And this year she needed all the help she could get.
She spotted Jax’s wallet on the floor by her vanity chair as she passed by on her way to grab an additional pair of stockings. Pausing to pick it up, she tossed it atop his jeans on the little chair and had taken several steps away before she suddenly came to a halt. She glanced over her shoulder at the leather billfold, then over at Jax, still deep asleep.
And she grinned. “Driver’s license,” she whispered gleefully.
Whipping around she retraced her steps and dropped to a squat in front of the chair. She picked up the wallet and with one final glance over her shoulder, flipped the tri-fold open.
Jax’s license had been issued in Massachusetts, a state she’d hadn’t even realized he’d ever lived in, and it occurred to her there was a lot they’d never discussed. He’d taken a good, if slightly sober-faced, picture and his birthday was—aha!—October third.
“Gotcha.” She smiled at herself, tickled to have won the ongoing game between them. Now her biggest decision was whether to let him know right away that she knew exactly when he was going to turn thirty-four or to wait for his birthday and surprise him. The fact that he was slightly younger than she was didn’t bother her, though she was surprised.
As she happily considered her options, her gaze drifted across the name on the driver’s license. And her stomach dropped. Her smile froze. No. No, that couldn’t be right.
But reading it again, she saw that, indeed, the license had been issued to Jackson Gallagher McCall.
The man she’d fallen in love with, the man she’d trusted, the man she’d been weaving goddamn fantasies of a rosy future around was Big Jim’s son. Something almost audible reverberated in her head.
She thought it must be the sound of all her dreams caving in.
JAX JERKED AWAKE as someone yanked urgently on his left biceps. Blinking groggily, he struggled up on his right arm. “Huh? What?”
He saw Treena bent over him. She slapped at his head, his neck, his shoulders with both hands then wrapped them around his upraised biceps again and tugged, obviously trying to pull his two hundred and eighteen pounds out of bed. “Get out,” she yelled. “Get out of here now!”
“Honey?” He sat up. “What’s the matter? Is the condo on fire?” But he knew that wasn’t it. He was waking up fast now and beginning to realize she wasn’t concerned for his welfare.
She was furious with him, and there was only one reason he could think of for that. Acid poured into his gut and his heart started banging like a loose shutter in a hurricane against the wall of his chest.
“Oh, God.” She laughed, but it was an arid, humorless sound. “What’s the matter? What’s the matter? I thought I knew you, but I didn’t know squat. And I want you out of my house, Jackson McCall.” She spat his name as if to get it out of her mouth before its corrosiveness could eat through her tongue like acid. “Now!”
Shit.
“How did you find out?” he croaked.
Wrong question. He knew it the instant the words left his mouth. Dodging the fist she sent hurling his way, he said hastily, “That’s not what I meant! Listen to me, Treena. I was going to tell you myself tonight, I swear.”
“Liar!” She came at him, murder in her eyes and her hands an erratic blur as they smacked at any part of him she could reach. “You goddamn liar!”
Jax surged to his feet and wrapped his arms around her, pinning her hands to her sides. She bucked and fought, and this wasn’t some delicate little English flower he was wrapped around. Treena was tall and strong and mad as hell, and he had to plant his feet, tighten his hold and hang on until she wore herself out.
It took a while but finally she went limp. His heart just broke when he felt scalding tears trickle down his chest, and he pressed his cheek to the top of her head, where he swore he could feel steam escaping.
“I was going to tell you tonight,” he reiterated, his voice hoarse with the urgent need to make her listen to him—to make her believe. “When I first met you I didn’t plan to tell you at all. But then I fell for you. God, I fell for you so hard, and I didn’t know what the hell to do—so I kept putting off telling you who I was. But I swear on my mother’s grave that I’d made up my mind to tell you tonight. I just didn’t want the knowledge of my identity to foul up your audition.”
Her head snapped up so fast she damn near shattered his cheekbone, and he bit back an oath as pain radiated out from the point of contact.
She glared at him through narrowed lashes. “Oh, trust me, you son of a bitch, I’m going to pass that audition. You will not screw that up for me, too.” Her heart pounded against his diaphragm. “How long have you known who I am?”
He was tempted to lie and say the morning following her birthday when she’d first mentioned Big Jim’s name. But he had to tell her the truth. He owed her that.
And, God, so much more. “Before we met.”
The pain that flashed across her face nearly brought him to his knees.
“You bastard,” she whispered. Her breath sawed in and out of her lungs as she stared at him and her voice was anguished as she demanded, “Why?”
“To get my grandfather’s baseball.”
“Your…what? A baseball?” Incomprehension furrowed her brow. Then her eyes widened. “The World Series ball?”
“Yes. I got myself in a jam, and I need the ball to get out of it with both hands still intact.”
It was clear she had no idea what he was talking about, and Jax drew in a deep breath and eased it out again, trying to marshal his thoughts. “Look, all my life I’ve had the history of Grandpa’s baseball shoved down my throat—and the lecture always ended with my father telling me that someday it would be mine. Well, the truth is, I never wanted the damn thing. It seems like all we ever did was fight about my disappointing skill in sports, and that stupid ball epitomized our entire dicked up relationship. So the day I found out Dad was dead I did something incredibly stupid. I allowed my ego to do my thinking during a poker game. The result of that brilliant move was that I let myself be maneuvered into putting up the ball for a wager.”
“You bet it?”
“Yes.”
She stared at him as if he were a slug with a mile-long slime trail. “So let me get this straight. You couldn’t be bothered to attend your father’s funeral but you had time for a card game, where you wagered his most prized possession.”
Trying not to let the contempt in her voice get to him, he said levelly, “I received the letter informing me of Dad’s death months late because it ended up chasing me all over Europe. And the day it finally caught up with me, I went a little crazy. I was drinking and not thinking real straight.”
“So you lost it.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes. And the guy I lost it to is threatening to have his goons break all my fingers if I don’t give it to him after the tournament tonight.”
For the first time she looked perhaps the tiniest bit sympathetic toward him. “Some man threatened to break your fingers?”
He gave a little shrug. “Not in so many words. But he implied it, and having his henchmen bend my thumbs backward made it pretty damn clear.” Sucking in another breath, he felt Treena’s breasts flatten against his diaphragm and realized he still held her immobile. She seemed to have calmed down enough to abandon her plan to beat him to death and he knew he ought to ease away and set her free.
He didn’t. He wanted to hang on to her for as long as he could. He loosened his hold slightly, though. “I honest to God wanted to do this the right way, Treena. When I found out the ball hadn’t been left to me after all I authorized my lawyer to make you an offer for it.”
“That was you?” She stared up at him, dumb-founded. Then a maniacal laugh burst out of her, and it wasn’t a pretty sound. It was harsh and loud and went on much too long.
He was beginning to fear what he’d have to do to stop the hysteria when the crazed sound stopped with the abruptness of a needle being snat
ched up off a record. She looked up at him and his head jerked back at the scorn that flared so hotly in her eyes it had burned away the last of her tears.
“You sorry-ass buffoon,” she said contemptuously. “I wanted to take that offer in the worst way. It would have given me the security I’d enjoyed before I gave up the cushion of my savings—it would have allowed me to start my dance studio should today’s audition not go the way I hope it will. The way it has to go now.”
She wrenched free of his hold and stepped back. “But you know what, Jackson? I couldn’t sell it. And would you like to know why?”
“Sure.” Without taking his eyes off of her, he snatched his jeans off the little chair and pulled them on.
“Because I knew Big Jim wanted it to go to his worthless son. Gawd, don’tcha just love it? Isn’t that rich? All this time that you were planning to—what, steal it from me?—I was saving it for you.”
Crap. His head swam, his usual methodical mind a frozen wasteland.
She laughed bitterly. “The joke was certainly on me, wasn’t it?”
“No.” Dropping the T-shirt he’d picked up to put on, he ran his forefinger down the soft skin of her cheek. It was flushed and hot beneath his fingertip. “The joke was on both of us.”
She made a skeptical sound and knocked his hand aside. “What the hell did you lose? I mean, come on! This is pretty much a win-win situation for you. You get your precious ball.” For a second she faltered. “Or maybe you’ve stolen it from the closet already.”
“I left it where I found it, Treena.”
“Well, hallelujah—you managed to keep your sticky fingers off of it. So, you get the ball, you get to keep your clever hands in one piece, and hey! You didn’t even once have to visit your sick father to get your inheritance! You didn’t have to go through all that dreary effort of putting yourself out for a man who pined to see you one last time before he died.”
It was a direct jab at Jax’s hottest button, and all his warmly concerned penitence turned to ice. He stepped back, his spine snapping straight, his most noncommittal poker face slamming into place. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he said coldly.
“Oh, don’t I?” She thrust her face up under his, poked a long finger into his sternum. “I was there, buddy, you weren’t! And it was all Jackson this and Jackson that. He lived for your sporadic phone calls, bragged to his friends about what a mathematical genius you are. Big Jim was the nicest man I ever met and you never once, in all the time I knew him, came to see him!”
“You’re damn right I didn’t! I don’t know where all that newfound fondness for me came from, but when I was growing up I couldn’t do anything to make that man proud. And as for his so-called pride in my math abilities—”
“There was nothing so-called about it, Jackson.”
“Stop calling me that!” He was nearly beside himself, hearing the hated name coming from her lips. “The only person who ever called me Jackson was my father—and that was usually when he was haranguing me for missing some stupid pitch in some stupid game I didn’t want to play in the first place. I’m Jax. Got it? That’s what my mother called me and that’s who I am.”
“Fine then, Jax. Don’t you tell me what I know. And I know he was proud of you—leagues beyond what you deserved, if you ask me. I must have heard once a day how you’d graduated top of your class from MIT at seventeen freaking years of age.”
“Then why the hell didn’t he bother coming to my graduation?” Jax roared.
“He was sick, you ass. He didn’t want to take away from your big day.”
“Had better things to do, is more like it.” He remembered the old man’s phone call that day. “Sorry, kid,” Big Jim had said. “You know how it is. Things come up.” “I knocked myself out trying to please that old bastard, but it was an exercise in futility. Nothing I did was good enough for him.”
She nodded. “Your father admitted he made a lot of mistakes with you.”
“Ya think?” he said with bitter sarcasm. “He didn’t understand the first goddamn thing about me.”
“That’s probably true. From what he told me, your mom was really good with you and he didn’t know much about kids at all. So when she died and you were this frighteningly bright kid who didn’t like any of the things he did, he didn’t have the first idea what to do with you.”
His stomach rolled and pitched queasily. “But that didn’t stop him from trying to browbeat me into being a clone of Big Jim McCall.”
“Oh, grow up,” she snapped. “We all have crappy things to deal with as kids. You think my folks approved of what I wanted to do with my life?” She pinned him in place with a withering glare. “Parents mess up. Get over it.”
Her contempt lashed him on the raw, and he struck out blindly. “Screw you. At least you knew your folks loved you. The only time my old man felt affection for me was when I could field a pop-up or score a base run. In other words, goddamn never! Or, oh, yeah—when I was long gone, apparently, and he decided my being a math geek wasn’t such an embarrassment to him after all. Well, where the hell was he to say, ‘Everything’s gonna be all right. I’m proud of you’ when I was fourteen and on my way to a university where the next youngest student was at least old enough to drive? I knocked myself out for his approval and he made me feel like the world’s biggest loser for my efforts. So, honey, he may have talked a good game to you but take it from someone who was there. His parenting skills were more than ‘messed up.’ They were nonexistent.”
“At least he didn’t lie through his teeth!” Storming over to the coat closet, she wrenched the door open and disappeared inside. A horrendous racket ensued as she banged around. “At least he never made you fall in love with him then ripped your heart out and stomped it into the ground!” She reappeared, scarlet-faced, with the Plexiglas box gripped between her white-knuckled hands.
Jax froze, all his ire draining away. Aw, crap. He’d messed up so bad, and he had to fix it. He stepped forward to say he was sorry, to make her realize how much he loved her, too.
Before he could even open his mouth, however, Treena slammed the box into his stomach. Sheer reflex made him grab it.
“Here. Take your goddamn ball and go. For whatever faults your father had, he was honest. He had integrity.” She herded him toward the door but stopped just shy of it to look him squarely in the eye. “And Jackson, or Jax or whatever the hell you’re calling yourself? He was twice the man you are.”
“No.” Nausea rushing up his throat, he hunched over as if she’d just kicked him squarely between the legs. For a second he was eleven, twelve, thirteen years old again where his reality was the knowledge that he might be book smart, but nothing he did would ever measure up to larger-than-life Big Jim McCall.
He swallowed the sickness the best he could and reached out to touch her hair. “Don’t say that,” he whispered. “Please, Treena, don’t tell me that.”
Her face was stony as she ripped open the door. She thrust an arm out, her index finger pointing rigidly to the corridor. “Get out of my house. I never want to see you again.”
Unable to discern the least bit of indecision on her face and hurting so badly he wasn’t sure he could draw a full breath, he trudged out the door.
It slammed behind his back the instant his bare heels cleared the threshold.
TREENA SLID DOWN the door until her knees were wobbling in front of her eyes. Wrapping her arms around her shins, she buried her face between her knees and cried, huge, wracking sobs that threatened to tear her lungs out of her chest, to rend her broken heart from its mooring. She cried until she had no tears left. Then she curled limply on her side in the fetal position.
She had no idea how much time had passed when a sudden knock erupted like a gunshot on the panel above her head. Her heart jumped in shock but she stayed where she was, willing whoever it was to go away. The knock came again, then the door opened, stopping abruptly when it hit her body.
“What t
he hell?” Carly’s voice said. “Treena? Are you in there? We should take off pretty soon for the audition.”
Right. The audition. A thin thread of determination found its way through her despair and Treena pulled herself up off the floor.
Carly fell into the apartment. She swore, righted herself and took a long, hard look at Treena, who figured she must look pretty bad because her friend’s face paled.
“Oh, my God,” Carly said. “What happened? What did that bastard do?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE MATTRESS DIPPED next to Ellen’s hip and she smiled as Mack leaned down and pressed his lips to the back of her neck. With a hum of pleasure, she arched like a cat beneath the sensations he invoked.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” he murmured in her ear, then changed the angle of his head to kiss the nerve-rich curve where her neck flowed into her shoulder. He stroked her hip through the blankets. “It’s almost eleven—I bet you haven’t slept this late in ages.” With one last kiss, he pushed back from the bed.
Missing his nearness, she rolled onto her back and stretched luxuriously, feeling a deep feminine satisfaction when his dark chocolate eyes went almost black. “That’s true,” she agreed and sat up, tucking the sheet beneath her armpits. “On the other hand, it’s also been an age since I’ve participated in such vigorous activity.”
He laughed and handed her a robe. That’s when she realized he must have been back to his apartment already this morning, because last night’s suit and tie had been replaced by his usual neatly pressed chinos and a black T-shirt. But she forgot all about his clothing when he flashed her the sweetest smile she’d ever seen on his craggy face.
“You sure look pretty in the morning,” he said. “And I’d like nothing more than to tumble you onto your tidy little backside and love you silly one more time.” His smile turned wry. “But I’m an old guy and you wore me out. So, how about I feed you instead? You hungry?”
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