"I had nowhere else to go," she said. "I'm pathetic too, showing up on my little sister's doorstep because, well you know the rest."
"The woman who owns this place?" Brad asked, surprised. He never would have guessed this woman could be related to the sweet, pretty wife of Jack Hansen. He'd told Jack why he was there, but not the particulars. Writer's block and some war correspondent memories getting in the way, he'd told him. Jack talked some about dealing with the past, and the man had insight. A little too much he thought at the time, which was why he'd cut the conversation short when Jack was about to hone in on the real reason. The man had come to terms with his demons—his ex-wife killing his infant son—leaving things open to talk things out later, if he wanted.
"Yes, Grace is my sister." The woman shrugged. Then she let out a little ironic chuckle, and said, "She always made the right choices. I wish I could be more like her."
Brad was curious. It was an odd statement coming from this woman, odd, because the woman was stunning, and witty, and smart, but men took from her what they wanted and messed with her mind and she let them do it. He was doing it now, reasoning why it would be okay for him to grab her wrist and pull her down on top of him. He'd already felt the length of her body against him, but for a very different reason. Now he wanted what she was trying to stop herself from doing. "If you try to be like your sister you'll lose your soul," he said.
"But men would treat me differently," she replied. "You wouldn't talk to Grace the way you talk to me. You wouldn't have asked her to come to your cabin."
Brad took another draw on the cigarette, not because he needed it now, but to keep from reaching out and grabbing the woman. He'd have her out of those clothes in an instant, and she'd have him out of his just as fast. Two wounded animals screwing the hell out of each other to clear their minds of everything else. But that wasn't going to happen. "Your sister wouldn't have told me before she'd even said hello that she wouldn't go to bed with me," he said.
"I wanted to make sure you understood." She wasn't being flippant, just explaining, in simple terms, who she was. A woman who was too beautiful for her own good, who'd been told from infancy that she was beautiful, and who'd found early on that her beauty would open doors for her, mostly doors to men's bedrooms, but she didn't learn that until Elliot, whoever the hell he was. But she got to keep the Jag. He'd noticed the car the day the woman arrived. Silver and showy, a different kind of fish out of water, but now the woman needed some clarification. "What I understood when you told me you wouldn't go to bed with me was that you were thinking about it. Why else would you bring it up?"
She shrugged. "Because that's what you were thinking."
"Maybe, but you were too, and you are now," he said, knowing he was right. The woman was no longer an enigma, but he still couldn't seem to cut her loose.
She thrust out her chin. "I just told you I want to be more like my sister," she said, a little glint of defiance returning to her eyes. She was wounded but she had spirit. He liked that. He also wanted her, and she was primed to let him use her like other men had, but he'd never be able to live with that. "If you want to be more like your sister, you have to stop giving men what they want, and you have to stop the sex talk."
She shrugged into her jacket and zipped it closed. "It's what men expect, and I've been doing it so long I don't know how to stop."
"Then I'll give you your first lesson." He ground out his cigarette, stood and walked up to her. Tugging her zipper open again, he unsnapped her shirt with one swift movement, kissed her on the neck, and said to her, "Raise your knee and shove it into my balls."
"What!?
He kissed just above her breast. "You heard me. Knee the hell out of my balls. Stop what I'm about to do." He trailed his tongue over her chest, avoiding her breasts.
"I can't," she said, "I'll hurt you."
He could feel her breath heavy against the side of his face as he made patterns against her chest with the tip of his tongue. "I'm a man," he said. He trailed his tongue over the top swell of her breast and wondered why she didn't stop him. He could feel her apprehension, yet she did nothing, and he was beginning to feel like shit with what he was doing. But the woman was reaching out, and he intended to get his point across. "I don't care if I hurt you," he said. "I don't even care what your name is. I just want to get inside you. Now raise your knee." He dragged his tongue over her nipple and she let out a little sharp gasp. Still she did nothing, just let him have his way with her, years of giving men what they wanted before dumping her.
"I can't do what you want," she said.
"If you don't, I'll strip you of whatever's left of your self-respect and pin you to the bed and take what I want."
"I don't believe you'll do what you're threatening," she said, her voice shaky, yet not making any attempt to shove him away. "I trust you."
He stopped what he was doing, looked at her, and said, "Why in hell would you?"
She held his gaze. "Because I know you. I got into your head in your book. I was here when you saw your mind demons and couldn't fight them off because you were paralyzed by them, and I feel good because I was able to help get you through it. I'd do it again, and give you more if that's what you needed."
"Hell," he said, refastening her shirt, one snap at a time, covering what he wanted, knowing he could never touch her again, not that way. "Who made you like this?"
"No one. It's just the way I am."
"You're not a whore."
"I got to keep the Jaguar."
"Severance pay. You earned it." After he'd zipped her jacket, he asked, "So, what’s your name?"
"Justine," she replied. "Justine Page."
"Okay, Justine Page," he said. "If you won't double me over with your knee then turn and walk away from me. You have that power."
Which she did, without saying goodbye, and without looking back.
But after she shut the door behind herself, Brad realized she was the one woman he wanted and would never have, because he wouldn't screw her over unless he put a ring on her finger, which he wouldn't do. He didn't care that she'd used other men, or let them use her; he could push all that aside. But the one time he put his faith in for better or for worse, he returned home from the horrors of war, with his demons tormenting him, to find his wife, the only person who could help drive them away, in bed with another man. He wouldn't be that fool again.
***
Justine glanced out the window in the back wall of the lodge and saw Brad's cabin, now covered with fresh snow from the night before. The snow was undisturbed and her tracks from two days before when she’d left his cabin were gone, with no new tracks leading from the cabin to the lodge, so she knew Brad hadn't left the cabin during those two days, nor had he come for meals at the lodge during that time, which she found troubling. She wanted to know he was okay, that he didn't need her, at least not for the reason he had before. But she didn’t want to play the corporate game anymore. Sean Elliot cured her of that. She'd hit her head so hard on the glass ceiling she'd had enough. Still, she couldn't explain her response to what Brad Meecham had done just before she left his cabin. Absolutely nothing. Yet, he'd acted as if he cared what happened to her. Cared about her. She'd never felt that from a man before. It was always about what he wanted. Granted, she had her reasons for being with a particular man at a particular time—a step up the corporate ladder—but men had been using women over the ages and turnaround was fair play. But with Brad, it wasn't the same. He wasn't the same as the others, though she hadn't known him long enough to know why, only that she'd gotten into his head in the book and he was different. He'd empathized so profoundly with strangers hanging on hooks that he was tormented by what he saw, years after it happened.
She turned to Grace, who was zipping up her three-year-old son Adam's jacket, and said, "Why did you put someone in the cabin across the way? There are vacant rooms in the lodge."
Grace positioned a wool cap on the toddler's head, and replied, "The man who's
staying in the cabin is the author, Brad Meecham. He didn't want to be in the lodge so he gave us double the rate to open the cabin."
Justine moved in front of the window, wishing she'd see Brad, wishing he'd see her and motion for her to come. She wasn't sure what she'd do then, because she refused to allow herself to be just another woman for him to get it on with between writing chapters. She was through using men, or being used by them, and this time she'd stand firm...
Unless Brad needed her again to ward off dark memories. For that, she'd give him whatever he needed. It was a strange feeling, wanting to give a man everything she had without wanting anything in return. Always there had been a goal, another step upward, toward the glass ceiling. It had taken years, and many men, but she'd almost made it. But she had no goal with Brad. She'd gotten into his mind and she understood him. "How long will he be here?" she asked.
Grace let the boy scamper off and grabbed his brother, Marc. "He took the cabin for two months," she said, shoving a little arm into a jacket sleeve. "He's got about six more weeks to go. We don't see much of him though. He stays to himself. I suppose he's writing. It's quiet out there, no one to disturb him."
"Then he's never talked much to you and Jack?" Justine asked, wanting to know more. The man had a grip on her. His mind had a grip on hers. Yet, she knew nothing about his everyday life. How he slept, whether in pajamas or sweats, or maybe nothing. What he looked like when he stepped out of the shower, chest wet, water running down it. How he looked in the morning when he first opened his eyes, hair rumpled, overnight stubble on his jaw...
Unless he awakened troubled by night terrors. She knew little about post-traumatic stress except that people became exhausted to the point of having hallucinations at times because they had flashbacks during the day, and lay awake at night while trying to suppress memories that gripped them, only to relive the traumatic episode in dreams if they happened to drift off, so they paced and tried to make time pass until the soul-gripping images faded away.
She studied the cabin and saw no movement inside, but it was daylight and there were reflections on the window. She wished she could see inside. Maybe she'd see him writing. When she was in the cabin she'd seen his laptop open on a table, and manuscript pages on the floor around the printer, and an ashtray chock-full of cigarette butts, and coffee mugs with sludge in the bottoms. She'd seen it all when she was there, but it was only after she left that it registered. While there, all she'd been aware of was the breadth of Brad's bare chest, and the cords in his well-muscled arms, and the pulse throbbing in his throat, and the disturbed look on his face.
He'd been humiliated by what happened. A man's man, international author, standing in a flight jacket in the photo on his book, regressing to infancy. But she'd also witnessed the horrors that haunted him. She'd slipped into his mind in his book and seen it through his eyes, and she'd felt her heart racing as she'd read his description, and trembled too, not like Brad had—the images he'd seen were not permanently stamped on her memory—but she'd still been affected.
"He's talked to Jack some," Grace said, "but not to me. He stays to himself. Takes his meals with the other guests sometimes but always brings something to read when he does, manuscript pages I guess. Then he either sets them on the table beside him or takes his plate and sits in the great room. Obviously he doesn't want to talk to anyone. Maybe that's the way writers are."
"Do the guests know who he is?" Justine asked. She'd had no idea herself when she first saw him looking at her from across the great room. She'd seen his books on racks in stores though, but when she took his book off the shelf at the lodge and glanced at his photo on the back cover she hadn't connected the two, not even when he toyed with her about rewriting the ending. She wondered now what she might have revealed about herself. But there was nothing he didn't know about her character. He'd pegged her from the start, a woman who'd slept with men and let them use her because she was using them.
"Some of the guests know who he is," Grace said, "but whenever anyone tries to start up a conversation he gives them a clipped response and goes back to reading. Most people give up pretty quickly." Grace looked over the top of the toddler's head, and said, "He's a troubled man, Justine, and you're here to get your life back in order. Don't make another mistake. The man will use you and dump you. And I can tell you right now, all he'd want with a woman while staying here is for her to warm his bed. You don't need that. You need to rebuild your self-respect so the next time you get involved with someone, which should not be for a very long time, he will love you for who you are, not for how you make him feel in bed. Any woman can do that."
"What does Jack know about him?" Justine pressed, thinking she'd seen movement inside the cabin. Maybe Brad's face at the window for an instant.
Grace gave a long sigh and Justine knew she was becoming aggravated, but Grace didn't understand the situation and there was no way to explain it. "I don't know what Jack knows," she said, irritated. "The man talked to Jack in confidence when he approached him about renting the cabin, and I didn't press Jack to tell me what he said, but the man is troubled and you absolutely cannot get involved with him. Don't even think about it."
Justine continued staring out the window. "I read his book," she said.
Grace glanced over the top of her son's head. "Why his book? We have others."
Justine shrugged. "No reason. I just pulled it off the shelf."
Grace slipped a mitten over a little hand. "Jack mentioned he's a good writer," she commented while maneuvering a tiny thumb into the mitten's thumb.
"Is that all Jack said?" Justine asked, wondering if Jack had also been drawn into Brad's head, or if she was the only one.
"Jack said the story was riveting."
Justine glanced at Grace. "Just riveting, nothing more?"
"I don't know what else there is," Grace said, "but I wouldn't think it would be your kind of book. Did you read it so you could get to know the man?" Grace eyed her with suspicion, and waited. A mother catching her child with her hand in the cookie jar.
"No. Like I said, I just took the book off the shelf," Justine replied. "I'd seen his name on books on racks in stores and knew he was a best-selling author, but I don't read those kinds of books. I didn't even know who he was when—" she stopped short. Grace didn't need to know she didn't even know his name when she lay half naked with him and held him in her arms until the trembling stopped, or afterwards, when he tongued her breast to prove a point.
Grace pinned her with knowing eyes. "When what, Justine?"
"When we talked. It was when everyone was off sleighing," Justine said, while trying to act indifferent. "I was here reading and he came in. That's all. We talked a little, and he saw what I was reading, but I didn't know he was the author, and he knew that but didn't say anything, I guess because he'd rather people not know who he is."
Grace looked askance at her, and said, "How long did you talk?"
Justine didn't like the direction the conversation was leading. Giving a little shrug, she said, "Not long. He left right after that, but there's something I've been wondering about for a long time and have been meaning to ask," she said, steering the conversation away from Brad Meecham and Grace's probing questions. "Have you and Jack decided what to tell the boys about how they were conceived?"
Grace eyed her like she knew the conversation was being redirected but wouldn't press for reasons, and replied, "We plan to leave things as they are. Marc and Adam are fraternal twins."
"Figuratively, but not literally," Justine said, and she wondered how long the family could keep the falsehood going. Susan would never want it known that the only reason she'd conceived Marc was to save her other son who needed a cord blood transplant, and Jack's brother, Sam, did whatever Susan wanted, just to keep peace in the marriage, and although Jack was clearly bothered by the righteous conspiracy, keeping Grace happy overrode that.
"Jack's name is on Marc's birth certificate," Grace said. "He is his father."
"A time error on Marc's certificate," Grace replied, "but they weren't born that far apart."
Justine looked at the toddlers, who were playing a game of run around in a circle and try to catch the other, and said, "I thought with artificial insemination the bio father's name had to be on the birth certificate."
"It does," Grace said, reaching out to grab Adam, who was about to tackle Marc, "but that certificate's packed away. When we adopted Marc, Jack and my names were put on his new certificate so there's no reason for Marc to ever know any different." She looked directly at Justine then, and added, "That is, if no one tells him."
Justine raised her hands, palms splayed outward, and said, "Don't look at me like that. I would never say anything. This is between the four of you. I just think it's sad that little Marc will never know anything about his real father."
"Jack is his real father now," Grace insisted. "Besides, it's more important that little Marc grow up knowing he's just as loved as Adam than worrying about a father who died two years before he was born."
"What about when the boys are eighteen and Ricky's twenty-one?" Justine asked. "Do you plan to tell them then?"
Grace shook her head. "Savior babies have a lot of psychological problems. One child lives because another needed him to be born, so the savior baby feels like he's nothing more than a means to someone else's end, which Marc is, and in Marc's case, Susan didn't even want him, even knowing he was the means of restoring Ricky health. It's just easier to leave things be. They're fraternal twins and that's that."
"Except that little Marc has Susan's odd-colored eyes that change from hazel to smoke gray and almost green at times, and everyone else's are brown," Justine pointed out.
"We can't worry about that," Grace said, her voice agitated.
Jack swept open the back door and stepped inside. Seeing the boys, he crouched and opened his arms, and both boys went rushing up to him. Bundling one in each arm, Jack stood.
Living With Lies Trilogy (Books 1, 2, and 3 of The Dancing Moon Ranch Series) Page 22