He parked in a guest spot close to the front door, turned off his SUV and shifted in his seat to face her. “You okay?”
She just sat there, gazing out the window, looking lost and in no apparent hurry to exit, her demeanor not that of someone he’d identify as okay. But she nodded in response to his question.
“I’m not sure if you’re aware,” he said. “But in addition to my undergraduate degree in criminal justice, I minored in finance. And I worked at my dad’s investment firm every summer from the time I turned sixteen until I graduated college. I’d be happy to take a look at everything Jerry gave you and help you make sense of it,” he offered, half on edge, waiting to see if she’d lash out at being insulted by him thinking she didn’t know how to manage her money when she did.
Instead of a reply, she reached up to dab at the corner of her eye with her knuckle and Justin wanted to pull her into his arms and tell her everything would be okay. That she could count on him to help her and take care of her.
Whoa. That came out of nowhere. But there was something about her, a naiveté long worn off in the women he dated, that made him want to be the man to teach her and tend to her, placing him in unfamiliar territory.
“Thank you,” she said, so softly he almost didn’t hear her. She inhaled a deep breath, let it out then turned to look at him. Light from the outside fixtures reflected in her watery eyes. “It’s not that I’m dumb or lazy. It’s the way I grew up,” Jena explained, lowering the folder to her lap.
“While Jaci fought for independence I was content to be taken care of. I chose to blindly trust Jerald to manage my money. I chose to leave rather than fight him for control. But I have worked from the age of thirteen, managing the house and as a nurse for my mom, even while I went to college. After she passed away, I took on the role of Jerald’s social secretary full time. Yet I never received a formal paycheck. Jerald made sure there was cash in the safe in his office, and I took what I needed when I needed it. My credit card bills came to the house and he paid them when he paid all the other bills. If I had to go somewhere there was always a car and driver waiting to take me.”
She looked down and fiddled with the elastic band holding the folder together. “And now I’m a twenty-four-year old mother of two who can plan a dinner party for fourteen with two hours’ notice, coordinate an exquisite gala for five hundred on a strict budget, and manage a staff of thirty-six, half of whom only speak Spanish, but I can’t drive, I have no idea how much money I have aside from the two hundred thirty-six dollars in the envelope in my dresser drawer, and I don’t know the first thing about paying bills or writing checks.”
Justin reached out to take her cool hand into his. He squeezed it. “I promise you, by the end of the weekend, you will have your bills sorted and paid, you will know how much money you have in the bank and in your investment accounts, and you will know how to write a check.”
She peered up at him from the corner of her eyes. “And the driving?”
He smiled. “If we can’t find the study guide for a driver’s permit test online, I’ll pick one up from the DMV,”—Department of Motor Vehicles—“on Monday. As soon as you pass the test, I will personally teach you how to drive and you can use my SUV to take your road test.”
She dropped her precious papers to the floor, lunged her upper body across the center console, and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Thank you,” she kissed his cheek. “So much.” She kissed him again.
Then they were kissing for real. Because he’d turned his head, intent on catching her lips with his. Success.
For a split second she stiffened and he thought she might pull away. Then she melted against him, opened for him, and before he knew what he was doing he’d dragged the rest of her onto his lap like some hormone-crazed teenager looking to get lucky in daddy’s Dodge.
His eyes may still be working on identifying the differences between Jena and Jaci, but his body sure recognized Jena, and at that moment, was most interested in rekindling their naked acquaintance.
They came up for air, both breathing heavy. “I’m sorry.” He wasn’t. “I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s okay.” She started to move away. He let her go but was not at all happy about it. “I guess I made the first move.” She patted down her hair and readjusted her blouse. “Again.”
He smiled. “Next time it’s my turn to make the first move.” In a room with a bed, when the babies were sound asleep and Ian was somewhere else and there was no chance they’d be interrupted. Then he’d wipe “fine” from her memory and replace it with amazing, unforgettable, stupendous. Never to be topped by any other man.
She looked away, like she often did when she didn’t want him to know what she was thinking. “Can we not tell Jaci how inept I am at managing my life?” she changed the subject. “I’d rather she not know.”
“You’re not inept you’re inexperienced.” He reached out, gently took her chin in his hand, and turned her head to face him. “By Monday that will no longer be the case, because I have the next two mornings off, and I plan to spend them teaching you.” Hopefully about more than her finances. “And on account of the major secrets your loving sister and my alleged best friend have kept from me, I’m kind of looking forward to having some secrets to keep from them. You got anymore?”
She nodded. “You know the rich, gooey, chocolate cake Jaci delivers to you on your birthday?”
“Of course I do.” With milk chocolate ganache frosting, layers of the best buttercream mixture he’d ever tasted, and dark chocolate shavings on top. His mouth watered. “Every year since I turned fifteen.”
Jena smiled sadly and nodded. “They weren’t from Jaci, they were from me. And she didn’t buy them at a bakery, I made them.”
“You?” No way. That cake was pastry chef quality. “From scratch? Come on.”
“I spent a lot of time at home. I made friends with the staff. They taught me things.”
She stared back at him, confident, seeming to dare him to question her. Well wudda you know? “That explains why Jaci missed my last birthday. That little liar. I’m going to—”
She smacked the base of her palm to her forehead. “I forgot your birthday. I can’t believe it. I’m so sorry.”
He reached out to move a curl that’d fallen down close to her eye. “I’m guessing you had a lot going on at the time.” Since she would have been around eight months pregnant.
She nodded.
He leaned back in his seat. “It’s been quite an evening,” he said, letting out a huge breath, feeling weighted down by all the revelations of the past few hours.
She stretched. “I’m exhausted.” She angled her watch to catch a ray of light. “Annie should be up for a bottle soon. Then hopefully I can sleep for a few uninterrupted hours so I’m bright and cheery for my new job tomorrow.”
“Wait a minute,” Justin said. “You have your money back. You don’t need to work.”
“Maybe not, but I like working as a nurse. And I promised Mary I’d help her out this weekend. She needs me.”
“Your daughters need you, too,” Justin pointed out. If given the choice, didn’t women want to stay home to take care of their babies?
“Relax,” Jena said. “It’s sixteen hours. It’ll be good for me to have some time away from the girls, to use my skills, and engage in professional conversation. I’m not in a position to commit to more hours right now. And if I come to an agreement with Thomas, I’ll be moving into the city in the next two months anyway.”
Thomas. They were back to her considering a marriage to Thomas. “What is this fixation with marriage? You. Jaci. Your brother. I don’t get it.”
“Keep your voice down,” Jena whispered.
He froze, waited to see if he’d woken Abbie, and said a private thank you for blessed quiet.
“When my father
died,” Jena said, keeping her voice low, “Jaci and my inheritances went into a trust. To be distributed on our twenty-fifth birthday.”
November twenty-eighth. In two and a half months.
“Typical of my dad, controlling tyrant that he was, he placed stipulations on the money.” She looked up at him. “To receive it, Jaci and I have to be married and living with our respective spouses by our twenty-fifth birthday. To be sure we don’t enter into a sham of a marriage, the payments are to be broken up over five years at five million dollars per year for each of us. If one of us doesn’t marry by the age of twenty-five, we forfeit our portion of the trust and the money will be donated to charities designated by my father before his death. If we divorce or separate during the five year period, we forfeit any monies not yet paid.”
Even dead that evil, arrogant menace managed to exert his power. “Twenty-five million dollars is a strong incentive to marry.”
Jena nodded. “It’s my daughters’ legacy, their future. And I will do whatever it takes to see they get it.”
“Even marry a gay guy?” slipped out before he could stop it.
“Trust me when I tell you, he is a million times better than most of the other men Jerald’s tried to pair me off with.”
The opportunistic bloodsucker. “What’s his interest, anyway?”
“Fathers come to Jerald looking to make a good match for their wayward sons. Men come to him looking for a quick infusion of cash our trust would provide to bolster their failing business endeavors and dwindling bank accounts. Both promise Jerald favors or contracts or something that he wants.” She shrugged and turned to look out the window. “Not exactly how I’d hoped to meet my future husband,” she said sadly.
Damn it. “It’s only for five years, right?” An idea started to form. A way to keep her from marrying someone else, to protect her from her brother and have her for himself, temporarily, to ensure his daughters’ financial future and make sure he would be the one and only daddy in their lives.
She nodded, staring into the night.
“Hell, five years isn’t all that long. I’ll marry you.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“I NEED a nurse out here,” Gayle called out. Again. One hour into her first shift and Jena had been called to patient sign-in to triage more than a dozen patients. Thank goodness Jaci had dropped her off two hours early to meet with Mary, review policies and procedures, and familiarize herself with the facility before she’d officially started work.
“I’m on my way,” Jena called out, freshening the paper liner on the exam table in room four and stuffing it and a disposable gown into the trashcan.
“Everything okay?” Mary, who was supposed to be supervising her closely, asked as she hurried in the opposite direction down the hallway.
“Fine. How’s that little boy?” A three-year-old found unresponsive for an undetermined period of time, and rather than call an ambulance the older brother had scooped him up and run, barefoot, through a major intersection, to the urgent care center.
Mary shook her head and gave Jena a look that said “not good.” Out loud she said, “We’re doing all we can for him. Paramedics are finally on their way to transport him to the hospital.” Forty-five minutes after they’d placed the call thanks to a train derailment with multiple casualties.
Jena entered the lobby to find a woman carrying a small child, holding a bloodied cloth over the left side of the toddler’s face, the woman’s blouse and the little girl’s pink overalls stained red. “What happened?” she asked, taking a pair of latex gloves from her pocket and slipping them on.
“I turned my back for a minute.” The mother started to cry. “I don’t care if that coffee table has been in my mother-in-law’s family for years. When I get home I am tossing it into the street.”
“Let me take a look, sweetie,” Jena said to the little girl, pushing aside a mass of black curls and lifting the cloth to take a peek at the injury, a rather large laceration to the left eyebrow area. But the cloth had adhered to the wound and Jena would need to moisten the area with saline to get a better look. “It seems to have stopped bleeding. Gayle will take your information and we’ll get you into a room.”
“My daughter has been waiting for almost an hour,” a big brute of man bellowed from the standing-room-only waiting area. His nine-year-old daughter, who sat quietly, in no apparent distress, watching cartoons on the television, had fallen from her bike, while wearing a helmet, and denied hitting her head. No visible head trauma. Right wrist swelling and pain. Minor scrapes and bruises to the extremities. Stable.
“I’m sorry for the wait.”
“That’s what you said half an hour ago.” He stood up and stormed toward her.
“Is there a problem here?” a deep voice asked from behind her. Justin’s voice. Jena had never been so happy to hear it.
“Yeah there’s a problem.” The man didn’t back down.
Justin came to a stop beside her, khaki pants covering his long legs, a navy blue polo shirt with Rangore Security embroidered in red letters on the left breast pocket, clinging to his muscled chest. His bare arms thick and powerful. His light scent enough to attract, to make her crave closeness.
Justin didn’t suffer the paunch of an overindulgent lifestyle or the pallid, diminished physique of a seventy hour week white-collar workaholic. He was an imposing specimen of man, the personification of macho alpha male, the standard to which she compared all potential marriageable males. The reason she found some otherwise decent men lacking.
“Well look at you,” Gayle’s voice intruded. “What did we do to deserve the head honcho tonight?”
Jena didn’t have time to question Justin’s unexpected arrival or wait for an answer to Gayle’s question because she heard a siren. “We have a critically ill patient in the back,” she told Justin. “I think that’s our ambulance.” She looked out the glass front door. Shoot. “Whose red car is that?” Parked perpendicular to the entrance, blocking the ramp.
“Mine,” the woman carrying the bloodied little girl said.
Justin held out his hand. “Either you move it or I will.”
The woman handed Justin her keys. On his way out he did something to the double doors to make both remain open.
“I’m guessing if it were your child in respiratory distress you’d want the doctor to give her his full attention,” Jena said to the irate father. “Even if that meant people had to wait while he did.”
The man returned to his seat.
“We’re doing the best we can,” she told the patients and family members waiting. “I’ve spoken with each of you and as soon as the doctor is ready you’ll be called in, the most acute cases first, then by order of arrival.”
For as long as they took to get there, the paramedics were in and out in under ten minutes. After they’d gone, Jena, Mary, and Dr. Morloni met in the hallway. Jena held up her pad. “I’m not quite comfortable with the laptops yet. But this is what we’ve got waiting and the order I think they need to be seen.”
Mary leaned in to look at her notes.
“Three-year-old, audible wheeze. Color within normal limits. No fever. Increased respiratory effort. Nine-month-old. One hundred and three point seven temperature. Mild lethargy. Two toddler lacerations, one eyebrow vs. coffee table, the other thumb vs. steak knife. Nine-year-old fall from bike with right wrist pain and swelling, wearing a helmet, no signs or symptoms of head injury and a very impatient father. Then the rest by order of arrival, three sore throats requesting strep tests. Two ear pain and pressure with fevers. Two seventeen-year-olds one with back the other with shoulder pain. A six-year-old with a pea or peas obstructing his left nostril, right nostril clear, no respiratory distress. And a four-year-old who may have swallowed a coin or coins from a bowl of change, no reports of GI distress.”
Jena looked
between the two of them. “To speed things up I’ve documented vital signs, chief complaints and past medical histories on each of them in the computer. I put the audible wheeze in room one to keep him calm and the nine-month-old fever in room two to get him out of the crowded waiting room.”
“You done good,” Dr. Morloni said. “We’re back in business.” Laptop in hand, he turned and walked in the direction of room one.
“These two.” Mary pointed to the two seventeen-year-olds on Jena’s list. “Did they come in with their parents?”
“An older gentleman who claims to be guardian to both.”
“Insurance?”
“You’ll have to check with Gayle, but I think he planned to pay cash.”
Mary shook her head. “Point them out to Justin.” When Jena looked up at her in question Mary added, “Local drug dealers send teenagers in to get prescriptions for narcotic pain medication which they turn around and sell on the streets.”
“That’s terrible.”
Mary looked her in the eye. “Prepare to see a lot worse.”
“May I ask a question?” Jena asked. “Unrelated to the patient population?”
“Fire away.”
“What’s Justin doing here?”
Mary smiled. “We contract with his company for evening security. This plaza is busy during the day, but we’re all alone after five p.m.” She removed her hairband and redid her pony tail. “Being able to advertise we have security on site at night helps us attract quality staff and expands our patient catchment area into the neighboring middle class towns.”
“Does he usually work here?”
“On occasion, as his schedule at the police station allows. But I was told Steve would be on duty this weekend.” She smiled. “I’m guessing the change has something to do with you.”
Secrets of a Shy Socialite Page 6