Choosing You (Thirsty Hearts Book 2)

by Kris Jayne

  “That’s not what happened. I didn’t give him the watch. He took it.”

  “You’re the one who took the watch, Shannon.”

  “Only for insurance. A little something to save for later. For me. I had it hidden in the apartment. He found it, stole it, and pawned it,” Shannon struggled to explain.

  “No. You stole it. Whatever happened after that is as much your fault as it is your husband’s. Your current husband, with whom you still live.”

  Shannon teared up. “That’s the point. I don’t want to live with him. I want him gone. I do. I swear. That’s why I wanted insurance. The watch was something I could hold back and sell later in case I needed money.”

  “Money for what? You’re working, and Lord knows I’ve given you money to start over. If you wanted to get away from the guy, moving here was your shot. How do you let him move in with you?”

  “He knew I was coming here. He knew why. It wasn’t about whether I let him come with me. He just did. That’s what he does,” Shannon whimpered.

  “His whole life is a revolving door in and out of prisons and drug houses. You can’t have that around a child. What the hell are you thinking?” Jeff shouted.

  “You could say the same thing about me, couldn’t you? He and I have been together one way or another for a long time, and believe it or not, he’s been there for me. He picked me up from rehab and gave me a place to live. I know that there are reasons that I should leave, but that’s none of your business.”

  Shannon’s self-pitying demeanor turned obstinate again.

  “It’s my business if this guy is going to be around my daughter.”

  “She’s my daughter, too. I know you’d like to forget that. You don’t think I know that he shouldn’t be around Olivia. I know that. But you won’t even let me spend time with Olivia without you, so what are you so worried about?”

  “Here’s the thing, Shannon. I thought you were someone who was trying to get herself together and be a good mom. If you ever want to have a regular relationship with Liv, you’re going to have to live in the kind of environment that is good for a child. How can you do that when you’re married to a thug?”

  “I did leave him,” she insisted. “But when I got out of rehab, I had no one else to call. He came for me.”

  “I’m sorry you didn’t have someone else. That doesn’t change who he is. You have to start using some common sense, Shannon, and think first and foremost, ‘What’s good for my child?’ It means doing what’s hard. You can’t let life just happen to you anymore. Take control!”

  “I am! I’m trying to work it so I can get rid of Kid.”

  “Is that his name? I thought his name as Wayne?”

  “Everyone calls him Kid.”

  Jeff banged his hand on his desk and stood up. “You could have told me the truth. You know I would have helped you. I always help you. Like a sucker,” he steamed.

  “That’s why I didn’t ask.”

  “So you stole?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Shannon wailed. “It was stupid. I’m trying to manage everything. I’m such an idiot. And Kid. He’s…I’m stuck.”

  “As long as you think that, I guess you are. But this visitation and everything? It’s over if you don’t get rid of him. I’ll go to court, and you’ll never see her.”

  “But he’s not around her! I’m always here!”

  “How long are you going to stay on the right track with this asshole in your life? I mean, have you thought about the fact that if it’s not good enough for Olivia, it’s not good enough for you?”

  A piece of Shannon shattered. Jeff could see it in her eyes as she went still. Shannon thought she deserved to be with someone like Wayne Nelson. She thought she couldn’t do any better. Shannon stared at him, then lifted her chin. “I can decide for myself what’s good for me. It’s my life. Being a good mom doesn’t mean that I’m not allowed to have a life.”

  “That’s what you take from what I said? He’s a felon. He’s violent. He’s been arrested for hitting you. He’s been arrested for drugs. Hell, according to the PI, he’s still doing drugs. And you expect to stay clean with him in the house?”

  “No, I don’t,” Shannon screamed and threw herself toward him. “You think I don’t want to leave him? I do. I will, but you don’t get to tell me how to get that done. I know Kid. I know how to handle him. What do you want me to do? Kick him out and change the locks? You don’t know anything.” Shannon threw her hands in the air.

  “So you’re planning to leave him?” Jeff asked.

  “Right now, that’s none of your business. You don’t see me getting between you and Taryn.”

  Jeff balked and aimed a finger at Shannon’s face.

  “Don’t you ever put Taryn and that jackass in the same category. My relationship with her is miles away from whatever dysfunctional bullshit you’ve got going with some guy who hits you and gets high and can’t hold a job? Are you fucking crazy?”

  Shannon swelled with anger, her face almost purple. “You haven’t even seen crazy. I’ve been playing nice with you for weeks. I see you and your precious Taryn prancing around with your money and your wedding, and your big company payday coming. And I smile. And I pretend not to know that you started this company when we were married. You and Paul started working together out of your parents’ house before I even left. I was your wife. I was entitled to half of everything you had. You showed up in Houston and threw papers at me and pushed me off with a car and a few hundred dollars. I may not be as smart as you or Taryn, but I’m smart enough to know that I can cause you all kinds of problems if I wanted to. So you better remember that before talking to me like that.”

  Jeff’s knees weakened, but he forced himself to stand taller. He couldn’t afford to have her acting up before their deal was final, and he couldn’t afford to have her think that she had one iota of power to mess things up for him. Jeff had already gone through this again and again with Nick and his family law attorney.

  Unless you can prove fraud, there’s practically no way to reopen and divorce in the state of Texas. And even if one party thinks there’s fraud, they have to bring their case quickly. No, his divorce was a done deal. But any wrinkle at all could spook their buyers, and the deal could fall apart. He couldn’t afford even the hint of a lawsuit.

  “You signed the papers. It’s been five years. Try opening up a divorce after all that time just because you’re bitter and jealous. Good luck with that.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I can get a lawyer and then we’ll see, won’t we?” Shannon twisted her mouth into a smug smile, flipping her hair off her shoulder and straightening her spine.

  “What would be the point of that? You’ll lose, and you’ll waste all kinds of money that you don’t have. That’s if you can even find someone who would take your case, which isn’t likely.”

  “You always talk to me like I don’t know anything.”

  “I’m telling you the truth.”

  “Says you, Jeff. We’ll see.”

  “What would happen if I called the police, reported my watch stolen, and told them where to find it? Aren’t you still on probation?” Jeff questioned in response. Shannon paled.

  “It was a mistake, Jeff. That’s all,” she pleaded.

  “A criminal mistake. Don’t threaten me, Shannon,” Jeff barked.

  “You do that, and I’ll have nothing to lose.”

  Her matter-of-fact statement came without a trace of threat, which frightened Jeff more than her defiance.

  Shannon gave him an empty stare and then headed out of the office and out the front door. Jeff followed. He locked the door behind her and banged his forehead against it three times, groaning. He needed to talk to Nick ASAP.

  Jeff couldn’t believe what Nick told him.

  “But we’ve already disclosed my divorce,” Jeff gasped, gripping his cell phone tightly.

  “True, but if there’s a chance of a new lawsuit, and you know that and fail to disclose i
t, that could get you in a world of trouble,” Nick explained.

  “There’s no way she has a leg to stand on. I already talked to a family law attorney when Moveo first brought up the terms of my divorce.”

  “Well, that’s your attorney’s opinion, but you signed a warranty that there were no threats of litigation.”

  “There aren’t. Shannon isn’t going to sue me. She threw that out to get a rise out of me.”

  “I’m not saying that you aren’t probably right. You asked me for my legal opinion. This is it. Know that if Shannon hints to someone else of a lawsuit involving the company and that gets back to the buyer, that could put the whole deal in jeopardy. Now, it’s possible Moveo would see this as frivolous and agree that there’s not a real legal issue, but at a minimum, we have to discuss disclosure with Paul and Brad.”

  Jeff felt sick. Once again, Shannon bopped in and turned his life upside down. She had no case. Responding to her would only make her think there was a claim. Serving her with legal papers or asking her to sign waivers would only invite trouble.

  The idea for the company came from his years of experience, dating back to when he was married to Shannon, but that doesn’t mean that the idea was intellectual property that should have been part of their divorce. He and Paul didn’t conceive of the mobile platform until a few years ago, well after the divorce. Hell, smartphones and tablets were barely a market when he and Shannon had their brief and remarkably ill-fated marriage.

  He needed to keep Shannon calm for the next few months. Jeff dropped his chin to his chest and pressed his forehead with the tips of his fingers. He had to talk to Taryn.

  She could always maneuver in these kinds of situations. She’d have a dozen ideas on what to do. Plus, now that everything she’d feared about Shannon was coming true, he owed her an apology. A big one.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  It might only be a day without speaking to Jeff, but to Taryn, it felt like a month. By mid-morning of day two, she could hardly concentrate on her work.

  She wanted to give him space liked he’d asked, but she had to fight the urge to call him and make him listen to her. Taryn clung to the belief that the ends justified the means in this case. But what if he didn’t forgive her? Had he spoken to Shannon? What if she gave him some bullshit story or tried to weasel her way out of the truth?

  Horrifying questions swam in her head and pulled her attention away from the spreadsheet she’d been pretending to review for the past hour.

  A knock on her office door pulled her out of her mental tailspin. Micky popped her head in.

  “Hey, Taryn, got a minute? I had a question.”

  “Yeah, come in.” Taryn signaled for her friend to enter.

  “Have you had a chance to see the budget plan for next quarter? Something’s not looking right. I’m not sure if there’s an expense that’s getting pushed out that we haven’t been invoiced for, but it looks like finance hasn’t accrued the dollars correctly. Did you see the email from Peter?”

  “Email? No, I saw something came in from him this morning, but I haven’t had a chance to look at it.”

  “Oh, well, did the numbers look right to you?” Micky gestured toward Taryn’s screen where the file sat open on her computer.

  “Umm, I’m not sure. I’ll need to go back over it, I think.” Crap. While she worried about Jeff and Shannon and her crazy husband and Olivia and the wedding, her work kept piling up. Normally, she had every detail of every dollar clearly sorted in her mind. She knew Micky counted on her to be on top of the budget. Taryn glanced at her screen, and a blur of numbers stared back at her. She needed to focus.

  “What’s wrong?”

  When Taryn hesitated, Micky stood up and closed Taryn’s office door, before sitting back down.

  “It’s Jeff. He’s furious with me.”

  “About what?”

  Heat crept up Taryn’s face. Micky had predicted that hiring the PI would cause trouble. On top of everything else, Taryn couldn’t handle an “I told you so.”

  “I re-hired that PI and had him follow Shannon.”

  “Oh, Taryn.” Micky slumped in her chair.

  “Well, it turns out I was right. Shannon was lying. She’s still seeing her convict husband, and she stole from the house. I was right.”

  Her defense should stand up to her friend’s scrutiny, but being right wasn’t making her feel better.

  “Did you tell him or did he find out on his own?”

  “I told him.”

  “At least you fessed up. How mad was he?”

  Taryn remembered the fury in his eyes and how coldly he’d told her to leave, and she shivered.

  “He told me that he wouldn’t speak to me until he could do it without yelling. It’s been almost a day and a half. That’s an eternity. I’m giving him time to get over it, but I can’t take the silent treatment. It’s killing me.”

  “What else did he say?”

  “He’s mad that I kept this a secret, and he thinks I don’t trust his judgment.”

  “Do you?”

  “I do. Except for this thing with Shannon. He bends over backward to give her the benefit of the doubt even after all she’s done. I mean, I understand that he’s trying to make things work for Olivia’s sake, but he’s willfully blind to who she’s been her entire life.”

  “Maybe that’s why he’s mad.”

  “Why?”

  “Because however you got the information, you’ve proven that she duped him. Again. That and you felt like you couldn’t just discuss this with him openly.”

  “I wanted to talk to him about it, but he didn’t want to hear anything negative. He kept insisting that I keep an open mind and be nice. He wants us all to be one big happy family.” Taryn rolled her eyes. “Do you know that he invited Shannon along to an appointment at Danya’s? I had to reschedule my first dress fitting because I didn’t want to do it with her sitting there drinking her fake champagne.”

  “Look, men can be obtuse. You know that, and you have to give him credit for all he’s done to help Olivia adjust.”

  “I do, but I don’t see how being cordial to Shannon means that you can’t still examine what she says and make sure she’s on the up and up.”

  “Jeff’s such a straight shooter. To him, that’s sneaky.”

  “Yeah, he pretty much called me sneaky. He said he wonders if this is how I’m going to be when we get married.”

  A lump threatened to form in Taryn’s throat. She would not cry at work. She repeated that admonishment to herself and pulled it together.

  “He’ll come around. He loves you. You just have to apologize for not being upfront. Tell him you won’t ever do it again.”

  “That’s just it. I don’t know that I’m sorry. In fact, I’m not. I still think I did the right thing. He would have never agreed to have the PI keep staking her out. The only way for us to have uncovered this information before something awful happened was for me to take control of the situation.”

  “Maybe so. But you need to find a way to let him know this is a special circumstance. You have to let him know you believe in him. If you believe in him,” Micky hedged.

  “Can’t I trust him but know that there are certain things he’s not going to do? It’s not even a criticism. I like him kind and trusting. That’s why I fell in love with him. I trust him to do the right thing when he has the right information. I just wanted to make sure he had all the facts.”

  “You don’t have to sell me on that. You have to square this with him. You might want to consider how all of this affects the dynamic in your relationship. In this case, your bulldog mentality paid off, but sometimes you may need to let things go. Let Jeff handle things.”

  Taryn sighed, throwing her face into her hands and knocking her forehead on her desk. “I’m so bad at that.”

  “Well, it’s probably one of the things Jeff loves about you even if he’s not happy right now. Give him another day to sort things out and then call him. Apologi
ze for hurting him.”

  “You’re right,” Taryn mumbled into the desktop. She sat up, running her hands through her hair. “I’ll give him another day. But if he doesn’t call me, I may go nuclear.”

  “Of course, you will.” Micky laughed and glanced at the time on her cell phone. “I’ve got to get to a meeting. Can you take a look at the budget and get back to me after lunch?”

  “Absolutely. I’m on it.”

  As Micky left her office, Taryn confronted the numbers on her screen once again. This time, she focused. Last thing she needed was to get fired for incompetence.

  By late afternoon, she had finally worked her way through both the spreadsheet and her email. The tediousness of it all formed a welcome distraction from her personal troubles. She sat back in her chair with an air of self-congratulation when her phone vibrated, skittering across her desk. Seeing Jeff’s picture on the caller ID display sent her heart racing.

  “Jeff. Hi.” She wanted to launch into another justification. Then, she wanted to press him on what he planned to do about his ex. She did neither. Hardly able to breathe, she waited for him to speak.

  “Can you come over to the house?”

  “Of course. Are you there now or do you want me to meet you later?”

  “I’m home, yeah. I decided to pick Olivia up from school myself today.”

  “I’ve wrapped up most of what I needed to for the day, so I can leave now if that’s okay.”

  “That’d be great.”

  “Jeff?”

  “What?”

  “I missed you.”

  “Me too.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Taryn’s knees quivered as she trekked into the house to face Jeff. He was taking some baked chicken from the oven and humming along to a song on the radio. He looked up at her as soon as she entered the kitchen. Taryn searched for Olivia, who must have been upstairs. Unable to start with miscellaneous small talk, Taryn blurted out her apology.