His body roused to the memory, so swiftly that for a moment he couldn’t catch his breath, and his half-zipped jeans threatened to retreat. He walked toward her, unable to stop himself. But the moment he stepped into the sunlight, he stopped, as unable to go on as he’d been unable to stop.
“What are you doing here?”
“Looking for—and at—you,” she said, almost teasingly.
Remembering what he’d just been doing, standing here naked and wet, lost in his ridiculous ponderings, he couldn’t help asking, “How long…?”
“Long enough,” she said with a look in her eyes that echoed the hunger he was sure was glowing in his own. “Did I ever tell you how beautiful you are?”
She said it with such simple wonder that he knew she believed it, even if he couldn’t even begin to. Still a little stunned at her sudden, unexpected presence, and realizing he was far from regrouped if just her appearance could rattle him like this, he groped for a diversion.
“How did you…?”
He didn’t finish this question, either, as the obvious answer dawned on him. It hadn’t been a Forest Service helicopter at all.
“Tess is remarkable,” Jess said, as casually as if they were discussing what trees grew here. “I never would have thought you could land a helicopter in that tiny clearing, but she did it without turning a hair.”
“Josh,” he muttered.
“Yes. Sweet of him to loan me his personal pilot, wasn’t it?” “Interfering.”
“Depends on your point of view, I guess,” she said, not rising to the bait.
“Go.”
“No.”
“Your own sake.”
“The last person I voluntarily took that kind of order from was my father. He wouldn’t want me to take it now.” Unexpectedly, she grinned. “You know, I’ve kind of missed your shorthand. It makes for…exhilarating conversation.”
He was digging too deep to really appreciate the humor. “Not safe.”
“I’ve never been safer.”
“Not worth it.”
“With most, perhaps. But with you there’s a difference, Dam. Most people build walls to keep people out. Yours are built to keep the part of you you’re afraid is too damaged away from people. To keep them safe, not yourself. Don’t you see that’s…noble?”
He couldn’t even answer that assessment, it seemed so ridiculous. Noble? Hardly.
He was shivering again, although his clothes had absorbed the last of the water, and he wasn’t that chilled anymore, standing here in the sun. With her.
“That’s a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with it, you know. Walling it off, I mean.”
“Not whole.”
“Sure you are,” she said briskly.
How, he wondered, had she known that gentleness, softness, would cripple him just now?
She went on in the same tone. “There’s just a part of you that you need to guard more than most. But it’s like having a dent in a car that runs perfectly, or a drafty spot in a house you love, that you only notice when the wind blows a certain way. Do you junk the car, tear down the house?”
He shook his head, not in negation but to try and clear it, to try and make sense of the chaotic thoughts that were careening around in his head.
“It was him,” he murmured, barely aware of speaking it aloud.
“I know you know it was all his fault, not yours, that’s not news,” Jessa said. “So what is it that was him?”
“My drive. Ambition. All him. He really did make me what I am. Hating him did. Without it, I’m…”
His voice trailed away. Without it, he thought, I’m nothing. Hating him made me what I am. And now I feel…nothing.
“Without it,” Jessa said, “you’re still you. Don’t you see, Dam? You took what he did to you, what he forced you to learn just to survive, and you used it, turned it back on him. He tried to convince you you were useless, stupid, bad and God knows what else. And you didn’t just prove him wrong, you proved him useless, stupid and bad. And pure evil into the bargain.”
Again he was shivering, and he couldn’t seem to stop. Jessa never let up. She wouldn’t, he thought almost numbly. There was no quit, no give up in her.
“Think about it,” she urged. “You surpassed him long ago. You’re so far above his treasured ‘status’ he’ll choke on it. Rub it in. Make him look as small as he is in comparison. I mean, what’s a small-town country lawyer next to the Vice President of Operations for Redstone Incorporated?”
Somehow he had never thought of it like that.
“He doesn’t deserve your hate, Dam. Not that he isn’t evil, he just doesn’t deserve one more ounce of your energy.” She took a deep breath before adding, “But we do.”
He shook his head again, in pain this time.
“You deserve—”
“I think I told you once that’s a decision you don’t get to make.”
“Jess—”
“The only decision you have to make is if you’re going to let him win, after all.”
She was, in her way, as merciless as he’d ever thought of being. And as determined. He could feel it, coming off her in waves. She was her own kind of warrior, and she would leave this battlefield with victory, or not at all.
“If you let what he did to you run your life,” she said fiercely, “for the rest of your life, then he wins, Dam. Then that evil monster has done what he wanted all along. He’s broken you.”
His shivers turned to a violent shudder. A sudden weakness sent him to his knees. And in an instant Jessa was there, on her own knees beside him, holding him.
“Don’t let him,” she said, her voice taut. “Don’t let him win, please.”
He leaned into her soft warmth, needing her gentleness now as he couldn’t have taken it before, and beyond wondering how she’d sensed the change.
He couldn’t speak, and she thankfully didn’t press him, just held him, tightly, and he had the odd sensation that she was literally holding him together while the emotions ripping at him were trying to tear him apart. Destroy him.
Because he realized now, probably had the instant he’d seen her step into that shaft of golden sunlight, that he could no longer exist the way he’d been for the last twenty years. So his choice was even more basic than Jessa realized…he either did as she asked, or he died. It was that simple.
Her arm tightened around him, fiercely, almost as if she’d followed his thoughts, as if she knew what choice he’d arrived at.
“I want you to think of something,” she said softly. “I want you to think of your father, sitting in that cell he’s in, finally where he belongs, knowing he’s been beaten at last. And then think of him smiling that evil, vicious, depraved smile when he learns that he’s won after all, that he’s destroyed you.”
He shuddered again, violently, because the image she painted was too clear, the memory of that very smile too vivid. He would smile like that, with twisted, perverted pleasure, if he heard that the son he’d abused had, even now, given up the battle.
And there, in that forest, in the dappled sunlight that sparkled off a glassy lake, he knew he didn’t want to die. She was right. He knew she was right. If he let this rule him, the bastard won. And he might as well end it right here and now rather than let this cripple him.
Let it cripple them.
He just doesn’t deserve one more ounce of your energy. But we do.
He shuddered once more. Was he a fool, daring to want more than the walled-off life he’d allowed himself? And a bigger fool for thinking that maybe, just maybe, the Redstone magic that had brought so many others together might actually apply to him?
It wasn’t that he didn’t know what he wanted—he did. What he wanted was right here, holding him, giving him a kind of support he’d never had—except from the child she’d been. He wanted everything she could give him, her love, her warmth, her tenderness, her courage….
And he realized that was what he lacked. Her courage. The courage
to refuse to give a twisted, perverted man power over him. The courage to truly leave behind the past. Or at the least, to wall it up securely enough that it withered and died from lack of attention and feeding.
It was a long time later that Jessa spoke. “I take it back.”
For an instant his gut knotted in the old way as he wondered automatically if she’d finally seen the light and changed her mind, decided to walk away from a man too damaged for her sunny goodness. But a newfound knowledge and faith quashed the thought before he spoke; this was Jessa, steadfast, unwavering. She wouldn’t. She just wouldn’t. And her next words proved him right.
“There’s another decision you have to make.”
“What?” He was surprised at how steady his voice was.
“I know I’m all tied up in your mind with the bad times. Will I always remind you? Can you let go of that?”
“You’re…the only thing I want to keep. From then.”
“You don’t get over the kind of things that happened to you. I know that. You can only figure out how to live with them, around them. It’s pretty obvious you’ve learned that. And that Redstone’s become the family you should have had, but didn’t. You trust them. I know what a miracle that alone is.”
So did he. He hadn’t really realized it before he’d gone back to Cedar, but he knew it now.
She went on, gently but relentlessly, that warrior closing in.
“And I know you’ll need time, now and then, to come to someplace like this, rebuild those walls. And I’m okay with that.”
He felt a new, fiercer kind of tightness that seemed to encompass his entire body as her gentle words and her un canny understanding washed over him. He hadn’t needed this before, this escape to rebuild the walls, because he’d never been close enough to anyone that it mattered.
It mattered now.
“That is,” she went on, “I’m okay with it as long as we get an equal amount of time away. Josh says you work too hard. That you never sleep.”
“Sleep…isn’t always good.”
“Nightmares? I think I know how to fix that,” she said, with a look that sent his pulse racing. “So what you have to decide is…if you want me. If you want us.”
He sucked in a breath. Steadied himself. And looked up to meet her eyes. Clear, honest, beautiful eyes. Eyes in which he could see the future, the chance at things he never even dared to wish for, if only he could find the nerve to reach for it. And somehow, what he saw there gave him that nerve.
“More,” he said slowly, “than I’ve ever wanted anything. Anything.”
He saw in her face, in her eyes, that she understood the import of his words. That he wanted the precious “us” she’d spoken of more than he’d even wanted to destroy the man who had nearly destroyed him.
“Kids. Can’t,” he said, knowing she’d understand.
“After the way you were with Tyler? I wouldn’t worry at all. We could adopt. But if you want, we’ll raise dogs instead. Borrow kids. I understand there’s a few of them available at Redstone.”
“Work.”
“I know. You have to be there. That may take me some time, until Mom’s in a little better shape. But I’ve always wanted to see California.”
“Election.”
“I withdrew.” She grinned, startling him. “The town council appointed a temporary mayor, in light of circumstances.”
“Who?”
“Uncle Larry.”
He blinked. Nearly smiled at the very thought.
“I never really wanted it anyway,” she said.
“That’s who should hold office.”
“Those who don’t really want the power? I agree. Larry sees it as a temporary but necessary nuisance in his life. I think that’s the right attitude.”
She reached up then, her gentle fingers tracing the scar. He shuddered under her touch, unable to hide the reaction, and, deep down, not wanting to.
“No one will ever own you again, Dam.”
He shook his head. “Wrong.”
“What?”
He knew what he was about to admit, knew it down to his bones. And knew it had to be. Because it had always been.
“You do. Want you to.”
The smile that curved her mouth then made him think of a long, unbroken string of mornings, waking to that smile. And then, in a voice full of so much emotion it sounded nearly as shaky as he felt, she said, “I love you, Dameron St. John. Just as I loved Adam Alden. And I always will.”
He swallowed tightly. “I know. And it makes me feel like…for the first time in my life…I…God, Jess, is this love? Is this what it feels like? Too big to hold, so huge you think you’re going to explode into pieces?”
“That,” she said, “is exactly what it feels like.”
“Then…I…”
He couldn’t quite get the words he’d never said out. But it didn’t seem to matter to Jessa. She simply looked at him, that smile widening.
“I know,” she said softly, in answer to what he hadn’t said. And much later, in the dappled sunlight that played across two sleek, naked bodies locked together, he found the words.
It was in the quiet aftermath that he reached over to his discarded jeans and dug into the pocket. He found what he was looking for, tugged it out. And held it up for her to see.
When Jessa focused on the clay dog dangling from the keychain she’d given him so long ago, her beautiful, changeable eyes widened. And the smile she gave him then held all he needed to know of the future.
Epilogue
“This place is buzzing like a power saw convention,” John Draven said as he walked into his boss’s office. “Never seen anything like it. Is it for real?”
Josh sat behind his desk, but he was staring out the windows to the west, toward the ocean. The view was the only thing in this surprisingly—for a billionaire—spare office that spoke of what this man had achieved in a relatively short time. But Josh was all about function, not show, and Draven knew he always had been.
For a long moment Josh said nothing, and Draven could only imagine what was going through his mind.
“So it seems,” Josh finally answered, but he still didn’t turn to look at his Chief of Security.
“You told me once,” Draven said softly, “that if you heard St. John was getting married, then you’d know the world was coming to an end.”
“And it may well be,” Josh said under his breath, so quietly Draven knew it would be better if he pretended not to have heard it. And then Josh seemed to shake it off, and at last turned to look at him.
“It’s right?” Draven asked.
“Very,” Josh said. “She’s probably the only woman in the world who could deal with him, with what he has to live with. And God knows he’s earned what he’s found. Paid for it in the hardest way.” Humor flickered in Josh’s eyes. “And the fact that he’s so surprised and stunned about it is the icing on the cake.”
Draven couldn’t help smiling at the very idea of St. John in either of those states. “Who is she?” Draven asked.
“From what he told me, she’s the only reason he was still alive for us to meet, all those years ago.”
Draven sat down on the scarred leather couch that Josh had had for years, since the early days in the hangar. It sat facing the other way, toward the Redstone Headquarters central courtyard, with its cool green garden and peaceful pond and waterfall. Josh expected the most out of his people, but he also gave them the most, and that garden was a favorite spot of most who worked here in the building.
“Then we owe her,” Draven said.
“Yes.”
“You know, don’t you? What happened to him? What made him…who he is?”
“Yes. For the most part. I doubt anyone knows the whole ugly truth.” As if in counterpoint to the unpleasant acknowledgment, a smile curved Josh’s mouth. “Except, I’m guessing, Jessa Hill.”
“Can’t wait to meet her.”
“You’ll like her. She’s…just what you�
��d hope.”
What he hoped, Draven thought, now that the unthinkable had happened and the Redstone magic had transformed not just his own hardened heart, but even the legendary St. John’s, was for the one thing that would cause even more buzz. The one thing that would delight all of Redstone, a bit of the happiness they’d found for the man they owed it all to.
Once, before his own life had changed so incredibly for the better, he would have never thought such a thing. Now he, and most of Redstone he guessed, wished for nothing less than the biggest dose of Redstone magic to happen to their beloved boss.
“It could happen,” his own sweet Grace had said this morning when she’d heard the impossible news about St. John. “If it could happen for him, it could happen for Josh.”
“Like it happened for us,” he’d said.
“Yes. And still does,” she’d purred, and proceeded to make him late getting here.
“There must be,” Josh said musingly, “something in the Redstone water.”
Draven pulled himself out of the hot, sweet memory of this morning and back to the present. “More like something in the Redstone people. When you bring together the best, people who think in the Redstone way, it’s going to happen.”
When he left a few minutes later, Josh was back to staring out the window.
And battle-hardened, intimidating, ruthless John Draven was aching inside for the man who had given so much and taken so little.
It could happen….
“Then let it be soon,” he muttered to himself.
And he knew that there wasn’t a single person in this building who wouldn’t echo his sentiments.
But sitting around hoping wasn’t the Redstone way. And it certainly wasn’t his. Action was. He just wasn’t sure what action to take. But he’d figure it out.
The Best Revenge Page 19
