by BJ Wane
“And I can now that I’ll be out from under Mom and Dad’s thumbs. That’ll be awesome.” She cocked her head, an impish smile tugging at her lips. “You always did like animals more than people.”
The urge to lean across the table and kiss her brought him up short. He needed to do something about this new direction his thoughts were determined to go around her. Popping a fry in his mouth, he winked before answering. “Not more than you, Monkey. Never more than you.”
NEW YORK CITY, FOUR YEARS LATER
As he exited the taxi, Jackson’s heart pounded against his chest and his palms grew clammy despite the fucking cold wind driving right through his leather jacket, an early Christmas gift from his best friend, Miles. Now, he not only hated big cities and crowds, but cold weather as well. He longed to be home where it was still a balmy seventy-five degrees in mid-December. But he figured if he was ever going to do this, it had to be soon. Here he was, over thirty already, and his two-decade relationship with Julie Martin stood at a standstill. They’d kept in touch with texts, e-mails and calls since she’d taken New York and the modeling world by storm, but hadn’t seen each other in two years, not since she’d made her one and only trip back home.
Every time he’d broached the subject of her returning to Florida, she’d said her schedule was too busy. Given the number of times he’d seen her picture splashed on a magazine cover, he wondered how she had time to do anything but work. Each time he caught her gorgeous face staring back at him, those soft lips curved in a come-hither smile, his gut clenched with a pang of sorrow. Gone was the gangly kid next door who gazed at him out of large, adoring eyes. But what had he expected, for her to remain young and innocent her whole life? His body certainly craved the woman she’d become. Just thinking about entering the posh, five-star restaurant and seeing her again stirred his lust. Her breathless voice when he’d called and told her he’d landed made him itch to touch her, to hear her soft voice crying out under his sexual control.
Anticipation drummed through his veins as Jackson pushed through the ornate glass doors and a maître’d strolled forward to take his coat. After giving his name, he followed the hostess into the dimly lit dining room, feeling out of place as he wound through the white cloth draped tables lit with candles. Dressed in glittering formals and expensive suits, the other patrons should have made him feel under dressed wearing slacks and a dress shirt. Should have, but didn’t. Fighting the urge to turn around and hightail it back to the airport, he wondered where the hell her table was.
Then Jackson saw her and disappointment swamped him when he noticed Julie’s short hair. Instead of a beaming smile and exuberant squeal of greeting at his approach, a small curl of the corners of her mouth was all she offered. This time the clutch in his chest stemmed not from pleasure, but regret.
“Hey, Monkey.” He hoped greeting her with the nickname that had popped into his head when he first met the skinny kid who was all legs, arms and big eyes would earn him a warmer welcome, but instead, she grabbed his hand and yanked him into a seat with a hiss.
“Shhh! What if someone heard you call me that ridiculous name? It’d be all over the tabloids and I’d be a laughingstock.”
“Sorry,” he returned, his cool tone reflecting his irritation at the way she scanned the nearby tables with a fake smile. “I didn’t realize there were different rules for our relationship here in New York.”
“What? Oh, Jackson, I didn’t mean I don’t like it when you call me that silly name. But let’s keep it between us, okay? I’m so glad you’re here.”
Jackson relaxed his tense shoulders as Julie gushed about her work, the exotic places she’d been on shoots, the constant attention from fans. Her eyes glowed as she described a world foreign to him, one she obviously basked in. The low scoop of her off-the-shoulder satin top draped over her breasts revealed a creamy expanse of the upper portion of her right breast, drawing his eyes to the pert outline of one nipple. The instant pop-up in his head of her sprawled naked on one of these tables with him pounding between her legs held a wealth of appeal. A woman approached their table, her nervousness drawing his attention away from his wayward thoughts.
“I’m sorry to intrude, but you’re Julie Martin, aren’t you? Would you mind signing my autograph book? My teenage daughter would be thrilled.”
He’d expected to see a friendly smile and greeting from Julie, but a haughty expression tightened her face. Flipping her short hair back, she murmured in a bored tone, “Sure.”
“That was unlike you,” Jackson couldn’t help but point out when the woman left with her face burning in mortification.
Julie rolled her eyes, but the gesture that used to tickle him now drew his pique as it conveyed a look of disdain he didn’t care for. “She was asking for her daughter, not herself. Maybe she should save her simpering for her husband instead of bothering me if she wasn’t interested in meeting me herself. What do you want to order? I recommend the salmon.”
Jackson felt his sexual interest take a nosedive and his chest tighten with a stabbing, sharp pain. It appeared he’d been right to worry this move would change the sweet, innocent girl next door. “Come here often, do you? It’s a far cry from our burger joints.”
She waved an airy hand. “Whenever I can. It’s one of the places the press always haunts on weekends. Gotta keep up the exposure. By thirty, I’ll be nearing the end of my career if I’m not careful.”
“That’s six years away.” The waitress arrived and took their order and he frowned when Julie chose a salad. What happened to the kid with a voracious appetite for calorie laden fast food? Jackson feared the big city had eaten her up.
Julie picked up where she’d left off in filling him in on her life in the fast lane. Sadness and annoyance marred his evening when she didn’t look at him once with that adoring gaze he’d missed. Was that what was bothering him, that she’d replaced her hero worship with vanity? By the time they’d finished eating, he realized she hadn’t asked about him once, cementing his decision to cancel his hotel and return to the airport tonight.
The sudden glare of flashbulbs nearly blinded Jackson as they stepped outside, but it was the immediate change in Julie’s demeanor that snared his attention. Gone was the vain, brittle woman he’d just spent an uncomfortable dinner with and in her place preened a gushing, simpering celebrity putting on airs for the tabloids. Bitterness that rivaled what he’d felt when Federal agents invaded his home and arrested his parents for drug dealing and complicity in a child’s death rolled through him. It wasn’t fair to have his illusions ripped out from under him twice in a lifetime.
Needing to get away, Jackson stepped away from her and hailed the next cab then gave her a quick hug as soon as the reporters left. “Good seeing you again, Julie.” He kissed her forehead and turned, ignoring her as she called after him in a puzzled voice.
“Jackson?”
But as he reached for the handle of the taxi, Jackson held up a finger, bidding the driver to wait. Spinning back around, he caught a glimpse of confused insecurity on Julie’s face before she masked it behind the façade he’d been staring at all night as he strode over to her. Yanking her against him, he held her head immobile by cupping her nape. Swooping down, he kissed her, fast and hard, refusing to give into the temptation to linger, to savor, to take more. Her low moan of instant surrender threatened his resolve to walk away, but he forced himself to remember the past hour, the worst he’d spent in her company. Pulling back with a sigh of regret and heavy ache for all he had lost, he drank in her face one last time. “Have a good life, Julie.” Ignoring her astonishment and the arousal in those amethyst eyes, he hopped in the cab and didn’t glance back.
CHAPTER 1
FLORIDA, SIX YEARS LATER
A thin rivulet of blood oozed from the self-inflicted cut, rolled down her arm and dripped into the sink. Sitting on the closed toilet lid, Julie Martin welcomed the painful distraction from the nightmare that had woken her while early morning darkness st
ill lingered outside the motel room. It was fitting, wasn’t it, that she continued to hide like a coward in a bathroom from the screams that still echoed in her head two years after they’d been silenced? Unlike that night, she now huddled with the light on, the metallic odor of the blood streaming down her arm reminding her of the smell when she’d emerged from that other bathroom hours later. A shudder rippled down her spine as she shoved aside the images of Maci and Candace’s mutilated bodies. How long would her friends’ deaths continue to haunt her?
When the pain receded to a dull throb, she rose, rinsed off her arm and slapped a small band aid on the cut. Following ‘the incident’, as her parents labeled that night from hell, the police psychologist had urged her into counseling. Eighteen months and three psych docs later and she’d given up after discovering pain worked better than anything else she’d tried in helping her cope with her fear and emotional trauma. Now, her arms and a few spots on her legs bore the signs of her self-harming addiction, marring her once perfect body. And Julie didn’t give a damn.
With a hand that shook, she reached for the bathroom doorknob, wondering how long she’d been cowering this time, her sweaty palm making it difficult to turn it. Sucking in a deep breath, she inched it open then released the pent-up air in her lungs with a whoosh at seeing what her mind needed clarifying. There was nothing on the other side of this bathroom door except a queen size, rumpled bed and small dresser illuminated by every light in the room. Padding across the worn carpet, Julie yanked open the curtains, adding a wide swath of early morning sunlight to the space. A few hours had passed since Maci and Candace’s terrified cries for help chased her into this bathroom.
Julie ignored her stomach’s rumbling as she tossed the few belongings she’d unpacked yesterday back into her suitcase. She managed to eat when she had to, a remnant left over from years of maintaining a rigid diet for her job followed by the stress inducing nausea of ‘the incident’. It had been nine years since she’d returned to Florida, not since her twenty-second birthday. As if it were yesterday, she recalled how Jackson had taken time off from establishing his practice to drive up to Gainesville and meet her at the same park where she’d told him about leaving for New York. She’d lost so much by making that move, not only the girl she used to be and her two friends, but the most important person in her life. Maci and Candace’s horrendous deaths had shone a light on the raw, unpleasant truths about the person she’d allowed herself to become, and she didn’t care for that person any more than Jackson had. Only she’d been too blind to see it before then.
Humid, warm air smacked Julie in the face as she stepped out of the motel room. The newest slice on her arm still hurt and helped her kick aside the leftover crumbs from her nightmare, but the Florida heat did nothing to thaw the coldness inside her as she’d hoped. She’d been too tired last night to drive the last two hours to her parents’ house in Lake Shore and didn’t relish arriving at lunch time only to hear another lecture on watching her weight for when she came to her senses and returned to her career, hopefully, before it was too late.
Julie could’ve told them it was already too late, but why bother? They wouldn’t listen now any more than they had been the past two years, or the twenty years before that. They’d never taken into consideration what she wanted, or needed. Tossing her bag in the back of the small Fiat she’d purchased before leaving New York, she checked out of the motel and got back on the road. Weariness pulled at her and, despite having reservations about popping in unexpectedly at her parents’, she was looking forward to the end of this trip. Two back to back, ten-hour days driving on little food and even less sleep had taken their toll on her nerves, but she worried if she stopped too long, she’d chicken out and start believing the common phrase, ‘You can’t go home again’. If she couldn’t go home, where would she go? There was nothing left for her in New York, and even if there were, the big city had lost its allure for her a long time ago.
Not working for two years and going through a large chunk of her savings had been one of the catalysts that had coerced Julie into making this move. The second didn’t bear thinking about; he and his request didn’t bear thinking about. Her lawyer ensured Julie didn’t have to speak to the man who had murdered two young women in cold blood, but she still felt the urge to put as much distance between herself and his prison in Montana as possible. Who would’ve thought she would become the victim of a violent crime in a small mountain town hundreds of miles from New York City? The quaint, peaceful winter setting their agent arranged for that shoot hadn’t turned out to be all that peaceful.
If Julie had to choose one thing she missed most about her old life here in Florida, it would have to be talking with Jackson. His cold shoulder and silence following their dinner in New York six years ago still hurt, and her only solace was now she could look back and decipher why he had walked out of her life.
The long stretch of highway blurred in front of her and she blinked in rapid succession to clear her watery vision. So many mistakes and regrets, so much loss. How could she ever hope to recover alone? The older boy next door gave and gave of himself until she’d been foolish enough to think he’d always be there for her, no matter what. Now she had no one, and the pain of that was as piercing as losing her friends to a madman’s rage.
The need to keep going, keep on driving, grew stronger the closer Julie got to her home town. A lump lodged in her throat and her hands shook on the wheel when she spotted the sign for the turnoff. It wasn’t until she drove right past the exit ramp that her heartbeat slowed to a more regular rhythm and the nausea churning in her empty stomach abated. Keep going, don’t stop, don’t stop. The mantra reverberated in her head for the rest of the day. It didn’t cease when she pulled over for gas, didn’t let up while she choked down an ice cream bar and didn’t quiet until she found the directions on the GPS for Davenport Veterinary Clinic just outside of Miami. And yet, Julie still questioned what the heck she was doing as she rolled to a stop outside the wide entrance into Jackson’s animal clinic and rescue.
People changed. Look what happened to her when she’d allowed herself to be blinded by the lights and glamor of the big city and fame. She’d turned into a stranger, a person Jackson wanted nothing to do with, and Julie couldn’t blame him. So why was she here, sitting outside his sprawling compound, shaking like a leaf at the thought of seeing him again? Even if she managed to earn back his friendship, if he ever found out just how low she’d sunk, she would lose him for a second time because there would never be a way to change the past or to atone for her cowardice.
Miami lay a short distance to the east; beyond that, the endless blue expanse of the Atlantic. It was either stay or retreat and, God help her, she was going to be selfish again and stay. She couldn’t go back to the empty void her life had become. Putting the car in gear, she drove down the long gravel drive.
The parking area in front of the two-story, clapboard house seemed small compared to the size of the operation Jackson had set up on the sprawling acreage. Knowing him, Julie figured he’d designed it that way on purpose, so he wouldn’t have to deal with too many people at one time. He always did prefer four-legged creatures to anything that walked on two feet. Except her. Her chest ached whenever she remembered the special place in his affections she used to hold and how she’d so foolishly lost her way, and him.
Before she lost her nerve, she trotted up to the porch only to have her hopes deflated when she spotted the closed sign. “Wouldn’t you know it,” she muttered, reading the clinic’s hours, which included closed on Wednesday. Still, she knew he lived on the premises, and it was past regular office hours on the other days anyway, so there was still a chance he was around.
Pivoting, she strolled over to the first of two large buildings housing indoor/outdoor dog kennels, all of which looked to be teeming with a variety of sizes and breeds setting up an excited ruckus. “Oh, look at you.” Stooping, she stuck a finger through the first cage and the small, scrawny mixed bree
d wagging its tail so hard its whole body shook licked it with tiny, excited whimpers. Three other medium sized dogs came bounding through the dog door and tripped over themselves trying to monopolize her attention. Laughing, she cooed and tickled their noses as best she could through the pen, wishing she could crawl in there with them.
“You guys are freaking adorable,” she sighed, pushing to her feet. Her parents had never allowed Julie to have a pet, claiming it would take too much of her time caring for one and there were more important things she needed to concentrate on during her spare time. It never mattered she would have much preferred playing with a dog after school than spending hours on dance, music or voice practice.
Walking with slow, measured steps down the row of kennels, Julie noticed how clean both the cages and the animals were. Some dogs were pitifully underweight, and a few showed signs of noticeable health issues, but since each kennel held bowls of ample food and water, she figured they were a work in progress in restoring their health. By the time she reached the end of the second building, she realized how big of an undertaking Jackson had taken on, one that would have daunted any other person regardless of their good intentions. He had to have help, but knowing him, he would keep his employees at a minimum and likely took on most of the work himself.
Rounding the corner, Julie saw a small red barn across the sweeping lawn and started that way until her pulse leaped from the low but recognizable voice coming from behind the kennels. Drawing a deep breath to steady her nerves, she walked to the back then stopped short, her heart stuttering at seeing Jackson again for the first time in six years. The old cliché about how a woman could get turned on from eyeing a hot man wearing a tool belt or Stetson pulled low over a rugged face never mentioned the instant, cream-your-jeans effect of seeing a tall, muscular man crooning to a small puppy held with care in his large hand. The sun picked up hints of red in his dark, mahogany hair curling around his nape, one sweat-dampened lock falling across his forehead. Not since the night he’d left her with her lips throbbing and her girly parts tingling from his first and only kiss had she been so affected by a man.