Love Hard

by Nalini Singh

  The messages were from his family and from Thea Arsana. He opened one at random. It was from Sailor: Jake, that asshole Reid’s released an intimate shot of Juliet. He’s claiming it’s recent and was taken with her consent. Fucker.

  Rage burned through Jake’s blood like fire. He clicked the link his brother had included, felt his hand bunch into a fist when he saw it was a relatively tame photo of Juliet in bed, the sheet pulled up over her breasts. She was leaning her head on her hand and smiling at the person taking the photo. All you could see were her bare shoulders and arms, and the slope of her hip under the sheet.

  Her face, however, was as it was today, not the sharper and more angular version of her past with her ex. He skimmed the “article,” saw that Reid was claiming Juliet had been with him the week before the impromptu press conference where she’d blasted him to pieces. The bastard had pointed to the date stamp as proof. That date was the night Jake and Juliet had first kissed.

  They’d reached passport control.

  He waited until they were through and waiting for their luggage before murmuring to Juliet. Esme was busy looking out for their bags, so they had relative privacy.

  “Jules, we need to deal with something.”

  “Oh God, what’s he done now?” She went to get her phone, which he’d noticed she hadn’t glanced at while chatting to Esme.

  He put out a hand to stop her, then laid it out for her, including showing her the image so she wouldn’t imagine anything worse. The look on her face was pure devastation. Such pain that he wanted to kill Reid then and there.

  “Jake, I promise I didn’t—”

  “I know that,” he said because he did. Juliet didn’t lie. “I know.”

  “He did take that photo—it was after we were first married, when I trusted him.” Her expression was fragile as she admitted that. “But I didn’t look like that then, was more angles than curves. He’s gotten someone to edit it.”

  “Yeah, I figured.” Squeezing the back of her neck, he said, “We’ll deal.”

  “No.” She stepped away. “Jake, I won’t drag you into this ugliness. Let me think. I can—”

  “No.” He was done letting Reid run the show and done having Juliet think she had to walk alone into the fire. “You’ve dealt with things long enough on your own. Now you have me.”

  “Jake, no.” Her gaze went to Esme, fierce protectiveness in her next words. “Esme, your family—we need to protect them.”

  “Esme will be fine.” Anyone who dared come after a Bishop-Esera child would be pulverized. Jake had the social and professional reach to do it on his own, but throw in Danny’s power and add in Sailor and Gabe and no one would survive it.

  As for any rumors or gossip that might reach Esme, they’d talk with her beforehand, give her the weapons to handle it. Tempting as it was to surround his baby in cotton wool, he couldn’t protect her by keeping her in the dark. “As for my family, see for yourself.” He showed her the messages on his phone.

  Her lower lip began to tremble as she went through the messages. All of them furious on her behalf and in her corner.

  “Your parents are out there,” she said, her voice a little wobbly.

  “Of course they are.” Jake put his hand on her lower back. “This is what we’re going to do. I’ll exit and take Esme over to them, then I’m going to come wait by the doors for you to exit.”

  Swallowing hard, she shook her head. “See?” She pointed to his mother’s message.

  “I know, Jules.” He pressed a kiss to her cheek, uncaring of who might see. “I know the gossip mags are out there. That’s why you are not going to go out alone.”

  Another hard shake of her head. “Jake, you can’t be dragged—”

  “No.” Jake rarely put down his foot in this way, but when he did, he didn’t budge. “This isn’t negotiable, Jules. You’re mine, and I stand by my people.”

  “But Esme,” Juliet argued back in a whisper, her priorities clear.

  “They won’t dare.” Jake knew that for a fact. “Our family has cut certain magazines from interviews because they published pictures of our children. They won’t risk it, especially as they’re hoping to get some kind of an exclusive from Gabriel and Charlotte.” Not that his brother would give them anything but crumbs—just enough to ensure they didn’t start making up shit.

  Another glance at Esme. “I—”

  “We aren’t discussing this, Jules.” He kissed her hard on the lips. “You wait for me to exit, and then you give me a minute to get Esme to my parents.” He held her gaze. “Promise me that.”

  A stubborn pause before she finally nodded, but there was a haunted wariness in her eyes. He didn’t attempt to address that wariness—sometimes the only thing that worked was showing someone that their trust was valued and wouldn’t be betrayed. Juliet was going to learn that Jacob Esera didn’t let down his people.

  He stuck.

  “Daddy! Jules!” Esme pointed excitedly as Jake’s bag came around. He’d tied a big blue bow on the handle especially so Esme could find it among the sea of other black bags.

  “Good spotting, Boo,” he said and stepped forward to get it off the conveyer belt. His daughter knew not to cross the yellow line, but she was happily pointing out her own bag, a pale blue thing emblazoned with—shockingly—the face of her favorite princess.

  He took that off the belt as well and was ready when Esme said, “Jules, look!”

  Jules, too, had tied a bow around her handle after Esme gave her a hair ribbon and said, “Then we can see it easy.” Her bow was a bright pink. He saw Juliet step forward to grab her bag, but he was already there. Come hell or high water, he was going to teach her that it was okay if she permitted herself to rely on him.

  “Do we have them all?” he asked Esme after grabbing a luggage cart and putting the bags on it.

  Brow furrowed, she carefully counted. “Yup. Here, Mr. Mouse can sit on top. He likes to ride the cart.”

  Juliet held out a hand after another shaky glance at Jake. Esme slipped her hand into her new favorite person’s, and they headed off to the Customs line, both Esme and Juliet dragging their roll-ons behind them. Thankfully, the line was moving fast today, and they got to a Customs officer in a matter of minutes. That the gray-haired man recognized both Jake and Juliet was obvious from the way his eyes flicked between them.

  “Look, guys,” he said, after quizzing them on their declaration cards and stamping them with the all clear, “just a heads-up. There’s a media scrum outside. I think it might be for you.” He glanced at Juliet. “We can get you out another way if you want.”

  Juliet was openly taken aback by the unexpected kindness, but she caught her breath and said, “No, it’ll be worse if I try to avoid them. But thank you for the warning.”

  The officer nodded. “Good luck. Follow the green line to the exit.”

  Once past him and on their way to the doors, however, they found themselves inspected by one of the airport’s drug-sniffing beagles.

  “No petting,” he warned Esme. “He’s at work.”

  Esme waved at the “doggie” instead and said, “Daddy, see? He’s so nice and he works hard.”

  “Baby girl, we are not getting a dog.”

  “But I gonna get the poopy thing,” Esme protested as the beagle moved on, giving them final clearance to exit.

  Juliet looked between the two of them. “The poopy thing?”

  “Tell you later,” Jake promised and stopped the luggage cart before the sliding doors to the waiting area. “Wait here.” He caught the eye of a nearby security officer who seemed to be watching them. “I need to get my daughter out, then I’m going to come back to the doors so Juliet doesn’t have to walk out alone.”

  The woman nodded. “Figured the cameras were for you.”

  Sometimes it was good to live in a small and rugby-obsessed nation where his face was immediately recognizable. “Thank you.” He took Esme’s hand. “Come on, Boo.”

  “Jule
s, come.”

  “Jules is going to take a couple more minutes. But she won’t be far.” A glance at Juliet to remind her of her promise.

  She nodded though her face was torn.

  He headed out, Esme’s hand held firmly in his. He controlled the cart with his other hand. Despite his parents’ warning, the media contingent was far bigger than he’d expected. It was, in fact, certifiably insane. It was either a slow news week or Reid’s stories had somehow caused a rise in ratings.

  Ignoring the camera flashes as he was recognized, he went left out of the doors—his parents always waited on that side, and that way the cart hid Esme’s small form from intrusive shutters.

  “Daddy, why are they taking pictures of us?”

  “Because I play rugby.” He kept his voice calm so she wouldn’t be scared. “They’re excited.”

  She beamed. “You’re fast! Uncle Danny is faster though.”

  Jake would’ve laughed if he hadn’t been so tense. Danny was faster; he could run like the fucking wind, the ball tucked securely in one hand. “Can you see Grandma or Grandpa?” he asked, having already spotted them.

  “Um.” She looked around for a few seconds before giving a happy cry and streaking forward toward his parents.

  She was already in Joseph’s arms by the time he reached them. His father gave him a disappointed look, his bushy eyebrows heavy over dark eyes.

  Jake parked the cart. “Wait here. I have to get Juliet.” He texted her to tell her he was on his way back to the exit doors.

  The disappointment faded, to be replaced by firm approval.

  His mother nodded too. “I don’t know what the world is coming to, that the media thinks this is acceptable.”

  Jake was already moving and was at the doors when Juliet walked out. He took her hand before she could stop him. Her glance was shocked, startled. He just squeezed and said, “Let me do the talking this time, Jules.”

  A tiny frown, but she was shaken enough that she didn’t protest, and then they were heading straight for the pack of media salivating out front. Camera flashes went off in a tornado of noise and light, questions shouted their way from ten different mouths.

  31

  Shield

  Jake paused and waited until they’d all calmed the fuck down.

  “Jake! Jake! Did Juliet cheat on you with Reid? Or did you get together in New York?”

  Beside him, Juliet stiffened. “Why the hell would I go to Reid when I have Jake?” She sounded so flabbergasted that Jake found himself bursting into laughter.

  “The photo!” another reporter shouted. “Are you saying you weren’t with Reid that night?”

  “I’m not into threesomes,” Jake said with a straight face.

  It took a moment for his comment to penetrate. The questions began again, harder, faster.

  He let them roll over him until they quieted again. “Look, that pathetic piece of crap who can’t even crack twenty-five on the wicket these days is taking you all for a ride. I was there the night Reid tried to hook up with Juliet again. Jules kicked him to the curb—her taste in men has improved drastically since—”

  Juliet elbowed him, sharply and visibly enough that the cameras flashed again. Grinning, he hauled her into a kiss, one hand cupping the side of her face and his fingers in her hair.

  And that was the photo that hit the online sites even as Jake’s parents drove Juliet, Esme, and Jake from the airport in their big people-mover van. Juliet, stunned at what had just gone down, stared at her phone as the pings began. Jake’s family, Charlie, Aroha, Iris, Everett, Kalia, Mei, Nayna, Molly, casual friends, even the eldest daughter from the family that had put her up back when she’d returned from Samoa, they were all sending her thumbs-up emojis or laughing faces or messages that broadcast pure delight.

  The cameras had caught Jake laughing as he kissed her. Jake never laughed. Not for the cameras, not this way. And the way he was laughing, the way his hand cupped her face, it was… Things got all tight inside her. No one had ever looked at her that way before. No one had ever put himself in the line of fire to shield her.

  He’d linked himself to her with a finality that was going to make his life much harder.

  The articles that had begun to pop up also mentioned that she and Jake had been greeted at the airport by his parents and that Jake’s daughter appeared very comfortable with Juliet. Esme, back on her feet by then, had grabbed her hand as soon as Juliet and Jake joined Alison and Joseph.

  She’d been frowning. “Are you famous too, Jules? But you don’t play rugby.”

  Needing the sweetness of Esme, Juliet had gone down to squeeze her into a hug. “I’m a little famous,” she’d said after. “I don’t want to be though.”

  Esme had patted her cheek, and the five of them had walked out of the airport unmolested by any more media interest. The reporters were all racing off to file their stories, and the photographers apparently realized there was no point taking family shots that included Esme. Not here, not in this situation.

  Maybe that line in the sand would be crossed in a larger country, but in a country this small, with the Bishop-Eseras a beloved family that quietly gave a lot of financial and emotional support to disadvantaged kids who wanted to play the game, the public tended to look askance at such an invasion of privacy.

  It helped that Jake was a young god on the rugby field. His devotion to his daughter was well known, as was his protectiveness. The media was well aware the public could turn against them in defense of Esme.

  All the articles held a vein of shock at the unexpected turn of events. Jake had sold it with his obvious contempt for Reid’s false statements. Juliet’s lips still tingled from the kiss. She’d never have expected that. Never. Jake was so private.

  She looked forward to where he sat in the front passenger seat beside his dad. Alison had chosen to get in back with Juliet, with Esme in a child seat between them. When Juliet glanced at Jake’s mother, her heart trembling because surely Alison had reservations about her son hooking up with a woman like Juliet, Alison gave her a warm smile.

  “You just let us handle this, dear heart.” She reached over to touch Juliet’s hair in a maternal caress. “You shouldn’t be dealing with it alone.”

  “That picture,” Juliet said, because she couldn’t bear for Alison to be shocked by the truth should it come out. “I let him take one when we were first married, and I trusted him. I know I shouldn’t have, but—”

  “You trusted your husband. There’s no shame in that,” Alison said gently. “But no matter what the circumstances, Juliet, it wouldn’t ever mean that you or any woman deserved that kind of media haranguing. Reid also released an intimate image without your permission and has been lying about you non-stop—you say the word, honey, and we’ll get the lawyers on it.”

  Juliet was going to start crying. Looking down, she squeezed her eyes shut.

  A tiny hand patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t be sad, Jules.”

  Esme sounded so worried that Juliet swallowed the knot in her throat and met the little girl’s eyes with a smile. “How can I be sad when I have all of you?”

  Smiling, Esme leaned her head against Juliet and went back to her conversation with Mr. Mouse about how New York had been so much fun but she was glad to be home.

  “Thank you,” Juliet said to Alison, one of her hands in Esme’s hair.

  Alison glanced to the front, where Jake and his father were involved in an animated discussion about a recent international match between two big rugby countries. Then she reached over and pulled out a pair of sparkly pink headphones from the back pocket of a front seat.

  “Want to listen to your princess music?” she asked Esme.

  When Esme nodded, her grandmother set her up. Only once Esme was singing along with her tunes did Alison turn to Juliet and say, “No. Thank you.” Soft eyes, full of a mother’s love. “Jake stopped laughing that way a long time ago. We’ve always tried to be there for him, but he took all the weight of
Calypso’s death on his shoulders. He stopped being a boy and became a man far too young.”

  Juliet thought of how he’d laughed with her in bed, how he’d looked so young when they’d kissed just now at the airport, and felt a strange stretching inside her. A reminder that this wasn’t a one-sided relationship where she was the recipient of all the gifts—Jake had asked her to be his wings, to take him flying.

  She hugged that truth to her heart when Joseph brought the van to a stop at Jake’s place. Jake invited his parents in for a coffee, and she found herself with Alison again at one point while the men and Esme went outside to check out a clothesline that had fallen over during the high winds Auckland had experienced a couple of days earlier.

  As Juliet made the coffee after scoping out the machine and realizing she could work it and Alison rummaged in the cupboard for a packet of cookies, Juliet found herself settling into a space where family wasn’t a cause of pain but of support and joy. She told Alison about their trip, and Alison told her about a family dinner they’d had after Charlotte and Gabriel’s return from their honeymoon.

  “We can be overwhelming en masse,” Jake’s mother said. “So if you ever want to miss a family dinner or get-together, no one will hold it against you.”

  Shaken inside at the simple acceptance that she’d be part of future family events, Juliet said, “I’d love to be part of a family. I don’t really have any family.” It was hard for her to be so vulnerable and put herself out there like that, but Alison smiled and gave her a one-armed hug.

  “Trust me, you’ve got one now. We’ll probably drive you bonkers.”

  Joseph Esera was less demonstrative, but he gave Juliet a pat on the back when he came inside and she almost cried again. But she didn’t, because Esme was running in, excited to tell them all about how the “big wind” had made things fall down.