by Azure Boone
I looked right and saw a group of people standing and talking on phones. I looked around and my eyes snagged on a man that looked exactly like Tom Cruise. A bit more scanning and I found another guy that could’ve been Brad Pitt’s twin! Then it hit me. They were the real people! I scanned the crowd and sucked in my breath at seeing so many other celebrities. Wow. I searched for Johnny but didn’t find him. It was an oddly small crowd, but definitely a sophisticated event. Tuxedos, ballroom gowns, jewelry glittering—definitely not average.
A young man finally took the stage and stood behind a podium. “Thank you all for coming tonight for our sixth annual fundraiser drive. Twenty-five percent will be awarded to the Mothers Against Drunk Driving organization, and seventy-five percent will go to the survivors of these types of accidents.
I swooned with a wave of nausea. Oh God. God, please, help me not faint. The nightmare phrase Mothers Against Drunk Driving taunted me for the next painful forty-five minutes as Johnny’s paintings were unveiled and bid on. I sat there, numb with shock and horror, feeling so dirty and vile, not even the awe of his paintings opening up at four million dollars could distract the anxiety attack looming all around me. Please, please, please God, help me through this.
Where was Johnny? Was he still angry? Had that kind man failed to convince him? Was this it? Was it all over and I was just sitting here waiting to be told?
“And now for the final event,” the young man suddenly announced. “Please welcome, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Johnny Blue.”
My body jolted at the name, sucking in a sharp breath. Damn it, shit.
He came on stage in a tuxedo, looking my God, so beautiful. His ebony hair framed his face, and those electric blue eyes seemed to glow against the flawless white skin and black tux and hair. He truly made these movies stars look second rate. Except maybe Tom Cruise.
“Ever since my father’s life was taken by a drunk driver, I’ve done this drive.” The familiar rough velvet of his voice gave me goose bumps and his words brought a mad pounding to my chest. Why that crime? Why not something else? “I remember feeling this deep sense of confusion in the years that followed. Always asking why? I thought I’d never get peace from it.” A silence followed and he cleared his throat. “I went away a few months ago. To a wonderful little town in Louisiana called St. Francisville.” He gave a light chuckle and glanced up. “Just wanted to get away from the big city, try and find myself. But I think I was hoping that maybe…maybe the big answers would just…” he gasped a chuckle and shook his head a little, “I don’t know, somehow find me, I guess.”
I held my breath, watching his every move and expression. Something was bothering him, he was keeping his emotions in check, but which ones?
“I know, talk about reverse psychology with fate, right.”
Soft laughter rippled through the place as two people carried in a covered canvas on an easel. Was that the same one I’d seen covered next to the window? Had he finished it?
“Oddly enough, my little theory worked. All my answers came to me while there, while I filled this little humble town with my soul, painting murals all over the place like a kid with a crayon.” More soft laughter.
My throat tightened at hearing how he saw himself and what he did, saw his passion.
“It wasn’t an audible voice, just…a knowing deep in my soul, that I was right on it, right on the answer, I could feel it, I just…needed to put my finger on it.”
He looked right at the audience. “I thought I had. But something happened tonight that made me realize, I was wrong.” He shook his head. “Boy did I ever realize I was wrong.” I swallowed hard and froze as his eyes zeroed in on me. “Jewel. Would you come up here please?”
“Oh shit,” I whispered, trying to steady my breathing.
He held his hand out. “Please.”
Sounded safe. Kind. Not angry. Just go dammit, it’ll be fine.
I got up on shaky legs and made my way out of the row, focusing on not falling or twisting my ankle or snagging my heel or slipping on stage. Shit shit shit. I held his gaze like a lifeline as I approached him. The look in his eyes was so damn intense, I’d never seen it before. So raw and…something.
I fixed my gaze on his hand he held to me and took it. He squeezed it softly. But I still couldn’t be sure if that was just a pretense. I barely glanced at the faces on the first row. Big mistake. She was there, his ex-fiance. What was she doing here? Why was she smiling?
His mouth was suddenly at my ear. “You look beautiful.”
I searched his face, looking for evidence of the sincerity in his tone, wishing the words would calm me or comfort me. Instead, all I found was torment in his gaze. Mysterious torment.
He addressed the audience again. “I thought I had all the answers. I thought that if I put them on canvas, it would make it real. I hoped this. But after tonight, I realized I was wrong. Jewel, would you do the honor?”
I looked at him and his hand gesturing toward the canvas.
“Would you lift the veil?”
There was mumbling in the audience of surprise at his request and I wondered why? Was this unorthodox?
I nodded at him, feeling the tears pooling in my eyes, feeling like this was all bad. “Yes, of course.” The words barely made it out my tight throat.
I stood before the canvas and clenched my eyes for a second, then forced my hands to the black cloth. Reaching from the bottom, I gingerly lifted it, not even looking at the painting as I wondered if I was supposed to just let the black material fall to the floor, or was I supposed to fold it? Drape it over the back?
I turned toward Johnny and stepped toward him, out of the way of the painting, hoping to get a yes or no indication from his expression. The sounds of appreciation filled the room and I turned to the work to see what I’d revealed.
I froze.
There I was, lying in his white sheets, staring up at him. I knew it was him I was staring at, even though he wasn’t in the painting. There was only one person that could put such a look on my face. Johnny blessed Blue.
The painter seemed to be flirting with the audience the way nudity tempted at the sheet’s edges. And the light. I felt warm just looking at it. He’d somehow cocooned me in it. Then I realized it appeared that I was glowing.
“When she came into my life, everything changed. It made sense somehow. Not up here,” he pointed to his head, “but in here.” He pointed to his chest. “And then something happened that made me realize I could never capture this rare butterfly. Not with brushes, or paints. Not on a canvas in a few hours, or days, not even weeks. Because this butterfly is not meant for captivity. And yet…” He turned to me. “Nothing on this earth or in heaven, can stop me from wanting to try.”
He dropped on one knee before me.
Oh God.
“I asked you before if you’d be my masterpiece. And you said…you’d be anything I wanted you to be.” His intense blue eyes held my shocked gaze. “I’m going to cash in on your offer and ask…if you would please…please…be my wife.”
I stifled my squeaky gasp with a hand as applause erupted with whistles and yells. I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think.
The microphone clunked to the floor and he stood and stepped close to me, capturing my face between his hands. “I’m sorry baby.” His lips barely touched mine softly in delicate kisses. “For doubting you.”
“I was so scared,” I gasped.
Applause roared as he deepened the kiss and slipped his arms around my waist. “I love you Jewel,” he breathed.
I think we both left the stage in that moment and went someplace else. Someplace where we floated in eternal bliss. “I will Johnny.” I kissed him back, latching my fingers into that sweet hair. “I will be your wife. Forever.”
Murmurs sounded and suddenly the speakers squalked. “Well well well, if it isn’t the nut job from St. Francisville Louisiana.”
We both jerked to the feminine voice next to us.
&nbs
p; “Charise, what are you doing, don’t do this,” Johnny muttered.
“Don’t do what?” She leaned all her weight on her perfect hip, her sparkly black dress hugging her endless curves. “Don’t tell the world? Tell the world about little miss baby killer?” She leveled her evil green eyes on me and sneered. “Uh-oh.” She raised her brows in pretend pity. “Did somebody forget to mention?” She turned toward the audience. “Wonder what our Johnny would think if he knew the woman he just proposed to is among the type of people that killed his father?”
Horror coursed through me.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Johnny growled.
Her head whipped around to him, lips drawn up tight over perfect teeth, making her look rabid. “She murdered her own babies.” Her evil eyes sliced to me. “Tell him how you drank and drove with your babies and how they burned to death cause you were too drunk to get them out the car, you let them burn! Like you’ll burn in hell! Is that the kind of woman you want for a mother to your children? She probably killed her future babies too, you may not ever get any. But then maybe they’re better off never being born.” She screamed all the words, setting fire to my brain, unlocking the nightmare at full throttle. It ran me over and the room spun as I tried to find Johnny. The horror on his face hit me like a freight train and finished me off.
Like you deserve anything else.
“Mommy help us, help us, mommyyyy.”
I covered my ears and closed my eyes. Their desperate screams roared through my mind. I fought to get the door open again, to break the window, banging my fists against it, screaming with them, screaming for my babies. “Somebody help me! Somebody help me!” The flames were so fast. “I can’t open it! I can’t reach them, God! God help me!”
“Jewel! I’m here, stop fighting baby, stop.”
I knew that voice. Where was he? How was he here? He could help me! “Johnny, Johnny!” I screamed. “Help me, I can’t open it, help me open it!”
I was suddenly bound and unable to move. I panicked. “Jewel, stop, it’s over, shhhh, we got them out, they’re okay now, they’re safe,” he rasped in my ear, sorrow hoarsening his voice. They’re in Heaven, they’re safe, shhhhh.”
I screamed my despair and rage, fighting against him. “I don’t deserve you, I don’t deserve to be happy, I’m a monster, I killed my babies! I killed my babies Johnny! They cried for me, I watched them melt, they melted! They melted!” Pain shattered through my mind as once again I watched their skin drip off their little bodies, mouths stuck open in agony as they reached for their mother. “I didn’t save them! I fucking hate myself! I fucking hate myself! I should’ve died! Not them!”
“We got her, move.”
I vaguely felt the prick of a needle followed by an acrid taste in my mouth. My strength left me and my eyes rolled.
“Is she okay?” That was Johnny’s voice. Scared and getting farther away.
“She’ll be fine now. Do you know if she has any medical problems?”
“No.” The word came on a sob and I felt his face next to mine. “Jewel, I love you, I need you. I need you.”
He needed me.
It was like a life preserver while drowning. And all I knew in that second, was I had to save him. I’d failed my babies, and now, Johnny needed me. I had to rescue him. He was that second chance and I wanted it so bad even while I knew I didn’t deserve it. I couldn’t deny him. I never could, not from the day I met him.
I’m coming Johnny Blue.
****
I opened my eyes to color and floral scent. For a second, I thought I’d fell asleep in a field of flowers. I spotted a man in a chair, head in hands, bent over. I stared at him for a few seconds, orienting my vision. “Johnny?”
His head jerked up and ragged blue eyes locked onto me. Oh God I needed that man more than air. He flew to my side and fell on me, his lips and nose on my neck, stubble spearing me. I slid my fingers in his hair, feeling the contour of his scalp while desire spread through my body, causing my nails to scrape with hunger. My hands roamed down his back, feeling how real he was. So deliciously real. And mine? Oh God, yes, mine. Mine to cherish.
His lips met my ear. “I love you. I’m so sorry baby. About everything, nothing you did in the past can change that, you own my heart and soul and I need you more than I’ve needed anything in my life, more than I needed answers to questions, you are my answer to everything.”
My heart thundered at the emotion in his voice. “I need you more Johnny Blue. From the moment I laid eyes on you, you were the Heaven I could never deserve but wanted so bad.”
He nuzzled my cheek. “Are you feeling okay? I’m so ready to take you home.”
“How long have I been out?”
He glanced back at the door and then stared at my mouth as he traced it with a finger. “Like twelve hours.”
I closed my eyes a moment. “Seems like days.”
“How do you feel?”
“Like I need you.”
He rained soft kisses all over my face. “I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.”
“Take me home Johnny.” I stroked the stubble on his face softly.
“Which one?”
I smiled. “Whichever one has you in it.”
“I want you in my shack. Forever. But…I think we might want to consider a house in the country with a little more space.”
“Oh really?”
His hand slid down over my breasts, then stomach. Desire throbbed between my legs but his hand didn’t continue to where I desperately wanted it to go. It stopped on my lower stomach. “Doc says we’re going to have a baby in about eight months.”
I froze up with sudden terror and he pulled back and looked at me with a worried face. “I’m sorry Jewel, I should have asked, it was wrong to force this. But damn it, I couldn’t keep from becoming completely one with you, it seemed so wrong. And you didn’t protest so I thought—”
I pulled his lips to mine and kissed him happily. “You talk too much Johnny Blue. I can’t think of a greater honor than being the mother of your children. If you’d let me.”
His passion flared and his tongue dove into my mouth, making me moan with need. I clutched his broad shoulders tightly then slid my fingers along the soft skin of his muscular neck. “How many do you want?” he asked, his fingers finding their way inside my hospital gown at which point I realized I had no panties on. He teased inside my folds, making me ache and squirm and claw at his neck with need.
“However many you’d like.”
I gasped as his finger slid inside me. He watched my face, his eyes intense on mine. “I’ll take five, if you don’t mind.”
A thrill shot through me that he liked a big family. Followed by a breathtaking ache in my chest. He saw the pain and slid his finger out of me and lowered his lips to mine. “They’ll always be here baby.” He moved to my cheek with soft kisses. “Even though they’re in Heaven. We won’t leave them out, I promise.” He made his way to my forehead.” I want names and pictures, and details, I want to know everything about them.” He kissed the bridge of my nose. “When I paint our family portrait, they’ll be there. They’ll be with us, inside us.” His lips settled on mine. “God I love you, you know that?”
I sobbed and clutched him tight to me. “Not as much as I love you, Johnny B.”
Table of Contents
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
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