by Kim Law
Appreciation flitted across her face. “Too bad you can’t learn to be a tad more subtle.”
She put her napkin on the table and scooted to the edge of the booth, as if intending to get up, but made a little “oops” sound at the last minute. She bent down, stretching for some unnamed object, and the top half of her darned near spilled out of her dress.
“Didn’t I once call you the devil?” Jaden muttered so only she could hear him. He also sent scowls to every man in the place who’d redirected his attention to Arsula’s chest.
She lifted her face from her position near the floor. “And shouldn’t you have learned your lesson from that last time?”
As he stared down into the face he was becoming more and more infatuated with, he understood how fast a man could get used to this woman. “Are you saying that you intend to shove me down another flight of stairs tonight?”
“Nope.” A hint of the very devil he spoke of showed up as she demurely returned to an upright position. Because at the same time as her back connected with the padded cushion behind her, her foot found his crotch. “I have something entirely different in mind for you tonight.”
He pulled out his wallet and tossed down a wad of bills, but before standing, he pressed her foot firmly into his erection. “Then let’s get out of here.”
She didn’t delay, seemingly as invested as he in getting back to the apartment in a hurry, but as they made their way through the crowded dining room, his gaze landed on someone else.
“Meg,” he said, surprise filling the word.
Arsula stopped in front of him, then she followed his gaze.
“What about her?” Her tone was friendly, but when she saw what he had—Meg on a date of her own—her posture changed. And Jaden knew that her change was due to his change.
“Nothing,” he replied quickly. He motioned with the bottom of one crutch toward the door. “Let’s get out of here.”
She didn’t argue, but neither did she continue moving as if she had somewhere to be. They made their way into the hallway that led to the lobby of the hotel, and as the restaurant doors closed behind them, Jaden didn’t let himself look back. He’d seen Megan a few times since that night at the office. They’d met up to look at potential locations for the store, and he, Nate, and Dani had even been with her at the real estate agent’s office earlier that day. They’d signed a three-year lease on what each of them felt was the perfect new location.
Additionally, during one of those meetings, he’d shared with Megan that he and Arsula were now dating—he’d felt it the courteous thing to do. Yet Meg hadn’t said a word about her going out with anyone. And he wasn’t sure why that bothered him so much.
Arsula remained silent as they made their way through the historic hotel, not bothering to take in any of the local artifacts serving as décor, and not for the first time, Jaden wished he could put weight on his foot.
At least he was in a boot now. That had happened last week.
But he wanted to be able to take Arsula’s hand as they walked. He wanted to pull her to the side of the room and talk about what had just happened.
“It’s just that I was surprised.” He didn’t intend to make a big deal about it, but he did feel the need to say something.
“I didn’t ask,” Arsula replied.
“But you want to know.”
She hit the automatic button on the handicapped door, and they stepped from inside to outside. And as had happened almost six weeks before, a sharp wind seemed to snap them in two.
“Good Lord.” He hurried up the sidewalk beside her. This time, they’d both come out without their coats.
“Do you want to go back?”
“No.” He lowered his head against the wind. He’d known an arctic blast was expected to pass through tonight—every cherry farmer in the area was concerned—but the temperature had remained comfortable when they’d gone in.
“Then let’s quit talking and get there as fast as we can.”
Arsula’s apartment was less than a block away, and it took another ten minutes, but they made it in one piece. He snuck a peek at her as she locked the office door once they got inside, and worry gnawed at him.
“It had nothing to do with her.” He stood in the middle of the reception area, determined to have this out before the night went any further downhill. “None of it. Not my desperation to win her back when she first broke up with me, not my drunken behavior afterward and winding up in bed with you, and not my seeming disappointment in seeing her tonight.”
He’d figured all of that out as quickly as he’d realized he hadn’t actually been jealous to see Megan out with another man.
“Then what, exactly, did it have to do with?” Arsula asked. She stood on the other side of her desk, having expertly put a barrier between them.
“It had to do with me,” he admitted. He made himself stand tall, even though it was easier to lean on his crutches. It was time to admit a fault he’d known about for some time. “My mother never loved me. Which you know already. But by the time I came along, she’d quit putting out any effort. Before she died, I felt like I was on the outside looking in. And afterward . . . I was the little brother my sister had to raise. Dani loved me, of course. And she was great playing the role of mom.”
He tried to pace, but doing so in crutches remained a veritable clusterfuck.
“But the thing is, she wasn’t my mom. And my life has never been what anyone would call normal. That’s what Megan represented to me. The normalcy I crave. I want the house, the kids, the white picket fence. And Megan was part of that plan. She was supposed to love me. That’s why I struggled with the breakup. Why I faltered upon seeing her tonight. My brain hadn’t fully reset.”
Arsula had grown still as he spoke, and once he ran out of words, his nerves kicked in. He didn’t know what else to say. Any other time, he’d expect her to jump in with words meant to coax him through his own thoughts, but he didn’t think that would be happening tonight. She remained too quiet.
And she looked too hurt.
“Arsula . . . please. I swear to you—”
She held up a hand to stop his words. “What were you thinking when you saw her? Was that really jealousy I saw?”
He nodded, and shame filled him. And he hated that one moment in time would hurt her. “It was at first, but just for a minute. And only because it was startling to see.”
“Yet you said you’ve moved on. You’re just friends again. You said I wasn’t a stand-in, Jaden.” Her voice cracked on his name, and she shook her head with disgust. “And you know I wouldn’t be with you if—”
“I have moved on,” he stressed. He crossed to her and refused to let her push him away. “I’m with you now, and only you. Mind, body, and soul. You make me happy in ways I didn’t know were possible, Arsula. Don’t you know that? In ways I only dreamed about with Megan. I’ve laughed more since I’ve known you than I have in a whole year. I open my eyes to a brighter world each day. To a woman who blows my mind with her bravery and refusal to live life any way but her way. I’ve shared things with you that I never did with her. Do you realize that?” He tilted her face up to his, the thought of losing her terrifying him. “And I want to share more. Because you’re you, Arsula. And because I’m beginning to think that you were sent here for me.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Arsula opened her eyes the next morning, and worry roiled inside her. Not for the fact that she’d let Jaden sweet-talk her into bed after he’d gotten jealous of Megan—although that was scary enough on its own—but because she finally got it. She understood what Jaden’s problem was.
She rolled to her side, finding him still asleep, and she contemplated the conversation to come. He wouldn’t like what she had to say, because it was bound to cut deep. But he needed to hear it. And she knew it had to be now.
She shifted her gaze to the ceiling. The aqua color had a soothing effect, which was why she’d chosen it. So she soaked it in, hoping to even ou
t her energy before having the confrontation that lay ahead. A phone rang in the office below, and she picked up her cell to see what time it was. Still an hour and a half before she had to open the door. It was probably someone on East Coast time, forgetting to account for the time zones.
She put the phone back and returned her focus to the ceiling. She was so Zen as she lay there, she didn’t hear Jaden when he moved. Yet suddenly, he lay propped above her, his blue eyes peering down into hers.
“You’re very still,” he said.
“I was trying not to wake you.”
“No. I mean on the inside.” He touched his fingers to her chest. “In here.”
She caught her breath at his understanding. “You can tell that?”
“Yeah. I don’t know how, but I can. And I have to say, it’s not exactly comfort I’m picking up on.” He moved his hand higher and traced his fingers over the line of her jaw. “What’s wrong, Lula-bell? What can I do to help? You’re not still upset about last night, are you?”
He could be very caring at times.
She pressed a kiss to his fingers. “I’m not still upset about last night. And thank you, but I don’t need any help. I’m just lying here worrying about you.”
His brow furrowed. “What about me?”
“I get it now,” she whispered, and his eyes darkened as he stared back.
“You get what now?”
“I understand why you hurt.”
Now it was his being that went still. “What are you talking about? I thought we’d moved beyond that.”
She could hear the trepidation in his voice. “Just because we don’t talk about it regularly doesn’t mean there’s not still an issue. And my subconscious finally worked it out. It’s not about your mom, Jaden. Nor is it just with your dad. It’s with your entire family.”
He pushed to a sitting position. “What are you talking about? We both know my mother was the problem.”
She didn’t know how she’d missed it before. She’d even seen it at the hospital when she’d offered to let him stay with her. In a blink, the discussion had gone from what was best for Jaden to Jaden against his siblings.
Wasn’t that part of why she’d stepped in and made the offer? So he’d have someone on his side?
“Yes, your mother was the problem. Originally. But after she was gone, why didn’t you get the normalcy you craved? Why did Dani have to come home and raise you instead of your dad doing it?”
“Because he’s a man,” he argued. “That’s not so uncommon.”
“Isn’t it? So you’re telling me that if you have kids someday, you won’t be there for them if they need you? That you wouldn’t play both mom and dad if they didn’t have a mother around?”
He’d stopped arguing, but she could see he didn’t like where his thoughts had gone.
“Your dad wasn’t there for you after your mom died,” she continued. “If you were working with a patient, you’d see the same thing I do. He wasn’t there for you when you were a kid, so why would you go to his house and risk him not being there for you now?”
“Stop speaking.” His words barely made it out, but Arsula heard them loud and clear.
She didn’t stop, though. It was time to push. “But there’s more to the story.” She kept her tone as calm as her insides had previously been. “Because it wasn’t just that you wouldn’t stay at the house when you broke your ankle. You wouldn’t stay with any of your family.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw.
“Not Dani, not Nick, not Gabe.”
He extricated himself and rose from the bed.
“What you fear is that no one in your family truly loves you, Jaden. That’s what Megan represented for you. The one person you could count on to love you for you. Who didn’t ‘have’ to love you.”
“I said stop it.”
“Therefore, you’d rather let a stranger be there for you than risk staying where you might not be wanted.”
He stepped into his jeans, nearly falling as he had to put weight on his ankle. “I didn’t ask for your amateur psychoanalysis, Arsula. Nor do I want it.”
“But I have valid points, and you know it.” She rose to her knees, remaining on the bed. “You spent years working on the knowns of your mother. All of you dealt with her. All of you survived in your own way. But you never faced that she wasn’t the only one who caused hurts.”
His face contorted with anger. “We did face it. That’s where you’re wrong. He hurt Dani. He let her take the brunt of Mom’s abuse, and he never once raised a hand to help her out of the situation. We faced it, they both went to therapy to deal with it. You don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about.”
“But the same happened with you,” she said softly. “And you didn’t face it.”
“I swear, Arsula. You need to pull the fuck back.”
“Tossing around curse words isn’t going to make me curl up in horror, you know.”
He yanked his shirt over his head.
“Nor will it offend me.” She rose and went to stand in front of him, and when he looked at her again, she read both anger and fear. She’d nailed it.
All of it.
“Then maybe if I point out what a joke you are, you’ll take offense. You don’t have any magical gift. Are you kidding me? And the fact that you ‘help people’”—he air quoted—“without so much as a lick of education only enhances the lunacy of your actions.” He tapped himself on the chest. “I’m the one who knows what he’s talking about here. Because I’m not the joke. No wonder your own dad is embarrassed by you.”
She went quiet. Because yep, he’d offended her. He’d sliced her open.
But she also understood this was part of his lashing-out process. He was hurting. He was scared.
And she was pissed.
“Quit channeling your mother, Jaden.” She let her own eyes show as much spite as his. “She hurt you, so you think you have some right to hurt others?”
“Do not throw my mother back in my face.”
“Then don’t act like her.”
He didn’t say another word. He turned his back, strapped on his boot, and then he and his crutches hobbled to the inner set of stairs. And when he opened them, while still not so much as saying another word to her, she picked up her cell phone and chunked him in the back of the head.
Thankfully, he didn’t fall down the stairs that time, but he did disappear. Probably from her life as well as from her apartment.
Her phone started ringing a couple of minutes later, but she didn’t bother to pick it up. Whoever it was could wait. She had to take a shower and wash Jaden Wilde from her body. And she hoped that by the time she had to go downstairs, he’d have found somewhere else to be.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Arsula wheeled into the Cheyenne hospital parking lot around eleven that night, hyped on coffee and adrenaline and twelve hours on the road, and took the first empty parking spot she came to. She had her door open before she’d even stopped and held her arm out behind as she ran from the car, pushing the lock button on the key fob. The car beeped as she hit the brick pavers under the awning, and a few seconds later the automated doors of the emergency room opened in front of her.
She stepped in, catching her breath only long enough to think about the last time she’d been in an ER and how much her life had changed since, then she hurried down the hallway she knew would eventually lead to the elevators to take her to the OB floor. She was at a run by the time she reached the right section of the hospital, and as she waited for the elevator to arrive, she continually jabbed the button.
The steel doors slid open and no one was inside, so she stepped in, hitting both the “Close Door” and “7” buttons at the same time.
“Hurry,” she urged, as the elevator began to climb. The call that had come in after Jaden left that morning had been her mother, shrieking about Whitney going into labor. Arsula hadn’t heard the message until an hour later, and thankfully, the temp she’d trai
ned to fill in for her had been available to come right in. Arsula had hit the road soon after, and given that no one had updated her in the last two hours, she was now in an all-out panic.
The silence from her family had her flip-flopping on whether the lack of information meant that the baby still wasn’t close to being born or that the baby had already been born and no one wanted to tell her she’d missed it. At the moment, though, she’d lay odds she hadn’t missed anything. There was too much inside of her, urging her on.
She pressed the “7” button again, not removing her finger as the car ascended, while lecturing herself for not taking the stairs. She knew how slow these elevators could be. Three nephews had already been born here, as well as this being the location where her great-aunt had spent her final days.
The car finally came to a halt, and the second the doors opened wide enough to squeeze through, she burst out of them.
“Arsula!”
Pivoting, she ran for the crowd of Morettis gathered outside one of the rooms. “Is she here?”
“Is who here?” asked her oldest brother.
“Baby Arsula.” She shot Chris a quit-being-stupid look. “Has she been born yet?”
“How do you know it’s a girl?”
Her other brother turned, then, and both of their wives, as well as Arsula’s parents, closed around her.
“Did you dream that it’s a girl?”
“Did Boyd tell you it is?”
“I always knew Boyd liked you better than us.”
“Boys, behave yourselves and quit laying into your sister.”
Arsula tossed a grateful look to her mother and a quick nod to her dad, who’d stood silent as her brothers had started in on her, then she faced her brothers. “No, morons, Boyd didn’t tell me anything. But I have to believe that surely one of you idiots can produce something other than a Y chromosome.”
