by J. S. Scott
“I don’t want your money,” I said sharply.
“Then what do you want, Ruby?” he drawled, his tone skeptical. “What will it take to get your claws out of my brother? Do you really want to be stuck with a man who can’t keep up with you because he has physical limitations?”
Tears started to pour down my cheeks, but they were tears of sorrow. They were proof of the fury and frustration I was experiencing, and I was done listening to this man say negative things about a man he couldn’t possibly even understand or appreciate.
“Jett has no limitations,” I snarled. “And I’m with him because I love him. You’ll never be even half the man your brother is, with or without his money. And you sure as hell shouldn’t be finding fault with anyone else when you slept with your own brother’s fiancée. You’re despicable.”
Before I could think, I lashed out and slapped him across the face, sending the drink in his hand flying and snapping his head to one side.
The satisfying sound of my hand connecting with his face was enough to not make me regret what I’d done.
He reacted immediately, his hand reaching out to grab my arm.
People were staring now, but I was too emotionally riled up to care. “Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me,” I hissed as I yanked and pulled myself free. “Money doesn’t make you less of an asshole. It just makes you a more powerful asshole to people who care about your status. I don’t. Just like your brother, I judge people by their actions and not their net worth. And just for the record, Jett is eight years older than me, you jerk.”
I turned around and ran, stumbling a little as I tried to see through the flood of tears that were flowing down my face.
“Bastard!” I said as I moved through bodies to get out of the building so I could compose myself.
In some ways, I had to admit that my relationship with Jett was unlikely, and looking at us from the outside, it wouldn’t be hard to make the wrong assumption.
Homeless girl who was on the streets and hungry.
Rich guy who had a good heart.
I’d never really thought about how the situation looked before, but now I couldn’t help but wonder how many other people had made the same conclusion as Carter.
Jett
“Give me one good reason not to put your ass in the hospital,” I growled as I grabbed my brother, Carter, and pushed him up against the nearest wall.
I’d seen red the minute I spotted my brother putting his hands on my woman from across the room, and that color had filled my vision as I saw Ruby trying to get away, obviously upset and crying.
Nobody touched Ruby. Not ever.
“I didn’t hurt her,” he said hostilely as he pushed me back and freed himself from the choke hold I had him in. “Jesus, Jett! Are you really going to do this to yourself again? How many users are you going to go through before you learn your lesson?”
“She’s not using me, shithead,” I said vehemently. “She probably could have, but she didn’t.”
I moved toward him again, but I felt a strong hand on the neck of my tuxedo holding me back.
“Don’t, Jett,” a masculine voice said. “This is our sister’s wedding. Don’t make a scene.”
Mason.
His comment was the only thing that held me back, but as my eldest brother slowly let go of me, I knew I didn’t want this for Marcus’s and Dani’s wedding. I’d flatten Carter somewhere else. But not here.
“What did you say to her?” I asked angrily, my brother Mason moving forward to stand next to me.
Carter shrugged. “I was trying to buy her off. You don’t really want her, Jett. For God’s sake, she was a homeless prostitute before you took her in.”
I moved forward again instinctively, but Mason had a restraining hand on my tux again before I could get to Carter.
“She wasn’t a prostitute,” I informed him. “She was a virgin. Ruby was a teenage runaway who had every reason to leave home. When I met her, she’d been kidnapped by a human trafficking ring and they were ready to sell her to the highest bidder. Anything that’s ever happened to Ruby was not her fault. And she’s been through hell. She’s taken very little from me, even though I offered her everything. She’s strong, and she’s a survivor. But she’s not a user. She’s starting her own business, and she’s doing very well without my help.” I took a ragged breath in before I continued. “I offered to marry her, and she refused because she didn’t feel like she had enough to give me in return. That is not my idea of a woman who wants to use me.”
“Doesn’t sound like it to me, either,” Mason confirmed.
I shrugged out of Mason’s hold. “I need to go find her. I’ll deal with you later,” I told Carter in a warning voice and turned around to go find Ruby.
It gutted me to think that one of my own family members had made her feel small, and may have hurt her.
But I’d make it right. I had to.
I was obsessed with my beautiful girl who looked at me like no other guy existed.
As I walked away to go find my woman, I wondered how anybody could ever think that Ruby was the lucky one when I knew damn well it was the opposite.
My dark-eyed angel had stumbled into my life just when I’d needed her most, and I knew I wasn’t going to survive without her.
Carter could go fuck himself.
“Do you really love him?”
I was surprised by the baritone voice that spoke from the darkness, and I stopped the swing I was riding on, even though I knew exactly who had spoken.
It was Carter Lawson, the last person I wanted to talk to at the moment.
When I’d run away, my only objective had been to escape after I’d left the ballroom, pretty sure nobody would find me on the playground that sat some distance away from the main resort. I’d stumbled upon it by accident. I’d stayed because it seemed like a good place to think. “How did you find me?” I asked him coldly.
Carter moved up beside me and sat in the swing next to me as he answered wryly, “I have two sisters. Why is it that women always want to go stare at the moon and stars when they’re pissed off, anyway?”
The only illumination nearby was a tiny solar light near the merry-go-round, so I couldn’t see much of Carter except his massive form next to me, but it seemed pretty strange that a guy like him, dressed in a tux, would be sitting on a large swing set. “I don’t know,” I answered with a sigh. “And yes, I love him. How could I not? Your brother is the most amazing man I’ve ever known.”
The anger I’d felt toward Carter was gone, but my hurt about what many people probably thought about my relationship with Jett was still bothering me. Maybe Jett didn’t care what people were saying, but the last thing I wanted was to be a source of gossip for him.
“I never really slept with Lisette,” he said. “I only told Jett that I did because I knew she was going to be poisonous for him after his accident. For weeks, she put off coming up to the hospital. But I knew she’d show up eventually, and that he’d be crushed because Lisette had no heart. She’s always been a bitch, but he never really saw it. I wanted him to dump her, and since he believes in marriage, I thought the one thing that would get him to break up with her was if she was cheating.”
“So she never came to see him at all? Not even when he was critical?”
“Not once,” Carter confirmed. “She was too busy with her social life.”
“Oh, God,” I said, shocked that a woman could be engaged to a guy and not rush to the hospital when he was in bad shape. It was almost unfathomable. “Why haven’t you told him the truth?”
“I tried. I swear I did. But he wouldn’t listen. The sad part of the drama is that he’d already seen Lisette earlier in the day, and she’d broken up with him. She was with him for the first and only time, when he was still in a lot of pain, just to break up with him. But I blurted out my lie be
fore he could mention that he was already free of her claws. So I lost my brother for nothing.”
I didn’t have siblings, so I had no idea how much Carter had risked to tell Jett something like that. But I could imagine it hadn’t been easy. “You were trying to manipulate him when he was down,” I admonished.
“For his own good,” Carter rasped.
“For what you thought was good for him,” I corrected. “Jett was a grown adult. He should have been allowed to make that choice for himself.”
“Maybe,” he agreed. “But it’s not easy to watch somebody you love making a big mistake. He would have been miserable with her. And she was going to make his recovery more difficult. I was trying to do the right thing.”
“But you’re wrong about me,” I informed him. “I don’t care about your brother because of his money. I love him because there isn’t another man like him on the planet. I’m sorry you can’t see how incredible he is, but I see it.”
“I’m starting to think maybe you really do,” Carter said stoically.
“Jett has risked his life for other people, and he’s done it a lot. He sees things that other people ignore, and he tries to do everything he can for others. He isn’t a self-centered jerk.”
“Like me?” he asked drily.
“I’m not going to answer that question because you probably wouldn’t like the answer,” I snapped.
“So I guess upping my offer wouldn’t work?” he questioned carefully.
“No.” Carter was such a jerk, but I sensed he wasn’t really trying to get me out of Jett’s life anymore. “If I thought I wasn’t good for Jett, I’d leave with nothing in a heartbeat. But I never considered the fact that people might gossip about him having a homeless woman as a girlfriend. I hate that.”
“What happened to make you leave home as a teenager?” Carter asked. “Jett didn’t really say.”
It touched me that Jett had kept my secrets, but I was tired of being ashamed of a past I had no control over. I was finally recognizing the fact that I’d been given one life as a child that I didn’t deserve, but I’d be damned if I was just going to lay down and accept it as a grown adult.
I was in control now.
I didn’t have to be afraid or let it taint my entire adult life.
“I was molested and abused. When my parents died in an accident, I went into the full-time custody of my abuser. He tried to rape me, so I ran away. Please don’t ask me anything more. That’s all I really want to share with you,” I said firmly.
Since Carter was Jett’s brother, I wanted to give him some insight into my broken soul, but I knew I needed to decide just how much I wanted to share. Little by little, because of my counseling, I was learning to set my boundaries.
“I respect that,” Carter agreed. “But it’s fucked up. Our parents died in an accident, too, but we all had plenty of money and each other, and we were all over eighteen.”
“Imagine if you didn’t,” I said softly. “Just think about how it would be if you’d had to figure out where to go, how to eat, how to get to a place where you could sleep. That was pretty much what consumed me every single day for well over five years. And until I turned eighteen, I was paralyzed by the fear of getting taken back to my abuser.”
“I’m sorry,” Carter said hoarsely. “Who did you say abused you?”
“I didn’t.”
“Do you want to tell me so I can kill the bastard?” he said.
I exploded with a surprised laugh. “No. And he’s already dead. Jett went looking for him, but he had a heart attack several months ago and died. What’s with the Lawsons and their desire to commit murder?”
“None of us can stand bullies,” Carter answered.
I found that amusing since Carter was probably the biggest bully I’d ever met, but he obviously had his own idea of what a bully really was, and who fit that mold.
I changed the subject. “Are you going to tell Jett that you didn’t really sleep with his girlfriend? It definitely wasn’t the right thing to do, but I think he’d be relieved that you didn’t really do it, and were only trying to help him in your own misguided way.”
“If he’ll stop beating the crap out of me long enough to listen.”
“You can’t control other peoples’ lives, Carter, even if you’re trying to help.”
“You have no idea what it was like to watch my brother suffer after the accident,” he rasped.
“But he’s okay now,” I said reasonably. “Why were you trying to buy me off?”
“He’s not okay, Ruby,” he said forcefully. “He’s never going to be okay again. You didn’t know Jett before his accident. He was an expert skier, basketball player, and he could kick my ass at almost any sport. He’s never going to be able to do that again.”
I kicked my swing into motion while I thought about his words. “You feel guilty because you can do those things and he can’t,” I finally concluded.
“Hell, yes, I feel guilty. Marcus approached me about PRO, too, and I should have been there with Jett, but I was too obsessed with our world domination to get involved. Maybe I could have protected Jett if I’d been there.”
“And maybe you couldn’t have,” I pointed out. “It was a tragic accident, Carter. Jett chose to be there. And if you’d talk to him, I think you’d understand that he’s pretty okay with himself as he is right now. He knows he can’t do everything he used to do, but he’s happy.”
“Because of you,” Carter said morosely. “And I almost screwed that up, too. Now that I see the whole picture, I understand that he’s changed. He isn’t hiding at home anymore. I could see that things were different from the moment he walked back into the offices again. But I’ve gotten overprotective. Maybe I was even holding him back, and trying to talk him out of anything that I thought would hurt him.”
“You don’t need to do that anymore,” I said simply.
“I get it,” he agreed.
“In a lot of ways, Jett and I are healing each other,” I said, just now realizing that my assumption was true. “Jett was a little broken when we met, and I was a train wreck.”
“I guess a brother isn’t always the best person to make a guy realize that their life isn’t over,” Carter replied.
“You weren’t feeling his pain like somebody who is broken can,” I explained. “Jett and I understood each other because we were both trying to recover from something that seemed like it was impossible to forget.”
“Ruby?” Jett’s voice called out.
“Here,” Carter called back.
I looked up to see a dark form coming toward us.
My heaviness in my chest disappeared as Jett reached for me and pulled me into his arms.
“Get lost, Carter,” Jett demanded. “And if you ever get near Ruby again, I’ll do a hell of a lot more than punch you,” he growled.
Carter stood. “I was trying to make shit right,” he grumbled.
I could see Jett’s face now, and I put my fingers over his lips as I said, “He’s telling the truth. Carter didn’t hurt me. We were just talking.”
“I don’t give a shit,” Jett muttered angrily. “I still want him somewhere far away.”
“I’m leaving,” Carter said. “But you’re going to have to talk to me someday.”
“Not today,” Jett answered in a cranky tone.
I saw Carter walk toward the lights of the resort as I hugged Jett tightly. The two brothers would need to make their peace. I knew that now. Maybe Carter had been extremely misguided, but he’d obviously done the stupid things he’d done because he cared about his younger brother. And he’d never completely betrayed Jett. Now that I’d met him, I doubted he was even capable of those actions.
Whatever his faults, Carter Lawson was loyal to his brother, even if he was a jerk.
Ruby
Jett’s arms ti
ghtened around me as he said, “Don’t ever do that again, Ruby. Don’t ever fucking walk away.”
“I wasn’t leaving you,” I explained. “I was leaving the situation.”
“Don’t do it again,” he demanded a second time. “It scared the shit out of me when I couldn’t find you. Let’s head back to the house.”
“I’m okay now,” I argued.
“I’m not,” he replied in a voice that was vibrating with emotion. “If I don’t get inside you right now, I’m going to lose my mind.”
My heart and my body fired at the same time, and I pressed against him to try to stop the ache that was pulsating inside me. “Then maybe you shouldn’t wait,” I said in a sultry tone I barely recognized.
“Don’t screw with me right now, Ruby, or you might get more than you’re asking for,” he said gruffly right before his mouth captured mine.
My hands threaded into his hair, my breath taken away by the hunger in his kiss. I opened to him and gave back as much as he gave, feeling the same insatiable desire I always did to climb inside him.
I couldn’t get close enough, even though I fought desperately to try to absorb him into every cell I possessed.
I moaned as he cupped my ass and pulled me hard against his cock, but it only fueled the flames more.
I gasped for breath as he let go of my lips. “I love you,” I blurted out as I panted. “I don’t care if you don’t feel the same way. I can’t keep it inside anymore.”
My heart was racing, but I felt relieved to finally say the words. I’d been holding back a volcano of emotions, and they’d finally erupted. All that love had to go somewhere, and it was now pouring all over the man who was the source of the explosive pressure.
Jett froze as he questioned, “What did you say?”
“I love you. I love you so much that it physically makes my chest hurt.” I wasn’t about to back down and pretend I didn’t say it.
I was over not being completely honest. I was okay with myself, and even though I’d probably always have some issues from my past, I was done letting my uncle control me.
