The wheels of Em’s mind began to turn as she took in the possibilities of the space, unable to keep herself from making suggestions. She wrapped the itchy army blanket around her and wandered toward the first pile by the door. “Built-ins, maybe? Some tall whitewashed ones? You know, the size of wardrobes? You could make a desk for Maizy right next to it.”
Her fingers went to the box as she thought out loud, startled when Jax yelled, “Be careful!”
Boxes came tumbling down around her head just as Jax lunged for her, dangly bits exposed and all. He pushed her out of the way as glasses and picture frames came spilling from the mouth of the top box, crashing at her feet. “Oh, Jax! I’m so sorry. I hope it wasn’t anything expensive.” She muttered another apology, tightening the blanket under her arms and stooping to begin cleaning up.
A black frame, worn around the edges, with a vivid streak of red caught her eye. She grabbed it just as Jax was pulling his pants on to help her.
Her breath lodged in her throat as she plucked the frame up and eyed it. At first she’d thought it was a picture of Maizy, but a closer look revealed a warehouse-type building behind them as the setting and Jax with his arm around two people. The first a man, blond and athletic looking, with the same hard jaw as Jax, but smiling, playful blue eyes, and the other...
Maizy’s mother. There was no doubt in her mind. She had the same amazing shock of vibrant red hair, the same beautiful skin, the same eyes. Gorgeous, this woman was absolutely breathtaking. Em couldn’t even summon up an ounce of jealousy for her—she was that beautiful. The gorgeous woman’s gaze was on Jax’s face, and her eyes screamed head over heels for him.
“Maizy’s mother?” She knew she should hush, but her curiosity, her mother had always said, would be the death of her. Looking up at Jax and the hard line of his mouth, she definitely should have just hushed.
His nod was curt. “Reece.”
This was a no-no subject, but did that stop her? “Where is she?”
“Gone,” he said, and then he was silent. So silent, she heard him purposely being silent.
Em hopped up, cursing her shredded nylons. Danger, Will Robinson. Stop. Do not trespass. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude. Here.” She held out the frame to him, putting a hand on his arm, but he turned away, brushing her off.
“Just throw it in the pile.”
Em frowned. This was his child’s mother. She spoke before she thought. “But it’s a picture of Maizy’s mother. Won’t she want it?”
“It’s also a picture of my dead best friend, Jake. Throw it in the pile, Em.” His voice had risen just enough to warn her she should back off.
Suddenly, he was all angry vibes and tense gestures, the light mood between them gone. Time to go home and glue her lips shut. “I’m sorry about the mess. I’ll help—”
“I got it,” Jax said, running a hand over his jaw.
She waved a hand like it was no big deal he was angry for some unknown reason he didn’t care to divulge. “I have to go anyway. Six o’clock comes really early.”
Without another word, she gathered her clothes, pulling on her silly trench coat and heels and gathering up her purse.
He seemed to remember she was going out into the cold, dark night without him. “Let me get dressed and I’ll walk you to your car.”
But Em just smiled and dismissed him like she made all her lovers in the afternoon angry. “No need. I’m fine. The car’s not that far, and I have to be up early to take the boys to meet their father anyway. It’s Clifton’s weekend. See you Monday. Thanks for a great night. Sweet dreams, Jax.” Then she was yanking open the door and moving as fast as her incredibly high heels would allow her.
When she finally made it to the car, she turned the heat on full blast and sat, staring at the guesthouse, watching the flicker of candles from the small arched window, and wondered what had set Jax off.
Reece. Where was Reece? Was she dead like Em had first assumed? Jax’s glance at that picture didn’t scream a lingering affection—for either of the people in the photo. So where was Maizy’s mother if she wasn’t dead?
Why did Jax look like he’d sooner cut off her head than keep a picture of her, and why would he keep a picture of Maizy’s mother from his daughter?
What had happened to his best friend Jake?
Why was whatever happened a sore subject?
Stop now, Em. Go home. Take a hot bath. Go to bed.
Or look them up on Google...
* * *
Jax threw the picture of him and Reece and Jake in the pile of glass and damned himself for overreacting to Em’s innocent question. The look on her face when he’d shut her down was like a kidney punch.
But how could he explain the sordid mess that was Reece and Jake? How could he explain the guilt Jake’s name drove through the core of him? How did he explain the kind of sorrow the subject of the two of them dredged up?
He pulled his shirt over his head and grabbed the bottle of wine, slugging some back before digging out a broom and sweeping the chunks of glass along with the picture into a pile.
He didn’t hide Reece from Maizy. He just didn’t talk about her a lot. That time would come, if Maizy kept being as intuitive as she was, but it wasn’t a conversation he was looking forward to.
A conversation he was forced to have because of Reece. Because she was an irresponsible, fucked-up mess. She’d interfered enough in his life; now she wasn’t even here and she was still pushing her way into a place he’d come to think of as sacred. The place where he felt more alive than he had in a very long time.
Here, in this shitty, crumbling guesthouse. With Em.
And now he’d hurt Em because of the meddling bitch.
Nope. You hurt Em all alone, pal. Reece didn’t have anything to do with this. You could have just told her all about Reece.
That was against the rules.
And very convenient.
Jax fingered the frame and tried for the millionth time to understand where it had all gone so wrong.
But he was tired of dissecting what happened. He was tired of living in the past. He was tired of keeping secrets. He was tired of worrying his world would explode at any second and there’d be no way for him to prevent it.
* * *
Em dropped the limp French fry on her tray, taking in the face of the man she once thought she’d spend the rest of her life with.
He was so little like the man she thought she knew. He was so little like Jax....
With trembling fingers, she forced her bad parting with Jax out of her mind and focused on this task. Finding out what Clifton wanted.
Clifton sat across from her at the restaurant they’d chosen as a drop-off/pickup point for the boys. The halfway point between the beginning of their separate lives. A greasy burger joint the boys loved and Em tolerated for the sake of amicability.
“I’m thinking of filing for full custody of the boys, Em.” He wiped his mouth with the paper napkin, crumpling it up and dropping it on the table much the way he’d discarded their marriage.
A prickly shot of anger whispered along her spine as his handsome face stared back at hers. How dare he sit there cool and collected like he’d just told her he was takin’ the boys fishin’? “You can barely manage regular visitation with them. How do you expect to have full-time custody, Clifton? It’s plenty more involved than just a meeting place and twenty dollars for some hamburgers and a milk shake.”
He’d changed so much in the year since their divorce. Gone were the days of red-checked flannel, Wrangler jeans and a John Deere cap. Now he wore boldly colored shirts with collars that tipped upward under his salon-styled hair and square glasses that enhanced his cheekbones and made his eyes a brighter blue.
Those eyes were hard as they looked at her from across the table. Icy
and hard. “I’d see them more often if I didn’t live in Atlanta. It’s a long ride from there to Plum Orchard.”
She tightened her grip on her purse, trying to keep her voice low. “Is the ride ever too long when your children are involved? And it was your choice to move to Atlanta, Clifton. You could have stayed in the PO and been divorced just as easily.”
His mouth, the mouth that had lied so many lies, thinned. “Right. That would have worked out great.”
“You can’t wear women’s clothes in Plum Orchard? Only Atlanta allows that?”
He fisted his hand, clenched it, unclenched it. She knew that gesture. He was fighting the urge to yell. “I can’t live in Plum Orchard anymore, and you know why, Emmaline.”
“Because your girlfriend’s in Atlanta and she doesn’t like us hillbillies?”
“Leave her out of this. You know why. Because I’m a laughingstock there. What would that be like for the boys?”
“Don’t you mean what it is like for the boys?” Clifton loved them. She knew that. But while he’d gone off to try to understand what was happening to him, when he’d left on this journey to find acceptance with who he really was, he’d left everything up to her.
All the mess was hers to clean up. All the tears and nightmares were hers to soothe. And it wasn’t fair. He didn’t get to have everything he wanted when he’d made the mess.
His eyes grew softer, almost like the old Clifton. “I didn’t do this to hurt them. I never wanted to hurt them.”
“But it did, Clifton!” she whisper-yelled, leaning into the table. “If you’d spent less time sneakin’ off to find yourself, and more time thinking about what could happen to them if someone found out, none of this would have happened. No good comes from secrecy and lies. Yet, it isn’t you who’s paying the price. It’s the boys, and me. Me who has to stand by and watch them suffer because of what you did. It was selfish and cruel to think you could get away with it without any repercussions—especially comin’ from the small town we come from. Do you have any idea the things the children at school say to them about you? How they’re constantly teased?”
His spine went straight. “I won’t apologize for my lifestyle.”
“Don’t you wave that PC stick at me! Don’t you even consider accusing me of asking that of you. You don’t get to be a self-righteous jerk in the name of your lifestyle. You’re missing the whole point here. I’m not askin’ you to apologize for bein’ who you really are, Clifton. But could you have at least given us the chance to accept this side of you before you decided for us? Before you lied and cheated on not just me, but them? In the process of finding out you liked to wear women’s clothes, you were selfish. This is what happens when you think only of yourself. You get divorced and sacrifices have to be made. We’ve all made sacrifices lately. Why shouldn’t you?”
He looked down at his hands. “Clifton called me the other night.”
Em reached for a napkin to cool her flushed face. “Good. He should call his daddy.”
“No, you don’t understand. He called me and told me he wanted to come and live with me. He was crying, and there was nothing I could do about it.”
Em felt like she’d been slugged in the gut. Clifton was calling his father, reaching out when he was hurting and it wasn’t to her? “There was somethin’ you could have done about it. You could have gotten in your car and come to see him. But you won’t do that because you’re a coward. As yellow as they come. Doesn’t all this living honestly mean you face all the people you lied to when you left Plum Orchard? If you’ve made peace with who you are, who cares what everyone else thinks? It’s not like they’re waitin’ to burn you at the stake, Clifton. So folks in town will stare at you. Is being comfortable worth not answering Clifton’s call?”
But he ignored the part where he was at fault. “Clifton Junior is miserable. He hates school. He wants to come live with me.” There was almost a quiet resignation to his voice.
She didn’t know this man anymore. This man dressed like he’d shopped with his twenty-year-old girlfriend. This man with gel in his hair, and the residual stain of red polish still on his pinky finger.
Em couldn’t believe she was hearing this. “You’ll take those boys over my dead body, Clifton. I have primary custody, and that’s how it’ll stay. There’s no way they’re better off with you than they are with me.”
Clifton paused for a moment before he said, “Do you think a judge will say that when he finds out you work for a phone-sex company?”
Fear rippled up and down her spine, her tongue grew thick just like it used to when they were married. “I’m the general manager, Clifton, and I make good money. Money the boys need because their father conveniently forgets they need to eat! I don’t talk to the clients unless there’s an office problem, and you know it.”
“But you consort with those who do. How is that a good environment for the boys? Being around a bunch of women who talk to perfect strangers.”
Em popped up from the chair, the angry scrape of its legs screeching on the tile flooring. “And who do you do all your consortin’ with? Members of Mensa? I hate to remind you, Trixie LeMieux, but while I’m earnin’ a livin’, you’re moochin’ off your fancy girlfriend and entering beauty contests! This is ridiculous, you slingin’ arrows at me. You’ve taken enough from me, Clifton Amos. You won’t take my boys. My employment at Call Girls is honest work and it pays me well. If it weren’t for Dixie and Caine, your boys would have lost their home while you found yourself. I’m going to leave now, but if you aren’t right back here on Tuesday evenin’ at exactly six sharp with my sons, I’ll hunt you down with old man Coon’s shotgun myself. I’m not the old Emmaline With No Spine, Clifton. You’d do well to remember that!”
He was bluffing. There wasn’t a chance in the fiery depths of hell Clifton could take on the boys. He might have the power of his rich girlfriend’s money backing him, but Clifton was all hot air.
She prayed he was all hot air.
Seventeen
“Miss Emmaline?”
Em nearly jumped out of her office chair. Guilty. Oh, God. She was so guilty. Two deep breaths later and she smiled up at Sanjeev.
“Am I disturbing you?”
Yes. I was just getting to the good part where I find out what happened to Jax’s best friend Jake Landry. Good gravy. Was there no privacy when you were being a nosy biddy? She clicked the computer screen off and smiled at him. “Of course not, Sanjeev. How are you?”
Sanjeev bowed his head, his serene smile in place, his deeply bronzed skin glowing. “I am well. You?”
Em massaged the back of her neck. Sore. She was sore from sitting in the same spot for three hours hunting down information about Jax, and Jake, and the infamous Reece. She was mostly coming up with nothing more than aches and pains to show for it, but it wasn’t for lack of looking.
Jake and Jax had a software security development company they’d started right out of college along with Jax’s sister, Harper, who joined the company after Jake was killed in a car accident six years ago.
But there wasn’t much else to find. The company dissolved when Jax’s sister, Harper, was also killed in a mugging four years later. According to a couple of articles, their company had been very successful, but no mention of Reece.
Jax had suffered so much loss in such a small amount of time, her heart ached for him and little Maizy. Maybe his reaction to Reece’s picture played a part in that. Or maybe he was just angry she’d crossed the no-personal-information line? She hadn’t heard from him for two days, and it stung.
It more than stung. It hurt. It ached. She’d picked up her phone a hundred times to text him an apology, but thought better of it. She’d touched a nerve with the picture of Reece. Gone too far, or something.
She didn’t know how to approach this with him. “Hey, sorry I brought up
a sore subject. Want to try that new vibrator I’ve been eyeing online?”
So what will it be like when it’s really over? Will it hurt less, Em?
“Emmaline?” Sanjeev peered over the top of her computer at her, his eyes full of concern. “Shall I make you a poultice for the cramps in your neck?”
Not a chance would she allow Sanjeev to heal her when she was doin’ the work of the devil by snooping on Jax. She shook her head then winced at the shooting pain on the left side of her neck. “No, Sanjeev. But thank you. What brings you here today? More of my undergarments lying about?”
His inky eyebrow rose, but his eyes laughed. “Not today. Though, I confess, I’m happy to see you’re moving forward and enjoying your...womanhood.”
Em’s head tipped back and she laughed. “I’m sorry I embarrassed you.”
“I’m not. I’m pleased to see you taking time for yourself. You are a selfless woman. Sometimes, in all that selflessness comes a draining of the spirit.”
“Do you really see me like that, Sanjeev? I’m not asking because I’m fishin’, mind you. I’m just not sure why everyone thinks that.” She was definitely being selfish right now.
“I do. Landon saw you that way, too. That’s why he left you in charge. You had to be selfless in order to handle his Dixie-Cup. She requires a great deal of selflessness—or she did.”
Em’s heart warmed. Whenever she felt alone, she thought of Landon, of his last days with her. Of the lessons he’d taught her about this thing called life. “Live,” he’d said. “Live hard.”
He knew what she’d been going through with Clifton. He’d offered his help. Help she’d refused. She hadn’t wanted anything more from Landon than his friendship, and she’d gotten that in spades.
“I miss him so much. It’s funny, I didn’t know him very well till the end of his life. Us livin’ in the same town and all, we shoulda been better friends. But those last weeks with him are some of my most treasured memories.”
“I assure you, he reciprocated those feelings. And to answer your question, I miss him every single day.” He held out a hand to her and Em took it, giving it a squeeze.
Something to Talk About Page 23
