He dialed the first number at the top of the white pages.
Jax rang the bell of a ranch style house in one of the older neighborhoods.
After making several calls over the course of several days, he struck gold with a Rozlyn and Philip Grey. He’d almost given up too, being they were near the end of the alphabet, but giving up wasn’t Jax’s style, and he’d pushed forward, finally rewarded for his tenacity.
The woman hadn’t admitted she knew Raven, but the hesitancy in Rozlyn’s voice was enough for Jax to know he’d finally found Raven’s parents.
At least, he assumed they were her parents, though they very easily could have been her aunt and uncle.
I’ll find out, whether they want me to or not.
A white curtain in the huge picture window twitched, and Jax wondered what the person thought of him standing there on the weather-worn porch. He couldn’t look more out of place if he tried. He’d dressed in his usual three piece suit and slung on his long cashmere overcoat to ward off the chill.
Winter had settled in to the point it was unpleasant to be outside.
Jax blew out a breath in irritation, and it turned white in the chill.
As he waited while the person decided whether or not to answer the door, Jax looked around. The residence was kept neat, the walks shoveled. The house appeared to have brand new siding on the outside, and the roof looked new as well. Whoever lived in this house took pride in its appearance, and it made Jax curious that Raven would have family who lived like this while she . . . floundered.
She could have gotten back on her feet between the ceremony and now, though Jax thought it unlikely or more information about her would have surfaced during his search.
Finally, the front door cracked open, and a bottle-blonde woman with brown eyes peered at him through the screen door she did not bother to open. “Can I help you?”
The woman’s eyes reminded him of Raven’s, and he crowed to himself in victory. It didn’t matter if this woman was Raven’s mother, at least he had found some part of her family.
“I’m looking for Raven Grey,” Jax said, hoping his firmness wouldn’t earn him a door slammed in his face. But he knew of no other way to ask. His approach to all things was to be straightforward. His lack of kid gloves had gotten him into trouble multiple times, such as marrying Raven in the first place, but it was his way.
“We don’t know of anyone by that name,” the woman said, her eyes downcast in sadness, already shutting the door.
Jax could read misery. He knew it all too well.
He had to stop her from shutting him out.
“I’m looking for her because I’m her husband.”
Jax stood in a living room devoid of any human touch. The room was neat and tidy just like the outside, but it wasn’t what he would have expected from an older couple. Pictures on the mantle. Photos hanging on the walls. Books. Newspapers. Clutter.
But there was nothing.
It made Jax uneasy because the empty feeling of their house echoed the feeling of his own.
“Do you take cream or sugar?” the woman asked, bringing a wooden tray laden with coffee and small cookies into the living room.
“Black is fine,” Jax said, turning from the window that overlooked a yard filled with snow.
The couple who sat on the couch were just as devoid of any humanness as the house itself. The only apparent indication they still had any spirit left was that the woman dyed her hair. She, at least, still cared about a little something, even if that something was a reluctance to go completely gray like her husband.
The man who sat on the sofa along with his wife looked just as gray as his last name implied, lifeless, without even a hint of spark in his eyes. His hair was the color of steel wool, and Jax guessed it must have been black at some point. He wore a gray cardigan with a dark gray pair of Docker slacks.
“I don’t know what makes you think we know Raven,” the man said gruffly, handling a thick ceramic mug of coffee. “And if you’re truly married to her, you should know better than we do where she is.”
“It was your wife’s hesitation when I said Raven’s name that brought me here,” Jax said, sitting on the edge of a chair, his hands cradling the mug Rozlyn gave him. He hadn’t thought he’d been invited in for any significant amount of time, and he kept his overcoat on.
Now sweat was starting to run down his back, but he didn’t want to seem like this visit would take longer than necessary.
Get in, get the information, and get out.
“As for being married to her . . .” Jax swallowed. He was going to have to admit he’d been a prick. It wasn’t something he was good at, and showing his true colors might do more harm than good. But it was a chance he was going to have to take.
“She was cleaning the church where I was to be married, and I have to be honest, my fiancée backed out on me. Raven looked like she needed money, and I . . . hired her . . . to be my fiancée’s stand-in so I wouldn’t lose face in front of my friends and family.”
There was no need to go into the reasons why Gwen abandoned him. If he spoke with Philip or Rozlyn again, or if they got to know him in any capacity, they would find out soon enough.
Philip snorted. “It sounds like one of those soaps you like to watch, Roz,” he said, a frown pulling down his mouth. “Then why are you looking for her?”
“Because she signed her real name on the marriage certificate. I’m about to . . . marry . . . and when I applied for our license, I was informed the marriage to Raven had been real after all. I need her to sign divorce papers.”
This time it was Rozlyn who snorted. “You rich people, thinking you can do whatever you want. We haven’t spoken with Raven since she was seventeen. That’s almost thirteen years, if you don’t know her real age,” the woman sniped.
Apparently, he’d said the wrong thing after all, and Rozlyn’s pointed glare told him visiting time was over.
Jax took the hint and stood, placing his mug on the tray, his coffee untouched.
“Then you have no idea where she is? I searched for her online and nothing popped.”
“All I can tell you Mr. Brooks, is to remember how she looked. What did that tell you?” Philip Grey led Jax to the door and opened it wide in invitation to leave.
On the way to his car, his dress shoes crunching over the frozen snow, Jax thought about Raven’s father’s last words.
How had Raven looked?
Erik had seen it. Down on her luck.
Jax had simply thought her a druggie, an alcoholic who would spend his money on drugs and booze. What if she was more than that? Instead of living in a rundown apartment in a poor section of town, maybe she didn’t even have that.
Maybe she was . . . homeless.
“How are you going to go about that?”
Jax snarled. It wasn’t like he hadn’t thought about anything else since he left the Grey’s residence. He glowered at his brother. “How would you?”
The evening after meeting Raven’s parents—and Jax still assumed they were her parents, though neither had actually confirmed it—he’d been seething about that very thing in his study. A fire burned in the fireplace, and his housekeeper had put a roast in the slow cooker that morning, the spicy scent of beef permeating the house. If he hadn’t been so sick with the idea of telling Lucia they couldn’t marry until he found his current “wife,” the aroma would have made him go crazy with hunger.
It made for a cozy scene, all he needed was a dog sleeping at his feet.
But inside, Jax felt anything but cozy.
“This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done your dirty work for you.”
“Why are you here, again?” Jax asked, balling his hand into a fist on his thigh under his desk. He loved his brother, he really did. Without Erik, Jax would never have come out the other side of the accident in one piece. Some would argue he hadn’t, but without his brother, Jax would have been dead.
There wasn’t any way to pretty up
that truth.
Not that Jax didn’t deserve everything that would have come to him.
“Checking up on you—”
Jax growled.
“At Mom’s request. She’s at the same benefit as Lucia, remember? She knew you were home alone tonight.”
“I can be alone. I’m not five.”
“Ah, but you still play with matches.” Erik grinned, enjoying the verbal sparring match.
“I’m not playing,” Jax corrected, shutting his laptop. “I’m thinking of ways to track down Raven, if she really is homeless.”
“That seems easy enough to me,” Erik said, crossing his legs. He was dressed in an evening suit; a sign he would be leaving soon. A Friday night when Erik didn’t have plans was almost unheard of, and it smoothed out Jax’s temper.
He stretched. He’d been enjoying the peace and quiet of an empty house. It was his lucky evening the benefit tonight was a dinner and silent auction for a local domestic abuse crisis center.
Women only. Men were not welcome there.
“Do tell.”
“It’s fucking colder than hell out there, Jax. Where do you think she’s going to go? It’s not like she can find a bench in a park or lay out a newspaper under a bridge. Admittedly, summertime would be different, and you probably would have a harder time, but use your fucking brain. We’re in the middle of a Minnesota winter.”
Pouring a scotch from the bar in the back of the room, heat burned Jax’s neck.
Checking the homeless shelters should have been number one on his task list, and he should be thanking his lucky stars the average overnight temperature for February was fifteen to twenty below Fahrenheit. No one could be out in that kind of weather for any amount of time without the risk of dying from hypothermia.
“Hey, it’s not like I haven’t done anything. I found her parents. I’ve just had a lot on my mind, lately.” Jax winced.
“Like the fact looking for Raven is a godsend because marrying Lucia is the last thing you need right now?”
That surprised him, and Jax met Erik’s eyes over the rim of his glass. “Where did that come from?”
Erik rubbed his face, making a lock of dark blond hair flop over his forehead. “You go after the same kind of woman. Lucia is Gwen all over again.”
“That’s not true. Gwen spent as little time with me as possible; she never fought with me like Lucia does.” He hated arguing with his fiancée, and he always gave in just to make it stop. It was like fighting with a wolverine. Whoever tried came out bloody and mangled, and it was all for nothing. Jax never won.
“See? It is true. She’s frightened of you, just like Gwen was.”
“Obviously, you’ve never been around when Lucia’s thrown things at me, whenever I say or do something she disagrees with. That’s not fear.” Jax had been livid when she’d destroyed an antique Chinese cloisonné vase worth over five thousand dollars. Cheap, in comparison to some, but it had still pissed him off. Her childish temper tantrum had been a waste of money. And all because he worked late. He hadn’t known she’d made dinner plans for them.
“If you fought back just once—”
“I wouldn’t. And Lucia knows I’ll let her get away with anything,” Jax said.
He’d never raise his hand to a woman. He’d never raise his voice. He’d never show any emotion at all. Calm. Cool. Collected.
Ice.
Except for one afternoon in a church when he couldn’t keep his hands off a homeless stray.
Which brought him back to the conversation at hand.
Erik shifted in his seat. “All I’m saying is I see Lucia leaving you just as Gwen did. Your relationships are not based on love.”
“And all I’m saying is that I’m not going to let looking for Raven delay me from marrying Lucia. Me loving her, or her loving me, is beside the point. Lucia’s willing, and I’m ready. If I can’t find Raven, then I’ll see about getting a divorce in absentia. There has to be laws in place for spouses who go missing.”
“Have it your way, little brother,” Erik said, walking to the door of Jax’s library. “But mark my words, women want love, not credit cards. Lucia will turn into another Gwen. She’ll realize the prestige and money that comes with marrying you won’t be enough.”
“Gwen had her own money; she didn’t need me.”
Erik cocked his head, one foot in the hallway. “Is that why you chose Lucia, then? Because you think she won’t take off like Gwen? Didn’t get enough bribery when you dealt with Raven, huh?”
Jax was pouring another drink when Erik shut the door softly behind him.
If that’s what had ended up happening, him bribing Lucia to marry him, it hadn’t been his intention.
They’d met at a benefit his mother had dragged him to because his father couldn’t go. Lucia had been the only woman with guts to approach him and begin a conversation. It hadn’t been quite a year since Gwen had abandoned him at the altar, but by then Jax had spun the whole ordeal into a sad story of neglect and desertion.
Lucia had wanted to comfort him, and by the end of the night, Jax asked her to marry him.
She said yes.
They’d had a two year engagement because his mother insisted on it, saying he wasn’t over what Gwen had done to him.
Which may or may not have been true. He’d buried his emotions so deep, even if Gwen had hurt him, he wouldn’t have felt a thing.
Jax sat behind his desk and opened his laptop.
Lucia wouldn’t be home until the early morning hours, more than likely going clubbing with her friends after the benefit or sneaking off to another man’s bed.
He had time to research how many homeless shelters were in the city.
Then he would do what he needed to do.
Find Raven Grey.
It was like looking for a needle in a pile of needles. The homeless shelters were the way to go. Erik had been right. She had to escape the cold.
But after visiting all the homeless shelters in the huge city, Jax still hadn’t found her.
Apparently, there were still places Raven could hide.
“Maybe she made a friend, and she’s bunking on a couch.”
Across a rusted metal desk, Jax stared at the director of Heavenly Hands, the last homeless shelter he tried because it was so far along the outskirts of the city. Anyone who needed the shelter’s services would have to scrape up change for the bus. At some point, Raven had been able to do so; the director had known Raven from the scant description Jax had been able to give her.
His presence hadn’t been welcome at most shelters in the city. Some were used as a refuge for domestic violence victims, and more than one director said they wouldn’t give him information even if they had any. The look of dislike in their eyes spoke volumes—explicitly, they distrusted and hated men—and in a move of solidary toward a woman they may not even have met, the female directors he’d spoken with kicked him out.
Another director at a different shelter had taken in his driver and Mercedes through the dirty windows of the crumbling and rundown building and asked if this was some kind of Pretty Woman joke.
It did seem odd a man dressed in a suit and his cashmere overcoat would be looking for a homeless woman, probably a junkie and alcoholic besides. But until the director’s comment, he hadn’t thought of Raven as a whore, and with a twist of his lips, thought that he should have.
It could be why he was having a hard time finding her. She might be sleeping in a whorehouse or living in one of the trashy downtown pay-by-the-month apartment buildings that had slowly started popping up when the new mayor had been elected last year. Word was he looked the other way because it happened to be his favorite side activity.
That didn’t have anything to do with Jax, he wouldn’t judge another man’s . . . hobby, except for the fact now he had a million other places to look.
Jax sighed.
He hadn’t given Raven a thought after he’d kicked her out of the limo. Hadn’t given one fuck if s
he would be okay or not.
He couldn’t say he did now, either, except if she was safe and sleeping somewhere that wasn’t a shelter, finding her had just become a whole lot harder for him.
Son of a bitch.
Why yes, he had been called that on occasion.
He pulled a business card from his breast pocket. He hadn’t brought more than the usual supply, and this was his last one. If every director he’d talked to had taken one, he would have run out a long time ago.
“Can you at least call me if you see her?” he asked, knowing the answer.
The slim black woman wearing jeans and a black shirt with the Heavenly Hands logo above her heart frowned. “I’m sorry, but if she shows up here, I wouldn’t be able to say. We have strict confidentiality rules. Some of these women are running from abusive husbands and boyfriends, and if we give out information all willy-nilly, we could be endangering all the women who stay here. All I can tell you is that I have seen her recently, and she was okay. As okay as a woman without a home can be.”
She leaned back in her chair and narrowed her eyes.
Jax knew an accusing glare when one was aimed at him, and he took it as his cue to leave.
“Thanks, I appreciate it.”
His words fell on deaf ears. The director was already picking up the phone and punching in numbers, dismissing Jax.
He shrugged into his coat in the dim and dingy hallway, the lightbulb close to burning out. The women who stayed there tried to make it homey, but the peeling wallpaper and the smell of hotdogs negated anything pleasant the women had tried to do. Every space was used, and it made the shelter look cramped and cluttered.
He walked past a living area where a couple of women were watching TV, eyeing him warily as he strode by. Jax offered them a smile that wasn’t accepted.
Jax bristled.
What they saw on the outside was a man of privilege, looking for a woman he possibly used as a punching bag.
Not all men were assholes.
That he was wasn’t anyone’s business.
“Yo, mister.”
All of Nothing Page 4