He noticed the blue court papers on the table and gestured toward them, like they were a life raft and he was drowning.
“The legal problem?” he said.
At the same time she said, “Can I ask you something?”
“I’m sorry.” He laughed. “I’m sure you have questions. Go ahead.” Not that he would answer them. He took a sip of coffee and waited.
“Why—?” She paused and he had to hope she didn’t finish the question. Why did he anonymously donate thousands of dollars to women’s shelters? Or why did he show up drunk at his mother’s funeral? Either way he wasn’t going to tell her and they were on shaky ground already.
“Why do you let the world think the worst of you?” she asked.
A chill ran down his spine. His skin prickled uncomfortably. That was a first. What did she see in him that made her ask that question—that question that no one asked? That he no longer asked himself.
“What makes you think this is the worst?” he asked, forcing himself to meet her razor-sharp gaze.
“You’re not what I expected,” she said, her shrewd eyes narrowed as if she were squinting to see him better. “The stories in the tabloids don’t match the guy who gives away thousands of dollars to community centers.”
“Like I said, it’s complicated.” He took another sip of coffee and pretended he wasn’t shaken. No one, not in a long time, had doubted those stories, the persona he showed the world.
Jennifer licked her lips and seemed, in his highly hungover and possibly still intoxicated state, to be battling something. Arguing with herself. Something he used to do all the time before he beat his better sense into submission.
Don’t do this to yourself, he wanted to say. I’m not worth it.
But after a second she waved her hand. “Never mind. It’s none of my business,” she said and pushed the papers across the table. “We’re not too sure what the possible grounds are for Mrs. Conti to want to—”
Able to breathe again he tucked the papers in the pocket of his jacket. “I’ll have a look,” he said. “You don’t need to worry about it anymore.”
Her teeth caught her lower lip and he shouldn’t have been turned on. Not by such a doubting gesture and because the blood pooling in his lap was mostly whiskey. But there it was. She bit her lip and he wanted to kiss her.
Cad. Cad. Cad.
Sweat ran down his back, cold and clammy, and he shrugged out of the suit jacket he’d slept in, trying to pretend he wasn’t shaky and sweating in front of this woman, who seemed as calm and cool as a northern lake.
“I’d forgotten what kind of heat you have down here.” It reminded him of growing up and just the thought of his childhood down here made him raw. Aggravated.
“It’s not usually this bad,” she said. “Our air conditioner is broken.”
“I guess I’ll take care of that.”
“I guess you will,” she agreed.
If he shot himself in the foot, it couldn’t get any worse. He struggled for conversation.
“You met Andille?” he said, watching her over the mug. She smiled a different smile. An illuminating smile that only proved how false her earlier ones had been. And he could blame it on low sugar levels, his pounding headache, five years of celibacy, whatever, but that smile went right to his blood.
He wanted to swear at his own predictability. Hot actresses with loose morals and gorgeous pop stars dressed in less than nothing with Kama Sutra-like invitations in their eyes left him cold.
Give him a nice girl. A good girl, no doubt with white cotton underwear under those sensible khaki shorts, and he got excited.
You’re sick, he chastised himself.
It’s why he avoided these shelters. Helped them from afar. Because stepping foot into a place like Serenity was a guarantee he’d fall head over heels.
Sick and stupid, he amended.
“Andille was very gracious. He’s—” She paused, as if searching for the right word.
“I know,” he said, relieving her of that impossible task. “There’s something about the guy that defies description. He’s been like that since we met. Let me guess, the dog loved him.”
She laughed. “Well, she didn’t attack him.”
“Dogs and kids love that guy.”
“Have you known each other long?” She tilted her head, her scalpel eyes back.
“Since I was fourteen and he was ten,” he said. “We met at boarding school. Within two weeks he was practically running the place.”
She laughed then stared at her hands again and the air in the kitchen got heavy. Uncomfortable. All that charm he’d been blessed with was nowhere to be found. And for the first time in a long time, he floundered. Tongue-tied, he couldn’t even make polite conversation.
Something in him just wanted to stare at her until he felt better. Like she could do that for him.
“I’m sorry about your mother,” she said, her voice quiet and husky. “She was—”
He set the cup down with a thunk and she jumped.
“What?” he asked, his voice biting. Hard. He couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t call it back. His grief, his anger, was an animal out of control. Running him into corners.
“An inspiration,” she whispered, those gorgeous eyes wide.
His lip curled and he shook his head. “You don’t know my mother,” he said.
“I met her,” she protested. “I interviewed her two years ago.”
“Interviewed?” His eyebrows clashed. “You’re a journalist?”
She nodded. “I worked for the NBC affiliate out of Baltimore.”
Oh, sure. Of course. He remembered the story—Camelot’s Golden Years. A couple of news shows had picked it up and after years of not seeing his parents in the press, he’d sat, sick through the whole thing, watching his mother and father sit side by side on a couch, smiling. Pretending.
The woman running the interview had been sharp. All angles and corners—hardly recognizable from this soft, messy woman in front of him. Except maybe those eyes. The scalpel eyes were the same.
“That was you?” he asked, his voice hard, and she flinched slightly, but her chin came up, her eyes shot sparks.
“Your mother changed—”
“Your life?” he asked, mocking. He hurt, ached and bled in all the old places, and it was making him crazy. Hurtful. “Let me guess, she said something so wise. So smart and kind. And it did something to you. It changed the way you looked at the world. The way you looked at children or husbands or the way you wanted to live your life?”
“Yes,” she answered. “That’s exactly what happened.”
He nodded, regret and anger burning through his veins like poison. Like acid. God. His mother. She was dead. Gone. And all she’d left behind was this legacy of lies.
“No one,” he said, looking right at this woman and knowing he was taking something she valued and throwing it against the wall. “No one knew my mother. Not really.”
And he left.
He left before he fell apart right in front of her.
Stupid, Jennifer thought, opening her laptop. That was incredibly stupid. Talking to him like that? Asking questions? Caring? What is wrong with you?
Without a second thought, being ruthless and cold and hard-hearted, she deleted all the notes for the Serenity story she’d started working on early this morning. If only getting rid of her curiosity over Ian was as easy. But the sword wasn’t working like it did yesterday. And Ian lingered in her head like a leech, unshakeable.
How many times do I have to tell you, she thought, that life is gone? Those stories are no longer yours to tell.
She should not have let him in. Her instincts had been right and now, stupidly, disastrously, Ian Greer was here.
5
Early the next morning, leaving Spence still sleeping on the couch, Jennifer came downstairs looking for coffee and a reprieve from the morning heat. She’d wrestled with bad dreams and sleeplessness all night long, but with the sun’s arri
val she was determined to make the best of the Ian situation.
And by “make the best” she meant she’d stay out of his way and keep her mouth shut.
“Hey, Deb,” she said, reaching for the coffeepot.
“Sink’s still broken,” Deb said, not looking up from the paperwork she was filling out at the kitchen table. She flipped a page decisively. “Air conditioner still isn’t fixed and the two men you let stay slept all day yesterday.” She sniffed. “Some benefactor.”
“Message received,” Jennifer said, lifting her hands in surrender. “But Ian and Andille are here and things should get fixed soon.” Not that she knew that for a fact. After his tirade yesterday morning she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of their benefactor all day long. Which was fine. More than fine. But it would be nice to get the pipes fixed. “Did you see them at all yesterday?”
“I saw Ian briefly,” Deb answered. “Coming out of the bathroom, looking like death. And Andille spent most of the afternoon outside on the lawn on his phone.” She snorted, and Jennifer wasn’t sure if Deb disapproved of Andille or cell phones or lawns or the world in general.
Jennifer filled the coffeemaker with coffee and almost asked Deb what she thought of Ian, but it would have been useless. She knew what Deb would say and Jennifer had spent hours last night convincing herself she didn’t care.
Shonny ran into the room and Deb stood, giving off enough chill that if she stayed mad long enough they wouldn’t need an air conditioner.
“It’s Sunday,” Deb said. “We’ll be outside.”
The door slammed behind them and Jennifer, cursing under her breath, grabbed the coffee carafe and headed for the bathroom.
She ran smack into Ian’s naked chest.
Every wall she’d built in the last two years fell down. Those things she’d told herself about men and dating and sex and how she wasn’t interested were proven, in one heart-rending moment, to be utter lies.
After a two-year sleep her body woke up.
She went hot then cold as she took him in—all of him, every bare inch of him—in a heartbeat.
His skin, fresh from the shower, smelled clean. Masculine and foreign. Drops of water clung to his neck and the thick blond tips of his hair, and as she watched, one drop ran down his shoulder and she couldn’t look away. She actually couldn’t breathe as she waited to see where that drop would go.
He was muscled and smooth and her hand, her whole body, itched with the desire to touch him. To test the velvet texture of his skin.
“I…ah,” Ian stammered, his hand clutching the knot of his towel. His hair clung to his forehead, making him look, of all things, like a boy, endearing and sweet—not at all like the drunk man who had shown up here.
Who are you? she wondered, caught up in this man’s tide, her body out of control. Who are you really?
“I left my clothes in my room,” Ian finished.
She should look away. Walk away. Tear out her eyes. But she couldn’t. Doug had been thin, smallish. His chest had hair and it had been years since she’d touched it. Years since her skin burned like this. Years since she’d wanted another man. And she stood here, shaking and trembling for Ian Greer.
The realization was horrific. Terrifying.
What am I doing? she thought, disgusted with herself. Comparing this man to her husband? What was wrong with her?
I’m a married woman.
“Don’t worry,” she snapped, waving it off as if naked men wandered the hallway all the time. “Just be careful Deb doesn’t see you.”
Her balance thrown, her equilibrium gone, her body burning for reasons she’d been sure were left behind two years ago, she turned and left. Mentally, she reached for that sword. It was gone. Burned to ash by the sudden heat. The shock was astonishing. She felt betrayed. Out of control.
Having Ian Greer here was tearing her carefully constructed world apart.
Deb believed in prayer. She loved prayer, actually. She wanted to eat it, drink it. She wanted to roll herself up in it and wear it every day like her nana’s sweater.
She loved prayer as much as she loathed church.
Daddy had been a preacher and that man was enough to put anyone off religion.
But despite Daddy and his evil, Deb saw God everywhere. In Shonny. In Serenity. In the sky and dirt and broken-down cars.
And since she didn’t go to church, she took her son outside every morning, had since he was a baby. She could laugh about it now, the way God had worked in her life, because she had been stepping outside at Serenity House to the old willow tree out front in order to praise and thank God since she was a twenty-year-old kid. Since she’d been beaten so badly by Daddy that she nearly lost her baby.
That willow tree was her church now. Shonny all the congregation she needed.
And this morning she needed some prayer. She needed to ask for some strength and some guidance because there were men at Serenity House. After years of a man-free life, a life she cultivated and cared for like a garden, they were suddenly underfoot, and had been for two days and it was giving her some grief. Andille Jabavu-Fushai, with his charm and sly grins, was screwing up her calm.
The morning sunshine warmed her neck and the smell of asphalt heating up under the Carolina heat made Shonny sneeze.
“Bless you, baby,” she said, following her son as he led her to the willow. He darted under the long, whip-thin branches that hung nearly to the ground and she parted them with her cast, stepping into the shadowed cave.
“I’ll sing!” Shonny yelled, jumping up to try and grab some of the dangling branches.
“Lay it on me, son,” she said, sitting in the dirt and roots, her back against the trunk.
Shonny launched himself into “This Little Light of Mine.” He sang like he did everything, with his whole body, and screaming at the top of his lungs. Deb sat back and drank it in. At some point “This Little Light of Mine” morphed into “Go Tell It on the Mountain” and he looked at her as if he knew something wasn’t right.
“Keep on going,” she urged, trying to teach him at this very young age that keeping on in the face of your mistakes was the only thing to do.
“Go tell it on the mountain.” A voice so deep it resonated through her belly and down her legs, like it came up from the very center of the earth, joined Shonny’s high childish soprano. That voice could only belong to one person and Deb jerked upright, reaching for her son, just as Andille parted the willow-branch curtain and ducked in.
“That Jesus Chri—Oh.” Andille stopped singing and he stood upright, the top of his head nearly touching the lowest branches. The long willow leaves hung over his shoulders. “I heard singing,” he said, flashing that wicked smile that made Deb feel as though there were a hundred bees under her skin dying to get out, “and couldn’t resist.”
“We’re praying,” Shonny said and Deb tugged him closer, stroking his arm. She didn’t like that man so close to her boy. So close to her. Frankly, she wouldn’t like that man if he went back to where ever he’d come from.
Lord, please give me strength and patience. Help me to deal with this man.
There. Praying done. Time to leave since the sanctity of her altar had been messed up by this man barging in.
“I see,” he said, smiling at Shonny. “I’ll let you get back to it.” He turned to go and she noticed his clothes. Not as fine as the suit from two days ago, but the man still looked good. The suit had been replaced by dark shorts, a red-and-blue plaid shirt and a pair of running shoes. The earring was still there, twinkling against his skin.
Temptation, her father’s utterly unwanted voice rang through her head. Sinful temptation. The diamond and the man.
Andille was handsome, more handsome and more manly than a man had a right to be, but life had taught her to distrust the packaging when it looked so good.
“Deb?” he said, turning back before leaving. “Have I offended you in some way?” His brow furrowed. “I am sorry for the way we arrived and I can certainly un
derstand how Ian’s behavior might be—”
“I’m not offended,” she said, truthfully. Part of her froze in sudden fear at his questions—a little something left over in her head from Daddy. And while she didn’t want to answer this man’s questions, she wasn’t going to run. Not her. Not anymore.
“Really?” His lips twisted at the corners. “Because you’re acting like you don’t like me.”
“I don’t know you enough to like you or not like you,” she said.
“Well,” he said, “there’s something about me you don’t like.”
“I don’t like you here,” she snapped and something in Andille paused. He lost his shine and she guessed not many people didn’t like being around the man. “Shonny, baby, why don’t you go inside and get yourself a banana. I’ll be in in a second.” Her boy was off like a shot. Deb stood and brushed off her pants, gathering up every scrap of herself to stand in the face of this man who upset her balance. The balance she protected at all costs.
“You called us here,” he reminded her.
“We called you,” she agreed. “But we never expected two men on our doorstep to stay for two days.”
“Ah,” he said, his eyes getting wide. “So, it’s not just me. You’d be throwing off this kind of attitude to any man who came here.”
She wanted to scoff at his generalizations. Like she was that textbook. But, frankly, she was. She knew that. She was trying to work on it and having this man here wasn’t helping her.
“That may be,” she said, knowing the truth when she heard it. “But my job is to protect the women who come to this shelter.”
“I mean no harm,” he said, his face thunderous.
“Then help us,” she said, “and get on your way.”
He stared at her for a long time, taking in her dreadlocks and her rhinestone glasses and hot pink casts, and for a second under that man’s gaze she lost herself. All those things she wore and did that made her feel so good, so in control and in charge of herself, faded and she was sixteen again, wanting just one man in her life to be kind.
And Then There Was You (Serenity House Book 2) Page 5