by Ann, Jewel E
Unfortunately, Mrs. Baker was more than a threat. There was no way she worked alone, which meant he would have to drag the information from her. That’s why he needed the knife. The quick neck snap was more his thing, but the threat of it rarely garnered much information. Evil people weren’t afraid to die, but they didn’t like pain.
From the garage he heard a car pull into the driveway. He slipped back into the house and grabbed his knife from the kitchen table. He had another lesson in an hour. There would be no time to waste on meaningless chitchat.
“Ryn.” He tried to sound excited to see her as he strained to see if Mrs. Baker had pulled in too.
“I know you have a lesson, but I need to talk to you. Do you mind if I wait here until you’re done?”
“Uh … or I could meet you at your house?”
“Well I’m already here so …” She looked at his hand. “You’re holding a knife … a scary-looking knife.”
He looked at his hand as though he’d forgotten about it. “I am.”
“You’re not planning on killing anyone, are you?” She grinned.
“Ha. Well, now that you’re here I’m not.” Jackson gave her his sexy grin and winked while slipping it into his back pocket.
Ryn shook her head as she stepped inside. “Seriously. What are you doing with a knife?”
“I’m … changing the batteries in a clock. It was easier than looking in Jillian’s tool chest for a screwdriver.”
“The tools belong to Jillian?”
“She likes working on cars and motorcycles. I like working on computers which don’t require anything with the word Craftsman on it.”
She pressed her finger to the taped center of his glasses that were supposed to keep any spurting blood from getting in his eyes. “You’re such a geek.”
He grabbed her hand and bit her finger. “Watch it, hot pants.”
The doorbell rang, the daunting reminder that Mrs. Baker would live to see another day.
“I’ll wait downstairs. Maybe practice some pull-ups.” She leaned up and pecked his lips before slipping around the corner.
“Mrs. Baker.”
“Jackson.” She beamed her flirty teeth-covered-in-lipstick grin at him as she stepped inside wearing expensive everything—right down to her Manolo Blahnik shoes.
He inspected her head to see if it was her real hair or if the red hair had been a wig. “You have a bug in your hair.”
She rolled her eyes toward her brows as he yanked on a few strands of hair. The delayed “ouch” confirmed that it was a wig.
“Sorry.” He smirked. “Got it.” With a flick of his fingers he sent the nonexistent bug flying absolutely nowhere.
“That’s fine.” She eased her hand over her wig. “Is that Jillian’s car in your driveway?”
“Why do you ask, Mrs. Baker?”
She took a seat at the piano. “Just curious I suppose. If it’s not hers then you might have company.”
“You’re my company, Mrs. Baker.” He slipped the knife under a magazine on the table and walked toward the piano giving her the you-should’ve-been-dead-by-now stare.
She averted her eyes. He grinned at the thought of how easily she would squeal like a pig, spewing out everything he needed to know before removing her from the equation. A necessary casualty.
“I’m not company. I’m your student.”
Jackson sat in the chair next to the bench, resting his ankle on the opposing knee. “You are. So please…” he gestured “…let me hear your progress.”
She played each song with perfection. Too much perfection. Mrs. Baker was his only student who practiced, although he suspected she knew how to play before taking lessons with him, in spite of claiming to be a novice. At the end of her thirty minutes he told her to have a good week—her last week of course.
After replacing the knife in its leather sheath in his drawer, he took a deep breath to expel the anxiety before going downstairs. If he didn’t control his sexual urges with Ryn, he could scare the mother of his children away before he had a chance to implant them inside her.
*
Ryn braced herself for the sexual hurricane that she knew would come tearing down the stairs at any moment. Jackson had ripped the zippers off two pairs of jeans, disintegrated four pairs of panties, and broken the clasp on her newest bra. She couldn’t even complain about him being selfish because his first stop was always between her legs. Lips, tongue, teeth, and she was gone. Every. Time.
“I started my period.” The words came out so fast it all sounded like one long word instead of four.
Jackson paused at the bottom of the stairs. “Jillian probably has something in her bathroom.”
“No … I just mean I or we can’t … you know.”
He smirked then nodded, shoving his hands into his pockets, pulling the waist down to tease her with the wide band of his sexy briefs. “Is that what you needed to tell me?”
“No.” She laughed at herself. It had probably sounded like that was her important news. “Preston was waiting by my car for me when I came out of barre class this morning.”
“You need me to kill him? Done.”
“No. Well, it’s not a bad idea, but I’m certain that would guarantee I’d never see Maddie again or you for that matter because you’d be in prison.”
The corners of his lips curled like he had the best secret ever. She trusted him, ninety-nine-point-nine percent. Yet that point-one percent held her heart captive in the hands of fear. Would she ever be completely free of that fear?
“I’m not happy that my ex-husband thinks you’re his business, but after you sent him to the hospital on my birthday he’s taken it upon himself to make you his business.”
Jackson shrugged. “Then tell him to call me and we’ll set up a business meeting, but until then he needs to stay the fuck away from you, or I’ll be the first one to make contact and it won’t be in the way of a phone call.”
There it was—that point one percent.
“I can call the police if it becomes a bigger issue.”
“I’m sure they’ll slap him on the wrist. They might even take away his favorite toy for a month or so.”
“Whatever, that’s really not my point. My point is that Preston did some looking into your past and he said it’s like you didn’t even exist before Omaha. Don’t you think that’s kind of odd?”
“Yes. I think it’s odd that your ex-husband is looking into my past.”
Ryn tilted her head to the side, crossing her arms over her chest. “That’s not what I mean.”
Jackson narrowed his eyes a mere millimeter. That minuscule change in his expression, that may not have been anything more than a muscle twitch, left Ryn feeling guilty for bringing it up.
“So I haven’t left my fingerprints all over my past. So what?”
Coughing out a sarcastic laugh, she gawked at him. “Fingerprints? What are you, a killer?”
“Do I look like a killer?” He smirked.
“I don’t think killers have a certain look, personality maybe, but not a look.”
“Well, if you think I have a killer personality then I’m going to take that as a compliment.”
Ryn shook her head, unable to keep a straight face.
“What do you want to know?” He moved toward her with slow predatory strides that sent tingly goose bumps shooting up along her skin.
She retreated, the thick mats under her feet mixed with that look made it impossible to balance. Her back hit the wall, saving her from stumbling, but trapping her in his larger-than-life presence as he wet his lips.
“Do you want to know my favorite color? The first girl I kissed? How many comic books I owned? The longest book I’ve read?”
Gulp.
“Yes,” she whispered, embarrassingly breathless.
He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Blue, like your eyes.”
He kissed her right ear. “Stephanie Mills, third grade.”
He kissed her left ear. “
Three hundred and seventy-one. Batman was my favorite.”
He kissed the hollow area in between her collarbone, circling his tongue around it. “The Bible.”
“No way.”
He nodded while unfastening his jeans.
Ryn swallowed hard, her body stiff. “M-My period.”
Sucking her bottom lip into his mouth, he bit it with a chilling intensity as he stroked himself. “Don’t worry. That’s not where I’m going to put it.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Day
Luke pulled into his parents’ drive after taking the slower, nothing over thirty-five, less driven roads to ensure his precious cargo had a safe trip—in the trunk. To his surprise, she stayed quiet for the entire ride. Even when he got out, she didn’t make a single noise. He considered opening the trunk to check on her, but his instincts told him to just stay away. It was nothing more than the silence before the storm.
“Hey, Luke. You two have a nice drive?” Tom asked, helping Felicity fold sheets in the living room.
“We did. It was a perfect day.”
“Did you find a nice little place to buy and settle into when you move back here to get married and have lots of grandbabies for me?”
Tom rolled his eyes at his wife’s question.
“We did not.”
Felicity frowned.
“While I fully intend to marry Jessica and have a manageable number of children with her, I want it to be when the time is right.”
“Not everyone can be like your mother and I were. Perfect timing on everything.” Tom winked at Felicity.
“I’m in your wedding photos, sitting in the front row next to Aunt Beth. Brilliant timing, folks.”
His parents shared their usual we-wouldn’t-change-a-thing grins. If Luke were honest, he admired their decision to wait until they were ready to get married. They conceived him on their first date.
“Speaking of fate … where is Jessica? Did she go upstairs?”
Luke smiled at his mom. “I think she’s still in the car going through a few things she picked up on our outing.”
“Oh, that reminds me. Did you remember my printer ink?”
“We did.” He handed her the car keys. “They’re in the trunk.”
Felicity frowned as she snatched the keys while shaking her head. “Was it just too much for you to haul them inside?”
“Something like that.”
As she brushed past him, Tom gave Luke a suspicious look.
Luke grimaced. “There’s a pretty good chance I won’t live to see the sunrise.”
“You forgot her ink?”
“No. It’s in the trunk—with Jessica.”
*
It broke Jessica’s heart that her beloved would die soon, but there were certain acts of complete disrespect that were punishable only by death. Locking someone in a trunk was one of them. They’d had some good times together and for that, she was not only grateful but sympathetic enough to make sure his death would be quick with minimal suffering.
Had she been able to predict such an act of sheer evilness, she would have purchased batteries for her electric pillar candles. Instead, she waited in the dark, knees bent to one side, hands laced behind her head. She wore a dragonfly shower cap, blue nitrile gloves, and a mustache molded from Sticky Tac. On the inside of the trunk lid was a sticky note with sloppy I-wrote-it-in-the-dark handwriting that read:
I’m going to let Jones hump your $300 pillow and play tug of war w your socks when U R DEAD!
“Ahhh! Oh my gosh!” A woman’s voice screeched.
Jessica felt like a vampire with the bright light frying her cornea—a deaf vampire thanks to the shrill pierce of Felicity’s scream. Everything came into focus a little at a time. The note still stuck to the inside of the lid, the horrified, yet confused look on Felicity’s face as she seemed to be reading it, and then the Holy Grail.
Jessica smiled as she sat up, pulling the mustache from her lip. “Hel-lo, Thelma.” She snatched the dangling keys from Felicity’s hand and hopped out. “Get in.” She slammed the trunk and slid in the driver’s seat. Yep. Just as she imagined: better than sex.
“Thelma?” Felicity questioned as she hesitantly got in the other side.
“Thelma and Louise. But don’t worry, we won’t drive it off a cliff or anything … at least not today.” Jessica tossed the gloves and shower cap in the backseat. “Buckle up. Once I start the engine we’ll need to be spinning the tires out of here. Oh … and keep an eye out the back window to say goodbye to Luke. In less than ten seconds he’ll be on your porch having a heart attack or possibly a stroke.”
“What’s going on?”
Jessica loved that without knowing a single detail, Felicity buckled up. Of course the skinny-dipping mom would be all in. It was wrong for Jessica to have doubted her for a single moment. She moved the seat up, stomped on the clutch, and turned the key. The seductive rumble of the engine, finally under her control, made it hard to focus, but she needed to get out of there because the timer had started.
She backed out of the drive, shoved it into first, and waited, one hand white knuckled on the steering wheel, the other fisting the round black ball of the gear shift.
“There they are. Blow your boys a kiss, Felicity.”
And she did because Felicity Jones was one. Cool. Chick.
Jessica tattooed the concrete with the back tires as she squealed out of the drive. She took a mental picture of Luke’s reflection in the rearview mirror: slumped shoulders, hand over his chest, slightly bent at the waist, mouth agape.
Priceless.
“I think the joke is supposed to be on Luke, but then again, he sent me out to get the ink, knowing you were in the trunk. And you were wearing a shower cap, gloves, and a mustache so … I’m confused.”
“Let’s just say your son would rather me ride in the trunk than sit in the driver’s seat. No offense to you of course, but he may have control issues, and I’m usually not all judgmental that way because I like control too but—”
“So you didn’t voluntarily get in the trunk? He drove home with you in there?”
“Correct. I’m not going to lie and when I say this I’m speaking to my partner in crime, Thelma, not Luke’s mom.” Jessica grinned. “When he first shoved me in the trunk I didn’t try to fight him. It caught me off guard, but I honestly thought he was trying to do something kinky with me.”
Felicity laughed to the point of a girlish giggle. “So what did you do when you realized he was locking you inside?”
“Started plotting his death.”
“Oh my goodness, he’s his father through and through.”
“Tom? No way.” She shook her head.
Felicity nodded. “Yes, he is. Tom used to be a control freak when we first started dating. It didn’t help that I was pregnant.”
“Wait, you were pregnant when you started dating.”
“Basically. Has Luke not told you that we conceived him on our first date?”
Jessica’s jaw dropped then closed into a grin, eyes wide. “No.”
“Yes. And now what I’m going to say is being said to Louise, not Luke’s girlfriend.”
“God, I love you. Go on.” Louise laughed.
“Luke doesn’t know this and I’m quite certain he wouldn’t be treating this car like his most prized possession if he knew that his conception took place in this very back seat.”
“Oh my God … Oh my God … Oh. My. God. Do you have any idea what you have given me?”
“No.” Felicity shook her head. “I’ve given you nothing. Thelma told her partner in crime, Louise, about the first time she had sex.”
“Aahh!” Jessica veered off the road onto the shoulder, coming to a stop. She couldn’t focus on driving anymore. “Don’t you dare try to silence me with some secrecy oath, especially since you just added the crème de la crème to the juiciest little secret I’ve ever known—you didn’t just conceive Luke. You. Lost. Your. Virginity … in this very car
. Luke’s baby.”
Dying. Jessica died a little inside. It would be the most painful secret ever to keep, and as much as she’d come to love his mom … she just couldn’t guarantee that the day wouldn’t come that she would need that ammunition to win a war.
“Seriously, we should like … bronze the back seat and never allow anyone to sit back there again.”
Felicity looked over her shoulder and smiled as if she were replaying the memories in her mind. Jessica found it sweet and romantic. Luke would have had his head out the door hurling his last meal.
“Do you think about having children someday?”
The conversation took a whiplash turn.
Jillian pulled back onto the road. Running the GTO through the gears made her feel in control and eased her nerves.
“Sometimes. I didn’t used to so much before I met Luke. And when I did, it was more like mourning something I would never have.”
“You were his patient?”
Of course she didn’t know for sure. Luke would never break that confidentiality … except with her parents. Traitor.
“I was. I’m not now. Well…” she shrugged “…not officially. He’s brilliant, he really is, but I’m an extra special, pardon my French, fucked-up case. I’m not sure anyone could ‘cure’ me. I want to believe I’m better, but I’m afraid I’m better with Luke, not necessarily because of him. He’s even said it himself. If tomorrow he were to just disappear from my life, I wonder if the woman I’ve become with him would still exist, or if I would slip back to the woman I was before him.”
“Can I ask who you were before him?”
Jessica huffed a small laugh. “I’d tell Thelma I was a monster, but I think that might frighten Luke’s mom so I will tell her that I was simply a woman afraid of herself. A woman who longed for this exact moment in time, but never felt worthy of a future beyond work and physical exhaustion.”
They continued to drive. Jessica knew Felicity needed to get back for the guests who were staying at their bed and breakfast, but Felicity never said a word. She let Jessica have her drive, her moment of quietude with the comfort of knowing she wasn’t alone. Jessica loved the same thing about Luke. They could be together and feel the closeness without the need to fill the space with words. They could spend hours in bed or on the couch at night with her on her laptop studying and him reading or working on a crossword puzzle. Sometimes they’d share a flirty smile, but it was never awkward or boring.
