by J. D. Mason
“You said yourself that you came to the house that day to try and learn something about the man. Did you plan on coming or did some invisible pull compel you to come to my house that day?”
Abby studied him, intensely. From his expression, she could tell that she might have actually hit the nail on the head.
“What is it that you need from him, Jordan? What’d you come looking for?”
Jordan gazed out over that herd, quietly pondering her question. Did he know? Maybe Julian knew. Maybe he’d cared more about Jordan than he’d ever let on before he died and now he was trying to reach out to him.
“Maybe he’s trying to save your life.”
All of this was way over her head, but it was no coincidence that Jordan had come to her house that day and that the ghost of his father was kicking up dust whenever his son came around. Julian had shown up because of Jordan. She was sure of it.
“Don’t you believe in miracles, Jordan? That’s sort of what this is starting to feel like.”
“I’m surprised that you do, Ms. Logical, Reasonable, and Analytical Engineer.”
“What do you think science and engineering is if not the discovery and explanation of miracles?”
“Never thought of it that way.”
“Not many people do. Science is magic, dissected. That’s all.”
He stared warmly into her eyes. “I believe that you are magic.”
Abby blushed. “You want to dissect me?”
He brought out the naughty girl in her without trying.
“Dissecting you is absolutely one of my favorite things to do.”
Abby chuckled. “Well then, let’s climb back on that big old horse of yours and head back to the palace.”
Your Remedy
THANKFULLY, LYDIA PREPARED A MEAL with chicken instead of beef, for Abby’s sake. This house felt different with her in it. Abby had dared to take a step into his world, and all it took was the appearance of a ghost.
When was the last time he’d danced? “I’ll Be Good to You” by the Brothers Johnson wafted through the entire house while he and Abby danced outside on the lanai around the fire pit. Jordan held a beer in one hand and had the other wrapped around Abby’s waist as they swayed back and forth to the rhythm of a beat that was not much older than she was.
“You’re only twelve years older, Jordan,” she’d told him earlier when he’d made mention of the huge age difference between them. “That’s actually kind of perfect since girls usually mature faster than boys.”
Jordan wasn’t sure, but it felt like she’d mildly insulted him.
He couldn’t keep his hands off her. He couldn’t stop staring at her. Abby was a different kind of beautiful. Natural and understated, effortless. The kind that settled into his soul nicely. She listened intently as he told her about the contract he was hoping to win from the government. It was an impressive deal in the making, a fact that wasn’t lost on her.
“I know you’re probably going to have Ph.D.s at your beck and call when you land this deal. But if you ever would like the council of a lowly structural engineer with a master’s in mechanical engineering, I’m your girl.”
“I will keep that in mind,” he responded, smiling. “But I’d rather you be my woman. Not my engineer.”
She blushed, and masterfully glossed over that part about wanting her to be his. “I’m dead serious, Jordan. That kind of stuff makes my heart race and my palms sweat.”
“Is that the only thing that makes your heart race and your palms sweat?” he asked without missing a beat.
Abby sat perched on his lap, straddling and facing him.
“Of course not,” she said after a brief pause, her expression subtly becoming more serious.
He lightly grazed his thumb over the skin of her thigh exposed by the short, white sundress she wore.
“Being with you absolutely makes my heart race and my palms sweat,” she admitted. “But I figured you already knew that.”
He was flattered. “I’d hoped.”
She smiled. “If we had gone to college together, you know that you would never have given me the time of day. Right?”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he disagreed.
“Boys like you never did. You, the jock, had girls lined up waiting to get to you. Don’t try to deny it. I know it’s true.”
Jordan sort of shrugged.
“I tutored the jocks. Sometimes, I even wrote their papers for them. For a price, of course.”
“Then chances are our paths would’ve crossed. I needed a ton of tutoring.”
She laughed. “Oh, I don’t believe that. You can’t be dumb and run a corporation.”
“I wasn’t running a corporation in college. I was chasing footballs and girls.” He grinned. “Life was much simpler then.”
“I’m sure it was,” she said, her demeanor softening even more. “What if he hadn’t died, Jordan? What’d you want to be when you grew up?”
No one had ever asked him that before in his entire life.
“What were you majoring in?” she asked when he didn’t answer.
“Business,” he eventually said.
“Why business?”
Jordan thought about it. “I have no idea.”
Abby tilted her head slightly to study him. “I think you’re the kind of man who would’ve been great at whatever he chose.” She knitted her brows. “Be it, a doctor, lawyer, fast food restaurant manager.”
He laughed.
“Don’t knock it. Fast food work is harder than it looks. I know. I worked a whole summer at Whataburger once as a fry and milkshake specialist, and it damn near killed me.”
“Oh, I’m not knocking it.”
“Resilient and stubborn. Confident.” She stared admiringly into his eyes. “Whatever you decided to be, you’d have been the boss.”
She was right. On all accounts. The last person Jordan had taken orders from was his football coach in college.
“What do you see in me?” she asked in a more serious tone.
He was confused by the question.
“I’m cute,” she continued. “Pretty. Funny. Smart. But I’m sure that you come across women all the time with those attributes. You could be with any woman you wanted, Jordan. And a man like you is far too busy and important to be driving up and down the highway to Blink. So, I don’t get it. I like it. But I don’t get it.”
“I feel good with you,” he admitted without hesitation.
“Define good,” she said, leaning in close to him and pressing against his chest.
Jordan took his time gathering his thoughts. Abby was forcing him to take a long, hard look at himself and at her.
“Good is not having to walk in an image that’s been defined for you, by you, by someone else. It’s just … being.”
Jordan Gatewood had a persona, and he had somehow fallen into the trap of living up to it, intentionally or not.
“You didn’t know me, except for what you might’ve read about me,” he said to her. “You know me now as the man I am, not as the man you think I’m supposed to be.”
“Because you didn’t introduce yourself to me as Jordan Gatewood’s predefined image?”
He smiled. “Exactly.”
“I’m confused.” She laughed.
He wasn’t surprised. What he was saying, or trying to say, was confusing.
“I’ve spent my life believing my own hype,” he confessed. “I stepped into Julian Gatewood’s shoes and decided that I needed to be him or rather, my perspective of him.”
Jordan compiled a list in his head of those things he believed his father to have been. “Unwavering. Unyielding. Cold and detached. Brilliant. I admired those things about him, and I adopted them. I adopted his demeanor, his stance, his attitude and made them mine.”
“Those aren’t necessarily bad things.”
He sighed. “No, but it’s exhausting having to be those things every single day, all day, to the point that it’s second nature.”<
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All of a sudden, Jordan understood what it was that had kept his father going back and forth to Blink. The revelation was so clear, and it made perfect sense.
“Comfortable,” Jordan simply said.
There was no pretense with Abby, no requirement for him to be anyone else but who he was. And it wasn’t until he’d met her that he realized how strained he’d always felt in his surroundings, driven by expectations, his own and everyone else’s, to live up to a name as tall as his corporate offices in downtown Dallas.
“I am unburdened around you, Abby. I think that I must’ve felt it the moment we met but I didn’t understand at first. I think Julian must’ve felt it with Ida, a peeling away of the burden of living up to preconceived ideas of who you really are. It’s like a peacock fanning out feathers to make the enemy believe he’s bigger than what he is. You’re not my enemy and because of that, you’re addictive.”
The look in her eyes wasn’t one of pity, but she seemed to understand precisely how much something like being able to be himself must’ve meant to him.
She planted a soft kiss on his lips. “So, you find peace in me?” she asked earnestly.
Jordan felt himself nod. “I do.”
She smiled. “Rest?”
“Yes,” he said, locked onto those beautiful eyes.
“Then I will be your refuge, Jordan.” Abby closed her eyes and pressed those lovely lips to his, pushed her hips against him, and wrapped her arms around him.
Is this what he’d been looking for? His refuge. His peace. A place for him to rest and just be Jordan.
Abby eventually pulled away from their kiss and whispered, “I’m not wearing panties. Did you know?”
Jordan laughed. “No. But I had hoped.”
In the Devil’s Bed
“MEN DON’T BREAK UP with women unless they have found another woman, Robin. Relationships 101.”
Robin sat across from her longtime friend Liza Atkinson at Station’s, an upscale bar in the heart of downtown Dallas. The two of them had worked for the same firm fresh out of law school back when they were baby attorneys, still wet behind the ears.
Contrary to her threat, she still hadn’t submitted her resignation, but Robin hadn’t been in the office in more than a week.
Liza’s words washed over Robin like ice water.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t considered it,” Liza continued.
“Of course I have,” she said coolly. Robin wasn’t naive. There had to have been someone else. “All of those times when he was out of town, or too busy—were likely times when he was with another woman. But does it matter?” Robin shrugged, angry tears filling her eyes. “We’re no longer together.”
Hurt feelings really weren’t her thing. Robin had broken plenty of hearts in her day, but she’d never had hers broken. Being on this side of the situation was brand-new, and she had no idea of how to feel, except angry.
“But aren’t you curious, Robin?” Liza asked, leaning forward, her dark eyes probing. “Don’t you want to know what woman could possibly take your place in his life?”
Liza was a notorious shit starter, a gossip, married to a rich man who left her alone with too much time on her hands to fly to Dallas from Los Angeles just to spur Robin into action and drag her ass kicking and screaming out of that pool of self-pity she’d been drowning in all week.
Liza leaned back and smiled. “I would love to know.”
* * *
Curiosity or ego? Both. It was a futile reaction to a deed that was already done. But Liza had planted a seed that quickly took root and blossomed into an immediate obsession that would likely only lead to more disappointment and deeper heartache for Robin. It was bad enough knowing that there was probably someone else in his life, but knowing who she was, or why he’d chosen someone over her was asking for her pride to take even more of a beating than it already had.
“Dean Rivers,” Liza had said over drinks that day as she’d pulled up his contact information on her cell phone. “A good friend of mine and excellent investigator.” She had looked up at Robin and smiled. “Consider this an early birthday present.”
In a matter of days, Liza’s investigator friend had forwarded Robin a file, a photograph, to her phone. And there he was. There they were. Robin felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach, physically ill at seeing Jordan Gatewood sitting at what looked like a bar with a woman standing in between his thighs, holding and kissing her. Even seeing something like this with her own eyes was beyond comprehension at first. Robin couldn’t wrap her mind around the idea that he would accept the kiss of another woman when Robin practically had to steal them from him. How was that even plausible?
The woman had dark skin and curly black hair. It was hard to see her face because of the angle that the picture was taken. The photographer must’ve been far enough away so that they didn’t notice him. Additional information accompanied the e-mail from Liza. Moments later, other pictures came through. Four altogether, all taken in that bar of the two of them huddled together, smiling, even dancing.
Jordan was enjoying himself. In just these few pictures she could see and almost feel something different about him, something that wasn’t there when he was with her. The reserved Jordan, reticent and aloof, wasn’t anywhere to be found in those pictures. This version of him was relaxed, open, welcoming. He looked content, happy.
A paralyzing numbness slowly consumed her, and Robin must have spent the better part of the day staring at that picture, memorizing every small detail, from how the woman stood on the tips of her toes to the familiar black-leather-and-silver bracelet Jordan always wore on his right wrist, to the way he tilted his head, accommodating himself to receive her kiss.
Negative thoughts cycled through her the way blood circulated through veins. Robin wasn’t good enough for him. She wasn’t beautiful enough. He didn’t like her sex or the way she laughed or talked. It had to have been those kinds of things that had turned him off, made her unattractive to him. He didn’t like the way she dressed—or what? What else? But this one, this Abigail that he held in his arms, that he kissed—that he loved?
What made this other woman better to him? What was it about her that compelled him to show her that side of himself that Robin had hoped he’d show to her? Robin had been waiting for the moment between them when Jordan would put down his armor and bare his heart and soul to her, but it never came. Somehow, someway, she was better to him than Robin. He’d chosen her over Robin because she was who he wanted to be with?
“Why?” she muttered softly to herself, truly perplexed by the multitude of questions circling her thoughts.
It made no sense. And Robin was the kind of woman who desperately needed to have things make sense. She showed up the next morning in his office and immediately closed the door behind her. Jordan looked surprised to see her.
“Who the hell is she, Jordan?” she blurted out, standing in front of his desk.
Jordan furrowed his thick brow. “Now’s not a good time, Robin.”
“Who is she?” Robin asked, still numb, still broken, tossing printouts of the pictures onto his desk.
Jordan glanced at them and then looked up at her like she’d lost her damn mind. And she had. “She’s no concern of yours, Robin.”
“The hell she isn’t,” she said with a smirk. “How dare you say that to me. Of course she’s my concern, Jordan. She’s the reason you dumped me in a San Francisco hotel. She’s the reason you’ve been too busy to return my calls. The reason behind you standing me up or canceling our dates at the last minute. She’s the reason for me sitting around feeling sorry for my damn self ever since you fucking left me humiliated. So don’t you dare tell me she’s of no concern to me.”
Cool and calm as ever, Jordan’s demeanor didn’t even ripple. “That wasn’t my intention. You know it. What I said to you in San Francisco was the truth. I never intended to hurt you.”
“But you did,” she snapped. “And for what? Some random little bi
tch in a bar? A nobody, Jordan? Seriously?”
“What I do and who I see are none of your business,” he shot back coolly.
It was as if she were a stranger to him. He spoke to her like she was some random person off the street. There had been moments between them, intimate and raw moments that left even the great and mighty Jordan Gatewood begging for more of Robin. She’d held him in the palm of her hands on more than one occasion, teasing him, torturing him with the kind of passion that that little country cow of his couldn’t possibly match. Or had he forgotten?
“Because you’d rather be with her than me.”
“Because I would,” he admitted. “Yes.”
That was it. Gloves off. “What is it, Jordan? Trying to relive the glory days of your father? Didn’t he have a dark little morsel of a side piece, too? Where was she from? Some small, insignificant town in the middle of nowhere, if I recall correctly. Is that where you’ve been disappearing to lately? Smothering your balls in greasy country pussy to drown your filthy-rich sorrows like he did? And her little black ass probably worships the ground you walk on. Is that what you need?”
Jordan’s expression turned dangerously ominous, and Robin relished it, because she’d obviously hit a nerve. Finally.
“Get the fuck out of my office,” he demanded.
Robin bowed slightly and graciously at the waist. “Oh, I will get the fuck out of your office, Jordan. The last thing I want is dick that’s been slathered in hog slop.”
Satisfaction slithered up her spine when she realized she’d insulted his girlfriend and it struck a nerve. “If slumming is what gets you Gatewood men off, then so be it. Because you are absolutely right. I do deserve better than your ass. And one day, you’re going to think back on all of this bullshit, and what you’ve done to me, and regret that you ever turned your back on me. You will miss me when I’m gone. I swear to God you will.”
Robin stormed out of his office to the elevator. She took it a few floors down to her office and began packing her things to leave.
