I smirked. “Money? I hope to hell you made a fortune, because you, my friend, are ruined. What if I talk? What if I decide to tell everyone in the surf community about your whoring business?”
He trotted to my side and touched my arm. “You don’t want to do that.”
I flung my arm away. “Don’t touch me! I don’t want your hands anywhere near me.” I shot him a gaze full of venom. “Don’t test me, Jax. You think it’s okay for you to break my heart, then waltz in here and make up some phony story about a son and all is forgiven?” I laughed a bitter laugh. “Doesn’t work that way Romeo. You don’t get to spread my legs, come inside my mouth, and then kick me to the curb when you’re done with me.”
“Holly, don’t talk that way. It wasn’t like that. I cared about you.”
I advanced on him and shoved him hard, but Jax was a strong man. He barely budged. “I hate you! Don’t look at me with those pathetic eyes ever again. Just get the fuck out of my house and go have yourself a good cry somewhere else where I won’t hear you sniveling.” I turned my back on Jax and goddamn if the man didn’t start crying harder. It was getting embarrassing. “Just leave. Please?”
Matrix and Dinah had settled on the sofa, watching Jax and me. The only sound in the room was the dogs panting and Jax’s pitiful weeping. Jax made no move to leave. Christ almighty, was I going to have to call the cops?
His head bowed, Jax peeked up at me from behind that long blond hair that I had once delighted in as it tickled my tummy. His voice was a croak. “Can I have some water?”
I stalked to the pantry, flung the door open, retrieved a bottle of water and tossed it his way. He expertly caught it and slunk to the sofa. The nerve of this man. Anxiety crept up my spine as I watched Jax settle in next to the pups. I sat in the chair opposite him. He wouldn’t look at me, just kept his head down, taking sips of water. I was beginning to worry, the way he carried on, his face red, tiny tears streaming down his face. I hated it when men cried. Was Jax mentally stable?
Then he hit me with the bomb. The one thing I did not want to rehash. His tear-streaked face looked at me. “What was she like? That woman who killed my brother?”
Oh God. I did not want to discuss Tatyana. Jax wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Will you tell me? How did she … get him to fall for her?”
Jesus Christ. He was not playing fair. The memories of that sicko Ukrainian mail order bride Stan had brought into our lives came flooding back. I drummed my fingers on the side table. “Why do you want to know about that?”
The look he gave me just about broke my heart. Those blue eyes held a lifetime of pain and trauma. “Tyler was my only family. I understand if you hate me Holly, but if you tell me what happened, I promise, you’ll never hear from me again.”
I folded my arms tightly around my body, pursed my lips and looked away.
Jax said, “Please?”
I should’ve thrown him out right that second, should’ve made him suffer. But in that moment, I remembered what Stan had gone through when he found out that Tatyana was a cold-blooded killer. During our time together, Jax had never wanted to discuss the event. I always wondered how he could ever smile again knowing that his brother had been so diabolically murdered. I caved.
“Come on. Let’s sit at the table. This is going to require some serious alcohol.” And against my better judgment, I prepared to tell Jax about the woman who murdered his only brother.
I removed a bottle of whisky from the cabinet, set the bottle on the table, and we sat, while I poured us both shots. I set the shot glass in front of Jax and raised my glass. “Down the hatch.” He smiled shakily and bolted the whisky down.
I took a sharp breath as the alcohol hit my system with a satisfying heat. “Jax, I’m still pissed at you.” My body flushed, my vision growing hazy. “Why do you want to know about her?”
His head was bowed, and he glanced up at me. “I know you’re mad at me. But you’re the only person I know who knew her. I need to somehow come to terms with this.” He poured himself another shot and threw it back. “I need to know about that monster who killed my brother.” He smacked the shot glass on the table harder than intended.
I refilled my glass, exhaling heavily. The world pressed down, and I felt like I weighed a thousand pounds. I tried to avoid eye contact with this man who I thought I’d cared about. My voice was low when I launched into the story. “She was gorgeous. Physically that is.” Jax stared at me as though hypnotized. “Stan had been divorced and lonely for ten years, and one night he decided to start trolling one of those Ukrainian mail order bride sites. At first, he didn’t tell me or his mother, but when he booked his trip to Ukraine for a visit”—I threw back another shot of whisky—“we hoped it would be a phase. But it wasn’t.” I looked away. “Stan actually proposed to her.” I looked at Jax. “He’d only spent a few days with her.” My palms were sweaty. Why was I even telling this loser the story? I was angry as hell, but went ahead with my tale. “I tried to talk him out of it. How could he have known anything about her? But Stan was determined. He brought her here on a”—my fingers made air quotes—“fiancé visa, which was supposed to be good for ninety days. Then he married the freak.”
Jax’s eyes filled. I could barely look at him. I pushed the bottle toward him, he refilled his shot glass and tossed it back. “Did you go to the wedding?”
Why did Jax want to torture himself? “They married at the courthouse. Didn’t tell a soul.” My eyes leveled with his and I pushed away visions of him screwing other women. “Things went wrong right away. I knew from the minute I laid eyes on her that she was a manipulator. But the thing of it was, she could be charming. I’m sure that’s the side your brother saw. She spent all Stan’s money, started screwing the local dog trainer and who knows who else.” Matrix trotted to my side, his brown eyes adoring. I patted his head. “Matrix was one of the many purchases she made on Stan’s dime. Fully pedigreed rottweiler.”
“Then what happened?”
I smirked. “Stan got suspicious of all the phone calls she was making to Ukraine, started recording her calls, and found out they were to a man back home, somebody she’d been screwing.” I leaned forward. “Stan actually had the calls translated.” I shook my head. “Let’s just say he was a lot more than a friend to her.” I thought Stan and I told each other everything, but he didn’t tell me the other way he’d been spying on Tatyana until much later. “He also purchased some panties which had a GPS device implanted in them.”
Jax sipped his whisky. “No way.”
“Oh yes. That’s how he found out she’d been having sex with the dog trainer. Tracked her right to where they’d been meeting for their rendezvous.” I glanced at Jax. Every time I looked at him, I saw him with those other women. I squeezed my eyes shut. “They had a huge fight, and that’s when Tatyana left Stan and went to Twentynine Palms.” My throat constricted. “And met your brother.” Tears threatened, and I refilled my glass. “They say she’s sick.”
The high-priced psychiatrist who’d taken on Tatyana’s case said that she suffered from dissociative identity disorder. Her alter ego had been created during an abusive relationship with her first husband, a man who became her first murder victim. To hear the psychiatrist tell the story, when she met Tyler, she fell in love, and her alter flew into a rage and murdered the poor guy. But Jax already knew most of that story.
I drained my whisky. “She was a sick, manipulative woman who used sex to lure men into her web.” Jax hung his head. I was still angry with Jax, probably would be forever, but he looked so sad that I reached out and touched his arm. “They say she really did think she was in love with your brother. I hate the bitch.”
Neither one of us said anything. I couldn’t believe that just minutes earlier, I’d found out about Jax’s whoring business. Now all I felt was extreme weariness. I sat up straight. “I think you need to leave now.”
“Holly, I’m so sorry.” I cut him off with a chop of my hand. His sad
eyes were heartbreaking. “I really did think I was ready to have a relationship.”
“Well, you had one heck of a way of going about it. Can I ask you something?” I said. “Do you really have a son?”
He nodded.
I stood up, cleared the table, and placed the shot glasses in the sink. “Goodbye, Jax.”
After Jax left, I called Stan. Good old faithful Stan. He was in his truck and at my side within the hour. We spent the evening finishing that bottle of whisky.
Rosalyn
Jax arrived in Santa Cruz around midnight. I hadn’t been sleeping well, and when his tires crunched on the gravel, I woke instantly. I heard the screen door slowly close and him brushing his teeth, and then his warm body was next to mine.
“Hey,” I said, rolling over and facing him. His face was barely visible from the streetlamp glow coming through the window.
He brushed my hair back with his hand. “Hey yourself. Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“It’s okay. How’d it go?”
He turned on his back and stared at the ceiling. “It’s been a long day.”
My fingers trailed along his bare chest and down to his belly button. “You want to talk about it?”
His hand moved to my thigh. “I’d rather talk this way.” He leaned over and kissed me. His kiss was urgent, sweet, and filled with desire. We pulled away, and Jax smiled. “It’s late. You need your sleep.”
I tasted alcohol. “Have you been drinking?”
He placed a hand over his face. “Yeah. I had a couple. But I ate a greasy burger to soak up the alcohol before I drove.”
I figured he’d tell me about the break up tomorrow. I drew him toward me again. “Speaking of sleep, this helps me.” My mouth found his. It was a relief having Jax in bed with me again. Having him gone for even one afternoon made me realize how much I’d missed him.
He chuckled. “Who am I to argue?” His mouth covered my neck, my breasts, my stomach, and worked their way between my legs while his hands explored my body. We made exquisite love, and there was something almost melancholy about Jax’s face as he entered me, moving slowly, his face contorting into a mask of passion and pain when he came. As we lay next to each other on the sex-soaked sheets, Jax tenderly held my hand. “You get off work at noon tomorrow, right?”
“I do.”
“Can I take you out to lunch? Maybe we can go to the wharf?”
“A date? That sounds wonderful. I’ll even change out of my scrubs for the event.”
Jax picked me up from work the following afternoon, and we went to the Dolphin, an open-air restaurant right on the Santa Cruz pier. The Dolphin featured a walk-up menu where diners could take their food to one of the picnic tables on the pier or, as we decided, eat at the tables under blue umbrellas overlooking some of the surf spots in the distance.
The waiter, a kid who looked about eighteen, took our drink orders, a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale for Jax and a bottled water for me. We scrutinized the menus. Jax went with their famous fish and chips, and I ordered a grilled Mahi Mahi with steamed veggies. When the food arrived, I stared at my plate. “What I wouldn’t give for some good old greasy fish and chips.”
Jax smiled. “Tired of sprouts and brown rice?”
“Don’t remind me. I’m going to be on that wonderful Trinity diet soon.”
He took a swig of his beer. “Kale juice on ice sounds good to me.”
“You’re not the one who’ll have to drink it.” The Trinity program had accepted all my paperwork, and we were scheduled to fly to San Diego then drive the twenty-three miles to Tijuana later that week. We tore in to our food, but I could tell that Jax was nervous. He acted overly solicitous, pulling my chair out for me, making sure I had extra napkins, asking did I need more water, did I maybe want to try some of the famous sourdough bread, did I have enough food, would I maybe want dessert?
Finally I touched his hand. “How’d it go yesterday?”
He collapsed back in his chair and took a sip of beer. “Holly wasn’t too happy with me.”
“I think it’s sweet of you to make the drive all the way down to break up in person.”
He sat up straight. “I tried to do the right thing.” His hands shook as he drained his beer. He signaled to the waiter for the check. “Let’s walk.” Jax paid the bill, and we left the restaurant, walking to the end of the pier and past the fisherman. The expanse of the Pacific Ocean stretched out in front of us. Jax held my hand and motioned to a bench. “Let’s sit.” We sat on the bench, and Jax’s knee bounced, his hands rubbing his jeans. Then he turned to face me. “It didn’t go too well yesterday.” What had happened to the poor guy? I figured his girlfriend probably wouldn’t have been too thrilled, but they’d only been dating a few months, right?
I squeezed his hand. “Breakups are never easy.”
He squeezed my hand hard then he let go and faced me. “I have to tell you something.”
My eyebrows knit together. “Jax, what happened?”
He cast a quick glance in my direction. “The reason Holly wasn’t so happy was because she found out about … Oh, God, I didn’t want to hurt her.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, you see, Roz, it’s kind of like this.” He bent forward and studied his fingernails. “I met this woman named Sandy. She liked me, a lot, and …”
“And?” What in God’s name had he done?
Abruptly he stood up, ambled to the railing, combing a hand through his hair and sending furtive glances in my direction. “I need to … Do you want some ice cream? Maybe some cotton candy?”
“I don’t eat sugar.”
“It’s just that—”
I patted the bench. “Jax, come sit down.”
He slunk toward the bench and collapsed in a heap.
“Who’s Sandy?”
He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. “She was a client of the surf shop. I gave her kid surf lessons.”
“What’s that got to do with—”
He sat bolt upright and looked me in the eye. “Roz, she paid me to have sex with her.”
“What? Jax … what … how did you … you got paid to have sex? You mean you were a prostitute?”
“Stop it. Don’t use that word. It wasn’t like that.”
My stomach felt sour. Jax, a prostitute? No.
He stood up again and walked to the rail, grasping it with both hands, taking deep breaths. “I didn’t mean for it to turn out this way,” he mumbled. “It was only supposed to be a few times. Just till I got my finances together.”
I sat immobilized on the bench. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Finally, Jax turned and looked at me with sad eyes. I leaned forward and whispered. “Jax, come sit down.” He shuffled over and fell on to the bench. My voice was shaky. “What happened? How did you get involved in paid sex?”
He stared straight ahead. “I met this woman named Sandy through the surf shop. I gave her son surf lessons, and she liked me. Then she started bugging me to have sex with her, kept saying she’d make it worth my while.” He gave me a half-smile. “I must’ve told her no a dozen times, but she was persistent.”
I placed a hand on my chest to ease the tightness. “What made you agree?”
He squeezed his eyes shut then opened them again. “I was kind of hurting for money after I lost my sponsorship at Mystic Seaweed. Sandy kept calling me about this business proposition of hers. She was unhappily married, and I guess she finally caught me at the right time. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to get paid for something I’d happily do for free. The worst part is I was already dating Holly, and I thought that we had a chance at something.” His face flushed. “I didn’t want her to think I was a destitute bum who couldn’t afford to make rent.”
I struggled to understand. “Go on with your story.”
“So, I didn’t really want to, but I finally agreed to have sex with Sandy. She paid me pretty darn good, too.”
“How much?”
>
“A thousand bucks an hour.”
I inhaled sharply. “You have got to be kidding me.” That was a lot of money. “Oh Jax, your poor girlfriend.” I could tell this conversation was difficult for Jax, but I wanted to understand. “How’d you meet her?”
“Through work. She was a rep for Mystic Seaweed. I really liked her. I thought we could have a real relationship.”
“Go on.”
“Well, we started dating mostly because … You promise you won’t make fun of me?”
“Why would I?”
“Because Holly kind of reminded me of you.”
I felt dizzy. “Me? Why?”
“She had this fun way about her, like you, and she was around your age. She even smelled like you do, a little.”
I massaged my brow. “Tell me the rest of the story about Sandy.”
He paused, and then with a halting voice said, “There was Sandy and five of her girlfriends.”
My hand flew to my mouth. “There were others?”
“Do you want me to tell you or not?” We looked at each other. I had to be understanding. Because as much as I didn’t want to admit it, I’d never stopped loving him. I nodded and Jax went on with his story. “We’d meet at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, and all the while, I was dating Holly.” He turned to face me, frantic, “But I planned on quitting just as soon as I had enough money set aside. I didn’t want to hurt her.”
My breath hitched. “The poor thing. How’d she find out?” He told me the story about Holly overhearing some of the women talking in the Ritz-Carlton restroom. I covered my face with my hands.
I tilted my body toward his. “Jax, this is a lot to swallow. I’m going to have to work through my emotions here.”
He stood up, his fingers in his belt loops as he towered over me. “You want to know the truth, Roz? I was good at it. And you want to know why?”
I blinked rapidly. “I’m listening.”
“It was because of you. If you hadn’t taught me so well, then I wouldn’t have gotten involved in this thing.” His gaze was steely. “Want to know what happened after you left me?” I winced at the reminder of what I’d done. “After you left, I guess you could say I assessed my talents. I knew how to do two things. I knew how to surf, and I knew my way around your body. Having sex was one of the only things I was good at, so I decided to use it.” He covered his face with one hand. “I used women for sex.” One of the fisherman glanced our way, but Jax didn’t care. He kneeled in front of me, his eyes trained on mine. “Did you ever wonder what would happen between us? I mean, if we’d stayed together forever?”
Waves of Desire: Pleasure Point Series Book Three Page 15
