Cheap Shot

by Cheryl Douglas

  “Sounds like you’re speaking from experience.”

  “If I hadn’t messed things up so badly the first time around, your sister and I would be married by now.” Just thinking about the life they could have had made him feel empty. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful she’s giving me another chance—”

  “But you want more,” Kiki said. “I get that. Chad was happy just dating. I was the one who pushed for marriage. We’d been dating for three years, and I was ready to take our relationship to the next level.”

  “I guess your plan worked,” Jaxon said, glancing at her diamond wedding band.

  “It did, but…” She sighed. “I wish I’d backed off a little. I didn’t get the romantic proposal I’d been envisioning since I was a little girl.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We were arguing about when Chad was going to propose. I was starting to lose faith, so I basically gave him an ultimatum, marry me or it’s over.”

  “Ouch.” Jaxon thought about how he would have felt in Chad’s position. He likely would have bailed. He didn’t do well with being cornered.

  “Yeah,” Kiki said, looking sad. “He said if I wanted to get married so badly, we would. The next day, we went ring shopping.” She looked at the one-and-a-half carat diamond gracing her left hand. “I picked out my ring, waited around to have it sized, and walked out of the store wearing it.”

  Even Jaxon knew women expected more. “I’m sure he was just doing what he thought you wanted.” Jaxon knew from experience it wasn’t easy to keep a Richards woman content.

  “I know that.” She shook her head, as though trying to rid herself of a bad memory. “And I really have nothing to complain about. We’re married now. We’re happy. So what if I didn’t get the proposal I’d been dreaming about, right?”

  Jaxon didn’t know how to respond. He sensed if he agreed with her, it would be like pouring salt into the wound, but if he told her she deserved more, it would only add to her resentment.

  “You tried the romantic gesture with my sister,” Kiki said. “The timing was all wrong, and it didn’t work out for you.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “What if you opt for the element of surprise instead?”

  Jaxon knew Kiki too well. The wheels were turning in that little head of hers. “What are you talking about?”

  “This is just about the last place my sister would expect you to get down on one knee, right?” Kiki giggled. “In front of our parents? Come on, she’d be totally blown away.”

  Jaxon choked on his beer, grateful he was able to swallow before spewing it all over the crisp white tablecloth. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m dead serious,” Kiki said, with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. “Think about it. What better way to convince my sister you’re all in while sending a clear message to my parents?”

  “I’d have to be crazy to set myself up for that kind of rejection.” Jaxon turned Kiki’s idea over in his head. He could walk away today engaged to the love of his life or alone and miserable. It was a hell of a risk. “She already said no once. We’ve gotten closer since then, but I can’t help but feel we have a long way to go before she’s ready to walk down the aisle with me.”

  Kiki shrugged. “So suggest a long engagement. It’ll probably take at least a year for Mama to plan the wedding anyhow.”

  Jaxon raised an eyebrow. He didn’t know how he felt about his future mother-in-law planning their wedding. Of course, if it made Sela happy, he’d get married in a tent in the middle of the woods. “I don’t know…” Jaxon’s heart swelled when he caught Sela smiling at him. “You really think she’d say yes?”

  “Jaxon, she’s loved you since the first night she met you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Kiki smiled and touched his forearm. “She came home that night and asked me if I believed in love at first sight. I said I did, and she said she’d just met the man she wanted to marry.”

  Jaxon closed his eyes as emotions overwhelmed him: love, gratitude, and regret for all the time they’d wasted. “She really said that?”

  “She did.” She squeezed Jaxon’s arm. “So you see, there’s no chance she’ll say no. The first time, she was hurt and angry, questioning whether she could trust you. I think she realizes now that you made a stupid mistake not because you were trying to control her life, but because you were desperate to get close to her again. If you ask me, it’s kind of romantic.”

  Jaxon’s lips twitched. “Thanks, but don’t tell your sister that. I’d rather she forget the whole mess.”

  “You got it,” she said, winking.

  Jaxon took a deep breath. “I need to talk to your father first.”

  Kiki’s mouth dropped open. “You’re not serious.”

  “Come on, Kik. Where we come from, you ask a girl’s father for her hand before you ask her.”

  “You didn’t think of that before.”

  “Because I was afraid he’d pull out his shotgun.” Jaxon grinned. “I don’t think he’d do that today. There are too many witnesses.”

  “What are you going to do if he says hell no?”

  Jaxon had already considered that possibility. “I’ll tell him that while we’d like his blessing, not having it won’t prevent me from asking the woman I love to marry me.”

  Kiki smiled. “Good for you. I’d like to go on record as saying I think the old-fashioned approach may backfire, but I’ll see if I can’t corner my dad and ask him to make his way over here without making Sela suspicious.”

  “Thanks, hon,” Jaxon said, kissing her cheek. “You’re the best.”

  “And don’t you forget it when my birthday rolls around. My birthstone is diamond.”

  * * *

  “Kiki said you wanted to have a word with me,” Gordon Richards said, sitting across from Jaxon.

  Their rattan chairs were inside a gazebo, well away from the rest of the group, so Jaxon was confident no one would overhear them. “Yes, sir, I did.”

  Gordon raised an eyebrow, obviously taken aback by the deference in Jaxon’s tone. “Okay, I’m listening. What’s this all about?”

  “It’s no secret that I love your daughter.”

  “Really?” he asked, folding his hands over his stomach. “I think it’s actually a pretty well-guarded secret. Isn’t that the reason y’all broke up, because you were so emotionally inept you couldn’t admit you had feelings for her?”

  Jaxon couldn’t deny his words stung, but they were true. “Things were different then.”

  “Is that so?” he asked, fixing Jaxon with a steely gaze.

  Sela’s father was an intimidating man. He was a criminal attorney with a record that would make most of his peers drool with envy, so Jaxon wasn’t stupid enough to try to evade the truth. He met Gordon’s gaze directly, though it was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. “I’d never met anyone like Sela. With other women, it had been easy to avoid anything serious.”

  “If you’re trying to make a case for yourself,” Gordon said, reaching for his bourbon, “I’d suggest you leave your other dalliances out of the mix. We all know you’re a player. I don’t need to be reminded.”

  Jaxon supposed he had that cheap shot coming. If someone like him had professed his love for his baby girl, he would have been skeptical too. “I was, you’re right. But that ended when I met Sela. Even after we broke up… I mean, I dated.” Jaxon cleared his throat when Gordon clenched his fist. “I’m not going to pretend I’ve been a monk for the past year, but—”

  “Where the hell are you going with this, Davis?” Gordon demanded.

  Shame and humiliation washed over Jaxon. What was he thinking, talking to Sela’s father about his sex life? “I’m sorry. I’m trying to be straight with you. I want you to know that while I sure as hell am not perfect, my feelings for your daughter are real.”

  Gordon eased back in his seat. “Go on.”

  “I was a fool not to realize a l
ong time ago that she’s the best thing that has ever happened to me.” Being raw and vulnerable was his only hope of winning Gordon over. “I should have told her how much she meant to me when I had the chance.”

  “Yes, you should have,” Gordon said, sipping his drink before adding, “You could have saved her a lot of pain if you had. When y’all broke up, she was a wreck. I’d never seen her like that, and all I could think about was hunting you down. I had dreams about putting a bullet in you, just to show you how much you’d hurt my baby.”

  Jaxon swallowed. “Wow, that’s intense hatred.”

  “Yes, it is.” He swirled the liquid in his glass. “I’ve always been wrapped up in my career. I wasn’t the parent my girls needed when they were growing up. I didn’t ask them about their day or show up at their dance recitals. I didn’t have time for that.” He threw back the rest of his drink and closed his eyes. “I always thought I’d have more time.”

  Jaxon was stunned. The last thing he’d expected was for Gordon to open up to him.

  “But the years slipped away. In the blink of an eye, they were all grown up. I wanted to go back, to make up for all the years I lost. I guess I tried to hold on a little too tight. I tried to control their lives, their choices, and they resented me for it.”

  “Sela loves you,” Jaxon said, feeling the surprising urge to ease his pain. “She knows how much you love her. It makes her crazy that you don’t always support her decisions, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start over, change things.”

  “Do you know why I was so adamant about her being a lawyer?”

  “No.”

  “For one, she was smart as hell. She always got straight As without breaking a sweat.”

  Jaxon smiled. “I wish I’d known her in school. I could’ve used a tutor like that.”

  Gordon covered his mouth with his hand before pulling it away. “I wanted us to work side by side. I thought we could get closer if we shared a passion for something, if we were working together toward a common goal.”

  Jaxon finally understood that Gordon’s motives for refusing to support his daughter may not have been as ruthless as he’d assumed. “Did you ever tell Sela how you felt?”

  “I couldn’t.” He looked down and swiped a piece of lint off his linen pants. “We didn’t have that kind of relationship. I love my girls more than anything, but it’s not easy for me to say those words. I didn’t grow up in a touchy-feely family. We never talked about feelings.”

  “I understand. My family was the same way.”

  Gordon met Jaxon’s eyes. “I’m sorry about what happened to your father. I had no right to stand in judgement of what he did. That’s not my place.”

  “Thanks.” It was hard for Jaxon to admit Gordon’s opinion mattered, but it did. “I appreciate that.”

  Gordon shook his head, looking mystified. “Don’t make me like you.”

  Jaxon chuckled. That was the last thing Gordon would ever want to admit. “I’m not expecting a miracle, but maybe someday, when I’ve proven to you there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her.”

  “Maybe,” Gordon conceded. “But you have a long way to go.”

  “Understood.” Jaxon swallowed. He had to spit the words out before he choked on them. “I’d like to marry Sela.”

  “Is that so?” Gordon leaned forward, setting his glass on the table beside him. “What makes you think she wants to marry you? You haven’t been back together more than a minute.”

  Looking him in the eye, Jaxon said, “She loves me. You know that as well as I do.”

  Gordon took a deep breath, the muscle in his jaw twitching. “I’d like to deny that, but I can’t. I see it when she looks at you, the way she lights up when you’re around. I haven’t seen her look that way in a long time, probably since she met you. But that light went out long before you broke up with her a year ago. Her mama asked her one day what was wrong, and she said you’d never love her the way she loved you, that you weren’t capable.”

  Jaxon wrapped his hands around the chair’s armrests as the urge to defend himself came and went. “She was right. I wasn’t capable then.”

  “What’s changed?”

  “I got help.” Jaxon had only talked to a few people about his therapy, and he never thought he’d count Gordon among the people he confided in. “I went into therapy, figured out why it was so hard for me to love someone or let someone love me.”

  Gordon looked at him a long time, obviously trying to gauge whether he was being sincere. “And it’s helped?”

  Jaxon swallowed his pride. “I’m sitting here in front of you today, admitting that I made mistakes and asking your forgiveness for hurting your daughter. I couldn’t have done that a year ago. My ego wouldn’t have allowed me to, so yeah, I’d say it’s helped.”

  “Maybe it has.”

  Jaxon noted that Gordon hadn’t accepted his apology, but he hadn’t really expected it to be that easy. Gordon was a skeptic. Forgiveness would come with time, if at all. “I’ve told Sela I love her, admitted my mistakes, and asked her forgiveness. If that doesn’t prove I’m not the same man I was before, I don’t know what else I can do.”

  “You’re doing it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re sitting here, talking to me like a man, telling me why you think you’ve earned the right to love my daughter. That’s all a father can ask for, Jaxon.”

  “Does that mean you’re willing to give us your blessing?” Jaxon held his breath, his heart sinking when Gordon’s wary look made him think they were taking a step back. “I can’t promise I won’t make a mistake or two in the future, but I’ll never run from them again. I’ll man up and be the husband she deserves.” When Gordon still didn’t look convinced, Jaxon said, “I’ll be her best friend, her rock.”

  Gordon closed his eyes as a slight smile curved his lips. “I guess that’s all I can ask.” Offering his hand, he said, “You have my blessing.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Fear ripped through Sela when she saw her father and Jaxon step out of the gazebo. If her father had pulled Jaxon aside to warn him off, Sela would never forgive him. She’d come there because she wanted her parents to see how wonderful Jaxon was. She’d believed they were making headway, but Jaxon’s grim expression had her second-guessing everything.

  Without a word, Jaxon reached for her hand. She thought he was going to lead her away from the group, or worse, tell her he couldn’t see her anymore. Sela looked at her father, hoping she would get a hint as to what was going on, but he had his poker face firmly in place.

  “What’s going on?” she whispered.

  Jaxon sighed as he held her hand. Everyone stopped talking, watching them intently. Andrea’s eyes zeroed in on her husband, silently asking what was about to happen. Gordon just shook his head, gesturing toward his daughter.

  Jaxon said, “The first time you told me you loved me, I felt like I was ten feet tall, but when I couldn’t say the words back, I felt like a coward.”

  Sela couldn’t believe Jaxon was airing details of their relationship in front of her family. “Jax, we don’t have to do this here.”

  “Yes, I do.” He caught Kiki’s eye and smiled when she gave him a thumb’s up. “I loved you so much I could barely breathe when I looked at you. It scared the hell out of me. I thought if I loved you that much after just a few months, what would it be like after fifty years? How would I ever let you go when the time came?”

  Sela didn’t know where he was going with this or why he was saying these things in front of her family, but she was determined to listen with her guard down and her heart open.

  “I learned about love and loss when I was too young to deal with it. I learned to equate love with pain. I didn’t know anything else. Love had never been a positive experience for me.”

  Holding his hands tighter, she said softly, “I understand.” She sensed those were the only words he needed to hear.

  “So when I met you, I was still equating l
ove with pain. I loved you so much, so I believed the pain would be unbearable when you left me. So I pushed you away. I thought it would hurt less if I had less time invested in the relationship.” He rolled his eyes. “Obviously I’m an idiot.”

  Sela could have sworn she saw her mother swipe a tear from under her oversized sunglasses.

  “I don’t want to live my life waiting for the other shoe to drop anymore,” Jaxon said. “I want to believe in you and in us.”

  “I want that too,” Sela said, trying to fight back the emotion welling up inside her. Her family wasn’t big on public displays of emotion, so she wasn’t used to crying in front of them.

  Jaxon dropped down on one knee as he reached into his pocket, producing the same ring he’d presented to her days before. “I know I’ll love you forever, Sela, and I want to believe you’re going to love me forever.”

  “I am.” She choked back a sob as she covered her mouth with her hand. She no longer cared about the people surrounding them or whether her tears made anyone else uncomfortable. The only thing that mattered was the beautiful man kneeling before her, offering her his heart.

  “I know there will be obstacles, but we’re strong enough to face them together. Nothing an no one can tear us apart, unless we let them.”

  Sela glanced at her father, who smiled and winked. Was it possible that the two most important men in her life had called a truce because of their love for her?

  “If a person is incredibly lucky, they find a love like ours once in a lifetime, Sela. Fate gave me another chance to get this right, and I don’t want to waste another second. Please, say you’ll marry me.”

  Sela closed her eyes as tears rolled down her cheeks. She savored the words she’d been waiting to hear for so long. The last time, they’d been tainted by a lie, but this time she saw his actions were prompted by his love for her, and that made forgiveness effortless. “Yes, Jax, yes, of course I’ll marry you.”

  With a whoop that made everyone laugh, he jumped up and swept Sela off her feet, swinging her in a circle as he kissed her.