by Melody Anne
“How long will this go on? Do you want me broken? If that’s the case, it’s close to happening,” she told him, knowing she would regret the words later, when she felt stronger. If she ever felt stronger…
“I don’t ever want to break you, Jewell,” he said, letting his fingers sift through her hair.
“I thought that’s what you loved to do, Blake — break women.”
“I won’t deny that doing that has brought me pleasure in the past. But can’t a person change?”
“No. I don’t think someone can change that much and that quickly. Especially if they don’t want to.”
“It’s very simple, Jewell. I have decided I don’t want to let you go,” he said and she felt again like she couldn’t breathe. “And I rather like you the way you are.”
She fought to free herself from his arms, but they were like vises. The more she struggled, the more they tightened around her. She finally gave up. It was all too clear how useless her struggles were.
“And what if I don’t go along with your plan?”
“I have something you want, so I think you will.” His voice was filled with the utmost confidence.
“There is nothing you could have that would make me want to stay with you,” she said, her voice stronger now.
“You don’t know what I have, Jewell.”
She didn’t want to ask him, didn’t want to know what he was holding over her, but she knew this night wouldn’t end until he got to make his point. So, though well aware she wouldn’t like whatever he had to say, she opened her mouth and let the words come out.
“What is it, Blake? What do you know? What do you have?”
Her heart pounded during the long moments of silence that followed. Blake spoke at last.
“I have the power to get you full custody of your brother.”
Chapter Seven
A few minutes might have passed, perhaps an hour. Jewell didn’t know, because after Blake announced he had the power to get her brother back for her, her heart had stopped and her breath had lodged in her throat.
“You didn’t believe me about my brother,” she finally managed to say.
“I didn’t,” he admitted.
“What’s going on, then?” she asked. “I’m lost, Blake.”
“I told you, I can return your brother to you, Jewell.”
“How can you do that? And why are you doing this to me? This is your idea of a cruel joke, isn’t it? Do you find my pain amusing? Hell, that’s a stupid question. You’re all about causing pain.” She jumped up and began pacing as she waited for him to respond.
He stood up slowly and approached her with measured strides, intimidating in his muscularity, his massiveness. She backed away but soon found herself once again against the wall with Blake blocking her in, trapping her.
“I don’t joke around,” he said, his words low and ringing with the sound of truth.
“But…”
“I discovered you were telling the truth, and I found out everything about your brother. As I told you, I’ll help you get him back.”
“I’ll ask again, Blake. How? And what is the price?”
“Does it make any difference?”
His words were a clear challenge, and all the fight left her. “No.” And it didn’t make a difference. They both knew it, knew that what he was offering to give her was worth any price. Hadn’t she already proved it the minute she’d agreed to work for Relinquish Control?
“Are you going to continue to fight me?” he asked her, his fingers resting on her hip as he leaned against her.
“Yes.” She was surprised when the word came from her throat. Why would she risk this? Why would she do anything that could cost her brother to stay a single moment longer in the foster-care system?
She wouldn’t. Before she could correct herself, he leaned against her and brushed his mouth against hers.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said, his words vibrating against her lips.
“I didn’t mean that. I will do whatever it takes to get my brother.”
“Don’t become boring, Jewell.” He pressed his thickness against her. “Don’t make it too easy to figure you out.”
“I don’t think that’s something you’ll ever have to worry about, Blake, because I can’t even figure myself out, let alone allow you to figure me out. None of this is right, and none of it is predictable, but I guarantee you that no matter what you do, you will never own me completely.” She shouldn’t continue fighting him, but it was almost as if another person were speaking.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Jewell, very wrong. I won’t settle for less than all of you.”
Her body felt molten. Even though she didn’t want to want him, even though she knew he was a monster, she also knew how good it felt to lie in his arms. She wanted him and she hated him for it.
“You’ll be very disappointed, then, Blake. But you’re also a man of your word. You have clearly paid for the rights to my body. And because I know you do have the power to get Justin for me, you have bought my obedience. But having my body and even having me desire you doesn’t mean that I’ve agreed to give you any other part of me.”
“I can have anything I want, Jewell.”
“Not quite, Blake. You can have anything that money can buy.”
“It bought you,” he pointed out.
“Actually, you just rented me, and not all of me at that. I hope you know that I find you despicable, and that I do indeed hate you.”
His eyes flashed at the words and the tone she used, and she waited for her punishment. She had to learn not to respond when he goaded her, or her time with him would be unbearable, because no matter what she could possibly do to him, he could do it to her ten times worse without breaking a sweat.
“If I believed that, we would have a problem.”
He reached into her hair and tugged it hard, then crushed his lips against hers. She fought him for a moment before all thoughts evaporated from her mind. This was the power he had. No matter how angry he made her, a few seconds in his arms and she was fully under his spell.
When she’d submitted to him totally, that’s when he released her. She slowly opened her eyes and saw unmitigated triumph in his expression, and once the fog cleared from her muddled brain, she stiffened.
Okay, this wasn’t working. She’d already known that he’d always win if they were having a power struggle, but her emotions kept getting in the way. She needed to go a different route when it came to dealing with Blake. But simply to answer him right now required her to pretend to possess a calm she didn’t at all feel.
“I hope you don’t take my passion as anything more than my body responding, Blake. I can despise you and still desire you. After all, you were a pretty good lay.”
He let her go and turned his back to her, leaving her to lean back against the wall and hope her legs wouldn’t fail her.
After a few heartbeats, he swung back around and smiled at her, giving her no idea what he was thinking about.
“You’ll eventually learn more about me, Jewell, about what ‘makes me tick.’ We obviously haven’t spent enough time together if you really think I’m so easily discouraged. But that’s okay — we have all the time in the world to get to know each other.”
“We have thirty days,” she countered. “And what about my brother? Do I have to please you before I get to take him home?” It took everything inside her to say the words without scorn.
“We will go and meet with the attorney tomorrow,” he said.
“And what will we say?”
Blake moved back to the couch and sat down as if he had no other place in the world to be.
“Don’t worry about it. In the end, your brother will be with you. That’s what you want, isn’t it, Jewell?”
“Of course that’s what I want,” she growled. After finally pushing away from the wall, she went in for another round of pacing.
“And you have proved that you will do whateve
r it takes to make that happen.”
She didn’t trust the calm she heard in his voice, the way he said those words. It didn’t take a genius to see that this was simply the eye of the storm. What she couldn’t figure out was what was in this for him. “What do you get out of this, Blake?” she finally asked.
The smile that turned up his lips was her first sign that she wasn’t going to like his next words any more than she’d liked anything he’d had to say so far. In fact, she’d probably like it even less. The confidence emanating from him made that sick feeling in her stomach even stronger.
“We’ve gone over this ground before. I get anything I want, don’t I, Jewell.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement — and one he had no doubt was utter and total fact.
“No, Blake. No one gets everything they want,” she told him. “That’s not an argument. It’s simply the truth.”
He just threw her another smile, one making it clear that her words hadn’t put him out one bit. It seemed that nothing she could do or say would throw him off the high horse he always rode. When he stood up, she waited for his next assault, but instead of coming toward her, he began moving away.
“What are you doing now?” she asked when he looked to be exiting the room.
“I’m done for the night. We’ll discuss this more tomorrow,” he said and he kept on walking.
Before she was able to say another word, she heard the front door open and close. She went slowly toward it, in shock once she realized he’d left. With shaking knees, she proceeded down the hallway, found what had to be her bedroom, and sagged onto the bed, not bothering to change, not bothering even to open her eyes again once they drifted shut.
Blake Knight had reappeared in her life with a hurricane-like force, disrupting everything in his path. But he wasn’t going to grow weaker as he continued on his path, much less calmly drift back out to wherever he came from. No. That wasn’t his style. He would return again and again until he got what he wanted.
For now, that appeared to be her. And there was nothing she could possibly do to stop him.
Chapter Eight
Jewell looked fuzzily at the clock near her head. Six in the morning, it said, and she wasn’t tempted to throw it against the wall. She’d finally slept, and it had done her some good. Instead of feeling defeated, she jumped out of bed and almost danced into her large new en-suite bathroom. She even added an extra little wiggle in her hips. When she’d been at Blake’s place three months ago, he had installed video cameras everywhere to monitor her actions. He might or might not have done the same thing here, but she just didn’t care. If he wanted a show, a show he would get.
When she last looked in the mirror, she’d felt hollow, drained. But not now. Today, she had a purpose. Blake might think he owned her, and in a way he did, but in the end she and Justin would be reunited and the two of them would run to the farthest reaches of the planet, and no one would be able to separate them again.
She showered quickly, threw on a robe, and then searched the phone book, made several calls, and found an attorney who could see her that afternoon. Thank goodness for free consultations! She would be paid well by Ms. Beaumont, but for now she had next to no money. Not that she would admit that to the lawyer. And she’d be very careful this time. She wasn’t the wide-eyed innocent that she was when the last lawyer took her for a ride.
After finding the walk-in closet crammed with clothing — a whole new wardrobe — Jewell dressed and put on makeup, then stood before the full-length mirror and smiled.
“Today is going to be a good day,” she told herself. All she had to do was make sure she exuded confidence. It would all be good. She left the apartment with a spring in her step. The attorney would tell her exactly what she wanted to hear. She was sure of it.
An hour later, Jewell wasn’t feeling nearly as positive as she sat back in the stiff leather chair and listened to the man speak.
“The court asked for a visible change in your circumstances, Ms. Weston, a sign of stability. You don’t have a positive employment history, and though you say you have money coming in, a one-time settlement won’t show Judge Malone that you are ready to be responsible for this child. Since you lost the last battle with the courts — you didn’t make it to the second hearing — you’re in an even more vulnerable position.”
“How could the courts possibly think it would be better for my brother to be raised by strangers who don’t care about him at all?” she gasped.
“It’s not a matter of who will love your brother more. It’s very black and white, and they don’t want to see this child bounced around for years until he ends up as yet another child in the juvenile-justice system.”
Jewell did not like this man, not one little bit. He was cold and he definitely wasn’t saying what she wanted to hear. “I disagree with you, Mr. Sharp. I think my brother is much better off with a sister who loves him and will do whatever it takes to ensure his safety.”
“I have been doing my job for a long time, Ms. Weston, and I won’t take on a case that I’m sure to lose. I’m telling you now that this is a losing case.” The way he said those words wasn’t exactly cruel, but still they cut her to the bone.
Her stomach sank as she looked into his almost sympathetic eyes. That was all she needed — pity. She’d have felt better if he’d sported a sneer, because his expression told her that she didn’t have a chance in hell of winning this case on her own.
Dammit! That out-and-out bastard Blake Knight. He knew all of this. That’s why he had so much confidence when he told her she would do whatever he wanted.
Power.
It was that word again. It was something that Blake Knight had, and something she would never achieve. How she hated this constant sense of helplessness, of inevitable defeat.
“You are sure that there’s nothing else I can do, Mr. Sharp?”
She didn’t want to hear the attorney’s next words, but she braced herself for them anyway.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Weston, but at this point, you don’t have a winning case. If your life doesn’t undergo drastic change, there’s no reason for you to even try to reopen this case. Sadly, that means that your brother could very probably be swallowed up by the system.”
Once again, she heard that depressing pity.
“What do you mean by drastic?” There was nothing she wouldn’t do at this point.
“This is strictly off the record, but the courts want to see stability. They want to see two-parent households, and they want to know that household will remain intact and welcoming to the child. No more disruptions. You need a home, you need security, and you need a lot more than you are showing right now.”
Jewell fully understood what he was telling her. She’d be on solid ground if she could tell the court that she had a husband, that she was a happily married woman who would provide a stable home for her brother. They didn’t see an unemployed college dropout as someone suitable to raise a child.
She nearly laughed aloud at her own thoughts. Sure, it was a bitter laugh. She thought she’d already reached the point of hysteria, but as she saw the last of her hope slip away, she realized she hadn’t seen anything yet.
Jewell couldn’t possibly imagine a world without her brother in it. But wasn’t his happiness far more important than her own? Of course it was. And if he managed to find a family that would love him for the rest of his life, wouldn’t he be happy? Maybe. But wouldn’t he be happier with her?
Not if she couldn’t provide him with a stable environment.
“I can’t give him the home he needs, can I?” she asked Mr. Sharp. Even though this man didn’t know her, sometimes it took a stranger to tell you the truth in a way that you could actually hear it.
“That’s not what I’m saying, Ms. Weston. I don’t know you. From the look in your eyes, I can see that you love your brother very much, but unfortunately love isn’t always the answer, and love certainly doesn’t put food on the table, or offer a roof over anyone’s
head.”
“Ah, but love can turn mountains into molehills,” she replied with more than a trace of sarcasm.
“In theory,” he said with the slightest of smiles.
“What would your advice be for me to do next?”
The attorney paused for so long, she figured he was giving up on even talking to her. She was sure he wanted nothing more than for her to leave his office. At least this man hadn’t led her on and taken her money.
He finally leaned forward and looked her in the eyes.
“If you can’t lose him, do whatever it takes.”
And those were the words with which she carried with her as left his office. No, he wouldn’t represent her, and she had no doubt that, no matter how many attorneys she visited, her situation wouldn’t change.
So she was now left with a simple choice: to give up or to fight. Which was she going to do?
She made her way back to her new apartment. But it wasn’t hers, was it? Nothing was. No matter what she seemed to achieve, she kept getting kicked back down.
Stop this right now! Jewell told herself. You’re not the kind of person to think this way.
She wouldn’t drown in her own defeat. There were some calls she needed to make. And when she was done, she knew she would feel a whole heck of a lot better.
Full of purpose, she stepped into her sitting room and then drew back a step. Sipping a cup of tea while sitting elegantly on Jewell’s couch — well, Blake’s couch, to be more accurate — was Ms. Beaumont.
“Hello, Jewell. I was expecting you to be here when I arrived.”
The woman’s face didn’t tell Jewell a single thing; it was closed and almost blank. Jewell wished she could be as sophisticated as this woman. Maybe it wasn’t sophistication, though; maybe Ms. Beaumont was just a woman who had seen it all and was beyond feeling interest or excitement.
“I had an appointment,” Jewell said, sitting across from her, wondering what this visit was about. Maybe Blake had changed his mind after their altercation the previous night and was sending her back.
