Paradise: The Masters of The Order Novel Two

by Verne, Jillian

  “It’s his fault,” Teo said quickly, pointing a finger at Jacques.

  “Ishabeeellla,” Jacques slurred with a crooked smile and let go of Teo, leaving him stumbling backward. He barreled into her, practically knocking her back onto the stairs, and swallowed her in a sloppy hug. “Mmm, you smell good.”

  “And you smell of liquor.”

  “Te-qui-la,” he sang.

  Teo managed not to fall over as he weaved toward the living room. “Gracias a Dios. Come here you gorgeous couch.” He flipped over the back, head first, and disappeared from view. The loud thump that followed said he’d missed the couch and hit the floor instead. The next sound was a curse, then heavy snoring.

  “Come on, mi borracho. Let’s get you to bed.” She pulled her arms tighter around Jacques, who could barely stand, let alone walk.

  “With you, gladly.” The smirk was full of suggestion.

  “Slow down, lover boy. It’s sleep for you.” That is if Jacques didn’t pass out on the stairs.

  Jacques leaned into her, sniffing her hair and giggling. Actually giggling. She’d never heard him do that, or seen him drunk for that matter. Despite the bitterness earlier, she smiled. Drunk Jacques was quite cute and she’d take this over the angry version any day.

  Somehow, they made their way up. Dios mío, Jacques is heavy. As they staggered together down the hall, he pulled away, hit the wall, then swung his hand out. It teetered in the air until she grabbed it.

  “Walk, Jacques. I’m putting you to bed.”

  “Bed,” he said, pawing at her as she pulled him away from the wall. Before they made it to their bedroom, he veered left and pulled her into the bedroom next to theirs.

  Well, a bed’s a bed and this one will have to do.

  She maneuvered him to the edge. Before she could sit him down, Jacques leaned into her and they both flopped onto the mattress.

  “Sit up, Jacques. Let me get you out of your clothes.”

  “Love the idea, Mrsss. Messszarosss.” All the “s’s” ran together.

  “Sit. Up.”

  He did and she pulled off his tie, wrestled him out of his jacket one heavy arm at a time. When she started on the buttons of his shirt, he snickered, “What are we going to do about those naughty hands?” and rolled on top of her.

  But instead of getting all hot and heavy, he scooted down her torso and pressed his ear to her belly. “There’s somebody in there,” he said, his breath warm against her skin.

  Isabella bit her lip in anticipation of the anger that would surely follow.

  Then Jacques looked up through his black lashes and giggled again. “It’s a baby.” The awed expression on his face made him look like he was making some grand revelation and she had no clue.

  “I know, Jacques. It’s our baby.”

  His gaze returned to her belly and he ran clumsy hands over her nightgown, trying to smooth the silk. “You have a good mommy. A very bad daddy, but a good mommy.”

  Her heart squeezed in her chest when his forehead fell as if in defeat.

  Then, he started babbling, “But I’ll do my best. I don’t know any lullabies so I’ll just hum, ‘kay?”

  Jacques started to hum. It wasn’t a song, more like a jumble of breath and sound, but it was the single, most beautiful sound that ever filled her ears.

  She started to sob.

  His copper eyes were cloudy, stormy actually, as he looked up. “Don’t cry, Ishabeella. Please, don’t cry.” He shimmied up to her side and draped himself over her body. His head fell into the crook of her neck. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered into her hair.

  Relief washed through her as she leaned into him. He felt so warm, so safe. And that made her so sad. Forty eight hours without him and it felt like she’d been adrift for months. She’d barely survived it.

  What will happen to him if he has to live without me forever?

  "Fifty years of a happy life," Jacques slurred into her nape as if he could read her mind. When she stiffened in his arms, he added, “You don’t have worry, Ishabeella,” his weight pressed more heavily over her, “I have enough for both of us.”

  “Enough what, Jacques?”

  No answer. Jacques had passed out, but his unspoken word hung in the air.

  She gingerly rolled from beneath him. It was a struggle, but she managed. Tears streamed over her cheeks while she untied each shoe and slipped them and his socks off his feet. Then she knelt with her head resting on her comatose husband’s knee. Instead of the comfort she expected, another emotion flickered in her mind.

  Guilt.

  She’d insisted that she hadn’t lied, but she had. She didn’t forget to take the pill. Her conscious mind may have forgotten, but her subconscious thought there was no need. Why plan for a future if you don’t believe you will have one?

  And she didn’t tell Jacques about the baby because she wanted to surprise him. Sure. She didn’t tell him because a baby meant a future and a future meant tomorrow and tomorrow was, well, not today. To get to tomorrow you had to believe in something you couldn’t touch or see or control.

  You had to have hope.

  And here she was again. Full circle.

  Why does it always come down to hope?

  Jacques’s words echoed through her mind like a prophecy. We can’t build a future based on secrets and lies, Isabella. If we don’t share everything, we will fail.

  Secrets and lies. Every day, more secrets, more lies. Each time she hid her bone-deep fear of the future from him she added another to the pile. One lie beget the next and the next and…Jacques wanted a long and happy life with her and she was dooming them to fail.

  Shaken by the frightening trail of her thoughts, Isabella scampered onto the bed to seek the comfort of a man who seemed to fear nothing. She locked her arms around him, as if their long and happy life could be held in her unyielding embrace.

  Even in his alcoholic stupor, Jacques's arms came around her in a protective cocoon. He burrowed his face into her nape, inhaling deeply, and purred as if all was right in his world.

  She clutched him tighter.

  24

  An Unlikely Prince

  “Ow. Ow. Ow!”

  Pain. Shooting pain. The heel of his palms slammed into his eye sockets. Probably not the greatest idea to have peeled the lids open just yet. Instead of “good morning, sunshine,” the light felt like acid pouring over his eyeballs. His lips were dry. His stomach felt as if he’d swallowed a gallon of cement.

  So this is what alcohol poisoning feels like.

  Eyes closed, Jacques threw his legs over the side of the bed, trying not to wake Isabella. No eyesight necessary to know she was curled into a ball with the comforter tucked greedily into every crevice. The only part of her visible would be the magnificent red hair on the top of her head. God, he loved his sleeping kitten and wanted to show her exactly how much, but his body was not on board with the plan.

  With outstretched arms, he stumbled from the room in search of coffee and Tylenol while X-rated visions of make-up sex danced in his throbbing head. He’d heard that pregnancy enhanced orgasm and planned to test that one out, but before he woke Isabella to the breakfast of all breakfasts, he had to get his act together.

  When he hit the kitchen, he found a cold blanket of big brother leaning over the table and clutching a mug of caffeine as if his life depended on it.

  “Good morning, pendejo,” Teo muttered in the gravelly voice of a seriously hung over guy.

  Great, the nickname stuck.

  “Morning to you too,” Jacques cursed Teo, “connard."

  “Idiota.”

  “Fils de pute.”

  “Hijo de puta.”

  “Salaud.”

  “Gilipollas. Don’t make me laugh, pendejo, or my head’s gonna explode,” Teo said, laughing, but sort of groaning too.

  “Hope it does.”

  “Right back at you, pendejo.”

  Teo leaned over to lay his head onto his forearm and shot right back
up, his eyes rolling with the head rush that obviously sent his world spinning.

  “How’d you get that?”

  Teo raised his fingers to the ugly blue-black bruise on his forehead and winced. “Coffee table on the way down. Isla’s gonna kick my ass if it doesn’t fade for the wedding pictures.”

  “Can’t wait to see that.” Jacques poured himself a cup of coffee, downed it and poured another.

  “Did you two kiss and make up?” Teo puckered up and blew him a kiss.

  “Nice way to talk about your sister.” Jacques pulled a baguette from the bread drawer, broke it in half and tossed a piece to Teo. “She’s asleep. I didn’t wake her up yet.”

  “Good, because I have something I want to ask you,” Teo said past the huge piece of bread he’d shoved into his mouth.

  They’d come a long way since their first meeting, but Jacques felt badly that the whole familia thing didn’t make Teo feel comfortable enough to even open the cupboards. He hid the thought behind a flip remark. “Ask, but I’m not cancelling the wedding.”

  Bloodshot eyes met his as Teo’s lips curved into a devil of a grin. “You better not or my brothers and I will take turns kicking your ass.”

  Jacques wasn’t sure whether Teo was talking about the Spanish mafia who called themselves Isabella’s big brothers or Sabin and Nicolai. Bad either way. Then Teo shifted from the cocky, sarcastic guy he knew into a man more like the one Isabella described. A man Jacques had never met. Until now.

  “So, you got it together now, Jacques?”

  Teo’s entire vibe said he expected him to, had faith that he would, but at the same time, would be there if he didn’t. Wow, Isabella’s brother was really something.

  My brother is really something.

  “For the moment, I’m alright. Tomorrow, who the hell knows, but I think that might be the whole point. Sometimes you’ve got it under control, other times, no. That’s when the people who love you hold you up.”

  Teo nodded in agreement. “Isla held me up. Saved my damn life. She’s my angel.”

  “Mine too.”

  Teo picked up a napkin with words scratched all over it and handed it to Jacques. “I wrote this for her. I want to sing it at the reception, but I wanted you to hear it first. You know, see if you approve.”

  Jacques started to read the words of Teo’s song out loud.

  What of dreams, little girl dreams, dreams of my prince?

  “Jesus, man, this again. I’m no prince.”

  “Keep reading,” Teo muttered and looked away.

  The world paints my eyes,

  leaves me blind, sets me astray,

  while little girl dreams die,

  die and fade away.

  No place in this world for princes.

  Too much life for princes. Too much pain. Close your eyes.

  No place for dreams.

  No place for love.

  The world paints my eyes while little girl dreams die and fade away.

  The words on the napkin blurred in Jacques’s vision and he couldn’t keep reading. Teo began to sing the rest of the song, his voice rising and falling through a haunting melody.

  Words of a woman overcoming barriers to find her truth.

  Words of the indefinable nature of love.

  Words of a lifetime spent living the dream.

  When Teo sang the final verse, the emotion in his voice echoed through the kitchen, filling it with his love for a sister he thought was perfect just the way she was.

  Eyes are blind to what only the heart can see.

  You open my heart,

  make me sing, set me alight,

  while a little girl dream

  comes alive again.

  Discovering truth in your love.

  With you, I can dream. With you, I am real.

  My love, my dream,

  perfect for me.

  A woman who longs for the forgotten prince she's found in you.

  “Does it suck?”

  Jacques couldn’t answer. He couldn’t speak. Teo’s song was the polar opposite of “suck.” It was Isabella translated into a series of words and notes, and it was the most heart-felt, heart-wrenching song he’d ever heard. He shook his head, humbled by the artist and the depth of his love for his sister.

  “She’ll love it. Absolutely love it. Thank you, Teo.”

  “Alright then, go wake her up and start dreaming.” He picked up the napkin and started away, but before he walked out of the kitchen, he turned back. “By the way, pendejo, this little love affair we’ve got going ends ugly if you hurt her.”

  "And that's exactly how it should be. Thank you again, brother.”

  With quick bob of the head, Teo left.

  *****

  Teo stopped in the foyer and looked up at the portrait of his sister.

  Isla was a natural beauty. Seen through the lens of Nicolai Stavros, she was, quite literally, a goddess. In a frame of only her face, the artist captured her essence. Her visage expressed the unique nature and depth of her love for Jacques.

  Amazing wasn’t the word.

  As a brother, the truth he was staring at should have made him mighty uncomfortable, but as a man, his admiration was undeniable. Love, in all its expressions, was marvelous and miraculous.

  And cruelly elusive.

  Teo knew what he wanted. Had known since the first time he had sex and the hundreds of times after that. Despite the endless parade of women who made themselves available to a guy toting a guitar, he’d never come close to finding what he saw in his sister’s eyes in that portrait.

  The voice of memory spoke up in his mind. Oh, you found it and like the damn fool you are, you let it slip away.

  He twisted the knob to let himself out of the apartment and escape the inescapable longing he carried in his soul.

  Where is she now? Does she have a man? Does he make her happy the way Jacques makes Isla happy?

  As Teo waited for the elevator, he consoled himself with the thought that he had a hand in his baby sister and her new husband finding themselves and their happiness in each other. The thought made him happy. Happy in a way he hadn’t been for years. He’d finally done something right. And he’d done it for the other woman he loved more than anyone else in the world. It was a pittance compared to what Isla had done for him, but it was something. He tucked the napkin with the song he’d written for her into his pocket and headed into the morning air.

  Even if he couldn’t have his one true love, his muse, his harmony, at least his angel could.

  *****

  Jacques grabbed a cup of coffee for Isabella, the first of many, many, many peace offerings, and headed upstairs.

  As soon as he opened the bedroom door, Isabella's natural perfume replaced the chicory aroma from the mug. God, he loved that scent. Isabella’s scent. The scent of paradise. It was his personal ambrosia, calming him, arousing him, luring him to the woman he’d waited a lifetime to find. He leaned back against the bedroom door and sucked her deep into his lungs.

  An adorably threatening grumble rose from beneath the comforter. “You better have coffee.”

  Ah, my morning Isabella.

  Isabella may be compassionate and intelligent and fiery, but until she had her java, she was scary. The memory of her on their first morning together made him smile. Having lived with her all these months, he couldn’t believe she hadn’t thrown him headlong over the railing into the river when he handed her his anti-hangover concoction instead of this.

  “Your coffee, madame.” Well, that was lame, but we've got to start somewhere. He moved to the bed and she sat up to take the cup.

  As soon as their eyes met, they both said, “I’m sorry.”

  Nervous laughter.

  Seeking glances.

  Slow sips.

  When the cup was empty, Jacques said, “You first, Isabella. Always, you first.”

  She started slowly, her voice trembling. “I didn’t plan this, Jacques.”

  “I know.”<
br />
  Her head fell and her hand went to her belly. “But I can’t say I’m unhappy that it happened. This baby is a miracle. I want my baby. I want you too.” She swallowed hard, clearly struggling to hold back tears. “Please don’t make me choose. I can’t live without either of you.”

  He put his hand over hers and poured all of his sincerity into his voice and the eyes she wouldn’t meet. “Neither can I.”

  She looked up as if she didn’t believe him. “But yesterday you were so upset. What changed?”

  “Everything changed, Isabella. When you told me about the baby, I mean wow. I can’t really describe what I felt in that moment. I overreacted and I apologize.”

  “I should have told you right away.” As soon as he opened his mouth, she held up her hand. “Don’t bother telling me the whole fight was your fault and I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  He closed it, feigning innocence, “Whatever makes you think I would do a thing like that?” The half-smile he got in reply was weak and worried so he went on. “It took me a while to wrap my head around this,” he motioned to her stomach, “but I did. With a little help.”

  She raised her eyebrows, scanning his face, his hands. “Help? Teo didn’t hit you, did he?” she asked with a grimace.

  “No. He seemed pretty confident that you would straighten me out,” he answered with a laugh and ran a hand over his jaw to give himself a moment to figure out how to diplomatically describe his evening. “Let’s leave it at saying that my boys helped me see things a little differently last night.”

  “One night can’t change how you feel, Jacques.”

  “No, but one moment can. It’s the moment when the fates or your guardian angel or whatever the hell calls the shots in life can’t deal with your stupidity for a single second longer and bangs you over the head to make you see everything you couldn’t see before.”

  “Well, you certainly look as if you were bonked on the head.” Despite the joke, Isabella's smile wasn’t genuine.

  He took both of her hands into his. “You have my vow, Isabella. I will not fail as a father.”

  “You didn’t believe that yesterday.”