“You okay?” came Jackson’s husky voice.
Mia lifted her head with a bittersweet smile. “I’m good. Just thinking about how delicious that omelet looks.”
The three of them ate at the counter, talking about nothing in particular until Danny hurried off to gather his school things, leaving Mia and Jackson alone.
“You really don’t need to worry about the beard,” Jackson said in a voice thick with reassurance. “I doubt the team will be goin’ anywhere. We’re just taking precautions.”
She was relieved. “But if you do have to go, you’ll say goodbye first, right? You won’t just—”
A knock on the door cut her off.
Almost immediately, her shoulders went stiffer than a slab of marble. She and Danny didn’t get a lot of unannounced visitors.
Except for one.
Mia flew off the stool, but she didn’t make it in time. Danny must have been in the living room because he was already on his way to the front door.
She froze, her heart sinking to the pit of her stomach.
Shit.
She was tempted to sprint to the door and stop Danny from opening it, but it was too late. The door creaked open and his dumbfounded exclamation reverberated in the apartment.
“Mom?”
* * *
Jackson was well versed in all sorts of explosives, which meant he knew precisely when a bomb would go off. And right now, Mia’s apartment was about to explode. The fuse had been lit, the countdown had started, and detonation was imminent.
He slid out of the kitchen in time to see Danny leading a petite middle-aged woman into the living room.
Jackson noted that the resemblance between Brenda and her two children was uncanny. Dark green eyes, the same generous mouth and sharp cheekbones. Only difference was that Brenda’s features had a weathered look to them. This was a woman who’d lived through a shitload of heartache and disappointment, and the evidence of that was etched into her face.
“Mia, look! Mom’s here,” Danny said with excitement that his sister clearly didn’t share.
“I can see that,” she answered tersely.
Disapproval crept into her brother’s tone. “You’re not even going to say hello?”
Mia spared a pithy glance at their mother. “Hello.”
“Hi, baby,” Brenda said softly. “I’m sorry I took so long to visit again.”
“Again?” Danny echoed.
His mother looked at him in surprise. “Your sister didn’t tell you? I stopped by last month, but you weren’t home.”
A fire of betrayal burned in Danny’s eyes as he swiveled his head. “Mom was here last month and you didn’t tell me?”
Jackson watched the exchange with growing uneasiness. He felt like he should leave the room, but any move he made would alert them to his presence and make things even more uncomfortable. So he stood by the kitchen doorway, shirtless and on edge, wishing like heck he could escape undetected, but knowing he was stuck.
“I must have forgotten,” Mia muttered.
“Bullshit!”
“Language,” his sister said in a warning pitch.
“Fuck that! Why didn’t you tell me Mom was here? Why would you keep that from me?”
“Daniel, it’s all right.” His mother spoke in a soothing tone. “I’m sure Mia didn’t mean to be sneaky. She was just trying to protect you.”
“From who?” he snapped.
“From her,” Mia snapped back, jerking a finger at Brenda.
A deafening silence crashed over the room.
Jackson tried to inch his way back to the kitchen, but Mia saw him and shot him a panicked glance.
Don’t leave me, her eyes clearly communicated.
He stifled a sigh and stayed put.
“Look.” Mia cleared her throat and turned to her brother. “I know you’re pissed, but now isn’t the time for this argument. We have to go, otherwise you’ll be late for school.”
“I’ll take him,” Brenda blurted out.
The look in Mia’s eyes could have frozen the Pacific Ocean. “No.”
“Yes,” Danny corrected, his cheeks red with anger. “Mom can drive me to school. I don’t want to be anywhere near you right now.”
Mia’s glacial expression transformed into an eddy of hurt. “Danny—”
“Come on, Mom, let’s go.” Ignoring Mia completely, he marched to the door.
Brenda lingered for a moment, her interested gaze flicking in Jackson’s direction. Then she addressed her daughter.
“Is it all right if I come back this evening so the three of us can talk?”
Mia’s jaw was tighter than a drum. “Fine. Whatever.”
It was her mother’s turn to look hurt. Without another word, Brenda awkwardly adjusted the strap of her bulky leather purse and left the apartment.
The moment the door closed, Mia’s face collapsed.
“C’mere, darlin’.”
She dove into his open arms, her breathing labored as she buried her head in his chest.
He hugged her tight and stroked her hair, his heart splitting in two when he felt her tears soaking his bare skin. In the two months he’d known her, he’d never seen Mia break down like this. If he could’ve taken away her pain and transferred it all on himself, he would’ve done it in a nanosecond, but all he could do was hold her close and offer gruff words of comfort.
She lifted her head to reveal tearstained cheeks and red-rimmed eyes. “Why did she have to show up again? She’s done so much damage already—why can’t she just leave us alone?”
He led her over to the couch, where he pulled her into his lap and wrapped his arms around her.
“I’m gonna say somethin’ you probably don’t wanna hear,” he started roughly, “but I want you to hear me out, all right?”
She nodded weakly.
He paused, knowing he had to tread very carefully. “Have you considered that maybe your mother’s motives are sincere?”
Bitterness splashed across her face. “They’re not. She has an agenda.”
“How can you be certain of that?”
“Because she always has an agenda. I don’t know what she’s up to this time, but there’s nothing sincere about that woman. The only person she’s ever cared about is herself.”
He tenderly tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “What if you’re wrong?”
“I’m not,” she retorted, but her voice faltered slightly.
“All I’m saying is, maybe you should keep an open mind. People do change, Mia. Sometimes folks take a good long look at their lives and realize how much their mistakes have cost ’em.” He swallowed. “At the end of the day, family is the most important thing you’ve got. Family, and love.”
“Oh really?”
He suddenly found a pair of shrewd green eyes focused on him.
“Why are you lookin’ at me like that?”
“I overheard you on the phone with your mother, Jackson. If family is so important, then why did you lie to her? You have the time off, but you told her you couldn’t come home for Thanksgiving.”
Guilt trickled through him. “You’re right. I did lie,” he admitted.
“Why?”
His throat tightened. “I…don’t like going home.”
“Why?” Mia pressed.
“Because…” Desperation and resentment formed a lethal cocktail that coursed in his blood. “Because I don’t wanna see my brother, okay? We had a falling out several years back, and things haven’t been the same since.”
A deep crease marred her forehead. “What happened?”
He didn’t answer. Every muscle in his body was tight, too many emotions constricting his chest. The memories were still so raw, like a wound that refused to heal. Whenever the thought of Shane entered his head, it was accompanied by crippling pain and bitter anger, not to mention paralyzing sorrow.
“Jackson…tell me what happened.”
He swallowed a lump of sadness, then forced himself to ans
wer. “My brother Shane recently married my high school sweetheart—”
“Seriously?” Mia said in shock.
Jackson wasn’t finished. “But that wasn’t what caused the falling out. All the bad shit went down years before that, after she—” he sucked in a breath, then exhaled in a frantic rush, “—after she accused me of forcing myself on her.”
16
There. He’d said it. Confessed the one painful secret that had been tearing him apart for years now.
Just as he’d expected, Mia’s expression conveyed pure and total horror.
What he hadn’t expected, though, was her immediate—and staunch—words of response.
“That’s fucking bullshit. You would never force yourself on a woman.”
“And I didn’t,” he said hoarsely. “I would never take a woman against her will.”
“I know.” Conviction rang in her voice, and her hands were firm as she cupped his chin. “Tell me everything.”
The enormous bulge of pain obstructing his throat made it hard to speak, but he managed to power through it. “Well, first thing you should know is that Tiff told the truth not a day later, so there was no arrest or trial or any of that nasty shit.”
“Tiff? That was your girlfriend’s name?”
He nodded. “Tiffany Griffen. She lived a few miles down the road from us—her daddy owned a horse-breeding farm, and he’d been raising Tiff alone ever since her mama died. She and I started dating in junior year and we were inseparable. We dated for three years, but we didn’t have sex right away. Tiff was a virgin, I wasn’t. We made love for the first time on our one-year anniversary.”
Jackson stopped, unwittingly remembering their first time. He’d gone all out that night—candles, rose petals, the whole shebang. He could still picture the ecstatic smile on Tiff’s face when she’d walked into the cabin and seen all the trouble he’d gone to in order to make her first time special.
“Anyway—” he cleared his throat, “—we were madly in love, planned on getting married and having babies and living happily ever after.”
“So what changed?” Mia’s fingers stroked his chin, skimming over the thick beard he was dying to shave off.
“Sex,” he said flatly. “You already know I like to experiment—well, I liked it back then, too.”
Mia hazarded a guess. “But Tiffany didn’t?”
“Heck, no, Tiff loved it. She loved everything we did in bed. Only problem was, it embarrassed her. She didn’t want to admit that she liked it dirty, and she made me promise that our bedroom activities would stay between us, and us alone. I was perfectly fine with that.” He shrugged. “I mean, I don’t like people knowing my business either. So yeah, things were good. We were a nice upstanding couple in public, and a pair of kinky sex maniacs in private. The night before my twentieth birthday, Tiff had somethin’ special planned. We were both living at home at that point, so we used to sneak over to the cabin on my folks’ property to fool around.”
He didn’t mention that Tiff was now living in that very same cabin with his brother, but the irony didn’t escape him. “She told me to meet her at the cabin, and when I showed up, she was buck naked and holding a length of rope. She announced that my birthday present was that I’d get to tie her up and fuck her in the ass. We’d always wanted to play around with ropes, so everything that followed was one hundred percent consensual. She initiated it, and she loved every second of it.”
He stopped abruptly, a burst of resentment going off in his chest.
“Hey, don’t stop now,” Mia said softly. “Tell me what happened afterwards.”
“That night? Nothin’. But the next morning, Tiff was out in the paddock with her father. It was sweltering outside, so she rolled up her sleeves without thinking, and her daddy noticed the rope marks on her wrists.” Jackson released a weary breath. “I guess we weren’t too careful the night before.”
Mia’s breath hitched. “Shit.”
“Shit is right. When her father demanded to know where she got those marks, Tiff panicked. She blurted out the first thing that came to her head.” He spoke through clenched teeth now. “She told him that I tied her up and had my way with her—without her consent.”
Horror erupted in Mia’s eyes. “No.”
“Yes.” His insides twisted with bitterness. “As you can probably imagine, Casper Griffen freaked the fuck out. He grabbed his shotgun, hopped in his pickup, and hightailed it over to my house.”
“Oh my God.”
“Tiff had already called to warn me he was coming, so we were all out on the porch when he showed up. He started hurling threats and accusations, said the sheriff was on his way.” Bile coated Jackson’s throat. “My father, God bless him, had his own shotgun out, and he ordered Casper to get the heck off our property, told him we’d settle it in court if we had to.”
Even though years had passed, the mortification he’d felt on that awful morning was fresher than ever. Jackson’s chest ached as he remembered the unwavering confidence on his father’s face. Kurt Ramsey hadn’t believed Casper’s claims for a second. He’d stood protectively at his son’s side, prepared to shoot Tiff’s father if it came down to it.
“Neither of my parents believed Casper’s accusation,” Jackson said roughly. “My sister, well, she was too young to know what was going on, so they sent her to a friend’s house while we waited for the sheriff. But Shane… Shane thought I was guilty.”
That elicited a livid curse from Mia. “How could he possibly think that?”
“I didn’t know it at the time, but he was in love with Tiff. Turns out he had a thing for her in high school, but she was three years younger so he was waiting for her to grow up a little before he asked her out. But by then she was already with me. Shane didn’t say a word to me about it, but secretly he was jealous that I was dating the girl he wanted. And when Casper showed up, Shane wasn’t thinking clearly. He was only thinking about Tiff, and the thought of anyone hurtin’ her, especially his own brother, sent him into a blind rage.”
Mia gasped. “What did he do?”
“After my dad shooed Casper off our land, I headed out to the barn. I needed to be alone, to make sense of it all. I couldn’t believe Tiff had accused me of doing such a despicable thing. I desperately wanted to talk to her and find out why she’d done it, but my folks advised me not to contact her, at least not until we spoke to the sheriff.” The frustration he’d felt back then returned now in full-force. “I was already having visions of going to jail for something I didn’t even do, so I went out to see the horses. Being around them always calmed me down. But Shane followed me into the barn and…”
He stopped. Couldn’t go on. That hot July morning had been the single worst day of his life. He’d never told anyone about it. Hadn’t allowed himself to think about it.
Mia twisted around so that she was straddling him. Her gaze shone with encouragement as she planted both hands on his shoulders and said, “What did he do?”
His lips formed a thin, angry line.
“What did your brother do?”
“He beat the shit out of me.”
“What?”
“He beat me,” Jackson said dully. “And I’m not talkin’ about a mean right hook or a kick to the nuts. He busted me up real good—two black eyes, split lip, broken nose, sprained wrist, three fractured ribs.”
Mia was agape. “Oh God.”
“My dad heard the commotion and rushed into the barn—he had to wrestle Shane off me. My folks wanted to call an ambulance but I refused, so Dad carried me inside and my mama cleaned me up best as she could.” He set his jaw. “Wasn’t long before the sheriff showed up, but before he could step foot in the house, Casper’s truck was speeding up the drive again. This time Tiff was behind the wheel.”
Mia scowled. “About fucking time she showed up.”
“Apparently Casper came back to the farm in a rage, told Tiff he was pressing charges, and she knew she couldn’t let the lie go on. She came clea
n, right there in front of everyone. My folks, Shane, the sheriff. I realized later how difficult that must’ve been for her, admitting to a group of people that she’d asked me to tie her up and fuck her in the ass—and that she’d enjoyed it.”
“Difficult for her? Did she even stop to consider how difficult it would be for you to be accused of rape? What a…a…bitch!”
A weak smile lifted Jackson’s lips. He found Mia’s outrage on his behalf oddly sweet, but still he had to argue, “She wasn’t acting out of malice. She panicked, pure and simple.”
“Don’t you dare defend her. Tiffany Griffen is a first-class bitch for doing what she did. She could’ve destroyed your entire life!”
“She did,” he said ruefully. “No matter her motives, and even though she recanted her story, the damage had already been done. I was beaten to a bloody pulp, things between Shane and me could never be the same after what he’d done. And then there was the people in town…”
Mia narrowed her eyes. “What about them?”
“Let’s just say the folks in Abbott Creek aren’t the forgetting type. They like to whisper and gossip and spread shit that ain’t true. I couldn’t go into town after that without folks staring and pointing at me. No matter how many times I denied any wrongdoing, or how many times Tiff admitted that she’d lied, some people still believed I’d done it. I think Shane secretly believed it too, because he never apologized for beating on me.”
“Please don’t tell me you stayed with Tiff,” Mia said in a menacing tone.
“I ended it the moment the sheriff left the house.”
“Good.”
“But yeah, life fuckin’ sucked after that.” Guilt swirled in his stomach as he thought back to those days. “I felt so bad for my folks. People were whispering behind their backs, half of them calling me a rapist, the other half—the ones who believed me—taunting them about having a kinky sex fiend for a son. Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore, so I drove to a recruiting office in Dallas and enlisted.”
Out of Uniform Box Set: Books 4-6 plus 2 Bonus Novellas Page 77
