by Mia Caldwell
“She didn’t have to be ugly about it, though.”
Jada laughed humorlessly. “I’m not offended. It’s the least of her sins.”
A family of mallards lifted off the lakeshore, quacking wildly as they flapped toward their nightly nesting ground, their green and blue feathers iridescent in the fading, golden light.
“It’s so beautiful here,” Jada said. “Do you ever get used to it?”
“I probably don’t appreciate it as much as I should. I don’t have a lot of free time to spend out here.”
“I’d like to think that if I owned a place as magical as this one, I’d never take it for granted and never leave it for long,” Jada said, a wistful note in her voice.
“That’s how my grandfather felt,” Ian said.
“You can’t really know, though, can you?” Jada asked.
“Know what?”
“How things are when you’re looking in from the outside. You can imagine it, or guess at it, but you can’t truly know. You have to live something, to be part of it. It’s the only way.”
Ian considered it. “That’s probably true.”
She seemed encouraged by his agreement. “Right, and anyway, people are so different. If one person reacts one way, it doesn’t mean you can predict how you would. That’s what makes it hard.”
“It?”
“Deciding the future.”
A stillness settled on Ian’s chest. What was she getting at? It was clear that she wasn’t talking about Sasha anymore. “You don’t have to decide anything right now.”
“Actually I do. It’s been nibbling at the back of my brain all day. My life has changed because of what’s happened, and it’s going to take a while to get back to normal, if it ever does.” She cocked her head to the side. “Do you hear that? What is it?”
Ian listened. He heard a high-pitched whirring not far away. It was getting closer, quickly, coming from beyond the hedges that lined the drive. Because he and Jada were sitting on the porch steps, the hedges blocked some of their view of the drive.
“It’s something electronic,” Jada said. “Oh! Look at that!”
A remote-controlled toy jeep buzzed out from behind the greenery and shot into the open circle of driveway. Its long antenna arced upward behind it, something brown and furry dangling from the end. It looked like a ... was that a toy mouse perhaps?
“Oh!” Jada pointed. “Look right there.”
The front half of a tabby cat stuck out from behind the end hedge. Crouched low, green eyes slitted and intent on the swerving jeep, the patient stalker was none other than Ms. Kitty.
The vehicle approached the cat at a slant. At the last second it turned, racing away. In a blur, Ms. Kitty leapt after it, her front paw leading the attack, claws extended, going not for the jeep itself, but for the bit of brown fluff bouncing on the end of the antenna.
“Oh, she missed! Too bad!” Jada said, smiling.
Ian would have rather looked at that smile than any of Ms. Kitty’s shenanigans. “She’s going for it again. Snagged it! Oh, it’s off again. She’s still after it, though. She sure can jump.”
A brown head bobbed above the hedges. It was young Billy, who worked at the estate helping with maintenance and groundskeeping. He was running hard when he broke into full view. He carried a small box in his hands: the remote for the jeep.
Billy noticed Jada and Ian on the steps. He skidded to a halt, panting. “Hope you don’t mind me playing with your cat,” he said to Jada. To Ian, he explained, “I’m on my break.”
“No problem,” Ian said.
“Have fun,” Jada said.
Billy tore off, as did the cat and its buzzing prey. They wound down the drive until they disappeared beyond the southern slope of lawn.
Jada’s smile faltered. “I think Ms. Kitty’s going to miss this place more than Marina and I will. I don’t know how I’m going to convince her to eat cheapo kibble again. To say nothing of all the attention she’s gotten. I’m only one person and I have no idea how to do feline shiatsu massage.”
She was joking, but Ian caught a serious undertone. “There’s no hurry. You should stay on while we get everything sorted out until it’s safe for you to ...” He trailed off, unable to say, “go home.” He didn’t want her to leave, not yet. Some undefined, indefinite later, probably. But not right now.
She turned and gave him a gentle look as she finished his sentence. “... go home. It’s time. You’re right that tonight’s too soon. I bet you can get your lawyers on this right away, though, squelch these stories flat in no time. Tomorrow, I can go home.”
“I don’t know that I can—”
“Of course you can. You already had a strategy in place this morning before the second story broke. Go ahead and do what you were going to do.”
She was right. He had the clout and his plan would lessen the scandal enough to make it possible for Jada to go home tomorrow. In good conscience, he couldn’t withhold it because he didn’t want her to leave.
“If you want,” he said. “I’ll start making my move tonight. If everything goes properly, there will be press retractions by morning and the public will lose interest before it’s time for the evening commute.”
“Perfect. I have no doubt that’s exactly how it will go.”
Normally, he would have taken pleasure in her certainty, her faith in his abilities. This wasn’t a normal time, though. “There can always be issues.” He paused. “To hell with it. I’m not going to make excuses and play around with this.”
Her eyes widened.
“Don’t go,” he said. “Stay here with me at the lake house. For a while. I thought we already had that settled, didn’t we? We were putting our attraction on hold until the marriage license fiasco was straightened out, and then you and I would ... move forward.”
“Actually, you and my father decided that for me,” Jada said. “I wanted to have sex with you last night, but you and Dad wanted to protect me from I don’t know what. Myself? Whatever. I never agreed to wait. You didn’t ask my opinion. You told me how it would be.”
“I was being responsible, looking out for your best interests.”
“I told you this morning that I wasn’t going to let you run me over anymore. Didn’t we already have this settled?”
He was taken aback by the fierce way she mocked his earlier question. “We did, yes. And I let you take the lead in the investigation because of it. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s not. I wanted you to do something other than condescendingly let me take charge. You might have, oh I don’t know, tried seeing who I actually am, and that I can’t be fooled by some macho routine where you think it’s cute that the little lady is standing up for herself. I could almost see what you were thinking, Ian.”
“Why are you so angry? I thought I was doing what you wanted.”
Her look was grim. “No, you did what you wanted to do, and that was placating me long enough to get me into bed. Shame on you!”
Shame on him? Did she really just say that? He almost laughed, it was so ludicrous. “That’s not at all what happened, or what I thought. Where is this coming from? It’s been a long day. You’re tired and—”
Jada stood, hands on hips, glowering down at him. “If you know what’s good for you, you won’t finish that sentence. And because you have some mental block about what’s happening, I’ll tell you why. I am not a tired, cranky child who needs a damned nap. I won’t be talked down to. I’ve had enough of that today, especially from you.”
He knew better than to give an opponent the high ground. He stood and stepped up to a higher step for an even greater height advantage. “If you’re gunning for a fight, I’m happy to give it to you. Or we can be adults and you can knock off the unreasonable accusations and—”
“That’s it,” she said. “I’m done.” She stomped up the stairs, heading toward the front door.
Ian called after her. “I was giving you what you wanted. I let you
have your way! How is that a bad thing?”
She stopped, her shoulders rising and falling as she took a few deep breaths, as if calming herself. Then she turned around. Her tone was restrained, verging on sad. “You have no idea what I want.”
Something twisted in his stomach. He answered as gently as he could. “Then tell me what it is.”
“I never wanted my way, Ian. I wanted your respect.”
“I do respect you,” he said.
“Not how I want. I want you to respect me as a person, not just as a future lover.”
“I don’t understand what you mean by that.”
“I know you don’t, and that’s why we won’t work together. It’s why whatever’s between us was over before it began.”
“Wait a minute.” Ian came up beside her. “Let’s not jump ahead of ourselves. Let’s talk about this. Tomorrow, after all the excitement has worn off, I’ll send everyone else home. You and I can be alone, finally, and have a chance to talk, to get to know each other better.”
“I’m not going to sleep with you, Ian. Not tonight or tomorrow or ever.”
“Dammit! That’s not what I was going for.”
“You’re right. That was unfair of me.” She seemed to get sadder with each passing second. “What I should have said was, it’d be too hard to spend more time with you. We come from two different places that are so far apart they might was well be two different planets. I can’t understand your world and you can’t understand mine.”
“Opposites can and do attract, Jada,” he said.
“For a little while, maybe. We’re too far apart in too many ways, though. It can’t work. I’ve been kind of trying to tell you that all day,” she said. “I’ve been feeling it since this morning. The fantasy’s over, Ian. And it was great. I loved every minute of it. But now it’s time to go back to the real world, the one where you run a multi-billion dollar empire and I work (or don’t work anymore), at a small accounting firm in a small town. It’s real life, where you and I will never bump into each other in the city at a glittery gala charity event, or in Springers Glen at my brokedown neighborhood market. Our paths don’t cross, and they never would have if Sasha knew basic U.S. geography.”
He shook his head vehemently. “This is the wrong time to make decisions. It’s not condescending to say that it’s been an emotional day, and not only for you. For me, too. I freely admit that you’ve made some points that I need to think about. I’m asking you to think about them again after a good night’s sleep, after some of the crazy of this day has worn off. We’ll talk tomorrow when nerves aren’t so close to the surface.”
“I won’t change my mind, Ian. I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m going home tomorrow and we shouldn’t see each other again. It’s too hard ... because we can never be.”
Her melancholy smile was painful to see. “Jada, we don’t know that.”
She ignored him and glanced out over the grounds. “I’m going to remember my time with you on this amazing estate as one of the best times of my life. Fishing in that little boat, our kiss on the dock, the picnic by the bridge. Mrs. Best and Elly, everyone and everything. Oh, Ian, thank you for sweeping me away in this fantasy where I got to feel like the most beautiful girl in the world. I never imagined I’d get anything like it, not even for the length of a three-day weekend.”
She put her hands on his shoulders to steady herself, and raised up on tip-toe, kissing him softly on the cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered.
And then she turned and hurried away, into the house, the front door swinging closed behind her, only her bright floral scent remaining, the perfume that had haunted his dreams every night since he met her.
What the hell had happened? He’d been blind-sided. One minute he was coming outside to make sure she was okay, and the next minute she was telling him she never wanted to see him again.
Why did she keep going on about fantasies? She actually was the most beautiful girl in the world and what did that have to do with a three-day weekend? It didn’t make any sense.
He considered going after her, sitting her down and talking until she saw reason. But no, better to let her get some rest.
This sudden change in her was because of everything that had happened that day. And who could blame her for it? He still hadn’t processed most of it himself. No wonder Jada wasn’t making sense.
He’d leave her alone, let her get a good meal, a good night’s rest. Everything would be different in the morning, he was certain of it.
Morning. By then his people would have CGTV and the other gossip outlets racing to retract today’s story. He’d tell Sasha and Agatha to leave tomorrow, too, because they could only be thorns in Jada’s side. And Mrs. Best. He’d ask her to make her famous eggs benedict and deliver them to Jada in bed. A meal like that couldn’t fail to start Jada’s day off the right way.
Tomorrow. Everything would come together then.
He was so convinced of it, that he didn’t mind when Jada didn’t join everyone for dinner. And he didn’t mind when she didn’t leave her room at all that evening. Thanks to the day’s revelations, everyone’s mood was subdued. No one spoke much, not even Agatha. It was a quiet night in the lake house.
The next morning, however, everyone was bustling, staff and guests alike. As expected, the press was backpedaling on the Ian-Jada-Sasha triangle and already moving on to greener gossip pastures. Mrs. Best said Jada loved the eggs benedict. And Sasha and Agatha didn’t even need to be prodded to leave. They were packed and gone by nine a.m., Trey not far behind them in his growling Bugatti.
Everything was going according to plan. Except for one thing. And Ian couldn’t figure out how it happened.
The one thing that really mattered that morning hadn’t gone right at all. If it had, he wouldn’t be standing in his driveway watching his helicopter take off from the landing pad, thunderstruck as it turned and flew away. Gone.
If everything had come together according to plan, Jada would never have told him she hadn’t changed her mind. She’d never have gotten on that helicopter five minutes ago and left him.
Forever.
It wasn’t supposed to happen. But there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Nothing at all.
Chapter Eight
JADA THOUGHT SHE’D NEVER GET used to how loud the helicopter was, even when wearing big, noise-cancelling headphones. It didn’t matter, though. After this day, she wasn’t likely to ride in another helicopter for long time, if ever.
The kitty carrier shifted on her lap. Poor Ms. Kitty was stressed. She didn’t like the roar of the copter any more than Jada did.
Beneath the roar, Marina and Sullivan chatted through the headsets. Sullivan was traveling on into the city after Raul dropped Jada and Marina at the armory field in Springers Glen.
Marina had been grilling him the whole trip for details about what had been done already and what would be done in the future to set the marriage license problem to rights.
Jada listened in, curious herself. One of Marina’s questions about Sasha particularly drew her attention.
“What’s going to happen to Sasha now?” Marina asked.
“Some of it will depend on what Jada wants to do,” Sullivan said, sending Jada a significant glance. “It also will depend on the Springers Glen district attorney. Ian thinks there’s room for leverage because of the involvement of the DA’s grandmother.”
“Sasha needs to be punished for what she did,” Marina said. “It’s crap if she gets away with it because she’s got friends in high places.”
“I don’t think Ian’s interested in letting her completely off the hook, but I don’t think he wants to see her in jail either. I don’t. Do you?”
“I don’t know,” Marina answered. “Kind of.”
Jada turned her headset down. She didn’t want to listen to any more. She didn’t much care what happened to Sasha, after all. Maybe she’d care later, but right now, not so much.
Sasha had kno
cked on Jada’s door right before dawn that morning. She’d walked in, not slouched the way she usually did, and actually apologized for “not thinking things through” and for “not being honest about much of anything until it was too late.” That was how she put it.
When Jada accepted her apology, Sasha looked genuinely relieved, and it was nice to see that the supermodel could care about something.
She’d scratched Ms. Kitty’s under the chin and said, “See you around, Cat. You’re alright.” Jada had taken this restrained display as further evidence that Sasha was feeling sentimental.
But she was still Sasha and wouldn’t leave well enough alone. On her way out the door she quipped, “Of course, if I hadn’t made that fake license, you wouldn’t be hooking up with one of the few billionaires in the world who’s actually hot. Oh, and he’s one of the best friends I’ve ever had. So I can’t feel too badly for you.” She shot Jada a saucy look then was gone.
Jada didn’t tell Sasha that she wasn’t getting the guy after all. It would have been too difficult to explain and Jada didn’t think Sasha would understand anyway.
When she told Marina that she was parting ways with Ian, Marina certainly didn’t understand. She gaped at Jada like Jada had lost her mind.
“You dumped a billionaire because he wants his own way? He’s a classic alpha male. By definition he’s going to be a little bossy,” Marina said.
“He’s not just a little bossy,” Jada said. “He’s overbearing and wants to run my life and he’s overprotective and condescending ... and ... quit looking at me like that! The bottom line is, he doesn’t respect me!”
“That’s stupid,” Marina said.
“Don’t call me stupid.”
“Fine. Slow-witted. Is that better?”
“Shut up.”
“Fine,” Marina said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I won’t say anything else.”
“Good.”
“Except this one thing. You can always teach him to tone down the bossy, you know.”