by J. S. Scott
The FBI had told Jett that he might be able to recover some or all of his money, but it could take years, and there was no guarantee he’d ever see a penny of the funds he paid out. Everything would depend on where the finances of the ringleader ended up after the investigation was over.
Tears sprang to my eyes as I told him, “You’ve already done way too much for somebody you don’t even know. I already owe you so much.”
“You don’t owe me a damn thing,” Jett said in a low, growly tone.
I stared at him, astonished that he’d even say something like that. “You and I both know that isn’t true.”
“You really want to repay me?” he said in a demanding voice.
“You know I do.”
“Then come to Seattle with me. Stay with me and be my assistant. I’ve had to do the majority of my work at my home office because of my accident, and I could use some help. I’m backed up on a lot of things, and having somebody around to help me out would be more than enough payback for me. I’ll give you a salary, plus bonuses.”
I frowned. “I don’t really have any skills.”
“Can you use a computer?” he asked.
“Yes. I used them in libraries, and I got some skills in high school.”
“Can you run errands?”
“Of course.” My foot was pretty much healed, but Jett still needed to continue to baby his knee until his meniscus was completely healed. “My driver’s license is expired, but I can renew it if I’m in one place for a while.”
“You have no job experience?” he questioned, sounding more curious than worried that I’d never worked a real job.
I took a deep breath. It was time for me to share a little bit about my past with him. “My mom was a pastry chef. She and my grandmother had a catering company. I didn’t really pull a paycheck, but Mom gave me some money for every event I helped out with. Gran always handled the food because she was an amazing chef, and Mom handled all the desserts. My dad ran the business part of things, so it was mainly a family business. I helped my mother with events from the time I was in grade school until I left Ohio at the age of seventeen.”
“You’ve been on the streets since you were seventeen?” he asked with a frown.
I nodded, hoping he wouldn’t ask me about anything else.
“Then you worked,” Jett concluded. “Obviously you were a good assistant or your mom and dad wouldn’t have kept taking you to the events.”
I smiled. “I loved it. Eventually, I helped Mom do her baking, and I learned to do decent pastries myself. The only thing I’d ever wanted to do was keep on working in the catering business with my family.”
Jett was silent for a moment before he asked in a husky voice, “What happened, Ruby? You were out on the streets when you should have been getting ready for high school graduation.”
Since I didn’t cry, I refused to acknowledge the tears that were welling in my eyes. I blinked them back before I answered. “We were on our way to a big event when I was sixteen. The roads were icy, and my dad lost control of the van. My father, my mother, and my gran died instantly. I only suffered some cuts, bruises, and a concussion. I don’t remember most of the crash or what happened right after.”
My one and only visit to the hospital had been the worst day of my entire life.
“Jesus, Ruby,” Jett rasped. “I’m so fucking sorry. No wonder you’re so damn afraid of hospitals.”
I tried to swallow the enormous lump in my throat.
I’m not going to cry. Not in the middle of a nice restaurant. And not anywhere else, either.
“You didn’t have any other family to go to?”
I stared at my half-filled wine glass, unable to look at Jett as I told him, “Only…my uncle.”
“You have an uncle, and you’re on the streets?”
Yeah, it was going to be hard to answer Jett’s question, but I needed to be as honest with him as possible. He was trying to help me, so I owed him that.
“He was…abusive.” I looked up at Jett, my eyes pleading with him not to ask me anything else.
He nodded sharply, like he understood that I didn’t want to talk about my uncle. “What happened to your inheritance? There must have been money coming from the business, and I’m sure your parents had some funds.”
I shook my head. “My uncle was a silent controlling partner. He’d given my dad the funds for startup, so he took over half ownership. He sold it. And since he was my only relative, he was also my guardian once my parents and grandma were gone.”
“A house? Life insurance? Savings?” he asked.
“We rented our home, and we didn’t have a lot of money,” I told him. “We were one of those families who just got by.”
“So you didn’t really ever have a chance to work because you left home while you were a minor,” he observed.
“Not much else except the catering business,” I confessed. “I picked berries where I could for money while I was on the road. I did just about any unskilled labor I could to survive.”
“Why South Florida if you were a Midwestern girl?”
“When you’re homeless, it’s better to be someplace warm. I can cool down during the day in the library, but it’s hard to survive frigid temperatures.”
“What about shelters?”
“I used them sometimes, but there was usually somebody who needed it more than me. Mothers with kids, someone elderly who couldn’t survive the elements. There just isn’t enough space for every homeless person.”
“Come with me to Seattle, Ruby. Trust me just enough to know I’m never going to send you out on the streets again,” Jett commanded in a guttural tone.
I knew he could never understand that I really trusted no one. Being alone and homeless, I couldn’t. I’d already made a huge mistake by trusting the wrong people, and I’d had a smaller lesson that I’d learned on my own during my adult life on the road.
But Dani had stuck her neck out and helped me, even when she really had no idea whether or not I was worth saving. And then Jett had done the impossible and gotten me out of a bad situation at considerable risk to himself. He’d even been injured trying to save my ass.
We locked eyes, and I asked, “Is that really what you want?”
He nodded. “Maybe I need you as much as you need me.”
I highly doubted that Jett Lawson really needed anyone. He appeared to be pretty self-contained. But if I could help him, and keep myself off the streets, I was willing to try to be useful to him.
“Then, yes. I’ll go. But I’d really like to find a job as soon as possible.” I had to take a huge leap of faith because there was no other option if I ever wanted my life back.
He actually looked relieved when I’d given him the answer he appeared to want.
Ruby
We were back at the condo later that night, both of us hanging out in the living room, when a very big question hit me. I asked Jett in a flat tone, “What happens when you fall in love? I don’t think any woman is going to want her man living with another woman, even if it isn’t a sexual relationship and I’m just an employee.”
I stopped downloading free books to the e-reader Jett had gotten me, and looked at him sitting in a recliner across the room.
If Jett suddenly fell in love, what would happen to me?
Since he’d asked me to marry him, I assumed he didn’t have somebody waiting for him in Seattle, but I’d discovered that assumptions weren’t always correct.
My stomach knotted at the idea of Jett being involved with a woman, and I wasn’t quite sure why. It wasn’t my fear of being alone again because I’d already been there. I was thinking the tightness in my belly had more to do with the fact that I was attracted to Jett.
Being drawn to Jett wasn’t comfortable for me, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from staring at his gorgeous
body and his handsome face. For some unknown reason, I just wanted to be closer to him. Something pulled me toward him even when I should really be pushing him away.
He shrugged. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Why in the world not?”
“No woman is going to want me,” he said matter-of-factly. “And honestly, I have no desire to date anyway.”
I looked at him, confused. “Why?”
He was quiet for a moment before he said, “I was engaged once. It didn’t end well.”
Riveted, I watched his eyes grow dark as he added, “We came pretty damn close to getting married. Fortunately, we put off setting a definite date.”
“What happened?”
“My accident happened. Marcus headed a team of guys who formed a private rescue organization. We went in when the government wouldn’t and rescued victims who were kidnapped and imprisoned in foreign countries. Usually political prisoners. We’d been together for years, saved a lot of lives. But our helicopter crashed in the Middle East. A couple of us were pretty badly wounded. It’s been a few years, and I’m still not fully recovered.”
“So you broke it off because of your accident?” Why would he do that when he must have needed support?
“She broke it off. I didn’t get the best of medical care because we weren’t close to a large city right after the accident. By the time I got back to the States, they weren’t sure they could save my leg, and I looked like hell. I still am, and always will be badly scarred. Lisette hated the way I looked, and she didn’t want me with a bum leg that would keep me from doing a lot of things, especially dancing or any other social activity that required some kind of grace.”
“She dumped you because you couldn’t dance?” I asked incredulously.
“I’m pretty sure she didn’t want a guy who was going to be scarred for the rest of his life, either.”
“Oh, my God, are you kidding me?” My shocked question rang out louder than it should have, but I was pretty damn dumbfounded.
“You wanted honesty, Ruby. I’m spilling my guts here,” he informed me drily.
“I’m sorry. I just can’t imagine any woman in her right mind dumping you for such a superficial reason.” Honestly, I was angry. Jett had been saving others when he’d been hurt. “What kind of bitch does something like that?”
His eyes lightened with humor, but he didn’t speak. He shut down the laptop he was holding, and set it aside.
Finally, he said, “I guess the kind of woman I was going to marry would do something like that.”
I put my e-reader on the side table as I asked, “Do you still love her?”
Please say no!
Jett didn’t deserve to be pining over a woman who definitely hadn’t loved him.
“I don’t,” he answered gruffly. “Hell, I don’t even like her anymore. Haven’t seen her since she walked out of my hospital room after reminding me what a mess I was. But that experience pretty much told me that very few women were ever going to be able to overlook the fact that I have…limitations. And some pretty ugly scars.”
He thought he wasn’t attractive anymore? Surely Jett didn’t think that no other woman would want him just because he’d been dissed by a grade-A bitch. “That’s not true,” I said emphatically. “You’re still very attractive.”
“You haven’t seen me naked,” he rumbled.
It wasn’t the first time he’d said that in some kind of joking form, but I wished he’d quit reminding me that I really would like to see his ripped body completely in the raw.
I wanted to tell him that I’d love to see him nude, but I wasn’t brave enough to admit that I couldn’t find a single fault in him. His scars were just a part of him, proof that he was willing to do anything—even risk his own life—to save someone else. If that wasn’t a turn-on for some women, it was their loss.
I thought about what he had told me, and all I did was get more and more pissed off. “She’s not the only type of woman out there, Jett. In fact, I’d say she was an exception.”
“Not in my world,” he snapped.
“Then maybe you need to find a new world,” I suggested.
“I don’t feel like looking for somebody else, Ruby,” he replied. “I’d rather put my effort into my company, and making a full recovery. My knee will never be quite right, but I’m hoping it will get better than what it is now. The surgeries are over, I hope. I had my last one on my knee a few months ago. So it’s all about working on getting it stronger.”
I hadn’t known Jett when his accident happened, but I wanted to be around for him now. Some woman had done a number on him, and he needed to stop looking at the world around him through a cynical pair of glasses. “I’ll help you as much as I can,” I vowed. “And it sounds like losing your fiancée was actually a gift. Maybe it doesn’t feel that way right now, but someday it will.”
“Maybe I was a little clueless back then, but I knew I’d made a lucky escape the minute she walked out the door,” he said hoarsely.
“But she hurt you,” I argued.
“Maybe. But it would have hurt more if I’d married her.”
It was entirely possible that Jett was over his ex, but I was fairly certain that he’d never gotten over the rejection itself if he thought there weren’t a million women out there who would snap him up immediately if they had the chance. Dancing skill or not.
Jett was special.
But he didn’t seem to recognize that he was a whole lot more than just a few scars.
“I think you’re gorgeous,” I blurted out before I could stop the words from flying out of my mouth.
I didn’t retract my statement. Scars included, Jett was one of the hottest guys I’d ever met. He was completely ripped, and I knew he’d been using the gym in the condo to keep up his exercise routine. I hadn’t liked that at first, but he’d explained that he could lift weights without stressing his knee. And he’d start back again with his regular routine to strengthen his leg once he was sure the meniscus had healed.
He crossed his arms in front of him, his biceps flexing as he asked, “What in the hell is attractive about me now?”
I considered his skeptical expression and the way he had one of his brows raised in question.
I melted as I realized he really didn’t see a single good thing about himself anymore.
“I love your eyes,” I said honestly, not exactly wanting to tell him that I lusted after his body. “Did you know they change when you’re happy and when you’re angry? But every shade is beautiful. Your eyes are truly green and not hazel. Did you know that’s the rarest eye color? Only two percent of people in the world have green eyes.”
He was trying to resist the urge to smile, but he didn’t completely accomplish it. “More reading at the library?” he asked with a smirk.
I shrugged. “I told you that strange facts or quotes I’ve read come out of my mouth at the weirdest of times. But what I say is factual. And yeah, it’s information I picked up in the library.”
“What else do you find attractive about me?” he asked hesitantly.
Okay. I was done holding back because I could see he wasn’t quite believing what I said. “You’re completely ripped, and every time I see your ass in a pair of jeans, I want to take a bite out of it.”
“I’m scarred, woman. Are you fucking blind? You saw a small preview the night I got you out of the club.”
I crossed my arms stubbornly. “When I admire your tight butt, I’m not exactly thinking about your scars.”
“You’re a virgin. What do you know about nice asses?”
“Maybe I haven’t touched, but I can sure as hell look.”
A bark of laughter escaped him before he answered, “I give up. You have no idea how unattractive a messed-up body looks naked. Do you always look for something good in everybody?”
“That’s not hard to do with a guy like you,” I said in a breathless voice. “Other than your scars and your bossiness, you’re pretty much perfect. I think your ex was crazy to give you up.”
“But you didn’t want to marry me,” he countered.
“I wanted to say yes,” I confessed. “But you don’t deserve to be stuck with a woman like me. I’ve been homeless all my adult life, Jett. I have no job skills, and I didn’t have any kind of future. You’ve already put out more money to save me than I’m worth. Way more. And it wouldn’t have been a marriage that was happening for the right reasons.”
Jett would have done it because he wanted to rescue me, and even though I liked him, my primary reason for marriage would have been to have a roof over my head and some kind of stability.
“Nothing that happened to you was your fault, Ruby,” Jett growled.
“My uncle didn’t want me to leave. I left of my own free will,” I said nervously.
Jett stood and walked slowly over to the couch to sit next to me. “Tell me what happened, Ruby. Just throw it out there. I’m not going to judge. If he was abusive, you had to leave.”
“I didn’t have to, but once the rest of my family was gone, I had no reason to take his abuse anymore. He was an alcoholic for as long as I can remember, and whenever he drank, he got violent. I-I couldn’t take it anymore,” I stammered.
“Son of a bitch!” Jett said harshly. “What happened after the accident? I’m sure your parents protected you from him before it happened.”
“I lived with him for almost a year, just long enough to make sure I could leave without him finding me until after I’d turned eighteen. His violent temper escalated into insanity. I had to leave with almost nothing to my name. Their part of the business would end up being his, and I couldn’t stay there.”
Jett pulled my trembling body against his, and I let his strong body support mine as I leaned into him. I mumbled against his shoulder, “I just couldn’t do it anymore. I wanted to graduate from high school, but there were times I didn’t think I’d live that long. I had to go.”
