PLAIN JANE EVANS
AND
THE BILLIONAIRE
(A Rags to Romance Book)
BY
MALLORY MONROE
Copyright©2020 Mallory Monroe
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This novel is a work of fiction. All characters are fictitious. Any similarities to anyone living or dead are completely accidental. The specific mention of known places or venues are not meant to be exact replicas of those places, but are purposely embellished or imagined for the story’s sake. The cover art are models. They are not the actual characters.
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ALSO BY
MALLORY MONROE
THE RAGS TO ROMANCE SERIES:
BOBBY SINATRA: IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES
BOONE & CHARLY: SECOND CHANCE LOVE
PLAIN JANE EVANS AND THE BILLIONAIRE
ALSO BY MALLORY MONROE:
ROMANCING MO RYAN
AND
MAEBELLE MARIE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
Now they loved her. At least that was what they were telling themselves. That they loved her. That twelve years of their sadistic behavior came down to now, on the eve of her departure, as they sat around their dining room table pronouncing their love for her.
Janet Evans sat around that table, too, and listened as the Henleys of Cope County, Oklahoma went on and on about their “affection” for her. From the father to the mother to the daughter and son, they all insisted they were the best thing that ever happened to her and leaving them would be the biggest mistake of her life. They spoke as if she would be leaving paradise. She felt as if she was leaving prison.
They took her in when she was six years old after her kind-but-old foster mother died and the State determined that her kind-but-old foster father was too ill-suited to care for a six-year-old little girl. And back then Janet was so small she looked like she was three. “He wouldn’t know what to do with a fragile little girl like you,” she remembered one social worker telling her. “If his temper riled up and he put a belt to you, he could harm you something terrible,” she also said, which even back then was ludicrous to Janet. Mo Riley, her then-foster-father, was the sweetest man on the face of this earth. He wouldn’t harm a flea.
But they wouldn’t listen to a six-year-old who’d only been in Mo Riley’s household for two short years after her last foster parents didn’t want her anymore. She knew what manner of good man Mo was. But they figured they knew better. After Mo’s wife died, a large social worker with flat, runover shoes took her out of his home anyway.
At the time there was a county-wide decree that said orphans should be placed with relatives as a first result and foster care placement should be the absolute last result. They even agreed to pay the families to take their own relatives in. And that was how it all came together. When Mo Riley’s wife died, the county searched under every rock for relatives, no matter how despicable those relatives were, and out of the woodwork came the Henleys. Ma Henley was a distant cousin of Janet’s deceased mother and she and her family, for that money the county was willing to give them, would be more than happy to take her in.
Now, twelve years later, Janet was eighteen and of legal age in the eyes of the law and was getting out when they needed her to stay. When, the way Janet saw it, they needed that monthly check to keep-a-coming.
“It’s a cruel and harsh world out there,” Pa Henley said. “You don’t know what you’re about to get yourself into, little girl. It’s cold outside.”
Janet looked at him. He was the head of the family, who always sat at the head of the table, but Ma Henley wore the pants. When Janet first came to the family and was treated like their slave rather than their relative, she remembered looking to the kindly-faced man to help her. He reminded her of Mo Riley, whom she was missing something fierce. But that help never came. Pa Henley was better than the rest of those Henleys. He would be the one to tell them when enough was enough. But he was terrible too.
Since she was six years old, she’d been with them. Since she was six years old, she’d been the outcast. The one that was forced to wash the dishes and do the laundry and sweep the floors and take out the trash and clean up the throw-up when one of the Henley children got sick. Those children were bigger than her. Boy Henley was older than her. But she had to do their cleaning too.
And it wasn’t up for discussion. Ma Henley would slap the fire out of her if she didn’t do her cleaning right, and they’d let Boy Henley kick her for no other reason than the fact that he liked kicking things. She’d kick him back every time he kicked her, but that didn’t sit well with either of the Henley parents. He'd run crying to them accusing her of abusing him and, for some inexplicable reason Janet could never understand, they believed him. They always believed that lying boy! And not only would Janet feel the wrath of Ma Henley, but on more than a few of her kick-backs it was Pa Henley himself who’d grab her and throw her down in their rat-infested basement, one of the few basements in all of Cope County, as punishment for defending herself. He’d defend her when his family’s mistreatment crossed way over the line, but nobody touched his boy and girl, he’d tell her.
And now they all were telling her to stay.
“What you need to do,” Boy Henley had the nerve to say, “is keep your scrawny butt right where you at. You’d be lost in the real world. What you gon’ do in that world outside? Why they’d eat you alive!”
That from the boy who liked kicking things so much that he killed the family dog, just by kicking him to death. But all he had to do was say Jane did it. She said she didn’t. No way would she harm that sweet dog. She was the only one crushed when he died. But Ma and Pa Henley believed their fat-faced bull
y boy the way they always did, and down in the basement Janet went. It started the first week of her arrival at their home and never let up, not ever, during the whole of her twelve years a slave.
From the moment she stepped foot into the Henley household they called her PJ, for Plain Jane, as Boy Henley mockingly informed her. “A face like a shovel, you’ve got,” was how he loved to describe her. “And with a laugh like a hyena.”
His mother was even more blunt. “You should be beautiful with your big hazel eyes most women would kill to have,” she’d say. “But all together it just don’t work for you.” And they called her many names to describe her features. Horse-face. Shit-face. Crack-Baby-face. Or they’d just call her Jane. But her name was Janet.
When tomorrow came, and she left those Henleys once and for all, she was determined to reclaim her name.
“It’s a cruel and harsh world you’re about to step out into,” Ma Henley said, joining in the chorus of the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t torch song too. And it was true that Janet knew how bad they were. She held no illusions about the fact that the Henleys were truly the devil she knew. But that unforgiving world outside, in their view, was worse.
“Ain’t no soft bed waiting for you,” Ma Henley continued. “Not here in Cope County it ain’t! Now you know that, Jane, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am, I know it.” They banged it into her head for years, as if they never wanted her servitude to end even back then. She had no choice but to know it. Problem was, she didn’t believe it.
When she first came to live with them, she would try her little backtalk and try to be sassy with her tongue. Mo Riley didn’t mind her speaking up for herself, and she had grown accustomed to talking back. But the first time she talked back in the Henley household, Ma Henley picked up that cast-iron rod and slammed it against her back, a hit so violent that it took her breath away and almost rendered her unconscious.
She learned a lesson that day.
She learned that those Henleys weren’t playing. She learned that she was smart enough to get herself into survival mode, and to stay in survival mode if she expected to get out of there alive. Her tongue lost its sassiness almost immediately after that cast-iron rod hit to the back, and it became completely compliant. Now, all those years later, it was like an echo chamber. Whatever they said was right. Whatever they did was right. She wasn’t rocking any boats. She wasn’t stirring any pots. That was her fate and she was determined to live through it, and get to the other side.
“People out of work out there,” Ma Henley continued to try and persuade her as they all sat around that dining room table having their last supper together. “People losing their homes and the shirts off their backs. It’s worse than the Great Depression ever was. And you going out to that? You’re just gonna be another poor black gal on the streets. Probably gonna have to do some horrible things with that body of yours just to get by. That’s what’s gonna befall you, child. It’s a cruel and harsh world you’re about to go out in.”
Janet kept eating slowly as she listened to all of their big talk. She nodded as if she agreed with every word they spoke and was extra careful to look at whomever was talking at the time. She learned that when she was six years old after that rod hit. Pretend they were the wisest people in the world with wisdom just dripping from their salty tongues and, if she did it just right, no hit or kick or slap or basement punishment would come her way. And most times it worked. But sometimes even that wasn’t enough.
And although she looked stone-faced as Ma Henley and the rest of the Henleys kept going on and on about that cruel and harsh world outside, she was so excited to be finally getting out of that prison that the idea of a cruel and harsh world sounded good to her!
Because she knew exactly why they were doing it. And it wasn’t about any affection or concern they held for her. It was all about the Benjamins. It was all about their lifestyle. If Janet left, those first-of-the-month county checks would be gone too. If Janet left, who was going to do all that cleaning for such filthy folks? Who was going to take out the trash? Boy Henley and Pa Henley were so lazy sometimes that both of them together wouldn’t make half a man. If Janet left, who was going to give Boy Henley a target to kick during those times when he’d get so enraged that his face would look contorted and he’d put a hole in the wall?
She remembered many times when the whole family would be in Walmart and he’d be screaming like a madman across the aisles just because a salesperson didn’t hurry over fast enough to tell him how much that video game cost. And then Ma Henley would start screaming at the salespeople, too, for not assisting her boy and start accusing them of running away rather than hurrying over to help their customers. And then the manager would rush over and make the whole family, including little Janet, leave.
But Boy Henley always got the last laugh. Before he left, he would take the whole bin of video games and knock it to the floor. Just tumble it over. That was how he was. And he’d be embarrassed when people looked at him like he was crazy with no home training, and then he’d go home and give Janet a black eye, taking his embarrassment out on her. And the Henleys, embarrassed by that whole shopping fiasco, too, would naturally blame Janet. “You saw how those white folks looked at us,” they’d say. And they said it as if those white folks were looking at them because of Janet, not because of their own insane behavior.
But Ma Henley was sitting at that dining room table talking as if all those twelve years of torture never happened. As if they never treated her as if a dirty rag held more promise. And they expected her to believe the world outside was the problem?
“Why don’t you stay here a little longer,” Ma Henley kept talking, feeding her fat face and her own delusions. “Just because you’re turning eighteen tomorrow doesn’t mean you have to leave at exactly that time. The county will keep paying for you to stay with us until you’re twenty-one, on account of you were an orphan, so I don’t see what’s all the rush. We’re your family, Jane. We’re the only family you got.”
Family? The way they treated her? She’d admit she didn’t know what it was like to be in a good family long term. She was placed in her first foster home when she was born. She moved from foster home to foster home and then, at the ripe old age of four, landed in a good one. But two years later, the old lady died. And they wouldn’t let the widower Mo Riley take care of her even though he was more than capable of doing so. So she ended up with the Henleys. And if family were people like them, she wanted no parts of family.
And that was why Janet kept on eating and listening. But never giving any opinion either way. She’d never been disrespectful to Ma Henley or Pa Henley in all the time she’d been in their house. Not because they deserved respect: they didn’t. But because the Good Book said it was wrong to disrespect your elders and Janet tried to live her life the right way. Even though it was a hard life to live. Even though many nights she cried herself to sleep wondering if trying to live right was even worth it. Wondering if she should just kill’em all and be done with it.
But she held on. She was terrified of the world outside. They made sure she’d grow up terrified of that world. But compared to life with the Henleys, she was convinced the world outside would be a piece of cake.
And they wanted her to stay? They actually believed she would stay? Janet was looking at them as she sat at that dining room table, listening respectfully to them, but what they didn’t realize was that she’d rather eat a skunk than stay with them.
“I hate to say this to you, Jane,” Ma Henley finally said, “and you know it’s coming from a place of love.”
Janet looked her big hazel eyes at Ma Henley and waited for her to say it. It was what the Henleys always reverted to whenever they wanted to really twist the knife.
“You’re a good girl,” Ma Henley said. “You always have been. But you’re so plain and ordinary-looking that beige is popping with color compared to you. And here in Cope County, no boy is gonna want somebody with
your limited resources in the beauty department. Let’s just be honest. Not when they can have their pick of the litter. Women outnumber men five to one in this town. What man’s gonna choose you? And what in the world is a girl like you gonna do without a man?”
Live. Work. Take care of my own self. Be free!
Janet wanted to say all those things to Ma Henley. They were just bubbling inside of her waiting to be released. But that wasn’t for anybody else to know. She didn’t say a mumbling word. She just kept on eating.
And Ma Henley kept on begging. She wouldn’t call it that. But Janet would. “The county only giving people like you that one-time payment of five hundred dollars when they turn eighteen and leave placement. That ain’t enough money to even get an apartment. How you gonna live? You’ll be homeless inside a week!”
What Janet may have lacked in the beauty department, she more than adequately made up in the brains department. She already was set up with a room in a boarding house that rented for fifty bucks a week. And she already had a job lined up, too, at a meat-packing plant that just hired a slew of workers. But she’d never tell the Henleys that.
Whenever Daughter Henley wasn’t at home, Janet would get on her computer, go to the password-protected account she had secretly created, and apply for jobs. One job interviewed her over Skype. It was a minimum wage job at that meat-packing plant in Cope, but when she got the email saying she was among the batch of applicants hired, it was as if she’d won the lottery. It felt that good.
And then the day arrived. Janet’s eighteenth birthday. Although the Henleys never let her go to school long enough to get a regular diploma like their children got, they did let her get her GED. And on that morning, on her birthday, she packed that GED and everything else she owned in the world, which was very little, and headed for the off ramp.
It should have been touching to her that the whole Henley family were all standing in the living room to see her off. After twelve years with those people? It should have been real touching.
Plain Jane Evans and the Billionaire Page 1