Page 25 of All Out of Love

Grayson couldn’t help it either. He stood on his feet when her emotions overtook her and she began running to him. And when her small body fell against his big body, and she wrapped her arms around him as tightly as she could, he wrapped his arms around her too.

He knew Oliver couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe it either! But this girl, this woman, meant something to him. She mattered to him.

When they stopped embracing, she helped herself to his neatly folded handkerchief in his suit coat pocket and blew her nose. And it was that little gesture alone that made Grayson understand why she mattered to him. She didn’t stand on propriety or what was expected of her. She didn’t change because she was in one setting or a different one. She was always the same. She stood on who she was not where she was or who was around her. She was Jameesha Latoya. Nothing more. Nothing less. She’d never know how much Grayson admired that.

When Toya had wiped her nose and her tears, she looked at the clothes Grayson wore. Then she looked at him. He was well-shaven, no more bloodshot eyes, and his hair was pristinely done. “You fix up really well,” she said to him.

He laughed. “Coming from you, I consider that a compliment.”

She wanted to smile, but her circumstances and what she witnessed earlier that night was too traumatic. Grayson realized it, too, and his smile dissipated.

“Sit down,” he said as he moved aside and assisted her into his chair.

Oliver was blown away by the entire scene. Grayson Carrington was a hard-driving, uncompromising man. He didn’t give a damn about anybody was always his impression of him. But yet he was being so gentle with this hood rat? He was coddling this criminal? It was so out of character that Oliver wondered just what the attraction was. She had a gorgeous face, and her body was topnotch, he noticed as he looked down at her body. But all of that could be said for Grayson’s current girlfriend and all of his prior ones too. And none of them had the baggage that babe was carrying when Grayson made it clear that he only fooled with women who would make no demands on his person or his time. When by virtue of the crimes she was facing, she was making demands on both. What was going on here?

“Latoya, this is Oliver Norman.”

“Hello,” Oliver said with a nod of his head.

“He’s the police commissioner.”

“The commissioner?” Toya was surprised. “You’re the top man.”

Oliver nodded. “That’s correct.”

“You can help me then? Because I didn’t aid and abet anybody with anything. I didn’t know Bam was gonna rob that store. I didn’t even know he had a gun. He told me he needed a ride to the gas station to pick up some beer.”

Grayson placed his hand on Latoya’s lower back. “Slow down,” he said to her.

“I’m sorry but they locked me up when I didn’t do anything.”

“You drove the getaway car,” Oliver said. “Now that’s a fact.”

“He forced me too!”

The sincerity in her voice pained Grayson.

“He put that gun to my head and told me I had to get him away from there. He told me to take him back to my mama house.”

“Why would he want to go there?” Oliver asked her.

“Because he lived there with my mama and my baby sister and her kids. He was shacking up with my baby sister.”

Hood rat just like he said, Oliver thought. “Well, Miss Morgan, I’m here to tell you right now that your story doesn’t hold water. You went in with him, and even after he killed that store clerk, you came out with him.”

“Killed him?” Toya was floored. “He died?”

Oliver nodded. “Yes. And Florida law is clear. During the commission of a crime, such as a store robbery, and a murder occurs, you will be prosecuted for that murder even if you didn’t pull the trigger.”

Toya’s heart dropped. They were going to prosecute her for murder? She looked at Grayson.

Grayson could see the anguish all over her face. And it upset him. “I need to talk with the state’s attorney,” he said to Oliver. “Get her on the phone.”

“I called her when I got the call. But I’m going to tell you right now, Grayson, she’s of the same mind as I. She’s up for reelection and she’s behind in the polls. Her hands are tied when you’re talking murder. There’s nothing she can do. There’s nothing she will do. She’s already made that crystal clear too.”

Toya felt strange, as if it wasn’t her anymore but some character in a movie she was watching. She couldn’t even think about it. She couldn’t even focus on it. Her main focus was on the fact that Mr. Carrington’s first name was Grayson, of all names, rather than on what she had to face in front of her.

She felt that way because that commissioner, and apparently the state’s attorney too, was firm. She didn’t stand a chance in hell of ever getting out of jail. Once that poor store clerk died, it was taken out of everybody’s hands except for a jury. A jury that would be more than happy to view her as some nobody crook who deserved to be found guilty of everything she was being accused of. For her to walk free, they would have to find compassion in their hearts for her and overlook what the state’s attorney will say is overwhelming evidence of her guilt. And when did anybody ever have compassion on her?