Straightening out the bedding he checked the room once more. Satisfied it was presentable and welcoming he turned and headed back down the stairs. As he opened the door which led out onto the street he heard the door leading to one of the bedrooms slam shut and he paused, turning back to glance up the darkened staircase as he held his breath.
Nothing.
Sighing in relief he stepped out and locked the door behind him. He hurried the few paces back to the entrance to the pub, as he’d forgotten his jacket and it was beginning to snow again. He slipped inside and was greeted with a rush of warm air. Relaxing he glanced around, noticing that the room was full, packed with customers. Nate, his newest bartender, nodded in acknowledgment as he finished building a pint of Guinness.
Jackson moved through the pub, stopping to chat comfortably with his regulars. He’d almost made it across the room when he heard his name and turning around he saw Roni as she wound through the tables and headed toward him.
‘Jackson.’
‘Roni love,’ he smiled as he retrieved the keys from his pocket. ‘I’ve just finished up with the guest room, it’s all yours.’
‘Thanks,’ she breathed a little breathlessly. ‘I haven’t stopped all day, there’s still so much to arrange.’
‘Don’t run yourself ragged darlin’, you should slow down some.’
‘I haven’t got time,’ she shook her head; ‘he’ll be arriving in the morning.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Dominik, that’s Dominik with a ‘k’ …Savage,’ she grimaced, ‘and he is by the way.’
‘Is what?’
‘Savage.’
‘Sounds charming,’ Jackson’s mouth curved.
‘You have no idea,’ she breathed heavily. ‘I’ve spent all day on the phone trying to accommodate his ridiculous demands.’
‘What demands?’
‘His room has to be exactly 26 degrees, it has to stock only Voss water and he has to have an orthopedic pillow with a blue pillowcase. There can be no plants in his room and he needs an air purifier.’
‘Seriously?’ Jackson’s brow rose. ‘I think I can accommodate you on the blue pillowcase, but as to the rest…’
‘Don’t worry, I have everything in my car,’ she sighed.
‘He’s a bit of a diva, is he?’
‘You have no idea,’ she shook her head, ‘the man is a nightmare.’
‘Why are you bothering then?’ Jackson asked in amusement. ‘Let him get his Voss somewhere else.’
‘I can’t,’ she replied frustratedly. ‘His good opinion is hard to earn which is why he’s so respected. If he says a place is worth visiting people flock to it like a swarm of locusts.’
‘Not a good analogy, locusts devour everything in their path.’
‘Okay, not locusts,’ she agreed, ‘but the economy is hitting the town hard. Tourism is down, especially after the murders last year. We need them if the town is going to survive. Trust me on this one, we need Dominik Savage’s blessing.’
‘If you say,’ he replied easily. ‘Let me know if I can help you with anything else.’
She checked to make sure no one was listening and leaned in close, her voice almost a whisper.
‘There hasn’t been any more paranormal activity, has there?’
‘Actually, it’s been blessedly quiet today.’
‘Good,’ she breathed in relief. ‘If it can just hold off a couple more days until I can get him and his orthopedic air purifier into the hotel.’
‘I think you’ll find that’s an orthopedic pillow.’
‘See?’ she rolled her eyes and sighed again, ‘he’s not even here yet and I’m already a basket case. You know I think I’ll take Cally up on her offer to visit her in the Caribbean this summer. I need a break.’
‘Cally?’ Jackson cast his mind back, ‘the dark-skinned beauty who was curating the exhibit on loan a couple of months ago?’
‘Yeah,’ Roni nodded non-committedly. After all Jackson didn’t know that Professor Cally Atlass, Curator of the traveling exhibit of magical artefacts from the Caribbean, was in actual fact the Goddess Calypso.
After that night in the woods when Olivia had finally found the Hell book, Infernum, she’d become very close to Calypso. After she’d returned to her native country the month before, she’d kept in touch with Roni. For some reason, the Goddess seemed to have taken a great interest in her.
‘You should,’ Jackson nodded. ‘I traveled some before I settled in Mercy and spent some time in Barbados. It’s a different pace is island life and would do you some good; you work too hard.’
‘It’s not work when you love what you do,’ she smiled sincerely.
‘Amen,’ he nodded, ‘but I must go. Shelley is still not fully recovered, and she’s been watching Miller. If I know my boy he’ll be hungry by now and screaming bloody murder.’
‘Thanks for this,’ she shook the keys at him. ‘I really appreciate it.’
‘No problem,’ he nodded before disappearing through the back.
He hurried up the stairs toward his apartment. He hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d told Roni Miller would be playing up merry hell. He was a demon when hungry and overtired. Jackson glanced down at his watch and grimaced. He’d taken much longer than expected cleaning the guest room and then being held up talking to everyone in the pub. He should’ve just gone around the back to the employee entrance.
Cursing himself he opened the door to the apartment and stopped dead. Miller’s highchair was pulled out from the table and still covered in the remains of what looked like spaghetti, his sippy cup on the floor. Shelley had obviously fed him, but it wasn’t the mess which had him frozen to the spot and staring.
Shelley was curled up on the couch with Miller in her lap. His skin was flushed pink and clean, he was dressed in his favorite pajamas, his blonde curls still slightly damp from his bath. His eyes were closed, one small hand wrapped around his bottle as he sucked it quietly and the other hand twirled a lock of Shelley’s long blonde hair comfortingly as she read to him in a low soothing voice.
Jackson’s heart did a long slow roll in his chest as he saw the woman he’d craved for so long, caring lovingly for his child. His mind may have been shrieking all kinds of warnings at him, but he wasn’t listening. His heart was once again playing a different tune, one only Shelley held the lyrics to.
5.
Shelley glanced up and saw Jackson standing in the doorway, looking at her strangely. She smiled softly at him and lifted her finger to her lips. She looked down at Miller; his bottle had slipped from his mouth and he was now snoring softly. Closing the book and laying it down on the couch beside her, Shelley removed his bottle and placed it on the coffee table before tucking her arms under him and lifting him gently.
Jackson watched as she moved carefully and quietly into Miller’s room to settle him in his crib. Unsettled, he stepped into the room and allowed the door to click closed behind him as he walked over to the highchair and picked up Miller’s cup. In the kitchen he ran the water for the dishes and busied himself cleaning up the remnants of his son’s meal, as much to give himself something to do as to clean the mess. He was just drying the plate and stacking it back in the cupboard when Shelley wandered into the room.
‘Oh hey,’ she replied quietly, her voice still a little rusty but almost back to normal, ‘I was just about to do that.’
‘It’s no trouble,’ he shook his head, his thoughts still preoccupied. ‘It’s the least I could do as you fed and bathed him. I didn’t mean to be so long; I certainly didn’t intend for you to have to put him to bed.’
‘I don’t mind,’ she smiled, ‘besides, you know what he gets like when he’s not fed on time.’
‘Aye,’ Jackson murmured as he stared at Shelley thoughtfully.
‘What?’ she blinked, rubbing her face, ‘do I have spaghetti on my face?’
‘No,’ his mouth curved, ‘Miller t
hrowing his food again?’
Shelley shook her head and laughed. ‘He kept trying to offer me mouthfuls of it; I managed to dodge most of them.’
‘He does like to share.’
‘Seriously,’ she tilted her head as she watched him, ‘what’s wrong? You’ve got something ticking over in that brain of yours.’
‘I need to ask you something.’
‘You want to know what’s going on with me and Stu?’ she guessed, blowing out a resigned breath. ‘I guess it’s time, and you may as well bring the wine as this may take a while.’
Jackson turned and pulled out a bottle of Shelley’s favorite from his own private stash while Shelley retrieved a couple of glasses and headed back into the other room. By the time Jackson had poured her a glass and handed it to her, she was nestled into the couch with her feet tucked comfortably under her.
‘So?’ Jackson took a seat next to her.
‘I guess it’s pretty obvious Stu and I are no longer together. Well, technically we’re not officially over as we haven’t spoken since the night I got sick.’
‘Why don’t you start from there.’
‘I went home,’ she stared into her glass, ‘feeling miserable and sick. All I wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep, but when I got home I found Stu in our bed with someone else, some woman he works with I think.’
Jackson’s knuckles whitened as he gripped his glass tightly.
‘He cheated on you? After stealing your money to buy himself a fancy new car?’
‘Yeah,’ she snorted humorlessly before taking a sip of her wine, ‘so I walked out. I haven’t spoken to him yet, but it’s over, I’m done.’
‘Shelley,’ Jackson placed his glass down on the table. ‘I’m sorry… I’m sorry you were hurt but I’m not sorry it’s over. He never deserved you.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Not what?’ he frowned in confusion.
‘Hurt,’ she confessed quietly, ‘I’m not hurt. Isn’t that awful? I was with him for nearly ten years. I’m angry, I’m humiliated, I’m embarrassed but when I try to reach past all of that for the pain, the hurt, the heartbreak, it’s not there.’ She looked up at him with tired eyes, ‘do you want to know what I felt, when I realized it was over, that there was no going back?’
‘What?’ Jackson asked softly.
‘Relief,’ she whispered, ‘I felt relieved. Does that make me a bad person?’
‘No,’ he frowned ‘why would it?’
‘Because the truth is, I’ve known for a long time it was over and I should’ve walked away.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘Why didn’t I?’ she repeated as she leaned back into the couch and took another sip of her wine. ‘That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?’
He watched her silently as she laid her head back against the cushion and stared up at the ceiling.
‘I told you about my sister?’
Jackson nodded. ‘She died, when you were younger.’
‘Yes, but that’s not all of it,’ she lifted her head and turned to look at him. ‘Jenna, she was older than me, sixteen to my eleven. I worshiped her, just like everyone else. She was perfect,’ Shelley shook her head, ‘at least that’s how she seemed. She was so beautiful, so graceful and kind.’
‘Sounds like someone else I know,’ Jackson murmured.
Shelley snorted in amusement.
‘Trust me I’m a poor imitation,’ she sipped her wine.
‘What happened to her?’ he asked curiously. ‘You never liked to talk about her and I didn’t like to ask.’
‘She killed herself,’ Shelley replied quietly, ‘the night before her seventeenth birthday. I was the one who found her.’
‘Jesus,’ he swore.
‘She climbed into the bathtub and slit her wrists.’
‘Shelley,’ Jackson gazed at her in horror, ‘and you found her like that?’
She nodded slowly, her eyes distant and her voice numb.
‘I couldn’t even tell it was water in the bath,’ she murmured, ‘there was so much blood.’
She turned to look at Jackson; his blue eyes were wide with worry for her she realized, and something in her warmed.
‘I always thought she was so perfect, but I never bothered to look beneath the surface, to look past the mask she wore. If I had maybe I would’ve seen how much pain she was in, maybe I could’ve helped.’
‘Shelley love, you were just a child yourself.’
‘Not after that night,’ she shook her head, ‘that night everything changed. My parents, they… they didn’t take Jenna’s death well. My father left six months after it happened, and I never heard from him again. I guess…I guess he couldn’t live with the constant reminder of the daughter he lost. She was his favorite, she was everyone’s favorite.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true.’
‘It is,’ she smiled sadly, ‘but it’s okay. The truth is she was my favorite too. She was my everything. She used to sit on the edge of my bed and stroke my hair while she told me about her day.’
‘What about your mother?’ Jackson asked.
‘Mama?’ Shelley laughed self-deprecatingly, ‘she wasn’t any better at dealing with Jenna’s death than Dad was but at least she stuck around. I suppose I should be grateful for that at least. She kept a roof over my head even if she didn’t do anything else.’
Jackson watched her silently.
‘Mama liked to self-medicate the pain away,’ Shelley told him. ‘She was never really there after that, mentally anyway. Physically she sat in her chair in front of the TV and smoked, living off welfare checks. Before Jenna died we lived quite well. We had a nice home and family vacations. After Jenna, well once Dad left it was like the straw that broke the camel’s back. Mama was no longer capable of holding down a job. We moved into a double-wide on the bad side of town and I grew up fast.
I had to make sure I was fed, I tried to get mama to eat but she never had much of an appetite. I went to school hungry more often than not. I stayed in school as long as I could but eventually I had to drop out and get a job to support us. All the welfare checks were going on mama’s habit, there was no money for food or bills. I knew we were going to end up homeless unless I did something about it. I got a job at an all-night market, stacking shelves and then eventually on the cash register. That’s when I met Stu. Well I kind of already knew him. He was the year above me in school, good looking, played basketball, hung around with all the popular kids. I wasn’t even in the same social stratosphere as him. At school I was tall and gangly for my age.’
‘I bet you were a looker even then,’ Jackson smiled.
‘The hell I was,’ she laughed softly, ‘I was like a damn gazelle, all legs. I didn’t fit in, but I didn’t have time to worry about it. I had other things to worry about like whether or not I was going to get home from school and find my mom od’d on the couch.’
‘Shelley,’ Jackson shook his head, ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It was what it was,’ she shrugged, ‘it was my reality, so when Stu strolled into the market and paid me attention I lapped it up,’ she glanced over to Jackson. ‘I was so lonely,’ she whispered, ‘I had friends, but I stopped seeing them when I dropped out of school. I had nothing in common with them.’
‘So, you and Stuart started dating?’
Shelley nodded.
‘He wasn’t always a selfish ass you know,’ she replied softly, ‘he was a good guy. He saved me when I needed saving. In those early years he loved me, and I loved him. Because of him I was able to go back to school and graduate. I don’t know where we went wrong. I guess somewhere along the line we just stopped seeing each other. In the end we wanted different things. I wanted a simple life, a home and a family.’
‘Security.’
‘Yes,’ she nodded, ‘but Stu wanted something bigger, grander. He wanted to be important.’ She let out another sigh, ‘I guess we’re both
partly to blame, neither of us wanted to let go but neither of us held on either.’
‘I can understand why you stayed,’ Jackson finally understood. ‘You couldn’t let go of the man you fell in love with, the man who saved you, even if that wasn’t who he was anymore.’
‘I guess,’ she frowned, ‘when you put it like that.’
‘Shelley, you need to talk to him face to face.’
‘I know,’ she nodded slowly, ‘I just haven’t got it all figured out yet. The tenancy is up on the house in a few months, so I’ll have to let that go. I no longer have any savings and I still have my medical bills to pay.’ She rubbed her hand over her face tiredly. ‘You know, I thought by now I’d be getting married and having babies. I never thought I’d be starting over again with nothing.’
‘Not nothing,’ Jackson replied as he watched her carefully, ‘you’ll stay here as long as you need.’
‘Jackson I can’t impose like that, there’s not enough space in here.’
‘There’s plenty of room. For now, I’ll have the pull-out bed I put in Miller’s room and if you want to stay longer, I’ve been thinking for a while of knocking back through into the guest rooms and making them part of the apartment again.’
She blinked, watching him silently.
‘Are you sure?’ she finally asked.
‘I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t,’ he answered. ‘Now, can I ask you something else, something personal?’
She nodded slowly.
‘What are these medical bills you mentioned?’
She stared at him, her expression guarded.
‘Are you sure you want to know?’
A Little Town Called Mercy Page 10
