by Melody Anne
“Can’t a person change?”
“It doesn’t happen very often.”
“I’m trying, Jewell. I’ve decided it’s better to listen when more than one person is telling me that the same old Blake isn’t giving ‘customer satisfaction,’” he replied, and he took her hand in his.
Jewell’s head was spinning as he caressed her knuckles. “I…uh…I don’t know what to think right now.” She tugged on her hand, but he wasn’t letting go.
“You don’t always have to think, Jewell. Not everything has to be black and white, and sometimes it’s simply better to trust your gut. We can’t predict what will happen every minute of every day, but we can learn to roll with the changes.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t trust you or this new you that you’re presenting. Is that honest enough for you?”
“I can see why. Want to know what I did yesterday?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with excitement.
“I’m not sure I want to know,” she replied, but her lips turned up just the slightest. It was hard not to be affected by his good mood.
“I’ll tell you anyway,” he said before pausing. “I bought a house.”
“But you just bought that gigantic yacht! Anyway, you already have a place.”
He decided not to tell her that he now owned two gigantic yachts; the house was a more important topic. “You’re the one who told me there would be a child living with us.”
“You bought a house with Justin and me in mind?” she asked as she was thrown off balance again.
“That’s why I’ve been gone so much these past couple of weeks. I had to find the right place. This thing between us is on a track and there’s no getting off it, so you might as well just accept it. It’s fate.”
“But…I…I’m confused. You run hot and then cold and you make these demands, and then you turn around and ask my opinion. I can’t keep up with you, Blake.”
“I’ve never pretended to perfect, Jewell. And I’ve never wanted to be in a relationship. Not a real one, at least. But we both have problems, and we can help each other with those problems. Will it be perfect? No, it won’t, but who has a perfect life?”
“I’ve seen lots of shining examples of perfect lives,” she told him.
“Blockbuster movies don’t count, Jewell. In real life, people have their imperfections. Just one or two,” he said with a chuckle.
“You’re admitting that you aren’t perfect, Blake?”
“I’m as close to perfection as it gets,” he said, leaning back with a cocky grin.
“Ugh! You have too much self-confidence,” she told him.
“Why shouldn’t I? I know who I am and I know what I want. I always get it.”
“Yeah. Yeah. I get it. You’re the cat’s meow,” she said, trying to keep a straight face, but not succeeding.
“Again, I tell you that not everything is always black and white, Jewell,” he said and she knew there was a story behind these words.
“If you expect me to do something I feel is wrong, then you have to give me a reason to do it, Blake.”
He paused for a long moment before he spoke. “Isn’t getting your brother back reason enough to do something you’re uncomfortable with doing?”
“Yes. Of course Justin is worth anything and everything. But you want me to lock myself to you legally. And still you’re not telling me why.”
“For the business deal,” he said.
“Yes, I can see you need to get married, but what I can’t figure out is why you’ve chosen me.”
“We have a connection. If I’m to give up my prized bachelor status, then I want to do it with someone I can stand to share a house with.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Again, he paused for a long moment, and when he began speaking, Jewell’s jaw dropped and she didn’t think she’d ever be the same again.
Chapter Twenty-One
It was time to tell Jewell about his family. Blake knew that if he didn’t do something drastic, he’d lose her in two weeks’ time.
Though there was nothing she wouldn’t do for her brother, she somehow knew that he wouldn’t actually keep Justin from her if it came down to it. So he needed to give a piece of himself up, or else he was going to find himself without her.
He was thankful to his brother for talking to him, thankful he had actually listened to Tyler. He was so used to getting what he wanted no matter what he had to do to get it, he’d forgotten the basic rule that you get more with honey than with vinegar.
“You know that my family is incredibly messed up, right?”
She looked at him warily. “I know there’s a story to be told,” she said.
“I grew up wealthy. My father was a very rich man, and my mother…well, my mother was a gold-digging bitch.”
Jewell’s eyes popped open wide. “Surely, she couldn’t have been that horrible,” she said.
“What do you think of, Jewell, when you hear the word mother? Whatever adjectives you’ll think of can’t be used to describe that woman. She was vain, egotistical, and out to get whatever she could.” Blake didn’t feel even a glimmer of emotion — unless contempt counted — when he was describing the woman who had birthed him.
“Is that why you’re so cold, Blake?”
“That’s part of it.”
“Byron and I remember it all vividly — all the fights, all the underhanded things our mother did, and the whipped man our father had become. She couldn’t leave him and walk away with the money because she’d signed an unbreakable prenup. Sure, she could have gotten a lot of money for child support, but it wouldn’t have been enough to cover the lifestyle that she’d grown accustomed to, and she didn’t want us. She liked that we had a nanny, that she didn’t have to deal with us. We barely even saw her, let alone communicated with her. Tyler was too young to be affected by her attitude and her actions, but Byron and I remember her very well.”
“Lots of children have less than wonderful parents,” Jewell pointed out. “But they don’t take that as an excuse to treat everyone around them as nothing more than garbage beneath their feet.”
“I agree, but how many children watch their parents die right before their eyes?”
“Wait! What do you mean?”
When Jewell took his hand, he was more than aware of it, even if he didn’t think she realized that she was doing it, that she was trying to comfort him. It was a start, a start that he would take.
“My mother decided she didn’t want to be with my father any longer. And she didn’t want anything to do with my brothers and me. So she hatched a plan to have my father killed. Because her sons were nothing to her, she wasn’t worried about any fallout. If we got hurt or even killed in the shuffle, then so be it.” His voice sounded dead as he told her that.
“That’s insane. There’s no possible way anything like that could happen,” Jewell exclaimed, her fingers tightening on his hand.
“It did happen, Jewell. I told you the world isn’t always black and white and people aren’t always who they are supposed to be.”
“What happened?”
“My mother was seeing a man and told him that if he killed her husband, she would marry him and share all her wealth with him. Apparently the man she was seeing knew she was as big a liar with him as she was with my father. He found out somehow that her ultimate plan was to play the victim, throw him to the cops, and run off into the sunset with all her many millions of dollars. Her lover told her he was going along with her plan, but the entire time, he was making his own plans.”
“What plans?” Jewell exclaimed.
A distant, lost look entered Blake’s eyes when he told Jewell about the night that had changed him forever. “I was ten years old when it happened. My brothers and I were watching an animated movie in the family room when we heard shouting coming from the hallway. We just ignored the noise —it wasn’t abnormal to hear raised voices in our house and continued watching our cartoon.”
“But this sh
outing was different,” Jewell said when Blake paused too long.
“Yes, this shouting was different. These two men suddenly came into the room, and they were pushing my parents ahead of them. Before we even knew what was going on, they had my parents each tied up to a chair and then they bound us, and set us on the couch. I’ll never forget the look in my mother’s eyes. They were practically glowing with excitement. I thought it had to be some sort of game, because she looked anything but worried.”
“How could she not be worried? These men had bound her up,” Jewell pointed out.
“Yes, but you see, that was all part of the plan. She couldn’t get away unscathed, or the cops would never buy her story. My mother’s sick and twisted plan was for her boyfriend to ‘rape’ her and kill her husband. And this plan included us, you see, because we had to be witnesses to what happened, so when the cops asked, we could say the men hurt her, too,” Blake said with a disgusted snort.
He could see the horror in Jewell’s eyes, and she dug her fingernails into his hand. She didn’t realize how hard she was holding on to him. Strangely enough, the pain in his hand stabilized him enough to continue speaking.
“Things obviously didn’t go according to my mother’s plans. She figured that out pretty soon, and that’s when I saw the panic enter her eyes. Her boyfriend told her he knew she was a sadistic bitch out to get anything she could. He then told my father her entire plot. My dad was weak and he started sobbing, begging the men to spare his life. Of course, they were very amused. They began beating him, and his blood spurted out all over the room. Some of it even landed on my mom.”
Blake stopped for a moment to catch his breath.
“Finally,” he continued, “our father passed out from the pain, and the men got tired of beating him. One of the guys looked right into my eyes and smiled while saying, “Take this as a life lesson kid. If you let a woman screw you, this is how you’ll end up.” Then he put his gun against my father’s temple and pulled the trigger. My mother screamed as my dad’s brains splattered over the side of her face.”
“Oh my gosh, Blake,” Jewell whispered, and tears were now running down her face.
Blake had to look away from her. He’d never be able finish his story if he focused on the sympathy in her eyes. And he needed to finish.
“My mother actually thanked the man, and then begged for her life. He laughed at her while he ran the gun up and down her face. He told her that if she pleased him real well, he’d let her live. The next hour was almost worse than any other part of the evening, because that’s exactly what she did, even as the sickening smell our father’s blood was filling up the room. We closed our eyes, but we heard everything. The two men beat the hell out of my mother while doing unimaginable things to her at the same time. At one point I opened my eyes because she told them to go ahead and kill us too, that we would inform on them if they didn’t. She looked at me as she said it. Blood was dripping from her mouth, and all I saw was hatred in her eyes…” Blake was shocked when he found a strange tightness in his throat. Why should this upset him? He hated his mother and even his father. This story shouldn’t affect him in the least.
“Blake, oh, Blake, I am so sorry,” Jewell said as she rose from her chair. Before he could stop her, she sat down in his lap and wrapped her arms around him.
The tightness in his throat grew even harder to fight, but fight it he did. He needed to keep talking, to get this over with. It was several moments before he could continue, and when he did, his voice was flat. He refused to let emotion overwhelm him.
“When the men grew bored, the shot my mother in the head and left her lying on the floor, then threw my father over her. I’ll never forget the sight of my parents’ blood seeping from their bodies. To this day I will never own red carpet.”
Jewell wasn’t impressed by Blake’s attempt at a joke.
“Don’t do that, Blake. Don’t try to make light of this to show how strong you are. I know you’re strong, I get it, but there are some things no one is strong enough to deal with.”
“My mother had given the staff the day off, of course, because she didn’t want adult witnesses, so my brothers and I spent the whole night tied up on the couch there in the room with our dead parents. When the maid came in the next day, she found us and called the cops.”
“But every time you close your eyes, it’s like being right back there, isn’t it?” Jewell asked.
“Not every time, Jewell, not since meeting you,” he said, and he felt her body tense. Had he just revealed too much to her? Blake decided to stop talking now, afraid of what was going to come from his mouth.
“That’s way too much responsibility to put on my shoulders,” she gasped.
“I’m just speaking the truth.”
“You aren’t exactly what you portray, are you, Blake?”
He didn’t want to give her false illusions of who he was. Withdrawing back into himself, he pulled her head back so she’d be forced to look into his eyes.
“I’m a cold bastard, Jewell. Around you, I want to be different, but I will never really change from who I am. Take that as a warning,” he said before leaning down and kissing her.
He wanted to bring heat and hunger, but he couldn’t right now. So he settled for a chaste but hard kiss to remind her of who he was. Yes, he’d been through a traumatic experience, but he’d still made choices that only he could make. He owned those choices.
“I don’t think you’re as cold as you want the world to think you are,” she countered. When he was clearly about to reply, she held up her hand to stop him. “Fine, Blake. We are both screwed up, probably too screwed up to ever discover real happiness. So what the heck? I’ll marry you. I’ll do what you want.”
It took a few moments for her words to sink in. But Blake didn’t feel the triumph that he’d expected to feel. He’d told her his story and now she felt sorry for him. That wasn’t what he wanted — not at all.
“I don’t need your sympathy, Jewell,” he growled.
“Whether you want it or not, you have it.”
“Don’t think I’m going to change just for you,” he told her.
“Have you changed your mind about getting married, Blake?”
That stopped him. “No, I still think we should marry,” he told her. “I just don’t want you to think it’s going to be a traditional sort of marriage.”
“I would never think that,” she said, and her sad sigh made that tightness reappear in his throat.
But Blake had just gotten what he wanted, and he wasn’t going to let the guilt consuming him change the course his life was going to take. Jewell would be his wife.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Save yourself!”
Startled, Jewell lost her hold on her cup of coffee, and was thankful that it bounced into the sink. Timing was everything!
She couldn’t help but smile when she turned around and saw Justin come running into the room with Blake hot on his trail.
“Help, Sissy,” Justin hollered, but the words were scrambled because he was laughing so hard.
“There is no help for the two of you,” Jewell said with mock weariness, and then began laughing when Justin’s socks made him go skidding across the well-polished tile floors.
The boy landed in a heap near her feet. Thanks to the counter, Blake barely managed to come to a stop; he might have landed with a splat right on top of Justin.
The last three weeks had passed in a blur for her. When Blake said he could get things done, he hadn’t been fooling around. They’d gotten a court date within two weeks — for mere mortals, that would have been miraculous — and been granted temporary custody of Justin, and the three of them had been living in Blake’s new home since they had brought the boy home a week ago.
So quickly that it made her head spin, they had gotten into a routine. They got up together and had breakfast, and then Justin went to school while Blake and Jewell headed off to work. She loved her new job with Dr. Rice. It gave he
r purpose and she felt, for the first time in a long while, as if she was in control.
Maybe not complete control, as she was very unsure of where she and Blake stood, but at least there was some stability in her life, and most importantly, she had Justin back. She would do nothing to screw that up.
One thing about the situation baffled her. Blake hadn’t touched her since they’d moved in together. She didn’t even share a room with him. Since she’d agreed to the marriage of convenience, she hadn’t heard him utter another word about it.
And her fear that this was all a dream prevented her from bringing it up again, though she thought about it almost constantly. How could she not when she was around him so much?
Blake was standing there in a low-slung pair of sweats and a tight T-shirt, his normal morning attire. When he reached up for a mug and then poured himself some coffee, she couldn’t help but appreciate his incredible physique.
She also couldn’t help but wonder whether he now thought this hadn’t been such a great idea. Still, he was amazing with Justin. Maybe he really had just needed someone to make the business deal go through, and in the meantime he was getting attached to her little brother.
Jewell didn’t know what to think anymore. Elsa worked part time for them, cleaning and cooking on occasion, but other than that, she and Blake split the household responsibilities.
They seemed to be nothing more than housemates.
“What are your plans tonight?” he asked as he got out the cereal for Justin while the boy reached into the cupboard for a bowl.
“The girls at work asked if I wanted to go out for a drink tonight,” she told him. “I’m pretty excited about it, actually. It’s been a really long time since I’ve been asked to go anywhere with someone.”
“Ah, that’s good,” he replied, but the expression on his face didn’t match his words.
“Is there something wrong?” she asked as she racked her brain for something she might have missed. “Is something going on later today that I’ve forgotten about?”
