by Sey, Susan
“The one that killed him?”
“That’s the one,” Jax said easily, not that it was an easy memory. His dad’s death still hurt. Of course it did. But it had been a long time ago, and Matty’s pain was fresh. Raw. He needed to unload some of it, and Jax could take it. He owed his brother that much. More, probably. “It was a death trap. Literally. And the one he built at Hill Top House wasn’t much better. Mom knew she couldn’t stop him from building it, but she insisted he do it away from the main house. That way when it blew — because everybody knew it was going to blow eventually — at least it would only take out the garage.”
“You’re saying everybody’s been just waiting for the garage to blow up?” Matty turned to stare. “It was like a time bomb or something?”
Jax gave him a good, hard stare in return. “You discharged a firearm in the direction of a propane tank, Matisse. Don’t even think you’re off the hook on that.”
Matty fell back into his slump and resumed his stare out the window. “A propane tank I didn’t even know was there,” he muttered.
“It wasn’t a secret,” Jax said reasonably. “It wasn’t even hidden. But if you can admit that you failed to maintain the situational awareness necessary to safely operate a firearm — even a pellet gun — then I can certainly concede that nobody probably ever mentioned Dad’s leftover propane tanks to you.” He rounded the bend and approached the giant rock marking the end of the road. Even as he turned left, he pointed his chin toward the right fork, the one that led to Hill Top House. “After all, they hardly even say Joe’s name over there. Of course they wouldn’t mention his deathtrap kiln. It’s a shame Mom’s so reluctant to talk about him, though. You’d have loved him. And he’d have loved the crap out of you.” The Nissan fell into a huge pot hole, and Jax winced and downshifted. He enjoyed that part but holy hell his suspension. “Especially when you tried to burn down Mom’s carriage house. He always meant to do that one day himself.”
Matty only grunted but Jax thought he might be fighting a smile. He glanced at Addy for confirmation. She was always so attuned to the kid’s mental state; she’d know if he was leaving this conversation in a good place. But Addy was staring straight ahead between them, gripping her knees and exuding concentrated silence. It was as if she were trying to erase herself, he realized suddenly. As if she imagined that Jax could reach across the cab to grab hold of the brother he’d somehow lost track of over the years, but only if she willed herself into invisibility first.
Something surged inside him with a violent churn, ripped his heart from the bedrock of his soul, and sent it spinning like an unmoored boat on a vast ocean. Good Christ, he loved this woman. He’d wondered about that over the years. Love was an easy word to toss around, a convenient way to describe — at least to himself — the upheaval Addy wreaked on his mental state, not to mention what she did to his body. He’d been very careful not to imagine himself in love with her for real, though. Real love wasn’t something that existed, one-sided, in the confines of a person’s head. Or even in their sweaty little dreams. Real love required two people, two hearts, and a hearty dose of real life.
But watching her try so damn hard to get out of the way while he fumbled to reconnect with the only brother he had left? It kicked the shit out of that theory. Fuck it, he loved her. He was in love with her. Desperately, irrevocably, forever and ever, say amen.
Silence reigned for a few minutes, and Jax concentrated on negotiating the private drive’s truck-eating pot holes with every shell-shocked ounce of his attention. Finally, he pulled into the weed-choked drive behind his grandma’s saggy old back porch.
“Yikes,” Matty said, and shoved open his door. “This place is a disaster.”
“Don’t burn it down,” Jax said. “I think Addy wants it.”
“Ha ha.” Matty threw him a scowl. “So funny, Jackson.” He stepped onto the gravel drive and headed for the porch, leaving the door hanging open for Addy. She threw her knee over the gearshift and scooted across the bench seat toward it. She stopped before she got there and turned back to him, her face shining.
“That was a good thing you did just now.” She reached out, took his jaw in one soft hand and rubbed her thumb over his cheekbone. “A very good thing, Jax.”
“What?” he asked, staring. He knew he was staring, could feel himself doing it, but was helpless to stop. A guy didn’t come face to face with his own heart all that often. He wasn’t firing on all cylinders just yet. “Asking Matty not to burn your house down?”
“Yeah.” She leaned in and kissed him. Just put her mouth right on his and kissed him. It was, he realized dimly, the first time she’d kissed him. She just touched her lips to his — a blessing, a kindness, a reward. A miracle. She drew back and laughed. “For that. I do want to keep it. Thanks.” She slid across the bench seat, got out and slammed the door behind her. She trotted toward the porch, calling for Matty, probably to wave him off the back steps — which were surely more dangerous than Joe’s old kiln — leaving Jax with both hands still on the wheel, and a stupid smile lighting up his whole damn face.
Chapter 20
AN HOUR LATER, Mason and Frank were squabbling happily about how a smart person might create a fully plumbed and wired island counter in Davis Place’s ruined old kitchen, and Jax went looking for Addy. He found her standing in front of a miserly window in what she assured him would soon be a breathtaking great room. He didn’t doubt it, not with that view.
Over her shoulder he could see a thin strip of lawn, a low rock wall, and then nothing but empty air and miles of water. The land simply fell away, sheered off into a cruel drop that ended in the lake’s snapping jaws while the river jetted out of the facing cliff in rainbow splattered shards.
Beauty wasn’t the right word for it, he mused. It was too sharp, too unsettling—
“Holy crap,” he said abruptly. He joined Addy at the window and stared. “This is the view!”
Addy cocked a brow. “Uh, yeah. Sort of the reason for this whole project, remember?”
“No, I mean, this view. It’s the one hanging in Hill Top House, in the great room. Diego’s tryptich.” He stepped back, squinted at it. “How did I never know that?”
Addy tipped her head and studied the windows. “You’re right,” she said slowly. “It’s that same vibe. Like a thin layer of beauty smeared over—” She broke off, bared her teeth and made claws of her hands.
“Right.” Jax shot a finger at her, in perfect harmony. “Over something damn dangerous.
“But compelling, too.” She pursed her lips. “You don’t want to look but it doesn’t feel safe to turn your back on it, either.”
Jax slung a friendly arm around her shoulders. “He should have named that series Mom.”
She gave a weary laugh. “Bianca.” She sighed, and was quiet for a long moment. Then she tipped up her face to his, hit him with huge worried eyes. “Jax, what’s going on in her head?” she asked. “I know she has a plan. I just have no idea what it is, which means I have no idea what to say when she asks for it.”
“And she will ask for it.” He watched Graham Graves cross the narrow strip of the front yard, clipboard in hand, his eyes narrowed on the tumble-down porch. Matty trailed after him, lugging a metal tool box. “Probably at dinner tonight.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured, too.” Matty knelt in the grass and rifled through the box to come up with the tape measure Graham had presumably requested. “But what? She had every opportunity today to tell Nan about the new paintings but she didn’t.”
“Didn’t let Matty tell her, either.”
“Yeah.” She slid him a sideways glance. “I noticed that as well.”
“He didn’t know it was a family secret, though. If he had, Nan would have picked it up in an instant.” Jax shook his head. “Kid can’t lie to save his life.”
“I know. Thank God.”
Jax didn’t imagine her gratitude was all for Nan not finding out about the paintings, or even m
ostly for that. It was for Matty’s inherent bent toward honesty, and Jax was right there with her. Diego had been an incredible liar, with a special talent for deceiving people who believed in him. Who loved him. It was damn hard to separate Matty from Diego when he was wearing that face, but this was an important distinction. The kind of distinction that could — if Bianca was right and the kid did have some freaky talent that would eclipse even Diego’s — save his damn soul.
“But why would she show Matty’s work when there’s such a lucrative alternative?” She frowned. “Or why would she at least pretend to? Why would she want the entire town to go all torches and pitchforks on us?”
He shrugged and tucked his fingers into his pockets. “Guess we’ll find out at dinner.”
“For pity’s sake.” Addy watched Matty hand Graham a crowbar out in the yard. “If she’s not planning to show Matty’s work, why would she put him through this? He’s so angry already.”
“To be fair, he’s thirteen. Thirteen is an angry age.”
“I know.” She sighed. “You should talk to him.”
“I just did.”
“I know.” She smiled up at him, and something shifted inside his chest. Something tender and vulnerable. “But you have to keep talking to him. Talk to him about this.”
He shook his head doubtfully. He was also trying to clear the stars out of his eyes. He didn’t think straight when she smiled right at him like that, all dimples and admiration. “Talking only goes so far with guys. I vote for keeping him busy.” He put a single finger in one of those dimples — soft as dreams, those things — and gently aimed her face toward the yard where Graham had Matty jogging back to his truck on his third fetch-and-carry of the last five minutes. “Until we have something concrete to talk to him about — like some idea of what Bianca’s trying to do here — I say we put him to work. If he’s not at the fire station with me, let’s keep him here at Davis Place with you. Let him tag after the guys, learn to build, saw, hammer, wire.” He trailed his knuckle down the curve of her cheek, followed the pretty line of her neck and let his hand rest on her shoulder. “Let him develop some skills, Addy. Let’s give him something to hang his self-esteem on that has nothing to do with art. It’ll protect him better than a million heart-to-hearts, I promise.”
“I believe you.” She watched Matty out in the yard with worried eyes. “I think you should talk to him again anyway.”
“You’re such a girl.” He drifted his hand down her back to her bottom, fit the lovely curve of it into his palm. Yep. Definitely a girl. His blood started humming, heating, but she stepped out of reach.
“For heaven’s sake, Jackson. We’re standing in front of a window.” But her cheeks were pink and interested. “Graham and Matty are right there.”
“And Mason and Frank are in the kitchen.” He tugged her away from the window, pressed her back into the wall and kissed her. He’d only meant to have a quick taste, a quiet taste, but she smelled so good. Like sunshine, he thought, the strong kind that baked the earth dry in August and left the whole North Shore standing around like a fresh pack of matches, waiting for one good lightning strike. And when she wound her arms around his neck and offered up her soft, sweet mouth, well, God. There went the lightning.
He crushed her to his body, until he could feel every gorgeous curve, every secret hollow. His hands raced over her, taking, claiming. It roared inside him, this need to mark her as his own. Desperate, he thought vaguely. He felt desperate, hungry. He wanted more than he had, more than she’d given him. More, he knew, than he’d actually asked her for just yet.
His fingers, he realized suddenly, were twisted fiercely in her curls, the fragile curve of her skull hard in his palm as he plundered her mouth. Like he was trying to, what, consume her or something? Mark her? Own her? Easy, he commanded himself, even as his heart thundered and arousal pounded. Dial it back, Jackson.
But when he tried, when he gentled his grip and shoehorned an inch or two of daylight between them, Addy arched back into him with a noise of demand that hit his system like napalm.
Right. He jacked her off her feet, pressed her into the wall and lost himself in the hot rhythm of his need. When she hooked her legs around his waist, he slapped a hand to the wall beside her head and picked up the pace, rubbing himself shamelessly against her, his desire hard and hot against her melting welcome. His knees went wobbly and a climax gathered prickly and devastating at the base of his spine. Her mouth was open next to his ear, and she was gasping, panting. Damn close herself, he thought and a roar of dark-edged satisfaction crawled up his throat.
Jax wasn’t entirely sure what he would’ve done next. He had a feeling it would have involved the floor and a significant rearrangement of their clothing and almost certain scandal when Mason and Frank rolled out of the kitchen to see what the commotion was all about.
But then Graham yelped, “Holy buckets!” out on the front lawn and Matty just bellowed. There was an unholy clatter of metal on metal, like somebody’d pitched a silverware drawer down the stairs and Jax and Addy sprang apart, panting.
For one sticky moment, they just stared at one another. Her chest heaved under her pretty purple sweater, and her nipples pressed clearly against the fabric, begging for his touch. His mouth.
And then she grinned at him. One loopy curl dangled in front of her eye, and a smile — a smirk, really — spread across her face, naughty and delighted and hot.
And suddenly Jax was done playing. He was flat out of patience. She was it, this woman. She was the love of his life, goddamn it, and he didn’t want to dry-hump her against the wall in secret anymore. Well, he did want that — it was a nice little appetizer — but that wasn’t all he wanted. Not nearly. He wanted the main course, plus dessert. He wanted hours, days. A lifetime. He wanted her. All of her — body, heart, soul. And there was only one way to have her.
He had to ask.
“Addison.”
“Mmmm?” She patted her chest and blinked, her cheeks flushed, her eyes dazzled, and he thought fuck it and almost reached for her again.
He pulled himself back with a superhuman effort. “We can’t keep doing this,” he said tightly.
“We can’t?”
“Hell, no.” A damn, dirty lie. He could take her up against the wall all day long. His hands twitched for her so he raked them through his hair instead. “We have to talk.”
“Oh.” Her hand crept to her throat. “Already?”
He frowned. “Already what?”
“What the hell was that?” Mason bulled out of the kitchen belly-first.
Frank followed more leisurely. “Somebody get struck by lightning out there?”
You have no idea, Jax thought, shoving his hands into his pockets for some emergency rearranging.
Addy snapped into action. She flung herself toward the front door and jerked it open. “Graham!” she shouted. “Matty?”
The stream of cursing Matty cut loose was so creative, so vile, so fascinatingly prolific that Jax was impressed in spite of himself. He shared a lifted eyebrow with Frank and Mason, and they all trotted out to the porch.
Matty lay on the lawn, all cursed out. His eyes were open, his arms out, and he stared blankly into the blue sky. He didn’t appear injured but was evidently occupying his own plane of existence for the time being. The tool box had barfed up its entire contents on the grass around him and Graham hopped from foot to foot a few feet away, folded nearly in two with laughter. Addy fell to her knees beside Matty.
“Matty!” she cried, patting frantically at his arms and legs. “Are you hurt?”
Matty blinked, gathered himself, sat up slowly. “I don’t think so, no.”
“What happened?”
He pointed solemnly to the porch. Jax walked down the steps to examine the broken lattice panel somebody had removed from the base of the porch and rested against the railing. He peered into the dark cavity under the porch, then turned to Graham, an eyebrow raised in question.
&nbs
p; Graham sucked in a deep breath but couldn’t quite wipe the grin from his round, sweet face. “We found Turkey Ground Zero,” he announced. “Pulled off that lattice work, and fifty, sixty birds pelted out of there. It was like the Boston Marathon, and Matty was standing on the starting line, facing the wrong direction.” He choked on a laugh, stuffed it down manfully and carried on. “They trampled the poor kid flat. Like he was Wile E. Coyote and they were the Road Runner.” He shook his head sympathetically, then ruined the effect with a snorting laugh he couldn’t quite suppress.
“You need to get Willa Zinc up here,” Frank observed, tucking his fingers into his belabored waistband. “Had raccoons in my attic last winter and she had them out on their furry asses quick, fast and in a hurry.”
“It was like he was wearing a shirt that said FREE BIRD SEED, THATAWAY,” Graham observed. He gave one last chuckle and wiped his eyes happily.
“Zinc’s good,” Mason agreed, smoothing his ‘stache. Jax suspected there was a smile behind it. “Her daddy was a son of a bitch, but Willa’s all right. You want her number?”
“I have it,” Addy said.
Matty sighed and lay back down. “I hate my life.”
Jax wasn’t sure he blamed the kid.
Chapter 21
A FEW HOURS later, Addy dragged herself into Hill Top House for Georgie’s engagement dinner. The chandelier in the foyer dripped a whole crayon-box of colors onto the gleaming pine floor, and despite her bone-deep weariness, Addy had to smile. All those blues and reds and oranges, the sunsets and sunrises, the modern edges next to all those antique curves and swirls. It was both a warm welcome and a solid punch to the throat, visually speaking. Bianca had always taken a very brace-yourself approach to hospitality.
She stopped in the middle of all those colors and waited for the sweet comfort of coming home to fill her. She needed it so badly. The past week had left ragged edges all over her soul, the kind of raw patches that home had always healed. But nothing happened.
