“What’s this?” I picked up the envelope that I dropped in my mini-freak-out and handed it to him.
“My half of the house. She sold it and our divorce decree stated I got half. This is it.”
“Why wouldn’t you want your own money?” I balked.
He shrugged. “Guess I just didn’t want to deal with her. It’s hard enough dealing with my brother.”
“Now, son…” Marco tried to enter the conversation but Jonah shook his head.
“Dad, don’t.” His words were firm and succinct.
His father shockingly pressed his lips together for a moment. “Your ma’s got dessert going. Wants to wow Simone with her chocolate cheesecake. You okay to stay for dessert and a cuppa?”
Jonah sighed. “Yeah, Dad, cheesecake would be great. Thanks. We’ll be right in.”
His dad left the room and Jonah looked at me. I lifted my hands to his face and cupped his cheeks. “I’m serious about beating her up. We can call it temporary insanity from the other night. They would totally let it slide.”
That had my guy smiling. “You are too much. What am I going to do with you, huh?”
“Um, feed me cheesecake?”
“Uh huh.” He hooked me around the shoulders.
“Kiss me?”
He laid a hot one on my neck and I sighed.
“Fall madly in love with me so that you never want to kiss or look at another woman ever again?” I batted my eyelashes and grinned wide.
He laughed. “Maybe.” He said the one word the same way he did when I asked him to kiss me on the ferris wheel, and that ride went smashingly so I figured I had a good start toward more.
“Maybe’s good.”
Jonah opened the door to his home and led me inside. His mood had been sullen ever since bitch-face Helen had come knocking.
I followed him and set my purse on the kitchen bar. Jonah didn’t speak, just went straight to a cabinet and pulled down a bottle of whiskey. “Drink with me on the patio?”
“Sure.” I leaned over the bar and watched him take out two tumblers and fill both of them with two fingers of Jameson over ice.
Without a word, he passed me the drink, grabbed my hand, and brought me out the back door to a raised wooden deck. The yard was small but immaculately landscaped.
I sat down in a comfy-looking loveseat that had a dark red cushion. He sat his ass next to me and we both put our feet up onto the matching small ottoman.
“Amazing yard. Did you plant all of these?”
He sipped his drink and stared out at the variety of small bushes, trees, and flowers dotting the yard. “Nah. The house is Ryan’s. I moved in a little over a year ago when Helen and I separated. Just haven’t had the time to find my own place and since Ryan and I work together on the same team, it didn’t really matter. I pay half the bills which he uses as his play money. Not that he has much time to play but the man is social. Every minute we’re not working, he’s finding time to be out and about. Says he needs to soak up humanity and all the good there is in it otherwise he’d be swallowed by the horror we deal in day to day chasing serial killers and profiling criminals.”
“Sounds like a really hard job. You gone a lot?”
His body went stiff next to me. I reached for his hand and laced our fingers. We both held our drinks in the opposite one.
“Yeah, it’s part of the job.”
“Do you get to see anything?”
“In what way?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “Well, you know, if I had a job where I traveled, I’d be visiting all kinds of attractions, old relics, festivals, that kind of thing.”
He smiled softly and stared into my eyes. “I’m sure you would. We don’t usually have much time for that. When my team in the FBI is called in, it’s usually a bad situation. Multiple deaths, often across state lines. We get in, profile the criminal and work with local authorities. Once our job is done, we jet back home.”
“Like Criminal Minds?”
“Kind of, but that’s more glorified. Ryan and I are criminal profilers, but we have a bit broader scope. There are a lot of FBI offices. Ours is downtown Chicago but we could be called in for anything. Depends on the job. Sometimes we don’t travel for months because we can do a lot of things virtually. Meaning review case files across the nation and give feedback, act as consultant on criminal cases, and more I can’t really get into.”
“Meh, it’s okay. I don’t need to know everything. How long have you been working with Ryan?”
“Since the beginning. We were best friends in college, both transferred to Quantico, and have been paired up ever since. It’s been mostly luck that we’ve gotten to stay in the same branches.”
“What type of woman is he usually into?” I ask thinking about my sisters. He was super hot and I could see any one of them being into him.
Jonah dipped his head toward mine and cocked an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Because I’m a woman with seven sisters. A good man who’s hardworking and hot is hard to find.”
He chuckled. “He’s always dated a wide variety of women.”
“Does he date out of his race?”
For a minute he seemed to think about it. “Yeah.” He nodded. “Actually, I’ve seen more women of color leaving his bedroom in the morning than I have white women.”
I grinned wide. “That’s awesome. My sister Blessing is Black, but her preference is white dudes. She’s dated a few brothers in the past, but for some reason they’ve never had staying power. She’s also a fashion designer who travels all the time too so a man who traveled and was okay with his woman traveling too wouldn’t be a problem to her.”
Jonah ran his nose down my neck and I trembled, squeezing his hand. “And what about you? Do you have a problem with a man who travels for work?”
I licked my lips and I could have sworn his eyes dilated. “No. People have to do what they love. I’m always busy and if my man was gone, I’d take that time to do hobby-related things, spending time with my sisters and mom. I’m not exactly the type of girl who ties a man down. Nor do I sit still for long. I respect people for what they need to be who they are. And I expect that in return. Would you have a problem with the fact that I planned a vacation with my sisters, and you happened to be home that weekend?”
He shook his head. “Never.”
“And what about when you want to have children?”
That had him letting go of my hand and rubbing at his forehead. “I want children in the future. Helen wanted them right away after getting married. I wasn’t prepared to give them to her when we were twenty-five and just married. I was in the beginning of my career at the FBI and needed to put the time in to solidify my position. Something I’ve since done.”
“How long were you married?”
He groaned and cracked his neck. “Seven years. I’m thirty-three now.”
I curled my hand around his thigh appreciating the muscles flexing under my palm. “I can understand that. I’m twenty-seven. You’re the same age as my sister Sonia. And she doesn’t have kids or a husband yet. It’s okay to want to be settled in your life and career before bringing children into it.”
Jonah let out a long, weighted breath, then sipped more of his drink.
“What happened with Helen?”
He let his head fall back and sucked in a breath.
“Never mind. You don’t have to tell me. It’s none of my business. I’m being nosy.”
He turned his head and looked at me intensely, then kissed me, hard. He used his hand to hold my head in place. He didn’t take the kiss farther, or deeper, just a hard press of his lips as though he were trying to say something without using his words.
I sighed dreamily when he pulled back. “It absolutely is your business. If we’re starting something here, which it feels a hell of a lot like we are, you deserve to know what you’re getting yourself into.”
“Okay.” I pulled up my legs and turned sideways so I could sit cross-legged and focus
on him and him alone. “Lay it on me, I can take it.” I sucked back a huge swallow of whiskey and let it out. “Ahhhhhh. Ready.”
Jonah shook his head and laughed. “You amuse me. A breath of fresh air from what I’ve experienced in the past with women.”
I held up a finger. “First and foremost, you need to stop comparing me to other women. You already said it yourself. I’m not like other women. Part of that is because I’m me. The other is probably because I was raised in a house with eight other women including my foster mom. I have a super overbearing blood-related sister in Sonia, and I don’t remember much about my real parents, but I lived at Kerrighan House since I was six. All of those personalities in the same place, you learn to adapt and form your own path. Mine seems to be tolerance. I can handle just about anything people throw my way, unless it’s about my family. Then I turn into a raving lunatic. Oh, and when I’m confronted with a bitch-face ex that cheated on my new hot guy in the worst way possible.”
He snickered and tried to cover his response by sipping more whiskey. “Noted.”
“Since we got that out of the way, what happened with Helen?” I pressed my free hand back to his thigh to keep our connection close.
“You really aren’t bothered by the fact that I was married before?” His tone was one of awe.
“Nope. It’s in your past not your present. Can’t dwell on it now.”
He nodded but took his time before speaking. When he did it was a low, tired sound that made me wish we were lying in his big bed in the dark while he told me. Though sitting outside, drinking in the beautiful backyard and quiet of night wasn’t too shabby.
“Helen and I fell madly in love in college. I met her and Ryan around the same time. When I transferred to DC, she followed me and finished up her schooling there. We were married three years later after I’d completed my training and became a special agent. Ryan and I were both eager to get back to Chicago, as was Helen, so when positions opened up in Chicago, we applied and were lucky to both be accepted.”
“That is really cool that you get to work with your best friend.”
“It is. Ryan’s a great guy. Always been there for me. Especially after Helen cheated. Offering me a place to live with no end on that condition. If he doesn’t bring a woman into his life, I think he’d happily share a place with me forever.”
I grinned and ran my finger in squiggly designs down and around his thigh. “How did the Helen thing go down?”
His nostrils flared and his body went rigid once again. I unfolded my legs and got close, pressing my chin to his pec. He curved his free arm around my back and held me to his side.
“I’d been on an extra long case. Gone three weeks. It was brutal. The time away, the endless nights, sleeping on cots half the time in an FBI branch conference room. Remember the headlines about the couple who kidnapped two little kids, a brother and sister, and then killed them by pushing them over high cliffs in national parks?”
I lifted my head. “You worked that? My goodness, that’s horrible. Wasn’t it six pairs of children?”
“Yeah, though ten ended up dying. Two of the children, one boy and one girl from different families, survived the fall. They were able to tell us a little bit about the couple. After we were able to piece together a few sightings of the couple with the children, we were able to nail them down. They already had two more kidnapped kids in their RV when we found them.”
“Jesus, that had to be awful.”
“It was. It lasted what felt like forever. I didn’t get to call home often, but Helen knew the score. This was nothing new. The night we found the kids, I was desperate to get home. Hold onto my wife even though we’d been fighting nonstop for the six months prior to that. My heart was shredded, my mind filled with images of dead children and mourning families, and I wanted nothing more than to fill my mental tank with the goodness of home. So, I took the red-eye home. Didn’t call. She had no idea.”
“Honey…” I squeezed my arm around his middle and pressed my face into his chest, already expecting what was to come.
“I walked into the house and noticed the clothes all over the living room floor first. My wife’s. And a man’s. Like a dead man walking, I went straight to my bedroom. I’ll never forget the sound of hearing my wife in the throes of pleasure, screaming the name Luca as she orgasmed. I knew that sound. Had been hearing it for eight years when I made love to her.”
My eyes filled with tears, but I didn’t interrupt. I couldn’t. Something inside me knew he’d never told this story in detail to another soul. As much as I hated everything he was saying and what it cost him to say it, I knew I needed to listen. To be there for him in this moment so he could fully move on to the beauty that the two of us could have without this past transgression in the way of his happiness.
“I pushed open the door, watched as if I were outside of my body as she rode my brother. He then turned her over and fucked her sloppily and very hard. And I watched the entire thing as she came again screaming out like she only ever did with me when she was drunk and randy as fuck. Which is another thing. The room was pungent with the smell of liquor and sex. They’d been at it a while. It was my job to know these things. Take in a scene. Scents. Sounds. The little things you are trained to notice at a crime scene. Which is probably why I stood there until they finished. Then when my brother got off and fell on top of my wife, sated, I pounded on the door.”
“Jesus,” I whispered, still holding him tight around the waist, the tears tracking down my cheeks and wetting his shirt.
“The two of them were so far gone, their eyes glazed with booze and euphoria it’s like they didn’t even know what they were looking at. Until my brother’s eyes widened, he stared at me, then at Helen with horror in his face. And he said one word, as though it was torn from his throat. Brother.”
I closed my eyes imagining everything he said and feeling the intense waves of hurt flooding my entire being.
“I left without a word and crashed at a hotel. Drank myself into oblivion until the next day when I called Ryan. He picked me up and I moved into his spare bedroom.”
I pressed off his chest and looked into his eyes, while he reached for my glass and set both of them, now empty, on the side table. Then he cupped my cheeks and wiped away my tears with his thumbs.
“You crying for me, sweet girl?”
My lips trembled as more tears fell. “Yeah, because it was an incredibly sad story. I’m sorry you lived that, especially after all you dealt with on the case prior to it. To come home to that…” I shook my head and sniffed. “It’s inconceivable.”
He pressed his forehead to mine. “At the time, yeah, it was. Which is why I’m so fucked up about women. Especially women I’ve saved, since my ex-wife was one of them.”
I lifted my eyebrows in question.
He sighed deeply. “There was a party near campus. Ryan and I were there picking up girls, shooting drinks back. You know how it is.”
I nodded with a grin, wiping at my eyes.
“Some jock was out of his mind, having a bad trip on acid. He was dating Helen. She was fighting with him, telling him to stop freaking out and to calm down. The guy pulled a gun out of the back of his jeans and started shooting wildly screaming about people not being people but aliens from another planet. Then he pointed the gun at her head point blank and told her that her face was melting off before his eyes. Which I knew meant he’d lost it completely and was about to kill this woman in front of my eyes. Ryan and I ran up from the side and I tackled him and scrambled for the weapon. He got off a couple more shots but none of them hit anyone by the time that Ryan and I wrestled it away. The cops came and he was taken in and charged.”
“Holy shit. You’ve been through a lot.”
“Says the woman who lost her parents at a young age and was raised in foster care.”
“Sure, but I was loved and never part of anything like that, well, until the bad guy hid in the back of my car.” I frowned. “You have a k
nack for hooking up with damsels in distress, huh?”
He chuckled. “No. Just Helen and now you.” He ran his hand up and down my back then yawned.
“We could go to bed…” I bit down on my bottom lip and looked into his dark eyes as I reached my fingertips out and ran them across his sexy pout. “I’m certain we could find some other really wonderful things in order to make us both smile.”
He tunneled his hand through my long hair to curl around my nape. “I want to drown myself in you, Simone, let it all go, and live in the moment.”
“That sounds awesome.” I ran my finger down his chest until he gripped my wrist with his other hand.
“We gotta do this right. You need a little more time to process all that’s happened in the past three days. It wouldn’t be right for me to take advantage…”
“You wouldn’t be taking advantage. I want you.”
He smiled, dipped his head, and took my mouth in a brief, sweet kiss. “I know. And I want you. More than I’ve wanted another woman. I haven’t been with anyone since Helen and after just seeing her, reliving my story, I…”
I pressed my mouth to his, wrapped my arms around his neck, and tangled my tongue with his. We kissed for a long time, slowly and luxuriously. I plucked at his top lip and then bottom lip the same way he was so fond of nipping at mine. I rested my forehead against his as we both panted, taking in air.
“It’s okay. I get it. We have all the time in the world,” I reminded him. “I’m not going away. Well, eventually you and Ryan and the team will catch the bad guy and I’ll be in my own place. Though it won’t be that apartment, I can tell you that much right now.”
“Simone,” he cut me off.
“What?”
“Shut up and kiss me,” he teased and took my mouth in another blistering kiss.
“Howdy, kids,” Ryan’s voice came from the doorway behind us.
We both turned our heads and saw the man grinning, arms crossed, the fingers of one of his hands curled around the neck of a beer bottle.
“Your timing is impeccable…as always,” Jonah grumbled.
“Just wanted you to know that you’re needed for the meet up tomorrow morning at eight.”
Wild Child (A Soul Sister Novel Book 1) Page 10