Brent Sinatra: All of Me (3 page)

She remained excited as she parked her car, hurried into the
capital building, and made her way onto the elevator.
 
She felt on top of the world.
 
She felt as if everything was finally going
her way and it was a thrilling way to feel.
 
She knew her decision to relocate didn’t come without risks.
 
A job as Deputy D.A. in a small county would
be a definite step down and a drastic pay cut from her position in the State
AG’s office.
 
She understood that.
 
But it was worth it to her.
 
Being with Brent was worth it.

As she finger-swept a strand of hair off of her forehead and
moved over as a group of fellow employees crowded onto the elevator, she could
not suppress her smile.
 
Word had already
spread throughout the state capital, and calls of congratulations were coming
in from co-workers and friends from Maine to D.C., and even the new arrivals
onto the elevator were offering their congrats too.
 
They knew she was leaving, not for career
advancement but to be closer to her man, and they were happy for her.
 
One girl even gave her a hug and said she
wished it was her.
 
Makayla used to be
that girl.
 
It used to always be somebody
else who declared victory in the lotteries of life.
 
Now it was Makayla’s time.
 
And if her suspicion was right about Brent’s
reason to want to see her tomorrow night, then it was more than her time.
 
It was high time.
 
She wouldn’t give this up for the world.

But when she stepped off of the elevator and entered her
small corner office on the sixteenth floor, all of her triumph dissipated.
 
Neal Grassley was sitting behind her desk as
if he was still her boss, and was rummaging through her desk drawers as if he
was still her lover and knew her like that.
 
When he looked up and saw her, and his eyes immediately trailed down the
length of a body he used to know so well, he wasn’t ashamed that he had just
been caught red-handed.
 
He wasn’t
ashamed at all.
 
He was smiling.
 
Makayla was not.

“Well, well,” Neal said and stood up from behind the
desk.
 
“The spoiled little princess
decides to come to work.”

But Makayla wasn’t giving an inch.
 
“I’ve been working all day,” she said.

“Not in this building,” he shot back.
 
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
 
But then he smiled, as if it didn’t matter
anyway.

But his smile, it seemed to Makayla, was more about covering
up his anger and disappointment, rather than displaying any warmth.
 
Not that she was interested in any well
wishes or warmth from him.
 
She wasn’t.

“Don’t you look beautiful today,” he said.

Makayla wasn’t interested in his compliments either.
 
“What are you doing in my office?”

“When I heard the news, I knew it wasn’t possible.
 
I knew a smart, sensible lady like you could
not possibly do something this outrageous.
 
Then I thought, wait a minute.
 
What am I talking about?
 
This is
Makayla, after all.
 
This is the same
smart, sensible sister who gave up the job of a lifetime to return to sorry-ass
Maine.”

Makayla began to walk toward her desk.
 
She wasn’t trying to hear him bash her
decision.
 
She knew he was angry about
it.
 
He expressed that anger six months
ago when she first left D.C.
 
Why was he
expressing it again?

“It was all settled,” Neal kept talking as he stared at
her.
 
“You were working in D.C., doing a
great job.
 
You were on your way.
 
But oh no.
 
That was too much like perfection for you.
 
You had to let some man twist you into knots
and make you come back here to Maine.
 
And now you’re here.
 
Going
nowhere fast.
 
A shooting star that can’t
get off the ground.
 
So why should I be
surprised by this new move?
 
You went
backwards when you came back here.
 
Now
you decide to go completely downhill and move to Jericho.
 
But I shouldn’t be surprised.
 
This is typical Makayla.
 
Stupid stuff is typical of the little girl
who never ever gets it right.”

Makayla didn’t respond to his nastiness.
 
People had been putting her down for years,
and had been questioning her choices even longer than that, but she learned
long ago to ignore it.
 
She slept very
well at night.
 
She, instead, walked
around her desk, sat her briefcase on top of it, and asked him to move.

“Move?”
 
He looked at
her as if he couldn’t believe this was the same kid he used to know and
control.
 
“Do you realize who you’re
talking to?”

“I know exactly who I’m talking to,” Makayla responded with
equal force.
 
“Move.”

But Neal didn’t move.
 
He stood there.
 
He was within an
inch of her beautiful face again, and that freshly scented curvaceous body
again, and those big, juicy breasts he used to suck into submission, and he now
knew why he decided to come.
 
He wasn’t
ready to lose her too.
 
He was about to
lose a lot in life, as the Feds were closing in on him, and he wanted his old
life back.
 
Makayla stayed in D.C. for
three-and-a-half years and worked with him at the Justice Department in her
usual professional way, and she didn’t get tainted by the allure of power and
money as he had.
 
That fact alone made
him love her even more.

And when she left D.C. and came back to work in Maine, he was
disappointed as hell, but he used to be the Attorney General in this state, and
in this very building.
 
He still would be
able to see her whenever he wanted to.
 
But
now that she was moving to Jericho, to be with her police chief boyfriend for
good, he was angry.
 
It felt like a
betrayal.
 
It was irrational and he knew
it, since they had not been an item in nearly five years, but it felt as if she
was leaving him all over again.

And the thought of it, the thought that he could very well be
on the losing end of Makayla’s presence forever, caused that anger that cloaked
him to soften.
 
Makayla Ross was not the
kind of woman who would allow him to manhandle her.
 
He had to slow down.
 
Be smarter.
 
Work harder.
 
He moved from behind
her desk, and gave her back her personal space.

Makayla sat behind her desk and closed the drawers Neal had
opened.
 
If he was looking for any
personal info on her when he rummaged through them, he was disappointed.
 
She made it her business to keep only
business-related info at her office.
 

When she closed the last drawer and looked up at him, he was
standing in front of her desk staring at her.
 
And it was a lustful stare, which angered her.
 
It was over between them.
 
Completely dead.
 
He had since married and had two little girls
of his own, and she belonged to Brent.
 
What was his problem?

“Tell me it’s not true, Mal,” he said in a voice that
bordered on desperation, as if he still could not believe he let her get
away.
 
“Tell me you are not going to
accept a job in small-ass Jericho.
 
Tell
me you are not going to do something that ass-backwards.”

Makayla saw the bitterness in his eyes, and could sense his
desperation, but he had lost his hold on her long ago.
 
What was he thinking?
 
She was twenty-two years old when she first
met him.
 
He wanted to be her mentor, he
said to her.
 
And as the first black
Attorney General for the state of Maine, he impressed her as a brother who was
going places and wanted talented young lawyers to take with him.
 
He recruited her hard out of law school and
eventually hired her to work in the same Maine Attorney General’s office she
was leaving in two weeks.
 
To her own
amazement, she did exactly what she swore she’d never do, and fell for the
guy.
 
She fell in love with her boss.

But he cheated on her.
 
He cheated on her repeatedly.
 
She
allowed it to go on as long as she did because she actually thought she
couldn’t live without the rascal.
 
That
was how far gone she had allowed herself to become.
 
But she wasn’t that girl anymore.
 
She dumped his cheating ass and got out of
the allowance game.

“Tell me it’s not true, Mal,” he said again.

“I can’t tell you it’s not true,” Makayla responded.
 
“Because it is true.”

“But why would you do something this unwise?”
 
Anguish was on his face.
 
“You had it made.
 
Even here in Augusta you stand a better
chance at advancement than you do anywhere else in this state.
 
But you can’t do it right to save your life,
can you?
 
You just had to fall in love
with some Jethro from Jericho and couldn’t bear to be away from him.
 
That’s why you came right back to the
plantation.”

Makayla gave him a hard look.

But he didn’t skip a beat.
 
“And then, to compound the problem, you decide to move to Jericho so
some rich white police chief can take care of you and be the boss of you when
you could have bossed yourself.
 
This is
the absolute worse move you could ever make, Mal.”

“First of all,” Makayla said with that
don’t get it twisted
look on her face, “Brent is not going to take
care of me.
 
I’ll be taking care of
myself.
 
And secondly, the worse move I
ever made wasn’t falling in love with Brent Sinatra.
 
The worse move I ever made was falling in
love with you.”

Neal’s jaw tightened.

“Moving to Jericho is the best move for me.”

Neal was offended, but Makayla saw more than that.
 
He looked depressed too, as if her decision
somehow had something to do with him when it had nothing to do with him.
 
“I’m only trying to look out for your best
interest, Mal,” he said in voice that sounded defeated.

But Makayla knew Neal Grassley from way back.
 
She was not moved by his pretense at
altruism.
 
“I’m looking out for my own
best interest,” she said.
 
“I’m moving to
Jericho.”

That word got him going again.
 
“To Jericho,” he said, and shook his
head.
 
“You, one of the most promising
young attorneys I know, decides to take a nothing job in a nothing county in a
nothing state.
 
And you won’t be the D.A.
in that nothing town.
 
Oh no.
 
It’s not even that grand, if I can use that
word to describe anything related to Jericho.
 
You’re going to be the
deputy
D.A.
 
Oh, please.
 
Your ass is going backwards and you know it!”

Neal spoke of her decision as if she had agreed to a prison
term.
 
But Makayla wasn’t ashamed.
 
For once in her life, her career wasn’t the
highlight of her life.
 
Her relationship
with Brent was.
 
It was now front and
center and she couldn’t wait to indulge it.
 
“Call it whatever you like,” she said.
 
“I’m going to Jericho.”

“But think about it, Mal.
 
Think about what you’re doing.
 
You’re giving up the big time for love.”

Makayla looked at him.
 
Why did that seem so disgusting to him?
 
But it was.
 
She could see it in
his stormy eyes.

And he would not relent.
 
“Do you realize how pathetic that sounds?
 
Giving up your future, your career, for
love?
 
Do you realize how dumb that makes
you?
 
You’re pathetic, Mal!”

He was being vicious now, she thought.
 
But that wasn’t going to sway her
either.
 
She’d been on the receiving end
of putdowns more vicious than he could ever spout all of her life.
 
From parents who abandoned her to an
alcoholic aunt, who abandoned her to an uncaring State, who abandoned her to
foster parents in it for the money, she was accustomed to life itself putting
her down.
 
But that same resilient spirit
that forced her to look inside of herself because she was all alone in this
world, and that made her work even harder in school, and made her determined to
live her life on her own terms, was still in control.
 
And people like Neal and their putdowns could
go to hell as far as she was concerned.
 
There was nothing pathetic about living, not the life others wanted for
her, but the life she wanted for herself.
 
She lost herself when she fell for Neal.
 
She found herself again when she had the courage to leave him, and to
walk away from that dream job in D.C. he dangled in front of her like a shiny,
golden trap.

But Neal didn’t see resolve in her big, beautiful eyes.
 
He saw anger.
 
And he did not back down.
 
“That’s
right, I said it,” he said.
 
“You’re
pathetic.
 
You’re still that same little
foster care girl looking for love in all the wrong places and a daddy figure in
all the wrong men.
 
That’s how you got
attached to me.
 
That’s how you’re
getting attached to this police chief.
 
And I did my homework on him.
 
I
did my research.
 
Don’t think for a
second you’re going to bat your pretty eyes and sashay your big ass in front of
him and wrap him around your finger the way you did me, because you’re
not.
 
That man is going to break your
heart.
 
I did my research on him.
 
He’ll break it in two. He may live in a hick
town, but he’s no hick.”

Makayla didn’t like the idea of Neal checking up on any
aspect of her private life, especially when it involved Brent, but she wasn’t
about to let him know how she felt.
 
She
was never going to let him see her sweat ever again.
 
She smiled instead.
 
“He’s no hick?
  
Since when?
 
Even you called him that
Jethro
from Jericho
.”