by Jewel E. Ann
“Can’t be any worse than New York.”
She paused with her dripping cone at her lips. A moment later she nodded. “True.”
“Hurricane season is over. We should head to the Gulf and find a little shack to rent.”
“Shack?”
“We don’t need much.”
He was looking at everything he needed.
“Don’t worry, I’ll do the laundry and dust the blinds.”
“You clean?” AJ couldn’t hold back his incredulous response.
“As needed. We might have to negotiate the definition of need. I have this feeling yours may be a bit more stringent than mine.”
He nodded, taking a small bite of his ice cream. “Were your parents wealthy?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Work seems to be an option for you, not a necessity. You live in a nice house, drive a brand new Harley, drop a couple thousand dollars on camping equipment, and for that first week I’m pretty sure you paid for all the gas and the hotel room expenses. Unless you stole my credit card from my wallet.”
Jillian licked her ice cream and chocolate covered lips. “Hmm … I never thought about stealing your wallet. Total oversight on my part.”
“I’m serious.” AJ pushed his half-eaten sundae toward the middle of the table. His appetite was still off.
“They weren’t wealthy, but they had money in savings, a house that was paid off, and pretty good life insurance.”
“Well you’re young and you should be putting that money in savings or investing it, not spending it on me.”
“So you quit your job. Where are you getting the money?”
“Savings … my house if it ever sells.”
“You don’t need to sell your house now.”
“Jillian …”
“What?” She shrugged, keeping her eyes on his ice cream that she decided to finish off.
“Look at me.” He took the cup from her and held both of her hands, squeezing them until she surrendered her gaze to him. “I can’t … I won’t pretend with you. I just want your now for as many days as I have. Because now—this moment—is all I have to give. It’s yours. I’m yours. Please just let it be enough.”
She looked at him without a single blink. Finally her head moved a fraction. It looked like a nod, a very small acquiescence. “You have ice cream on your nose.”
AJ wiped his nose then looked at his hand. “Did I get it?”
“Nope.”
He looked up just as a spoon filled with caramel and ice cream collided with his nose. Jillian’s shoulders bounced as she bit her lips together and snorted a laugh.
“Funny?” He narrowed his eyes.
Cupping a hand over her mouth, she nodded.
“Stop.” She tried to twist from his hold as he lunged over the table, locking her head between his hands while he rubbed his nose all over her face. She gave up the fight when his lips took hers.
Fate used his heart as a punching bag every time he touched her, a painful reminder that it could be the last touch, the last kiss.
“Aric James …” she whispered over his lips.
“Shh … now. Nothing else matters.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lady Gaga blared through the speakers about her Nebraska guy as Ryn gripped the ballet barre. Her leg muscles ignited into a fiery burn under Val’s drill sergeant orders. She welcomed the pain because her Nebraska guy was off. The. Charts.
“Coffee?” Val wiggled her brows at Ryn after the rest of the class left the building.
“I don’t know I—”
“Sorry. It sounded like a question didn’t it? I meant we’re going for coffee because you owe me the latest scoop. I’m in a dating funk right now. I need to know there’s life after divorce.”
“Sorry, I’m on a tight schedule today.”
“Just say it. You’re going to have hot sex with that boy because he likes the taste of your sweat.”
Ryn pushed on the front door and turned back. “Please don’t call him a boy. I’m drowning in enough insecurity.”
Val laughed. “Next week. I won’t take no for an answer.”
Ryn nodded and rushed out the door, digging through her purse for her keys as the cool fall breeze whipped her hair in her face.
“I love that my wife works hard to keep her figure.”
She froze, feeling nothing but fear pounding against her chest. Preston’s smug bastard face greeted her as she lifted her gaze. He wore his usual custom-tailored black suit, leaning against her car door with his ankles casually crossed as if he owned the world, as if he still owned her. Ryn held up her phone.
“You can’t be here, so leave before I have you arrested.”
“I want to apologize.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Apologize? This better be about Maddie. How dare you lie to her and make her think I was ever crazy and suicidal.”
He smirked. “I’m not apologizing for that. That’s between you and Maddie. I’m here to apologize for your birthday. The whole passing out thing.” He chuckled. “You know the funny thing about that … the last thing I remember is that thug you brought putting his hand around the back of my neck and squeezing. He say anything about that to you?”
Ryn shook her head.
“I did some looking into him. It’s like he didn’t exist before moving to Omaha. Where did he say he’s from?”
“He’s none of your business.” She reached for the door handle.
He didn’t move. Instead, he bent down and whispered in her ear, “He’s fucking what’s mine so that makes him my business.”
“I’m not yours.”
He pushed off the door and slid on his shades. “Semantics, sweetheart. I’m just telling you something’s not right about him so watch yourself.”
*
Mrs. Baker reeked of all kinds of wrong. Jackson followed her home after her last lesson. She lived in a small split-level house surrounded by a jungle of weeds in a run-down neighborhood. Children’s toys cluttered the front yard like she ran a daycare out of her home. Through his binoculars, he watched her get out of her car, go inside, and come back out fifteen minutes later wearing baggy ripped jeans and a flannel shirt—a fashion world away from the expensive clothes she wore to her lessons. But it wasn’t her clothes that made his blood run toxic through his veins, it was her red hair. Had she been wearing a wig? Certain that at least on some level she could be a liability, he decided to plan her removal.
Fate, however, granted Meredith Baker a stay of execution when she missed her lesson to visit a friend in the hospital. Knowing she could be plotting his death, or even Jillian’s, had him on edge the entire following week. Ryn fell victim to his nervous energy. All their lessons on self-defense turned into fuck fest on the mat. He fucked her hard and often, hoping the release would ease his impatience, but it didn’t. It just left the woman he felt certain defined love in a constant state of confusion and physically exhausted to the point of avoiding him for days in between.
All of that was about to change as he lined the back of Woody with plastic. Jillian hated knives, but Jackson found them to be quite effective. He didn’t enjoy the kill—that’s how he slept at night. There was never any sort of high or adrenaline rush. It was a job. Remove the threat.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Baker was more than a threat. There was no way she worked alone, which meant he would have to drag the information from her. That’s why he needed the knife. The quick neck snap was more his thing, but the threat of it rarely garnered much information. Evil people weren’t afraid to die, but they didn’t like pain.
From the garage he heard a car pull into the driveway. He slipped back into the house and grabbed his knife from the kitchen table. He had another lesson in an hour. There would be no time to waste on meaningless chitchat.
“Ryn.” He tried to sound excited to see her as he strained to see if Mrs. Baker had pulled in too.
“I know you have a lesson, but I need to talk to you. Do you mind if I wait here
until you’re done?”
“Uh … or I could meet you at your house?”
“Well I’m already here so …” She looked at his hand. “You’re holding a knife … a scary-looking knife.”
He looked at his hand as though he’d forgotten about it. “I am.”
“You’re not planning on killing anyone, are you?” She grinned.
“Ha. Well, now that you’re here I’m not.” Jackson gave her his sexy grin and winked while slipping it into his back pocket.
Ryn shook her head as she stepped inside. “Seriously. What are you doing with a knife?”
“I’m … changing the batteries in a clock. It was easier than looking in Jillian’s tool chest for a screwdriver.”
“The tools belong to Jillian?”
“She likes working on cars and motorcycles. I like working on computers which don’t require anything with the word Craftsman on it.”
She pressed her finger to the taped center of his glasses that were supposed to keep any spurting blood from getting in his eyes. “You’re such a geek.”
He grabbed her hand and bit her finger. “Watch it, hot pants.”
The doorbell rang, the daunting reminder that Mrs. Baker would live to see another day.
“I’ll wait downstairs. Maybe practice some pull-ups.” She leaned up and pecked his lips before slipping around the corner.
“Mrs. Baker.”
“Jackson.” She beamed her flirty teeth-covered-in-lipstick grin at him as she stepped inside wearing expensive everything—right down to her Manolo Blahnik shoes.
He inspected her head to see if it was her real hair or if the red hair had been a wig. “You have a bug in your hair.”
She rolled her eyes toward her brows as he yanked on a few strands of hair. The delayed “ouch” confirmed that it was a wig.
“Sorry.” He smirked. “Got it.” With a flick of his fingers he sent the nonexistent bug flying absolutely nowhere.
“That’s fine.” She eased her hand over her wig. “Is that Jillian’s car in your driveway?”
“Why do you ask, Mrs. Baker?”
She took a seat at the piano. “Just curious I suppose. If it’s not hers then you might have company.”
“You’re my company, Mrs. Baker.” He slipped the knife under a magazine on the table and walked toward the piano giving her the you-should’ve-been-dead-by-now stare.
She averted her eyes. He grinned at the thought of how easily she would squeal like a pig, spewing out everything he needed to know before removing her from the equation. A necessary casualty.
“I’m not company. I’m your student.”
Jackson sat in the chair next to the bench, resting his ankle on the opposing knee. “You are. So please…” he gestured “…let me hear your progress.”
She played each song with perfection. Too much perfection. Mrs. Baker was his only student who practiced, although he suspected she knew how to play before taking lessons with him, in spite of claiming to be a novice. At the end of her thirty minutes he told her to have a good week—her last week of course.
After replacing the knife in its leather sheath in his drawer, he took a deep breath to expel the anxiety before going downstairs. If he didn’t control his sexual urges with Ryn, he could scare the mother of his children away before he had a chance to implant them inside her.
*
Ryn braced herself for the sexual hurricane that she knew would come tearing down the stairs at any moment. Jackson had ripped the zippers off two pairs of jeans, disintegrated four pairs of panties, and broken the clasp on her newest bra. She couldn’t even complain about him being selfish because his first stop was always between her legs. Lips, tongue, teeth, and she was gone. Every. Time.
“I started my period.” The words came out so fast it all sounded like one long word instead of four.
Jackson paused at the bottom of the stairs. “Jillian probably has something in her bathroom.”
“No … I just mean I or we can’t … you know.”
He smirked then nodded, shoving his hands into his pockets, pulling the waist down to tease her with the wide band of his sexy briefs. “Is that what you needed to tell me?”
“No.” She laughed at herself. It had probably sounded like that was her important news. “Preston was waiting by my car for me when I came out of barre class this morning.”
“You need me to kill him? Done.”
“No. Well, it’s not a bad idea, but I’m certain that would guarantee I’d never see Maddie again or you for that matter because you’d be in prison.”
The corners of his lips curled like he had the best secret ever. She trusted him, ninety-nine-point-nine percent. Yet that point-one percent held her heart captive in the hands of fear. Would she ever be completely free of that fear?
“I’m not happy that my ex-husband thinks you’re his business, but after you sent him to the hospital on my birthday he’s taken it upon himself to make you his business.”
Jackson shrugged. “Then tell him to call me and we’ll set up a business meeting, but until then he needs to stay the fuck away from you, or I’ll be the first one to make contact and it won’t be in the way of a phone call.”
There it was—that point one percent.
“I can call the police if it becomes a bigger issue.”
“I’m sure they’ll slap him on the wrist. They might even take away his favorite toy for a month or so.”
“Whatever, that’s really not my point. My point is that Preston did some looking into your past and he said it’s like you didn’t even exist before Omaha. Don’t you think that’s kind of odd?”
“Yes. I think it’s odd that your ex-husband is looking into my past.”
Ryn tilted her head to the side, crossing her arms over her chest. “That’s not what I mean.”
Jackson narrowed his eyes a mere millimeter. That minuscule change in his expression, that may not have been anything more than a muscle twitch, left Ryn feeling guilty for bringing it up.
“So I haven’t left my fingerprints all over my past. So what?”
Coughing out a sarcastic laugh, she gawked at him. “Fingerprints? What are you, a killer?”
“Do I look like a killer?” He smirked.
“I don’t think killers have a certain look, personality maybe, but not a look.”
“Well, if you think I have a killer personality then I’m going to take that as a compliment.”
Ryn shook her head, unable to keep a straight face.
“What do you want to know?” He moved toward her with slow predatory strides that sent tingly goose bumps shooting up along her skin.
She retreated, the thick mats under her feet mixed with that look made it impossible to balance. Her back hit the wall, saving her from stumbling, but trapping her in his larger-than-life presence as he wet his lips.
“Do you want to know my favorite color? The first girl I kissed? How many comic books I owned? The longest book I’ve read?”
Gulp.
“Yes,” she whispered, embarrassingly breathless.
He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Blue, like your eyes.”
He kissed her right ear. “Stephanie Mills, third grade.”
He kissed her left ear. “Three hundred and seventy-one. Batman was my favorite.”
He kissed the hollow area in between her collarbone, circling his tongue around it. “The Bible.”
“No way.”
He nodded while unfastening his jeans.
Ryn swallowed hard, her body stiff. “M-My period.”
Sucking her bottom lip into his mouth, he bit it with a chilling intensity as he stroked himself. “Don’t worry. That’s not where I’m going to put it.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Day
Luke pulled into his parents’ drive after taking the slower, nothing over thirty-five, less driven roads to ensure his precious cargo had a safe trip—in the trunk. To his surprise, she stayed quiet for the entire ride
. Even when he got out, she didn’t make a single noise. He considered opening the trunk to check on her, but his instincts told him to just stay away. It was nothing more than the silence before the storm.
“Hey, Luke. You two have a nice drive?” Tom asked, helping Felicity fold sheets in the living room.
“We did. It was a perfect day.”
“Did you find a nice little place to buy and settle into when you move back here to get married and have lots of grandbabies for me?”
Tom rolled his eyes at his wife’s question.
“We did not.”
Felicity frowned.
“While I fully intend to marry Jessica and have a manageable number of children with her, I want it to be when the time is right.”
“Not everyone can be like your mother and I were. Perfect timing on everything.” Tom winked at Felicity.
“I’m in your wedding photos, sitting in the front row next to Aunt Beth. Brilliant timing, folks.”
His parents shared their usual we-wouldn’t-change-a-thing grins. If Luke were honest, he admired their decision to wait until they were ready to get married. They conceived him on their first date.
“Speaking of fate … where is Jessica? Did she go upstairs?”
Luke smiled at his mom. “I think she’s still in the car going through a few things she picked up on our outing.”
“Oh, that reminds me. Did you remember my printer ink?”
“We did.” He handed her the car keys. “They’re in the trunk.”
Felicity frowned as she snatched the keys while shaking her head. “Was it just too much for you to haul them inside?”
“Something like that.”
As she brushed past him, Tom gave Luke a suspicious look.
Luke grimaced. “There’s a pretty good chance I won’t live to see the sunrise.”
“You forgot her ink?”
“No. It’s in the trunk—with Jessica.”
*
It broke Jessica’s heart that her beloved would die soon, but there were certain acts of complete disrespect that were punishable only by death. Locking someone in a trunk was one of them. They’d had some good times together and for that, she was not only grateful but sympathetic enough to make sure his death would be quick with minimal suffering.
