by Amy Gamet
Her stare was icy.
“It must have been horrible for you,” he said. “Getting pregnant by the one man you can’t stand.”
“An eye for an eye.”
“What did you say?”
“I lost my baby when you killed Ralph. You owed me one."
He put one hand on either side of his head and turned away from her and this craziness. Not even Linda's betrayals compared to this. That's when he saw her bag packed and ready to go. He pointed to it and turned back to her. "If I hadn't come back just now, you would have been gone."
She crossed her arms.
He stormed to her. "Answer me! If I hadn't come back here, would you have left?"
She glared at him and spit out between her teeth, “Hell yes, I would have left. I can’t stand you. I don’t want you in my life or my baby’s life."
"Well then, we’re just going to have to make sure you stick around." He dug in his bag and withdrew a pair of handcuffs. He turned to her, pleased when a knowing look appeared in her eyes.
"No."
"You don't get to decide anymore.” He put one handcuff around her wrist and the other around the arm of a heavy chair. "And you sure as hell don't get to walk out of here with my child.”
All he could see in his mind's eye was Jessa, beautiful Jessa, naked beneath him and guiding him inside her without a condom.
I want you to come inside me.
She’d been planning to steal from him, to take the one thing more precious than any other. The family that rightfully belonged to him.
20
Jessa wept into her pillow in the darkened hotel room. When it was time for sleep, Jax had chained her to the bed frame using the handcuffs and some cable he had in the car. Now he lay beside her, sleeping as she cried.
She touched her lower abdomen.
I'm so sorry, baby.
She'd been a fool to think she could get away from Jax, to have thought she could keep the child a secret forever. She remembered Jax's face as he accused her of everything she had done. There was some comfort in the hatred she saw there. At least it was better than the wanting.
She had no defense against that.
She squeezed her eyes shut and a fresh crop of tears made their way to the pillow. Her baby was the one who was going to pay the price for this. Her baby was the one who would be stuck with a tin man for a father. It wasn't fair, but nothing was ever fair.
Ralph was the one who should have been her child’s father, Ralph was the one who wanted a baby with her, who would have been such an incredible dad.
Not Jax.
Never Jax.
She thought of Linda, Jax's ex-wife, back in the day when Linda and Jax were still married. The two women had been friends, if not the best of friends. They had a lot in common back then, each of them married to a man who was married to HERO Force. Linda had told Jessa how cold Jax could be. How unforgiving. He'd made Linda's life miserable, and now he was going to make her and her child's life miserable as well.
It's all my fault.
She took a shaking breath in and felt the mattress move as Jax rolled over. He was invading her personal space by sharing the bed with her, but he told her chivalry died the moment she decided to take his son or daughter away. So here she was, tethered to a bed in a motel room with the one man who she desperately wanted to get away from.
What the hell was she going to do?
She needed a plan. Something to work for. If only he would realize what a terrible father he would make, how much better off this baby would be without him, then surely he would not choose to be a part of its life.
Would he?
Ralph used to say Jax was tenacious as a pit bull. She clearly remembered how brutally Jax had ripped apart his ex-wife in court. She and Ralph had even fought about it—her defending Linda, him clearly on Jax’s side. She’d made a fool out of him, Ralph said, and broken his heart. Jessa was fairly certain Jax didn’t have a heart, and personally held Linda blameless.
At least Linda had managed to get away from Jax, while here she was, sharing a bed with him.
And let’s not forget, you’re carrying his child.
Her baby. Not his.
Hers.
21
Jax stared unseeing into the room. The bed trembled as he listened to Jessa cry. Not that he had a lot of sympathy for her. She deserved anything that came her way after what she had done to him. He still couldn't believe it. Sweet Jessa, who'd never hurt anyone in her life as far as he knew, had planned and schemed to take keep his child from him.
Was there anything worse in the world?
His eyes closed of their own volition.
I want you to come inside me, Jax.
God, how those words had turned him on. He'd wanted to lay claim to her, to have his body mix inside her — hell, yes, maybe have the potential to change everything. He sighed. Not that he knew she was going to get pregnant, of course not. But in that moment, if she had told him she wanted a baby, he would happily have obliged.
Not if you knew she intended to cut you out of that child's life forever.
He hadn't given her hatred enough credit, hadn't realized how truly and completely she had wished him ill. He'd known she was angry, sure. He'd known she was hurt, grieving, even. But he had not understood the lengths to which she would go to get back at him.
So what the hell was he going to do now? He wanted her to have the baby. There was no question about that. That little boy or girl was so tiny right now, but already he loved it. That was the hardest part. Because right now, he could not see a way that this would work out as a happy family for his child.
Whether the baby ended up with Jessa alone or with him alone or with some awkward and hellish arrangement in between, he couldn't see a happy life emerging from this mess.
A child of his deserved better than that.
He rolled over and looked at the ceiling, staring at the shadows there as if they might hold the answers to the universe’s major questions.
A baby.
God, it was hard to believe. He'd wanted to be a father for as long as he could remember. Now somewhere inside Jessa was a tiny human being made of her and him.
He smiled in the darkness.
He had to find a way for this child to have a good life. And, much as he didn't want to admit it, the baby's best chance for happiness depended on his own ability to live with the child's mother.
I may never be able to do that.
He wanted to kill her.
He looked over at the silhouette of her body outlined by the covers. Just yesterday, he'd been fighting for her life. Willing to lay down his own if it meant she would be okay.
Thank God that was over. Yes, the rotten liar was safe, and he would do whatever he had to do to make sure she stayed that way. But live with her? Trust her and let her get close to him?
No way.
22
"Where are we going?" asked Jessa.
They'd already been driving for almost an hour, and she hadn't even bothered to ask. Jax was clearly in a foul mood — not that she could blame him — and she had little desire to incur his wrath once again.
"I'm taking you to my house."
She had suspected as much. She didn’t have a house to go to, and he clearly wasn’t planning on letting her out of his sight. She was weak from being in his presence, from the lies and the emotional uproar of him finding out she was pregnant. No, she was tired of him before that. Needing her space. "And then what? You can't keep me handcuffed forever."
He shot her a wry look. "Why not?"
Jessa shook her head and looked out the window. "Sooner or later, you're going to have to let me go. You do know that, so why are you pretending?"
"I'm not pretending anything, Jessa. I'll leave that to you. I would just like to know that you're not going to run off with my kid the minute I turn my back. And until I feel comfortable that isn't going to happen, you're going to stay tied up like a Doberman."
&
nbsp; She scoffed. “Just slightly illegal."
"It's a hell of a lot better than what you did to me, honey."
They drove the rest of the distance in silence, all of Jessa's plans to convince him he'd be a lousy parent falling by the wayside. She couldn't talk to him when he was like this. There was no point. He was as stubborn as hell, and there wasn't a damn thing she could do about that.
She vaguely recognized the mountain he lived on when they got to it, the twisting and turning road bringing her nausea back to life. The last time she’d been here had been with Ralph. "I think I'm going to be sick.”
“Just pretend I don't know you're pregnant. That ought to settle your stomach right down."
She glared at him. "This is not a joke, Jax. I've had morning sickness for weeks now."
“Forgive me if I’m running low on sympathy for you at the moment.”
"Forget it. Just forget it."
Jax slowed to a crawl near a tall wrought iron gate. He frowned.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Someone's been here." He pointed to a set of tire tracks faintly visible in the wet leaves to the side of the gate. "I wasn't expecting any visitors." He reached over her lap to open the glove compartment and retrieved his weapon, noting how she shied away from him as he did.
“Do you always reach for a gun when you have a houseguest?" she asked.
Jax stared at her. "This is not a houseguest, Jessa. The only houseguests that I get know damn well not to drive around the security gate. I'm wondering if this might be a special visit courtesy of that fancy lawyer in Boston."
He could see his words register on her sense of security, her eyes widening with concern.
"What do you mean?” she asked. “We already killed the man who was after me."
"He may not be the only one. If he was paid to go after you, then the person who hired him might have hired someone in his place.”
She closed her eyes and pressed a hand to her stomach. “Why only one? Why not send two?”
“Or three, or four.”
Her eyes popped open.
“We don’t know what we’re dealing with here, Jessa. For all we know, that lawyer tipped someone off that Maria Elena was there looking for answers. And that she wasn't alone."
Jessa's eyes widened. "Oh my God, did we give them your name?"
He nodded once. “I did. Do you want to know how many Jax Andersson's there are in the United States?"
She took a deep breath in and exhaled slowly. "No, I don't think I do."
Jax hit a button on the dashboard of his car, and the gates opened wide. “There are three.” They drove up to the house without talking, a sprawling cedar two-story that settled into the mountainside like a cliff.
Jessa’s first visit here had been when Jax and Linda were still married, for a skiing weekend with Ralph. She remembered being impressed by the sprawling house, with its cedar siding, tall windows, and rambling floor plan. It was mere weeks before Jax announced he and Linda were splitting up, and the couple was clearly not getting along.
The weekend from hell.
One evening in particular, Jessa had overheard the pair arguing in the kitchen late at night when she’d gone to get a glass of water. She should have walked away when she heard Linda say, “You don’t even touch me anymore,” but her curiosity had gotten the better of her.
Jax’s voice had been deep and filled with pain. “I touch your skin, and I wonder who’s touched you there before me. I wonder when.”
“We have to move forward, Jax. We can’t keep dwelling in the past.”
“I wonder if you brought them into our bed.” The sound of a chair squeaking across the floor. “Did you, Linda? Did you bring them into our bed? Did you tell them how lonely it is with your husband gone for weeks at a time?”
“Stop it.”
“Christ, you did, didn’t you? You let them fuck you right there. What else did you do?”
“I was lonely, Jax! All the time. Even when you were right next to me, I was lonely. I still am. You shut me out with a single look, and damned if I know how to get back in.”
“Then I’ll go grab your cell phone and you can make a booty call to one of the guys you’ve been fucking. Maybe barebacking on the living room sofa we picked out together will help you sleep.”
He’d rounded the corner to the stairs, nearly colliding with Jessa.
She’d been horrified.
It hadn’t even occurred to her that Jax might still live in the same house.
Jax opened the garage door but did not pull inside. He turned to her. "I want you to wait here." He looked at her handcuffs, clearly considering, then cursed under his breath before unlocking them. "Never mind, you're coming with me."
"But…"
"But nothing. I can't leave you here handcuffed. You won't be able to defend yourself. And I can't give you the keys because we both know you’d be gone faster than a bat out of hell. Which leaves us with only one option."
He walked into the garage and opened a storage locker, withdrawing a dark vest. He brought it back to her. "Put this on." He handed her a weapon. “I’m just going to have to trust you don’t hate me enough to kill me.”
With that, he led the way inside. “We’re going to clear each room, one by one. You stay behind me, never in front, or I might shoot you.”
She slipped her arms into the bulletproof vest. “Seems we’ll just have to trust each other, then.”
23
Jax watched as Jessa pushed her pasta around her plate with a fork. She'd hardly eaten anything, and he wondered if that was her new normal now that she was pregnant. “Is there something else I can get you to eat?"
She put her fork down. "No, it’s just not sitting very well.”
He nodded, picking up her plate and taking it to the sink.
They'd gone through the house room by room finding no one and nothing visibly disturbed, then checked the logs from the security system. Nothing seemed out of place, no sensors on the house alerted in his absence, but Jax remained convinced someone had been there. Hell, they might still be outside. The woods around this house could provide cover for the masses.
He needed to upgrade his security system. Install video surveillance at the gate and around the perimeter of the property.
"So," said Jessa, "I've been thinking. About you and me and the baby… What it’s going to be like."
He rinsed her pasta into the garbage disposal. "Go on, I'm listening."
"I know you never wanted kids. That doesn’t have to change.”
He turned around and leaned back against the counter. "When were you discussing my life goals? With Linda?"
She nodded. "We were friends."
"Yes, I remember. Maybe I should explain a few things to you about my ex-wife."
Jessa held up her hands. "Whatever happened between the two of you is none of my business."
"Before today, I would have agreed with you. Now I think it's important you understand what really happened. She cheated on me, nearly every time we went wheels up. Lots of different men, lots of different times. Did you know that?"
"I overheard you guys arguing that night."
"That's right. You did.”
"I remember she was very lonely."
"She was a goddamn liar, that's what she was. Seems you two have something in common there.”
Jessa narrowed her eyes at him.
Jax shrugged. "Besides sharing my bed, that is." He watched as her face flushed with anger, momentarily pleased he was the one who put it there. He wanted her to be angry. He wanted her to be hurt. He wanted her to feel even a fraction of the hell she was putting him through now.
"You know what I keep thinking?" asked Jessa. "That some people just aren't meant to have children. They're not nurturing, they're not warm. Just because I'm pregnant, Jax, doesn't mean you have to be a father."
He walked around behind her chair and put his hands on her shoulders. "If you wanted an absentee fa
ther for your kid, you should have run faster." He squeezed her shoulders, enjoying how she shook him off.
"I've been doing some thinking of my own,” he said. “And I thought maybe I should have primary custody, and you should be the one to get visitation."
She shot out of her chair. "No!"
"I mean, it seems only fair. You decided to bring this new life into the world. I should get to decide what we do with it."
"You will make a terrible father. The only emotion you know how to show is anger."
He froze. All his life he’d been told he was cold, unemotional, but none of those comments ever hurt quite like this one. “Could be worse,” he said. “I could have forgotten how to smile." He watched as her face fell, his comment hitting home. The volley of insults reminded him of his ex-wife. "I think we've talked enough for tonight. It's time for us to get some sleep."
She crossed her arms. “I’m not sleeping next to you again."
He had expected as much. Fortunately, he already had another plan. “No, you’ll be sleeping in the guest room. Second door on the left. There are clean clothes for you on the bed.”
He watched her go, noting the curious look she gave him at the apparent reprieve from his watchful stare this evening, then finished straightening the kitchen while her words echoed in his head.
You will make a terrible father.
The only emotion you know how to show is anger.
She was good at locating his Achilles heel, that much was sure. He walked up the stairs, stopping in an empty room Linda had used for crafts. It was supposed to be a child’s room, but that child had never come. In the end he knew why — his wife had secretly been on birth control throughout their marriage.
What a fool he’d been.
Now Jessa was carrying his child and she didn’t want him in the baby’s life. Not that she would win that battle, of course, but her accusations touched on the major concern he had about fatherhood — that he wouldn’t be affectionate enough with the child.
He walked to the window. She should be dressed by now and enjoying her newfound freedom, if not already planning her escape. He walked to his bedroom and opened the nightstand drawer, a smile lighting his features as he pictured what she had in store.
