by Susan Ward
“Clearly not.” Gloria arched a brow slowly. “Have you lost your mind, Jackie, bringing a girl here for that? In the middle of the afternoon. The neighbors can see into the yard.”
Jackie—great, fucking great—and her tone was even less complimentary, though she did deserve some credit for holding her aplomb through this.
I lowered my gaze. It was the respectful thing to do. “Can we keep the rest of this for later?”
“No, we cannot.”
“Let me just take her back to her hotel, Gloria.”
“Like hell I’m letting you out that door after being gone for four days without a single call home. You’re not going anywhere, Jackie. Give me your keys.”
I shoved my hands deep into my pockets as my jaw clenched. “I’m taking her back to her hotel, and you are not stopping me, Gloria.”
The rapid inhale of her breath made me flinch. I’d never openly defied her before.
Fuck.
Dreading what was about to come next, I chanced a fast glance at her, only Gloria wasn’t staring at me. Her eyes were burning with rage and fixed on Lena standing behind me.
“You.” The way my stepmother said that single word was the cruelest thing I’d ever heard. “Haven’t you ruined enough lives, Lena Mansur? My God, Jackie is just a boy. And you…you are a viperous whore.”
My senses kicked into overdrive as I saw her arm swing and I barely caught it before Gloria’s palm landed on Lena’s cheek.
“I’m sorry,” Lena murmured brokenly, darting around me to run toward the house.
The rage inside me banished clear thought. My fingers tightened brutally around Gloria’s wrist. “Don’t you ever talk to her that way again. You are not even fit to speak to her.”
Her cheeks burned, since we both knew what I meant by that. She lifted her chin. “I’m calling your father. Let’s see what he has to say about this.”
I released my grip from her arm. “Go ahead, Gloria. I don’t care. I’m packing a bag. I’m leaving with Lena, and I am not ever coming back here. Tell my father that when you speak to him.”
I walked away, anxious to catch up to Lena. She’d struggled not to let it out, but I could hear the sobs in her chest as she hurried around me.
Inside the house was empty.
I went out front and found Lena in my car, her face buried in her hands. She was crying.
I opened her door, crouched down, and took her in my arms. “I’m sorry. Please don’t cry.”
Sniffing, she lifted her tear-ravished face. “I should cry because your stepmother is right. I should never have—”
I silenced her words with my fingers against her lips. “No, she is not right, and if I hadn’t found you I would have regretted it for the rest of my life.”
She pressed her brow against my chest and I heard her muffled sniffs. “No, you wouldn’t have. If you hadn’t found me you wouldn’t have known to regret.”
I nodded. “I would have known. Maybe not who. Definitely what. No girl has ever made me feel the way you do, doll.”
Doll—that made her laugh even through crying. “Don’t call me that, you frustrating boy.”
I kissed her nose. “I promise never again so long as you don’t ever call me Jackie.”
More laughter.
Louder.
Good.
I kissed her on the head. “Wait here. I’m going to grab some things from my room. I’ll be right back.”
Her brows puckered. “No, don’t leave. Just get me away from here.”
“I will, Lena. But for now you have to wait here.”
I closed the car door, went back into the house, and before Gloria’s disbelieving eyes, I packed some clothes, my hidden stash of cash, and the few keepsakes that mattered to me into a suitcase.
“Tell my dad goodbye for me,” I said.
“Jack, you can’t do this. You can’t throw away your future for that girl!”
I grabbed my guitar, and as Gloria tried to block me from leaving, I brushed past her out of the house, fully intending never to return.
Chapter Thirteen
That night in bed I only held her. Lena’s mood was so sad it made her feel fragile. Touching her body, loving her with mine, didn’t seem the right move.
I tightened my arms around her. “I don’t want you to leave tomorrow. Stay with me, Lena.”
Her hair fluttered against my chest as she did a tired shake of the head. “I can’t, Jack. Don’t ask me to. Gloria was right. I’m so ashamed. I shouldn’t even let you stay the night.”
“Gloria has never been right about anything in her life,” I countered firmly. I placed a finger on Lena’s chin, tilting her face so she had to look at me. She’d hardly done that since we’d returned to the room. “I’m not saying never go back to New York, Lena. I’m saying not yet. I want you to drive back, across country, with me.”
Her brow puckered in consternation. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m leaving here. I already told you that. Harvard next month, remember? I was going to drive across country with my best friend, George. It’s been planned for over a year, only I want to do it with you instead.”
“Oh, Jack.” She laid her cheek on my chest. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it would be wrong. I’ve done enough wrong things as it is. I don’t need to add to them.”
Now I was angry.
I moved until we were no longer touching and I was sitting beside her. “If you are talking about you and me, then that’s the first stupid thing I’ve ever heard you say. I make my own decisions. Remember? You haven’t done anything that I didn’t intend. Don’t you know what you are to me?”
She stopped my words with the press of her hand.
“Don’t say it. I couldn’t bear it now.”
“Not saying it isn’t going to change a thing. I’m in love with you, Lena. You must know that.”
Her dark orbs clouded over. “Don’t say words that will hurt us both.”
I climbed from the bed. “God, you’re a frustrating woman. And damn, don’t tell me not to say I love you.”
She sat up, posture elegant and composed with that deviant lift of her chin. “Fine. You love me. What then?”
I gaped at her, confused. “What then?”
She stared up at me with stricken brown eyes. “I love you. You love me. What then? What do you think is going happen with that?”
Fuck, I didn’t know. My words were streaming one step ahead of my thoughts, but I did know I didn’t want this night to be the end.
I studied her, silent, not knowing what to say.
She looked away. “Just what I thought.”
My temper flashed. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Her chin inched higher in the air. “It means you want what you want the way you want it, like all men. You want me here in bed. You want me beside you in the car. You want me when you want me but that’s it.”
That I didn’t have the first clue what she was saying, or what she was hoping I would say, didn’t change how much her words hurt me.
“What I’m saying is you’re my girl, Lena,” I said heatedly. “No one hurts you. No one offends you. No one disrespects you. And you’re not going anywhere, ever again, without me.”
Tears dribbled down her cheeks. “Oh, Jackson, you are a dreamer. Nothing in life is that simple.”
“Everything in life is that simple. Life is simple if you let it be. Let it be for us, Lena.”
Her body did a small shimmy—half laugh, half cry—then she eased in to me. “Have you thought about your friend George? What he’ll think of you dumping him for me? Friendships are important. If the past few months have taught me anything, it’s how important good friends truly are.”
My gaze bore into her. “Not as important as you. Besides, George’s parents are rich like Rockefellers. He’s not going to have any problem getting a plane ticket to Cambridge. In fact, he’d probably prefer it. H
e wasn’t hot on the idea of being trapped in a car for weeks with me.”
This time only laughter, and her arms slipped around my waist. “I don’t know if I should want that either. You don’t make it sound at all inviting.”
More husky laughter and it ran my tense body, brushing aside the worry in my limbs.
“Are you saying you’ll consider it, Lena?”
“I’m saying that I want to, and that I shouldn’t, and that I’m not going to the airport tomorrow. After that, who knows?”
Relief shot through me, though it shouldn’t have, because she’d only left us at not a definitive ‘no.’ But she was staying, for a while anyway, and I could change her mind before I had to go. I was certain of that.
I slipped back beneath the blankets and took her up against me. “Let me love you, Lena.”
She kissed my chest above my heart. “Why is that so important to you?”
“I don’t know. It only is.”
“You shouldn’t love me at all. You hardly know me. You may not like me. I’m not always a good person, whereas you, Jack, you’re always a good man.”
I changed the subject. “We’ll have fun together. A trip of a lifetime with the girl of a lifetime.”
She shook her head, exasperated. “Always quick and always the right, charming thing to say.”
I dragged her atop my body and began working the nightgown from her shoulders. “Was it good enough”—I kissed the rise of her breasts—“to get you”—I closed my mouth briefly around a hardened rosy tip—“to make love to me?”
Her hips moved against me, stroking my erection with her velvety warmth as her mouth claimed my lips. “It’s good enough, Jack, to keep me with you forever.”
I turned her beneath me on the sheets and devoured her in a way I hoped consumed her as much as she consumed me.
~
“Look here. That’s all the places we’re going to travel to. Everything I ever wanted to see. It’s all mapped out. I am disciplined at times. I’m disciplined in my travel planning.”
She looked up from the road atlas I’d retrieved from my car, her eyes glowing impishly.
“You’ve become disciplined in other things as well, Jack. Very, very disciplined…”
She pounced on me, sending us back to the floor in laughter and kisses.
I brushed her curls back from her face. “It’s all planned out. All you have to do is say yes and come along for the journey.”
She sighed, as though still considering it, but she wasn’t fooling me. She’d missed her flight Wednesday. We’d spent another two days together at the Biltmore. She was going to leave here with me tomorrow, I was positive of that, and she would just continue to be difficult until she climbed into the car. I was certain of that as well.
Lena needed her air of mystery, even in things that held none. Her being with me was not a mystery but a forgone conclusion.
Her continued show of being difficult didn’t bother me. It was her. And I loved her exactly as she was.
“Happy one week anniversary,” I said, kissing her.
When she lifted her face, her eyes were shimmering. “No. It hasn’t been a week. Only six days. I don’t count Friday. I hadn’t made up my mind about you yet.”
“Well, I do count Friday because you made up your mind before we left the theater.”
She made an annoyed face that came off as something sweet from her. “You think you know everything.”
“No, I don’t. I want to know everything with you.”
She stared down at me and I was pretty sure I was smiling like a love-struck imbecile.
Her expression softened with the glow of her eyes as her face lowered to mine. “Happy one week anniversary, Jack.”
“Oh, better than happy,” I said between kisses as I molded her curves into me.
We were undressed in bed, slowly stoking our senses in the glorious build upward into joining bodies, when there was a loud knock on the door. No, correction—someone was in the hallway pounding a fist against wood. That’s what it sounded like.
She startled and pulled away from me. “No, no, no, no, no,” she whispered, her body quaking from fear.
I missed both the rapid change of her expression and definitely the dread in her voice in that moment. I was reaching for my pants, not looking at her.
“I’ll get rid of them,” I said. I stared irritably into the sitting room. The banging hadn’t paused for a second. “Jeez, what is their problem?”
She grabbed my arm. “No, Jack, stay here. I’ll go. I’ll take care of it.”
I frowned. “Like hell you will. Whoever that is is getting a mouthful from me.”
“No!” She had already pulled her nightgown in place and was frantically looking around the room for the thick, white complimentary robe. “Just let me take care of this, Jackson. Please.”
Jackson. Christ, what was happening here? She was distraught in a way I’d not seen before.
With her palms on my chest she moved me back toward the bed, and then fled to the door. She paused to look back at me. “Whatever you hear, promise me you’ll stay in the bedroom, Jackson. Promise me, please?”
What she wanted made no sense and neither did the frantic look in her eyes.
“I can’t promise you that—”
“If you love me like you say you do, if you want to be with me as you say you do, then do as I ask. Whatever happens, stay in the room.”
She slammed the door closed between us, and I paced in circles, not sure what to do next. Staying behind while she dealt with whatever this was seemed like a cad move. It didn’t matter that it was what she wanted, something very wrong was happening here, but when I heard raised voices—a male voice—nope, not even for Lena was I going to hide in the bedroom as she’d asked me to.
I charged out of the room, ready to protect her, and had the wind knocked out of me before I could say word one.
“Please, Papa. Don’t say that! How could you do this? How could you come here?” Lena said despondently.
A man with black hair and an olive complexion, unmistakably her father, stood rigid in a dark suit, his face enraged.
“Mrs. Parker called me, as she should have, and I caught the first flight here. Damn it, Lena, not again. How could you do this again?”
Tears of mortification streamed down her cheeks. “I’m not doing anything wrong. I have a right to a life. I have a right to a boyfriend. You have no right—”
He angrily tossed his hat into a chair. “From what I hear, boy is accurate. Does he know about you? Have you even been honest with him?”
Those words landed like knives in her; with each one she cringed and jerked a little. That was it.
“I know everything about your daughter, sir,” I said, my voice simmering with anger. “And I’m in love with her.”
Instead of calming him, it kicked up his fury. He pointed a finger at me. “Oh, I bet you are. I bet you’re feeling like quite the stud today, exactly how she intended. I can see I got here not a moment too soon.”
“Don’t talk to him that way,” Lena cried fiercely. “If you listened you’d know you are wrong about everything. This and how you treat me. You’re smothering me. I know that’s not what you think you’re doing, you think you’re protecting me, but I don’t need you taking care of me, Papa. Not any longer.”
“Who else do you think is going to take care of you, girl? Him? You are twenty-three years old. You’ve ruined your career already once over one man. You haven’t any money. Nowhere to live. I took you back when most fathers wouldn’t. Who else do you have to take care of you except me?”
Twenty-three? I almost missed it in all that was happening—Christ, even her age had been a game of her own amusement—but watching Lena’s dignified posture slowly collapse, I didn’t care that she lied. I wanted only to step in, protect her from her father, and take care of her. Always.
“I’m marrying your daughter,” I said, perhaps foolishly, into the tense silence.
“And there is nothing you can do about that, sir.”
“No, you are not,” her father announced stiffly. “You are going home, Jackson Parker, and my daughter is going back to New York with me.”
“I think that’s a decision your daughter should make,” I countered.
Walter’s harsh black eyes locked on Lena. “You’ll do as I say this time, Lena. Your own judgement has already proved disastrous to you once. Jackson Parker isn’t going to be any more of a promising future than Gustavo Reyes was. If you don’t walk out that door with me today I’m washing my hands of you forever. You can’t defy me a second time and run home to me again. I won’t forgive you a second time, Lena.”
She lowered her gaze from her father, and it was worse when she didn’t look at me.
“You’re being horrible. Simply horrible,” she sobbed, running from the room.
The bathroom door slammed shut.
I stood in the crackling tension, staring at Walter Mansur and not knowing what to do next.
He sank down on a chair and pulled a silver case from his pocket. He took out a cigarette and lit it.
“Your mother says you’re a well brought-up young man with a promising future. I can see that’s the truth. You may hate me right now, but I promise you, boy, I did the best thing anyone could ever do for you today.”
I hated him for that, in a way I knew would remain for the rest of my life.
“You don’t know anything about me, sir. Not if you think I’m leaving Lena with you.”
He looked unconcerned with my pronouncement. “You’re not doing anything of the kind. It was her decision. She’s already made it. Why do you think she ran from the room rather than face you and say goodbye directly to your face? She’s a smart girl and she knows the smart move.”
I was unwilling to believe that, even if a part of me was in agony that it might be true.
“Still, I won’t go without speaking with her first—”
“Get out of here before I call the cops on you,” he warned viciously. “I don’t give a damn that your father is a senator. I’ll do it. Don’t push me. This ends now. Forever. Go before I change my mind how I want to deal with you.”
My heart felt like it’d been ripped from my chest, as though nothing was beating there. I couldn’t imagine walking away from Lena. Not at his order. But I also couldn’t dismiss the suspicion that he’d spoken the truth. She had already chosen her father over me.
