At the age of eighteen, Jazz McNeil woke up in a hospital to be informed that he’d killed his best friend. He’d been driving, he was told, and his friend hadn’t made it. For more than a decade, he’s carried that guilt inside him.
Now he’s going back to his hometown, determined to raise his daughter and uncover the truth of what really happened that summer.
He also wants to look into the eyes of the girl he destroyed—his best friend’s baby sister.
Anne-Marie Kincaid knew what she’d been told about her brother’s death. Believing it was a different matter. For years, she thought about him, but she never imagined she’d see Jazz again. When he shows back up in her life, the childhood crush she’d had on him flares back to life, only this is a lot more than just mooning over her older brother’s cute, brooding friend.
Sparks rage between them and she knows she’s not the only one feeling the heat.
But there are those who don’t want Jazz settling back in town, those who want secrets to stay good and buried. And they are willing to kill to make sure those secrets remain hidden.
Copyright
For the Love of Jazz © 2007 Shiloh Walker
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
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For the Love of Jazz
Shiloh Walker
Dedication
Hugs and kisses to Renee. You always liked this one best. And to Pam, for helping me stay sane one very long afternoon.
Mom, you're allowed to read this one.
And to Sherry…just in case you’re reading this…do you see it? Do you remember?
I kept it blue, just for you.
Chapter One
Spring
Fourteen Years Old
He ached. From head to toe and back up again, he ached. His jaw throbbed where that sonovabitch had clobbered him across the face the first time. His ribs hurt, his gut hurt, his head hurt, but most of all, his hands hurt. His hands were torn, bloodied, and bruised, his knuckles raw and scraped, and every single mark was a battle scar.
Yet he had a smile of satisfaction on his face.
Jasper Wayne McNeil Jr., better known as Jazz, had fought back for the first time in his young life. And he had given it good. He hadn’t meant to, certainly hadn’t planned it, even though he had dreamed of it, time and time again. But when he walked in on that bastard beating his mama again, he’d lost it.
With the speed of youth and the advantage of surprise, Jazz had taken a swing at the man the law called his stepfather, and broken his nose. Big for his age, and smart, Jazz was an eerie echo of the man Beau Muldoon had hated his entire life. With his father’s eyes and his father’s derisive smile on his young face, Jasper McNeil Jr. had stood up to the man who had been beating both him and his mama for the past six years.
“You sure you don’t wanna go see the doc?” Alexander Kincaid asked. With his gilt-edged hair and sky blue eyes, Alex looked like a golden angel mending a fallen one.
“Shit, no,” Jazz snapped, curling his split lip in a sneer when all he wanted to do was whimper. The sneer hurt like hell, but he couldn’t exactly cry like a baby in front of his best friend, could he? “He didn’t get me that bad.” The sad fact was that Jazz spoke no less than the truth. Beau had laid into Jazz before and a time or two had put Jazz flat on his back for a week. This beating, much as it hurt, wouldn’t slow him down more than a day or two.
He sucked in a breath of air when Alex doused his burning knuckles with alcohol.
“Sorry, man. Gotta get it clean.” Spoken like the son of a doctor. Born to one of the most prominent cardiologists in the south, destined to go to medical school himself, Alex had spent a good amount of time doctoring up Jazz’s battered body over the past few years. But this was the first time Jazz had come swaggering to their private haunt wearing his bruises like battle scars.
Tonight, Alex was filled with pride and fear. Pride that his bud had done the damage he’d done, fear that Muldoon would retaliate in the worst possible way. “If you say so, man,” he replied, shaking his head as he eyed the ugly, red cuts on the backs of Jazz’s hands. “You look like you’re hurt, that’s all.”
Hell, yeah, he hurt, Jazz thought. But if the local social worker found out he’d been beat again, he’d be in a home for sure this time.
There was no way in hell Jazz was going to let that happen. He wasn’t leaving his mama. He didn’t want to, but even if he did, he couldn’t do it. If he left Mama alone, Beau would end up killing her.
~*~
At the tender age of fourteen, Jazz became a man, fighting his way into manhood as he hauled his stepfather off the battered body of his mother. At sixteen, he stood in a sullen rain, watching as her casket was lowered into the ground. The sky was leaden-gray and the downpour had started late the night before, soaking the earth so it turned into mud. The few people who had bothered to come to the funeral stood in their Sunday best, soaked to the bone, shoes covered with mud, and most of them still in a state of shock over what Delia McNeil Muldoon had done.
Stone-faced, Jazz stared at the headstone and wondered who’d taken care of it. Somebody with a decent amount of money. Jazz suspected it was Alex’s daddy. The name engraved into the pale pink marble read Delia McNeil, beloved wife and mother.
The Muldoon name, thankfully, wasn’t anywhere on the stone.
In his pocket, he had the note she’d left on the kitchen table, along with a locket Jazz’s dad had given her years ago.
Please don’t hate me, Jazz, she had written. But I can’t take it any more.
She had loaded up the Smith & Wesson Jazz’s father had gotten her years earlier. Then, Delia had waited in the tiny kitchen of the shack they lived in, waited for Beau Muldoon to return from his trip to Lenny’s, the bar he always visited after his weekly beating of his wife.
When he had crossed the threshold and looked into his wife’s bruised eyes, she pulled the trigger, sending a bullet into her second husband’s surprised face. Then she turned the gun on herself, no longer able to live with the shame.
She had done this, not only to herself, but to her son. The guilt and shame she’d lived with ever since Beau had started beating her and her son had eaten her alive and she simply couldn’t live with it anymore.
Rain running down his face, Jazz thought, I could never hate you, Mama.
She was with Dad again. After ten years of living without him, Delia McNeil had found her Jasper again.
Only problem was, she’d left her son alone.
“I’m real sorry about your mama, Jazz,” a quiet little voice said from his side. Turning his head, he met the wide, green eyes of Anne-Marie Kincaid, Alex’s baby sister and general pain in the backside. Fourteen years old, she was already a veritable shrew. She was bossy, she was a know-it-all, and Jazz loved her dearly. Next to Alex, there wasn’t anybody in the world he cared for the way he cared for Anne-Marie. He was as protective of her as Alex was, although he
had a bit more patience. For a while, he’d suspected she’d had a crush on him and while it usually amused him, he couldn’t deal with the adoring way she watched him right now.
He couldn’t deal with anything.
He started to mumble something, but then she tucked her hand in his, and tugged. Dutifully, he lowered his head to hers.
“I know how awful bad it hurts, Jazz. I missed my mama so much when she died, I wanted to die too. But Daddy told me Mama had done her job here, so she got to go be with God. We all have a job to do.”
Rising on her tiptoes, she brushed Jazz’s cheek with a feather-light kiss. Then she whispered in his ear, “Your mama’s job was done, that’s all. Now she’s with your daddy again, and she’s happy.”
With that, she turned around, daintily side stepped a puddle in her shiny, black patent leathers, then joined her father, who stood by watching. Desmond watched him with sad eyes. His voice was soft and gentle as he said, “Time will help, Jasper. I can promise you that.”
Closing his eyes, turning his face heavenward, he wished he had been the one to empty the lead into Beau Muldoon. His mama would be alive, and safe, and free.
Now he had all the time in the world to regret he hadn’t been the one to do it.
~*~
Eighteen Years Old
It was hot that night in late June, their last summer as kids. Come fall, Alex was heading north to the University of Kentucky, and after that, medical school.
At eighteen, Jazz was heading for the Marines. After spending the last two years with the Kincaid family, he knew he had to do something to make Desmond Kincaid proud of him.
Going into medicine wasn’t in his future, though. He was smart enough, Jazz guessed. School was ridiculously easy for him. But he had issues with blood. Alex was the only person on God’s green earth that knew it, and if his friend ever breathed a word about it, Jazz would kill him. Issues with blood aside, Jazz had no idea what he wanted to do and if nothing else, the military was a good way to kill time while he figured it out.
That night, the air was thick and heavy with the scent of coming rain. A storm was brewing, both inside the car and out. Hands drumming on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, Alex drove in silence. Taking a sip from the icy soda, Jazz waited, knowing the fallout would come shortly.
Something was eating Alex up inside but asking what the problem was wouldn’t do a damn bit of good until Alex was ready to talk. So Jazz didn’t waste his breath. The tension in the car got heavier and heavier and when it finally broke, Jazz breathed out a sigh of relief.
“Maribeth is pregnant,” Alex blurted out.
“’Scuse me?” Jazz asked, sticking his finger in his ear and wiggling it. He studied Alex and hoped like hell this was some kind of trick. It wasn’t, though. Alex’s face was pale and his eyes were miserable. He wasn’t much of an actor. “Sorry, bud. Did you just say Maribeth was pregnant?”
“That’s what I said.” His voice was grim, his eyes wild and scared. Impossibly young.
“Shit,” Jazz muttered, shoving his hand through his thick black hair. His eyes were wide and dark, the color of melted chocolate, and as he stared at Alex, they narrowed. “You two broke up a few months back. She ain’t saying it’s yours, is she?”
“Sure as hell is.”
Glaring out the window, unsure of what to say, he remained silent. The words, I told you so, danced around his head, but he didn’t give voice to them. He had warned Alex, time and again, Maribeth Park was nothing but trouble. She might not be an abusive bitch, but other than that, Maribeth was the female version of Jazz’s dead stepfather. Cut from the same cloth, Maribeth and Beau believed in only one thing and that was to get as much for themselves as they could, without actually having to work for it. Maribeth looked at Alex and dollar signs all but gleamed in her eyes.
But the last thing Alex needed right now was a reminder about how many times Jazz had warned him about Maribeth. So instead, he stayed quiet for a minute, thinking. “Seeing as how you two ain’t been together in months, she’s gonna have a hard time getting you in any trouble.”
Alex looked away, his eyes guilty. “Well, you see, the thing is… Remember graduation? We were all at the river that night and Maribeth and me started talking.”
“Talking, my ass,” Jazz muttered, blowing a breath out between his teeth. No talking, and no thinking, either, at least not on Alex’s part. “So the baby could be yours.”
His voice soft, Alex said, “I don’t think there is a ‘could’, Jazz. I got a feeling that baby is mine.” Not just a feeling, but a bone-deep certainty.
Silence once again fell.
“What’s the old man said?” Jazz asked, as Alex took a sharp curve going near sixty.
“Before or after he skinned me?” Alex asked with a faint grin. “He told me that I had made a mistake, but he’d be damned before he saw me marrying somebody like her. He’s going to get a lawyer.”
“A lawyer? Why in the hell do you need a lawyer?”
“To get custody of the baby,” Alex replied calmly. “I am not going to see that woman, or her mother, taking care of my baby. Shit, I wouldn’t trust them to take care of a stray cat.”
“Alex, you’re eighteen years old.”
“If I was old enough to be screwing her, then I’d better be old enough to deal with the consequences.” He was quiet for a minute and then he murmured, “You know what Maribeth is like. You warned me about her more times than I can count. Do you honestly think she could love a baby? Hell, forget love. Do you think a baby would be safe with her?”
Jazz sighed and rubbed at the back of his neck. He had a vicious headache all of a sudden and he suspected it was going to get worse before it got better. “Maribeth isn’t capable of loving or taking care of anything.”
“Then you understand why I can’t let it happen.” He tapped the steering wheel with his hands, a habitual nervous gesture. When Alex was nervous, being still was impossible. “Dad thinks we’re going to have to pay her money—between her and her mother, they’re greedy enough they’ll take the money and be thankful they don’t have to take care of some kid.”
“You really ready to be a dad, Alex?”
Alex looked too damn old for his years as he replied, “Doesn’t matter if I’m ready or not. It’s going to happen. But I can handle it.” With a trace of his normal good humor, Alex slid Jazz a sly glance. “I’ll name you the godfather, bro.”
In the process of sipping from his soda, Jazz choked on a laugh. “The hell you will,” he replied, good-naturedly smacking Alex on the head.
~*~
“She got rid of it.”
Jazz sat with Alex down at the river. Alex had killed the better part of a case of beer. They’d liberated it from Alex’s cousin who was conveniently out of town.
Desmond Kincaid would skin them both if he knew they had the liquor but right now, Jazz was more concerned about Alex than the old man.
Alex had been sitting in the same spot for well over an hour and he had a lost, confused look on his face. He’d said those same words over and over probably five times now.
“I wouldn’t marry her so she told me she wouldn’t bother having some whiny brat,” Alex said, voice raw. “That’s the only reason she even got pregnant. She told me that.”
Jazz had about a dozen ugly things to say to Maribeth—and part of him wanted to shake Alex, because he’d warned the other guy. But he just reached over and caught the other man’s shoulder, squeezed tight. “It sucks, man. All around.”
“I was going to take care of her, Jazz.”
“I know.” He knew Alex wasn’t really listening to him though. His friend had been going on for a while now and it didn’t seem like Alex was going to stop any time soon. Guilt sat in his gut like a heavy stone, because he couldn’t help but wonder if he wouldn’t be relieved, if he was in Alex’s shoes.
“Was I wrong? Should I have been willing to marry her?”
Jazz shot Alex a g
lare. “Hell, no. She fucked around on you when you two were together and she’d do the same if you got married. She treated you like shit half the time, treated your dad like shit half the time and treated Anne-Marie like shit all the time. Only person she doesn’t treat like shit is herself—do you really think that would change just cuz she was going to be a mother?”
Alex gave him an owlish look, confused and clearly too drunk to parse through that comment. In the end, he just sighed and shook his head. Then he clambered to his feet and stumbled over to the edge of the river. “I wanted the baby, Jazz. I don’t know why the hell I did—I’m too young to take care of one. But I wanted it.”
Jazz had no idea how to respond. He couldn’t even imagine being a dad. Much less wanting to be one. Wasn’t like he had the best role model, not after his dad died. Beau sure as hell wasn’t a good example. Jazz couldn’t remember ever holding a baby and he knew there was a lot more to it than just holding one. Especially if there wasn’t a mom in the picture. Maribeth wasn’t going to be the kind to change diapers. It would have messed up her manicure.
As he sat there, trying to figure out some way to help, Alex tipped his head back and stared up at the sky.
“Man.” Alex’s breath gusted out of him. “Look at all the stars, Jazz. You see them all? We’ll never see stars like that when we leave here. You hauling ass off to…wherever. Me, going to Duke. Going to be a fucking doctor. Don’t have to worry about trying to figure out school and taking care of a baby now, I guess.”
He turned around and started back toward the car but tripped and ended up on his ass.
“Shit, man.” Jazz went to him and hauled him up. “You’re a mess.”
“I’m a mess,” Alex agreed. “She got rid of the baby. I told her Dad and me would take care of her. We were gonna get her an apartment. She could have gone to beauty school like she said she wanted. We’d pay for it. But…nooooo…she said, no ring, no way.”
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