothing luxurious about it.
But she was wrong. Edmund was impressed with the cleanliness of it, and her understated tastefulness.
It was a charming home. “This is very nice,” he said.
Maude didn’t respond to that because she knew he was just being nice, although she also knew niceness wasn’t a particular trait of his.
But trying to figure that man out required too much figuring.
That was why she didn’t even try as she began moving away from him.
“Have a seat and I’ll get you something to drink,” she said as she began walking away.
But Edmund reached out and pulled her back.
When she ended up against him, he was blunt. “How much do you owe?” he asked her.
That was the last question she wanted him to ask. She was a prideful person who never wanted anybody to think for a second that she couldn’t take care of herself. And Sam’s appearance all but guaranteed Edmund, and even Don, would think such a thing. “I’m good,” she said as she broke away from him.
But he pulled her back again. He didn’t like to pry into anybody else’s business, and he never did with any female he’d ever known.
But Maude was so different to him that everything he did was different.
Including his reaction to her debt. He felt an obligation to handle it, even though he had no such obligation at all.
But that was how he felt. “How much?” he asked her again.
“I told you I’m good.”
“I didn’t ask if you were good. I asked you how much do you owe that man. Answer my question.”
She looked from his right eye to his left eye as if she was still trying to size him up. And couldn’t. “Why would that matter to you?” she asked him with a mystified look on her face. She just couldn’t read him. She just couldn’t figure him out!
Edmund wasn’t interested in being figured out. He was interested in her welfare. And his patience with her was wearing thin. “How much do you owe him, Maude?”
“In two weeks, I’ll be behind two months. But the owner has given me an extension.”
“That expires in a week.”
Sam’s big mouth, Maude thought. “That’s right,” she said.
“Will you have two months’ worth of rent to pay that man in a week?”
Maude hated to admit it, so she didn’t. “I’ll handle it,” she said again.
“How, Maude?” asked Edmund. “Where are you working?”
She looked at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He pulled out his checkbook. “How much is it?”
She frowned. She was nobody’s charity case. “I’m not taking your money,” she said forcefully.
“So that’s how it works?” he asked her. “You won’t take my money, but yet you won’t pay your bills?”
That comment cut Maude to the core of her being.
Since she was sixteen years old and on her own she struggled to make ends meet, but she always managed to do so and to do it with no help from any man.
And he had the nerve to act as if she was some deadbeat who did all she could to avoid her responsibilities?
She was not that girl and he wasn’t going to treat her like she was that girl.
Her rage flared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean? ”
“You know what it means.”
“That I’m a deadbeat? That I don’t pay my bills?”
“If the shoe fits.”
That did it for Maude. “Get out,” she said with hostility in her voice. She began pushing him toward the door. “Get out of my apartment and get out now!”
Edmund was floored by her reaction as she opened that door and pushed him out so forcefully that she pushed him into Don. “And stay out!” she yelled at him, as she slammed the door in his face.
But when that door closed, she leaned against it and then leaned her head back.
Why did she keep thinking she’d found Mister Right only to be proven wrong time and time again?
And for her to think somebody like Edmund would be the one was insanity on top of crazy anyway.
She deserved to be set back. She brought it on herself!
But outside of her apartment, in the hallway, Edmund was just as pissed as she was.
He disentangled himself from his bodyguard and began hurrying down those stairs.
Don, confused, hurried down those stairs behind the boss.
But when they made it to the first floor, Edmund stopped in this tracks as if he had a change of heart.
“Wait in the car, Donnell,” Edmund said to his bodyguard and Don, relieved, hurried out of the building.
But when he got to the Tahoe without the boss and sat inside, Wyatt looked at him. “Where’s Doc?”
“I guess he’s going back upstairs to beg that woman.”
“Beg her? Boss begging a woman?” Wyatt was astounded. “Beg her for what?”
“Man, it was nuts. I’m standing there at that apartment door, on duty you know. I’m doing my job. The next thing I know that door flies open and that girl is pushing Doc out of her apartment.
“What?” Wyatt was surprised.
‘Get out and stay out,’ she said to him.”
“Whaaat?” Wyatt was dumbstruck.
“I don’t know what happened, but he was apparently so rude to her or wanted sex from her or he said something to her because she kicked his ass right up out of there!”
“You shittin’ me, Don. Why you shittin’ me like this?”
“If I’m lying I’m flying. I couldn’t believe it either.”
They looked at each other. And then they smiled and nodded their heads in admiration of that young lady. “That girl got game,” said Don.
“She got balls,” said Wyatt.
“And I’m glad. It’s high time one of these females stands up to that man. It’s been a long time coming if you ask me.”
But Edmund wasn’t asking either one of them as he made his way, not back upstairs to beg Maude, as Don had surmised, but to her landlord’s apartment. He knocked on the door.
Within seconds the same small, white man opened the door with anger on his red face and impoliteness in his drawling voice.
“What you bugging me for?” he began saying.
Until he saw the well-dressed gentleman at his door.
The one that had been with Maude. “Oh. Hello, sir. You looking for an apartment too?”
How ridiculous this man was, Edmund thought. As ridiculous as Maude. Was something in the water in Dillon? He didn’t know why he didn’t get back on his plane and get the hell out of there. Fuck Maude. Fuck Natasha. Fuck all of them! That was how angry he was.
But he knew he was blowing smoke up his own ass because no way was he leaving Maude. “How much does Maudetta Drayton owe you?”
“Maudetta? What Maudetta?” You mean that black gal you walked up them stairs with? You mean Maude Drayton?”
Edmund was so over these people! “Yes, I mean Maude Drayton,” he said. It was obvious whom he meant.
But apparently not to that landlord. “Yeah, I know Maude. What about her?”
Edmund wanted to roll his eyes. He never had much tolerance for hicks. “How much does she owe you for her rent?”
“She’s a month and a half behind. Which means she’s got one more week before I put her junk out the door. Would have done it sooner had the owner not given her an extension she didn’t deserve. But those people can be something else.”
“Show me her pay history,” Edmund said as he pulled out his checkbook.
“Why I got to show you that? I ain’t lyin’ on that gal.”
“Do you or do you not want her rent paid?”
He wanted it. “Just a minute,” he said and closed the door in Edmund’s face.
Edmund looked around at the building. It was nicer than most they passed by, but still substandard in his view.
But that apartment was the last thing on his mind.
The way Maude pushed him out of that apartment was front and center on his mind.
He’d never been kicked out of anyplace at any time ever.
But that young lady did it without batting an eye.
All because he did what exactly? He simply pointed out that she didn’t pay her rent.
Or did he say she didn’t pay her bills? Either way, it was the same side of the coin. And that upset her? That?
He didn’t understand women. He knew he didn’t. Didn’t want to either. But he truly didn’t understand Maude!
The door opened again and the landlord shoved a receipt book toward him. It was stained with food so Edmund didn’t touch it. But he did see receipts for Maude’s rent payments. Up until last month. And this month. Her rent was fifteen hundred dollars per month, and she was two months behind.
“How much does her late fees total?”
“That’s five hundred dollars for every month she’s late,” the landlord said. “So that’s a thousand dollars by itself.”
Edmund gave him a nasty look. What a ripoff, he thought.
But he knew there was no arguing with people like him.
Therefore, with the two months Maude was behind, and the additional five months left in the year, and the thousand dollar late fee, Edmund wrote a check for eleven-thousand-five-hundred dollars and made it payable to the name on her other receipts: Dillon Rental Properties.
He wrote what the check covered and Maude’s apartment number in the memo section, and then tore it out of his checkbook and handed it to the landlord.
The landlord saw the amount and then looked at Edmund in pure shock. “You’re paying her rent all the way to the end of the month?”
“With the two months behind and the late fees included. Yes.”
“Wow. She must be your woman. I thought she was your trick,” he said, and as soon as he said it Edmund punched him with such force that he fell on his ass with a drop so hard that he screamed out just from the fall alone.
And then he held the side of his face. “You hit me!” he yelled out. “You hit me!”
“Make certain you get that receipt to Miss Drayton. And after that, you leave her alone. Do I make myself clear? Or do you want another reminder?”
The landlord was nodding his head. The sting of that punch was still reverberating in his body. He wasn’t about to experience that again. “Yes sir. I mean, she won’t hear a peep out of me ever again after I give her that receipt. You can count on that.”
Edmund gave him a hard look and then headed out of that building.
And when he got outside and saw an old Buick driving by that was leaned to the side with shiny rims and with loud rap music banging from its thousand-dollar speakers, he shook his head.
He took a leave of absence from his job for this?
It seemed so implausible to him. But here he was, in the middle of nowhere, paying money he didn’t want to pay for a woman who’d just kicked him out of her apartment as if she was the Queen of Sheba and he was one of her minions.
He hurried down those steps and got into his Rolls.
“Where to, Boss?” Wyatt asked when Don closed the back passenger door and got onto the front passenger seat.
“To Atlanta,” he said. “I’m not staying in this hick town another second. Donnell, call my secretary and tell her to book me a suite at the Ritz-Carlton.”
“Yes sir,” Don said. But not before looking at Wyatt, and Wyatt, equally confused, looking at him. Because they both wondered why would he come all this way, land in Dillon, but decide to stay an hour and a half away in Atlanta?
They’d never understand rich people to save their lives.