by Kira Blakely
She knew that her knocking was a dead giveaway, but since he was about to witness her fucked up family firsthand, she saw no reason to say anything about it.
The door opened and the housekeeper ushered them in and took their coats, hanging them in the closet nearest the door before telling them the family was waiting in the den.
They walked through the long hallway lined with priceless works of art. Jackson was silent, and so was Hope. Her spirits dropped a little lower with each step, and by the time they came into the den – the one they all referred to as the small den, despite its massive size – she was sick and shaking and cold.
Robert and Clarissa were in their usual places in two hooded club chairs set near the fireplace. They were perfectly and formally dressed, of course. Clara stood near the window, a drink in one hand and a tense expression on her stunning face.
Robert stood as they entered and said, “Well, there you are. We were getting worried that we would have to wait for dinner.”
It was exactly one minute to seven. Hope said, “Of course not. Jackson, these are my parents, Robert and Clarissa, and this is my sister, Clara.”
“Nice to meet you.” Jackson said, but his tone was subdued and his hand still holding hers tightened around her fingers just a tiny bit, giving away his own nerves.
She knew he felt out of place. Hell, she felt out of place there. She should never have asked him, she thought miserably.
Jackson gathered himself up though. He stepped forward, and said, “I brought wine. I hope you don’t mind.”
Robert took the bottle even though Jackson had extended it toward Clarissa. “I do not,” Robert said with a wintry smile. “This is a wonderful vintage, and very thoughtful.”
The housekeeper stuck her head back in to announce seating was ready.
They followed the others into the massive dining room, the table all set with formal place settings and a plethora of silver and crystal. Robert handed off the bottle and they sat.
Silence spun out, thick and weighted.
Robert asked, “So tell us again what it is that you do Jackson.”
“Not much right now.” His smile was wide. “I am retired in a way, but I am slowly starting to seek out new opportunities.”
Uh oh. Hope wanted to cover her head because she could see what was coming, and she knew she should have warned him.
Robert’s eyebrows went up. “Oh? A bit young to be retired, aren’t you?”
“Not when I just sold my gaming platform to MetaWorks.
Robert leaned back, a look of greediness on his face. “I read about that deal. One of the largest in history as I recall.”
Hope did not dare look over at Jackson. She barely dared to breathe.
Jackson spoke casually. “That is what they tell me, but history is not fully written yet, so I bet someone will get a bigger deal sometime in the future.”
Robert toyed with his water glass. His eyes sharpened. “As I understand, you had already sold a very successful…er…”
“App,” Jackson supplied.
His voice was smooth. Hope could not tell if Robert was irritating or angering Jackson just yet, and she began to sweat lightly.
“App,” Robert said. “Interesting. You should consider investing that money and soon, if you have not already.’
“I have not,” Jackson returned calmly. “I have not quite decided what I want to do with it to be honest.’
Now Robert was all animation. “You should talk to him, Clara. That girl there – she is a financial genius. Hell, if I could afford her, I would be on her client list.” He gave a self-deprecating chuckle that had a savage edge below it. “She is one of the best in the business, and I have to tell you, going with her would make sure you got a good return and made money, too.”
“Thanks,” Jackson said.
Hope found air and dragged it into her lungs. Her leg pressed against Jackson’s as she tried to communicate her regret and apologies.
The maid appeared with the starter course, a thin and clear soup laden with finely chopped herbs. Hope picked up her spoon but could not manage a single bite. Jackson was eating his though, and she took that as a good sign even if it wasn’t.
Her eyes went to his fingers. The hands that could drive her crazy in bed and create programs beyond anything she had been able to imagine. God, she loved those hands, and she was beginning to think that she loved him, but she just was not sure how he felt about her or how long that love could last if she made a breakthrough in her research.
Clara asked, “How are things at the lab?’
Hope said, “Good. Great in fact. Jackson here created a program that will make research so much easier. Well, it will free up a lot of the time of my staff and give me the ability to see the larger picture and present a more cohesive plan to the grant board.”
Robert set his spoon down on the plate below his soup bowl. A frown marred his forehead. “I cannot believe you are still clinging to that plan. I keep telling you to get out of that college research lab and into a company lab. You need the money that would give you, God knows, and it would be nice to be able to tell our friends that you’re finally meeting your potential.”
Clara said, “Dad, she’s happy there, and it sounds like she’s–”
Robert interrupted. “Happiness will not buy you a home, and let’s face it, Hope, so far you have not even made enough money to afford the things that everyone should have. You are getting older and you have got to start thinking of your future.”
“I am thinking of a lot of people’s futures.” The words were soft but firm. “I want to help people, not corporations. I don’t want to be a part in a faceless machine that cares only for its bottom line.”
Robert shook his head. “I have no idea how you came about such nonsense. It must have been inherited from your father. Your mother here had good sense.’
The words stung despite her having heard them so often.
Robert appealed to Jackson, “Do you think she should try for something far grander in scale?’
“I think she has a rather grand plan as it is,” Jackson returned in a biting tone. His leg met hers and she found a shaky breath. Jackson added, “Besides, as long as she is happy, I do not see why it matters.”
Did he mean it?
From the start of their relationship, Hope had always worried that Jackson would one day find her work to be worthless. That he would think, like her father, that she was wasting her time trying to help people instead of trying to help herself.
Robert shook his head. “Now see that is what I do not understand. Did you know that when I met Clarissa she was living in a tiny rental house and working two jobs just to make ends meet? It was a dead end, and I think we can all agree to that. Now she has everything she could ever want and need. Her first husband was a man who wanted to do what only made him happy, and look where that left you and her, Hope.”
Her face burned. Her eyes went to her mother but Clarissa, as usual, sat impervious and calm. How in the hell could she do that? The constant belittling of the life she had had before she married Robert should have enraged Clarissa, but she seemed to take it as what she owed for having been given the amazing opportunity to be a rich man’s trophy wife.
Anger simmered and roiled in Hope’s heart. She said, “My father believed very much in what he did.”
To Jackson, Robert said, “He was a musician. Go figure. Hope, I am only trying to get you to see that you have to do better for yourself. I mean…well, let’s not beat around the bush here. You should want to be as successful as the rest of your family.
“Take Clara for instance. She made nearly a million dollars this year, and she is set to make that next year, and she is the youngest person in her firm. And a woman. That is because she has applied herself most diligently.”
“Dad, Hope applies herself, too. Just in a different way, and can we not discuss my salary in company, please?” Clara’s voice was filled with the same resignation it al
ways held at these stuffy and awful dinners.
The second course arrived – a grilled chicken breast served with steamed vegetables and new potatoes. Hope did not even bother picking up her fork.
Tears wanted to come, but she held them back thanks to years of practice. How her mother had married that ogre was beyond her. How she put up with being belittled and scoffed at every single day of her life was beyond Hope, too, but Clarissa did it. Hope had escaped as fast as possible, but every single month she came back here just to be put through this misery, and for what? Why? Why in the hell did she do this to herself, and why had she invited Jackson to come along and be a partner in the misery?
Well, that last bit was easy to answer. She had hoped his being there would make Robert back off of her. That had most certainly not happened, however.
11
WHAT THE FUCK kind of freak show had he walked into? Jackson was angrier than he had been in a very long time as the plate of chicken and vegetables met the table in front of him.
Hope’s stepdad was not just an asshole. The guy was a sadist. Jackson had been around enough bullies in his younger life – having been tormented by most of them – to know a bully when he saw one, and Robert was a bully. A well-dressed, rich bully, but a bully all the same.
And her mother! Jesus Christ!
His mom had had her problems. God knew she had had her problems, but even when she was at her worst levels of addiction, she would never have let someone talk to him like Robert was talking to Hope.
It was like Hope’s mom was willing to just sit there and take whatever she had to – and for what? So she could eat off fine china and sit at a table that would have easily seated three dozen people in a house so ugly and gaudy that it could have made the cover of Tacky House magazine?
Even his house, as big as it was, was not like that monstrosity he currently sat in. To compound matters, he remembered all too clearly that decorator that Dawson had sent out to his house saying that there were two kind of rich people: those who thought expensive meant good taste, and those who knew better. It seemed her parents fell into the former category, because all the things that decorator had declared forbidden were on full display there in that house.
He knew Robert had grown up in some small town in another state and had made his own fortune, and he could respect that, but there was no way he could respect or even like a man who was a bully, and who was willing to bully the people in his own home.
Jackson had an almost unholy urge to slug the bastard right in his nose just to shut him up.
Robert said, “Really, I am appalled, and I mean appalled, every time someone asks me how you two are doing. I have to tell them all about how well Clara is doing and how proud I am of her. Then, when they realize I have not said a word about you and ask, I have to admit that you are still living a…you know, it is like you want to be poverty stricken, and all I can think is that you are doing this just to defy me and make your mother and I look bad in the bargain.”
Jackson’s jaw worked as anger began to spread. I am definitely going to punch this asshole in his stupid fat face, he thought as he stared at Robert with real loathing.
Robert didn’t notice that look Jackson was giving him, because he just leaned back in his chair and added, “Clara here, she’s doing so well, Hope. I just do not understand why you can’t seem to understand that the job you are doing is never going to make you a success.”
Clara said, “Dad…”
Robert waved off the warning in Clara’s voice. His face was intent, and Jackson could read malice in his words and an expression and that made him madder than ever.
Robert said, “I am just stating facts here. Hope is forever defying me and my wishes with her refusal to do what she was reared, and at my great expense, to do, which is excel. It seems like a waste of the very good education that I provided for her to keep on doing what she is doing. I considered your education, both of your educations, as an investment, and I just do not see where I am getting a good return on Hope’s.”
Jackson’s eyes went back to Hope’s mother. Clarissa sat there impassive, still not speaking. If she was on anyone’s side, he could not tell whose, but he could tell this was nothing new and that Clarissa was not about to speak up in Hope’s defense either.
What bothered him the most was the unresponsive look on Hope’s face. She was used to that treatment. So used to it that she didn’t even blink.
It hurt though. He could see it in the white knuckles of her hand, in the tightening of her full and lush lips. She was hurting, and she was angry.
Who could blame her?
Robert added, “I just don’t understand why you can’t be more like your sister, Hope.”
Clara protested, “Dad, you are not being fair. Finance is not what Hope likes or cares about. She wants to help people.”
Robert glared at Clara. It was obvious he did not like being defied, not even by Clara, who was obviously his golden child. “She is helping nobody. All she is doing is wasting her education, pursuing a subject that will never get her anywhere and will help nobody.”
“How much?” Jackson’s words cut across Robert’s. The steel in his voice finally shut the hateful jerk up.
Robert blinked at him for a few seconds, then asked, “I beg your pardon?”
“How much did her education cost you? Give me a number, and I will write you a check right now. That way you can shut the fuck up about how you feel about how she uses the education you so graciously provided.” The sarcasm dripping off Jackson’s words was made worse by the very real anger running right below that sarcasm.
Clara grinned but then she quickly looked down and away to hide that smile. Clarissa went pale. Hope gawked at him. Jackson smiled at her, but he was far from a smiling mood. He was pissed off so badly he would have gladly throttled Robert at that moment. In fact, his hands were clenching and unclenching as he considered doing just that for the sheer simple satisfaction of it all.
Robert fidgeted. “Look here–”
Jackson jabbed an imperious finger toward Robert. “No you look here. One of these days, you might just end up in the hospital. You might have a disease that you need a cure for. It’s people like Hope who keep people alive.” His eyes raked over Robert in a dismissive way. “Even if they deserve to live or not. I am betting that if you were a patient and in need of the treatment that Hope is sacrificing everything for, you would find it a much better investment.
“Now, I am not willing to wish such a terrible illness on you or anyone else, so instead I am offering to write you a check for the cost of the education Hope got thanks to your generosity. You know, since you seem to think that that was less something a good parent would do because it’s their duty and more what you had to do to in order to have bragging rights to whatever successes she had. Since you can’t seem to have any happiness in her success, which is real and valid, then I’ll just pay you off so you can quit being a jackass about the whole thing.”
Robert’s mouth sagged open. It was clear he was not used to being treated that way. It was also clear that he was nursing a grudge toward Hope, simply because she was not his biological daughter.
That was messed up, and it was wrong, but he would not be the first person to like their own kid more than their step kid. But the way he treated Hope was beyond the pale, and Jackson was sick of hearing it.
Robert said, “I want her to be successful.”
“You want her to be successful as how you define it. She is successful, and you are an idiot if you cannot see that.”
Hope’s mouth hung open. Jackson reached out a finger and casually lifted her jaw. Hope stared at him, her expression torn between shock and laughter.
Robert, however, was wholly furious. He threw the napkin in his lap onto the table. “How dare you speak to me that way in my own home?”
Jackson shot back. “How dare you bully and browbeat her when I am sitting right here? In fact, how dare you bully and browbeat women whet
her anyone is here to see it or not? I see you, and what I see is a big, fat obnoxious jerk who can’t quit crowing about his own success and who can’t stop expecting these two women here to keep glorifying him with theirs.”
Robert slammed his hands down on the table. He was white except for the two hectic red spots on his cheeks. “I pulled these two out of the literal gutter. Without me, they would be nothing.”
Jackson retorted, “Then you do not know Hope at all. She was born with those brains, and you had nothing to do with that. Nothing. She would have made it with or without you.”
Robert, clearly unused to having his bullying met with anger, snapped, “You cannot come into my home and behave this way!”
“Because, obviously, you are the only one allowed to speak around here. If I go by your playbook, then I can do whatever I like,” Jackson said calmly. “I’m a lot richer than you and far more successful, too. It seems to me that, in this house, if you can claim those things, you can say any hurtful uncool thing you want to say and nobody ever stops you from it, so why not speak my mind?”
Clara choked a bit. Jackson was pretty sure she was trying not to laugh. Hope was just sitting there, her face turned to his. Clarissa was pale and silent, Robert was red and furious.
“Last chance,” Jackson said in a lethal tone. “Either give me a number and take my check or shut your mouth about what she does for a living and all your investment into her future.”
“I want you out of my house.”
Robert’s words came as no shock. Jackson threw his napkin on the table, pushed his chair back, and stood. He held a hand out to Hope. She looked up at him, and then she stood, taking his hand.
Jackson said, “Thank you for the dinner.”
They walked toward the door. Hope opened the closet and got their jackets. Jackson helped her put hers on, feeling the fine trembling that had set in and the tension riding her neck and slim shoulders.
