by Kim Law
Her head began to hurt from hanging upside down, but fear of him depositing her on the other side of the door kept her quiet.
“Are you talking about Ted Pritchard?”
God, he remembered. “Yes. I modeled under the name Reveka.”
“From what little I remember, didn’t others come forward to speak out against you? Saying…” He shook his head one time. “What was it? Something about you willing to do anything to marry a politician?”
“Yes.”
He shifted her weight on his shoulder and dumped her equipment on the couch. His free hand came up to hold her at the back of her thigh, then he stooped and set her on her feet. She straightened to face him.
“Are you saying what they said is true, or not?” he asked.
“She was supposed to be my friend, JP. The only one who ever pretended to like me. After her tabloid windfall, I guess she decided that wasn’t enough. The next thing I knew, practically everyone I worked with took payoffs from Ted to run me in the ground. He was all about trying save his career and marriage, and didn’t have a concern in the world for what it was doing to me.”
JP’s forehead crinkled from deep thought. “It didn’t work, though, right? Didn’t the jerk step down a short time later?”
She nodded. “Three weeks. And his wife ended up taking him for everything he had. But I lost everything too.” She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the floor. “I thought I loved him. We had even talked about a future together. When this came out, he not only laughed at my pleas to stick beside me, he did everything he could to soil my reputation. I was done at that point. I could have posed in Playboy, probably could have gotten a joke of a reality show, but I was a laughingstock. All serious opportunities quit coming my way, and there was no way I’d ever get the chance to report on anything that mattered to people.
“Everywhere I went…” she continued, then cringed as the memories replayed inside. “It was horrible. All I wanted was to make a name for myself and be able to support my mother, and suddenly I was such an embarrassment she didn’t even want me to come home. She eventually went back to Mexico because of the shame of walking down the street I grew up on. I changed my looks, making sure to never wear makeup or enhance my appearance in the slightest, and went to photojournalism school.” She lifted her shoulders and let out a soft sigh as they settled back into place. “It wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but it was the closest I could get.”
JP’s hands slid up her arms to cup her shoulders. “Ted Pritchard was a bastard.”
“It doesn’t matter. He took me down with him, and all I ever asked from him was…” She brushed off his hands and walked away.
“Was what?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Was what, Vega? Don’t stop now. What did he take from you?”
Tears once again filled her eyes and edged over her lashes. She touched the back of her hand to her cheeks and kept her back to him. “I just wanted to be special. Have him love me. I was discovered and talked into modeling at sixteen, two months after my father died.”
JP’s body heat touched her from behind, but he didn’t lay a hand on her. She closed her eyes and fought the urge to lean back and let his strength support her.
She sniffled. “I missed Dad so much. He and I used to do everything together. By the time the agent approached me, Mom and I were having such a hard time financially. We were having a hard time period. She missed Dad, I missed Dad. We couldn’t figure out how to be there for each other. So I went into modeling to help pay the bills.” A shiver racked her body. “I lived all over the world, alone, no friends, and all I wanted was someone to love me. Like my father used to.”
She faced him, knowing she was a puffy-eyed mess. “Instead, I not only lost out on love, I lost who I was. I’m so tired of hiding, JP.” She sniffled. “So very tired.”
He held out his arms and she went willingly into them. They closed around her, and for the first time in years, everything felt right.
JP held Vega until her tears dried, stroking her back and generally doing anything he could think to soothe her. She’d been through a lot in her life, and he suddenly felt petty about his own troubles.
So what if his mother wasn’t happy with him unless he was the perfect politician? He knew that deep down, she did love him. Probably. Plus, he had Cat, Becca, and Tyler. Even Beverly.
And Vega had no one. Not even her mother was close enough to be there when she needed her.
He couldn’t figure out what to do about her. He peered down at the top of her head and wondered which way her breakdown would send her. It could make her run even faster, or it could shed some light on what they could have.
She mumbled into his chest, but he couldn’t make out her words.
“What?” He pulled back and tilted her tear-soaked face to his. He stroked his fingers across her cheeks to brush aside the tears, then touched a soft kiss to the tip of her nose, savoring the salty taste. She’d needed to go through that. “What did you say?”
“That I love you.”
The words were spoken almost as resignation, but they put a smile on his face he wouldn’t have thought possible. “You love me?”
She frowned. “I said I did, didn’t I?”
He squeezed her tight to his chest. “Damn, lady. If I’d know my hauling your ass out of here would spur your love, I’d have tried that much sooner.”
She smacked at him and pushed back, but he didn’t let her escape.
Fear shone bright from her waterlogged eyes. “So what do we do now? You see why it can’t work?” She dropped her head to his chest, resting her cheek against his pounding heart. “I can’t put you in the position of having a politician-hungry, husband-
stealing woman by your side. And…” Her shoulders sagged. “And honestly, I don’t want to go through the public scrutiny again either. I just want to do something that makes me happy and go on about my business.”
Panic exploded inside him. “And what about love? Don’t you want that in your life?”
“I wrote love out of my life years ago.”
“Yet it found you anyway.”
His throat hurt as he watched her slim frame seem to shrink before his eyes. He dug his hand in his pocket and pulled out the chunk of piano she’d pulled from his box. He held it up between them. “When I was ten, my mother bought me that piano over there. Gran had been teaching me to play on an old upright by showing me videos of other people playing. I watched their fingers and could easily duplicate their actions. I also played at school. It took away some of the sting of knowing that with everything else, I wasn’t as good as all the other kids.
“One day, the teacher sent home a note expressing how musically inclined I was. Beverly took the note to my mother, and she was thrilled. She’d heard me play at home, but I guess the teacher validated my talent.”
“So she bought you a piano? That shows she cared, right?”
“And she bought stacks of sheet music. She and Dad wanted me to perform for an upcoming dinner they were throwing. She wanted me to play the music she’d picked out.”
He could tell she saw where this was heading.
“Right. I couldn’t read the music. It didn’t make sense to me, and Gran didn’t play herself. I suggested taking real lessons, but both Mom and Dad were against it. I guess they were worried someone would learn I wasn’t perfect.”
Vega pressed her palm over his heart. “What happened?”
He wrapped a hand over hers, and replayed it in his head. “The night of the party came, and I still couldn’t play the music. I begged Mom to let me play the other songs I knew, but that wasn’t what Dad wanted. She said my father had people coming from his alma mater, and these were the songs they wanted to hear. She walked out of the room after telling me to just forget about it, and I swear it hurt worse than what felt like her desertion when I was initially diagnosed.”
“You’d gotten your hopes up that you could please he
r with this, hadn’t you?” Vega spoke softly.
He focused on her, thankful to have her in his life. “You’re pretty smart, you know that?”
“Nah,” she shook her head. “I can just see it in your eyes.”
He gave her a wry smile, then tucked her back against his chest. He kissed the top of her head. “Yeah, I’d gotten my hopes up.” He pulled in a deep breath. “I had convinced myself if I could do this one thing, she would be proud of me again. When she walked out, I went a little crazy. I found my brother’s baseball bat and started waling on the piano. I busted one leg and took that chunk out before Cat stopped me. She and I sat on the floor of that room for what seemed like hours, both of us crying because I wasn’t good enough, and she didn’t know how to help. She even offered to take piano lessons herself and come home to teach me.” He chuckled. “But it was too late. I didn’t want to take lessons anymore, and I didn’t care if I ever pleased my mom again or not.”
Vega’s arms slid around his waist and held him tight. He squeezed his eyes shut, because he knew as well as she that his hope had not died that day. But his young soul had definitely been shattered.
“My sister and I became much closer that afternoon. She even started helping me with homework every day.”
“And the piano?” Vega remained tucked against his chest, enjoying the feel of his strong arms, and knowing she was giving back some of the same comfort. “Clearly you started playing again.”
“The leg got replaced, and by the time it was fixed, I realized that playing helped me more than being mad at my mother did. I eventually took lessons, but only years later after I had learned on my own how to make the sheet music make sense to me.”
“And that piece in your hand? Why didn’t it get put back into place?”
JP nuzzled the top of her head, and she had the thought she should probably get out of his arms. They’d shared too much not to have grown closer, but the same issues still sat like deadweight between them.
He laughed gently. “For some reason, they could never find that piece. Since it didn’t affect how the piano sounded, it was left as is.”
“But you found it?”
“I took it.” One hand smoothed up her back to cup loosely around her neck. “I took it that night and locked it away with the promise to myself that I was finished begging for love. I put the box away, and it was never opened again.” He pulled back and stared into her eyes, his blue orbs darkening. “Until tonight.”
“Oh.” She wet her lips, her gaze dipping to watch his tongue do the same. The air between them suddenly thickened and warmed, and she whispered, “We shouldn’t.”
“We should.”
“But nothing’s different. We can’t be together.”
He put his mouth to her temple and nuzzled his way to her ear. “We’ve got to be together, baby. Don’t you see? We’re both so damned broken, we’re the only ones who fit each other.”
Her neck tilted to allow him better access. “But…” She struggled to remember what she intended to say as his fingers tugged at her blouse and slipped underneath. He slid one hand up and palmed her breast, and she was lost. She had no idea how they could possibly make a relationship work, but for the first time, she wanted to believe they could.
Vega began working on the buttons down the front of his shirt, and smiled at the gleam in his eyes. “We’ll figure it out later?” she asked.
He growled. “We’ll definitely figure it out later.”
He closed his mouth over hers, and with a quick shift, her feet once again left the floor. Only this time, she wasn’t tossed over his shoulders like a bag of potatoes.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and curved into him. “I think I like this position better than the last time you carried me.”
The fingers beneath her lightly pinched her butt and sent her wiggling in his arms. “I liked the other way too. It was everything I could do not to grab your ass when it was practically in my face.”
“Right.” She giggled. “You were so mad at me, I doubt my rear was even on your radar.”
JP stared down at her, love shining from his eyes, and winked. “There hasn’t been a day go by that your rear wasn’t on my radar, sweetheart.”
He entered his bedroom, the single lamp the only light glowing save the twinkling city outside, and laid her gently in the middle of his big bed. He shucked his shoes, then crawled on top of the covers with her.
As she rolled to her side to face him, she reached up to trace her finger over his lips and couldn’t contain the hope that bloomed wide inside her chest. She wanted this man. As a friend, a lover, but mostly as a husband. She wanted it so bad the depth of her desire terrified her.
“Love me, JP,” she whispered.
He gave a single nod as he wrapped long arms around her and fitted her body to his. “Always.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“I WANT TO START a program for kids.”
Vega cracked open her eyes to the early-morning hue of JP’s bedroom and squinted to focus. Red digits beside the bed said 5:00. Their night had been better than she could have ever imagined, waking time and again to seek each other out, but they had yet to return to reality and discuss anything more substantial than what position they wanted to try next. Looked like JP was now ready to face facts.
She rolled to her back, forcing him to loosen his hold, and peered up at him in the gray dawn.
“A program?” A yawn escaped with the question.
“I’m sorry.” He brushed hair off her forehead and replaced it with a kiss. “Did I wake you?”
“No.” She stroked his rough jaw, enjoying the intimacy of the moment. “I was listening to you breathe.”
His mouth curved. “I like that.”
She stifled another yawn. “Sorry.” She waved a hand in front of her face as if swatting it away. “I’m tired. Something kept me awake most of the night.”
He nudged his nose to the side of her face, forcing her head to turn, then nipped at her earlobe. “You can sleep when we’re old and our four kids are taking care of us.”
Fear thundered through her as instantaneously as it had the first time he’d mentioned forever. She still couldn’t figure out how they could make it work. Instead of addressing the subject of how many kids they may or may not have, she returned to his opening statement. “What kind of program?”
His gaze narrowed as if he knew what she was up to, but she also caught a tightness around his mouth. He didn’t know how to deal with her past any more than she did. He snuggled against her side, one arm heavy over her waist, his cheek pressing to hers. “Something similar to what I’m doing at the Montessori school. Not your ordinary program designed to help kids figure out their best way of learning, but attention given to building within them a confidence they’ve never had. Hope. Show them there’s nothing wrong with them just because they’re different.”
She liked the feel of the vibrations from his body as he lay against her and talked. “It sounds perfect. What’s stopping you from doing it?”
He released a long, sad breath. “I don’t want to just fund it and forget it. I want to be involved. Make sure it’s being done right. I want to visit the schools and help train the counselors. I want to be a part of it.”
“You want to make a difference,” she whispered.
Several seconds passed before he answered. “Yes.”
“Then I’ll ask you again. What’s stopping you?”
He rolled to his back and bent his arm across his forehead. “How can I do that and be a senator? And keep an eye on the company?”
“And not let it be known you’ve dealt with dyslexia yourself?”
She felt his gaze on her, but she didn’t look his way. He had to figure out that he hadn’t quite developed that confidence yet himself that he wanted so badly to instill others.
“I’ve overcome it.” His voice was low.
“Then why keep hiding it?” She rolled to her side and faced him. “I
t still hurts you deep inside, but yes, you’ve overcome the obstacles.”
“What would be the point of putting it out there now?”
“Because you can’t move on from your past until you do. Do you realize you’re doing the same thing to Tyler that your mother did to you?”
His jaw clenched. “Like hell I am.”
“Then what’s the problem with showing his issues on-screen? You’re treating him like something is wrong with him by refusing to allow him to be fully seen in public.”
“That’s not…” He paused, then slammed his mouth into a straight line and glowered at her. His nostrils flared. “What about you? You’re so busy hiding, you’re afraid to even have a life.”
“Why are you turning this on me? We were talking about you and what you want.”
“Yet you’re doing the same thing you accuse me of. Do you want to cower behind a camera the rest of your life?” His tone hurt, but she knew he was simply lashing out because she’d struck a nerve. “Why not step out there and grab what you want?”
“It’s not the same thing. I brought mine on myself. You were born—”
“Bullshit. You may have been naive, but you didn’t set out to trap a man into marrying you. And you certainly didn’t bring any of this on yourself. The only thing you did wrong was run from it instead of face it head-on.”
She sat up and pulled the sheet up with her. “What would facing it have gotten me? More offers of tawdry reality shows? More porn producers calling?”
He followed her up to the headboard. “It would have gotten you the ability to have a life.”
“A life with you, you mean?”
The sun had begun peeking over the city, and a harsh slash chose that moment to streak across his face, highlighting his eyes as well as the pulse pounding in his temple. He looked at a spot over her shoulder, and the atmosphere in the room changed. “I can’t figure out how to do it, Vega.”
Her hand covered her mouth. He was talking about them. Though she knew it was the only choice, she wasn’t ready for this.