by Shae Mallak
"It's not ownership," he corrected, swiveling in his chair to glare at me.
I ignored him. "—and I just have to accept it? Like, until you decide you're bored of me or something? Will any future boyfriends have to ask your permission before dating me, too?" I cried indignantly.
"You won't be dating anyone," he growled. "And yes, my protectorship," he emphasized the term, "would continue in the event of a breach of contract until otherwise contested."
"Contested?" I frowned. "What do you mean? Like filing an appeal?"
"Your father," he sighed, pressing his fingers against his temples. "Can file a contestation to return rights to himself," he explained. "If he can prove he is, in fact, acting as protector and providing for you," he added with a scowl in my direction. "Or you can file it for yourself," he said reluctantly. "but you'd have to be completely on your own, without any outside help."
"So abandon my brother and sister to my debt-ridden father or deal with you the rest of my life," I translated, shooting him my best glare. I knew Jonah Carson was a manipulative man who twisted the laws to his favor, but using my family against me like that was low.
"If you want to see it that way," he replied with a shrug. My hand itched to slap him. "I told you," he continued seriously, "As long as you're under my protection I will take care of the twins. I thought you'd appreciate the loophole—even if Otto is an idiot and breaks his side of the contract, I am still legally obligated to provide and protect for you and the twins."
"Why on earth would you think I'd be happy about it?" I wailed. I tossed the contract onto his desk with a slap and threw my hands in the air emphatically. I really wanted to slap him. "Why would I be happy about being legally obligated to a man who is..." I struggled for the right word—something insulting enough and that would hit him where it hurts the most.
"Who's what?" he pressed, returning my glares with a dangerous one of his own. "I thought we were past name-calling, Evelyn."
I narrowed my eyes at him and weighed the pros and cons of slapping him across his left cheek. It would feel good for a second to see him flinch from the sting of my palm, maybe even leave a pink mark on his skin. But, I reminded myself, I would probably end up hurting my own hand as much as his face in the process. Was my own pain really worth it to see his? He scoffed, shaking his head at me like I was a child throwing a tantrum. Maybe I was. But he was an underhanded, scheming, son of a—
"Jackass!" I shouted at him and retreated to the only privacy his glass cottage had to offer. The bathroom.
I slammed the bathroom door with as much strength as I could muster. My anger was quickly fading into tears and I refused to let him see me cry. Jonah Carson had taken everything from me; I could at least keep my dignity. Not that slamming a door like a child was very dignified, but it was the best I could come up with under the circumstances. Storming off wasn’t really an option.
There was no lock on the door—of course, why would a bachelor need a lock on his bathroom door?—so I leaned against it, hoping Jonah wouldn’t try to force his way inside. I was no match against his biceps. I admittedly had stared at those bulging muscles enough in my limited time with Jonah to know his strength was well past my own. He looked like he could lift me off my feet with one hand without even a grunt of exertion.
I tried to take deep breaths to calm my frazzled nerves but my heart rate didn’t slow down and tears still stung my eyes. I had every reason to have a complete and total breakdown. After everything that happened in the last twenty-four hours, my life flipping upside down and turning inside out, any normal person would have already been crying for hours. Or something else normal, like trying to runaway or lashing out at my captor. Only he wasn’t really a captor, since I wasn’t being kidnapped. Even if it felt like it. And trying to hurt Jonah physically was nearly impossible, not to mention running away from him would only do me more harm than good. I read the contract closely enough to know that much.
I couldn’t believe my father had signed such a foolhardy document. It gave new meaning to the phrase, “signing your life away”. Only in his case, he dragged me down with him. What did he get himself into that was so terrible that taking Jonah’s agreement was the lesser of two evils? Jonah warned me before that I was better off not knowing—that whatever it was, it put Dad’s life at stake along with the lives of his children.
What was Jonah saving him from? Who was Jonah saving him from? I knew a few big names in the criminal world from my dad’s glory days as a lawyer—mostly the ones he put in prison—but the loan sharks, bookies, and gamblers weren’t the sort of people he took down back in the day, and they certainly weren’t the kind to make headlines in the local news. Even if they had given me a name, there was a good chance I wouldn’t recognize it anyway. Unless it wasn’t a no-name sleaze he owed. Would Dad be foolish enough to get mixed up with the same criminals he once prosecuted? Surely even he knew they wouldn’t exactly be thanking him for doing his job.
It didn’t matter anymore, I reminded myself. Whatever or whoever it was, they were paid off now courtesy of Jonah Carson. Dad would be rewarded with his life and a lifetime of debt to him—even if he did manage to repay the money, he would always be indebted to him for stepping in to save him in the first place.
And then there was my part in the entire fiasco. The rules of my captivity—I had to think of a different word for it, I thought—were still unclear. The official terms of the contract were clear enough. I would be given at least two family visits a year and in return he took care of my family in my absence. What that entailed I had no idea and I wasn’t really in the mood to ask him about it at the moment. Other than that, the only conditions were the vague “protectorship” term. At its most basic, he was legally obligated to protect and provide for me. But that could be interpreted many ways, and if I knew Jonah at all, he was bound to take full advantage of that fact. Like hauling me to a mountain cabin and locking me in a one-room house with him for months on end. It should be classified as cruel and unusual punishment.
But what else did he have in mind? Besides his not-so-subtle goal of getting me to sleep with him. Or, in his words, fall in love with him. Then why did he have to go to the trouble of the contract? If he was interested me, a normal person would ask me out on a date. Or ask me for my phone number. Not rope their father into giving them away as collateral on a loan. It was a little extreme, even for the scheming Jonah Carson. And it was a lot more permanent than a few dates or a one-night-stand. There was something deeper there, something Jonah wasn’t revealing. After all, one of the conditions to terminate the contract was agreeing to marry him. He was either a psychopath or he was hiding something. Something big. Lucky for me, it wouldn’t be easy to hide much in a one-room house made of glass.
Which, I reminded myself, was also unlucky for me. Jonah wasn’t the only one wanting to hide things. Particularly a few intimate things. Even if I changed clothes in the bathroom, what was stopping him from barging in anyway? Or sneaking a peak when I was showering? Not to mention, if I wanted to get a good night’s sleep any time soon I would most likely have to share a bed with the man. The man made my skin burn with a graze of a finger; I would be reduced to ashes if I attempted to sleep next to him!
I slid to the floor, my legs unable to hold me up any longer, and I tipped my head back, hitting the door with a thud as I groaned in frustration. How did so much change in so little time? Yesterday I was complaining about stress at work and trying to figure out how to get more hours at my second job to pay for the twins’ birthday and now I was… I was crying in Jonah Carson’s bathroom on the top of a mountain. Well, halfway up a mountain, technically.
Silent tears streaked my cheeks as I thought about everything I would miss now that I was Jonah’s living collateral. The twin’s tenth birthday in a few months, for starters. Their first day of middle school—or high school in a handful of years. Ava’s first crush or her first period—goodness, who was going to walk her through that one? Addis
’s first baseball game—or whatever activity he decided to do. I would miss watching them grow, watching them find themselves, helping them through their struggles with friends and school and…and life. I would miss all of it because my father was a terrible gambler!
“Evelyn?” Jonah knocked softly on the door as he said my name but didn’t attempt to open it. I didn’t answer him right away. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to him yet. If ever. “Are you okay?” he asked. Curse him, he sounded genuinely concerned, too. I groaned, debating whether to lie to him or to give him blunt honesty. He hadn’t exactly sugar-coated anything for me, so why was I considering doing it for him?
“No,” I growled back. My voice was gravelly and cracked, giving away the fact that I’d been crying. If he hadn’t already guessed. Silence followed and I wasn’t sure if he was still there or if he left me alone again. After about a minute, he spoke again.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
I was admittedly starving, but I wasn't ready to face Jonah again. Not yet. Obviously I couldn't hide in his bathroom forever, but I needed more than a few minutes alone with my thoughts before I could face him with any measure of calm or dignity. So I didn't answer him. Instead I shuffled over to the shower and turned it on full blast and leaned my back against the outside of the tub, listening to the water rain against the ceramic. I didn't need another shower, but I needed a noise buffer between Jonah and me. And the sound happened to be soothing. Like rainfall.
"Evelyn?" Jonah called again, knocking louder on the door.
"Later, Jonah," I growled at him. There was no more noise from the other side of the door and I assumed he left me alone. I wasn't entirely sure how long I was going to sulk in the bathroom and my frugal side felt bad about wasting all the water from the empty, running shower.
"Please, he can afford it," I scoffed to myself. "Maybe I'll just let it got for an hour and run up his bill. What's he gonna do? Kick me out?" I laughed at myself. "He can add it to the damn tab."
"Ev?" Jonah knocked twice on the door. I glared at it even though I knew he couldn't see me.
"What?" I snapped.
He inched the door open a little and stuck his hand through, holding a plate with a grilled cheese sandwich on it and two sandwich cookies. The yummy vanilla kind. I didn't move from my spot beside the tub. His arm lowered and set the plate on the floor then disappeared back behind the door, closing it with a soft click. He didn't say anything else and I didn't offer a thank you.
Why the hell did he have to be nice? It made it damn hard to stay good and mad at him when he was so...considerate. If he thought bribing me with cookies was going to get him on my good side, however, he was mistaken. It was going to take more than vanilla creams to win me over after everything he did. He would have to offer me the moon. Or a star. Or a whole damn constellation. That'd be cool. My own constellation.
Eventually I heard the sounds of Jonah back at work, yelling at several people on the phone about being behind schedule or late or something. I quietly crawled across the tiles and picked up the plate, sniffing at the grilled cheese curiously. It wasn't cheddar, but it smelled divine. Or I was just really hungry. I gobbled up his peace offering in a few quick bites and lingered over the cookies, licking off the cream and nibbling at the edges.
When there was only crumbs left, I turned off the shower and stood up, telling myself I had to go back out there eventually. I stared at my reflection in the mirror as I gave myself a mental pep talk, grimacing and poking at all the flaws I saw.
I wasn't sure why Jonah would want me in the first place. I wasn't anything spectacular. The guy could date supermodels if he wanted, so why did he pick me? That part didn't make any sense to me. What did he get from me that was worth loaning my father such a sum? I certainly didn't feel worth it. Although I still resented my father for agreeing to such a cockamamie scheme in the first place.
This was my life now, I scolded myself in the mirror. Hiding in a glass house on a mountain with Jonah Carson. At least, until he changed his mind and dropped me like a leaf in Autumn. Wasn't it better for me to just accept it and try to find some semblance of...normalcy? Was that even possible? Was living with Jonah ever going to feel normal? What the hell was I even supposed to do all day, cooped up in this house? I wasn't working eight to twelve hours a day like before. I didn't have the twins to run after or Dad to argue with—although I did have Jonah to fill that particular void. Did he expect me to laze around for the next several years? Or give in to him and sleep with him just out of pure boredom? Maybe that was part of his plan, seducing me with boredom. It was certainly a creative approach, if a flawed one.
"Maybe think of it like vacation," I told myself in the mirror. "Relax, play nice with the locals, and soon you'll be back home with the twins before you know it." But I didn't look or sound terribly convincing. With a sigh, I snatched the plate from the floor and opened the door.
EIGHT
Jonah was smart enough at least to keep his mouth shut when I finally emerged from the bathroom. He glanced at me briefly over his shoulder before he returned with renewed vigor to his computer screen, ignoring me completely. I quietly rinsed off the plate and padded back over to the sofa. What else was I supposed to do? Suggest a game of checkers? Besides an old deck of cards in the storage closet, it was the only thing resembling entertainment or time-consuming in the entire house. Except his computer and his phone. And his books.
I quirked an odd smile at the volume I was flipping through before, remembering his single book of Shakespeare on the shelf amongst the law and business and wondered what prompted that particular addition to his small mountain library. Did he even own other books or were these just a specific selection? Surely he didn't make the hour drive every time he conducted business in town; he had to have a house or apartment somewhere in Sinclair Falls, perhaps with the rest of his books. More Shakespeare maybe, or Mark Twain.
"You're happy about something," Jonah noted. I jumped in surprise, not even realizing he approached. He sat on the other end of the sofa and cocked his head at me curiously, eyeing the book I was caressing. "You can't possibly be amused by Law and Ethics can you?"
"Sort of, " I admitted. His eyebrows rose in question. "Why the Shakespeare?" I asked, the question flooding from me before I could stop it. Wasn't I supposed to still be mad at him or something? Wasn't I just hiding in the bathroom from him because he was so loathsome I couldn't stand to be in the same room? I was usually so good at holding grudges. What was it about Jonah that dashed all that out of my mind? His crooked smile maybe. The burning, tingling touch of his skin against mine...definitely.
Jonah laughed, throwing his head back and guffawing heartily until he was slightly breathless. "So you noticed that little oddity of mine," he commented, the left side of his mouth twitching up in a smile.
"Hard not to notice," I shrugged. "You know, 'one of these things is not like the other,' " I sang the tune from my childhood days.
"That particular volume," he explained after another lopsided grin, "Actually belonged to my mother." My mouth fell open in a silent gasp of surprise. "She was a huge book nerd, as she put it. She taught college literature, actually, and that book stayed with her from her own school days until the day she died."
"But you're not a reader," I noted. If he was, he would have more than merely a small shelf of tedium to choose from.
"No," he shook his head. "Admittedly I am not, although I always wished I enjoyed it more, if only to be able to talk to my mom about something other than the same three subjects—work, weather, and women."
I rose an eyebrow at him. "Women?" I prompted. "I think you're one of the few men in the limelight who isn't splashed across page six with a new girl every week."
"Her concern was more the lack thereof," he shrugged. "I tried to tell her," he sighed, "it would happen in time, but she didn't—Well, it was different for her and harder for her to understand."
"Understand what?" I frowned. "Wouldn't she be gl
ad her son isn't gallivanting around with every short-skirted blonde in town?"
Jonah chuckled. "I'm not big on blondes," he shook his head, then pinned me with a hot stare, his message impossible to miss. "I prefer brunettes."
I was barely able to refrain from reaching up to touch my dark locks self-consciously, but the blush that colored my cheeks was unavoidable. My skin was tingling with heat already and he never even touched me.
"I've been clear about my intentions with you from the start," he reminded. I nodded mutely. He leaned a little closer, setting a hand on the law book for support as he bent toward me. I could feel his warm breath tickle the little hairs on my skin and smell the fragrance of his soap—clean and fresh with a dash of citrus. "But I won't force myself on you," he said seriously. "You need to know that."
"O-okay," I nodded. "Thank you." I wasn't sure what I was supposed to say to that. Of course you won't, jackass, because if you do I'll kill you in your sleep felt too aggressive, even if it was my original thought. Followed by an opposing, devilish voice in my head telling me I wanted him to touch me. To make me tremble and burn all over.