by J. D. Mason
She belonged with him. It was something she just knew, felt it deep down inside, and once she’d come to terms with it and got out of her own way, let go of those silly doubts and insecurities, there was no denying that the two of them were meant to meet and they were meant to be together. It was the logistics that gave her pause. Abby lived in Blink. She had a business and a home and family in Blink, Texas. And Jordan’s world was here in Dallas. Never in a million years had she ever contemplated what it might be like to live in a place like this.
He’d promised her that they’d make it work, though, and Abby trusted him. She trusted him with all of her, and she loved him more than she imagined she’d ever loved any man. The thought of leaving him tomorrow made her want to cry. She’d grown accustomed to falling asleep next to him and waking up with him.
“Abby,” he called softly to her from the top of the stairs.
“I’m here.”
“Come back to bed, baby,” he said.
Abby turned on the balls of her feet and hurried up the stairs to get to him, standing naked and holding out his hand and waiting for her. Inside the bedroom, Abby slipped off his shirt and slid back into bed, curling up next to him. Robin Sinclair had tried to do a number on Abby. And it had damn near worked. Every now and then, since talking to that woman, doubts would rise up in Abby about how a man like him could possibly truly care about someone like Abby, who wouldn’t even register on his radar in a big city like this, swimming with the Robin Sinclairs of the world.
Fate had brought Abby and Jordan together and introduced them in her house that day. All the stars had to have been aligned, and every element in the stratosphere had to have been in place to have put the two of them together, and that’s exactly what happened. Even in Abby’s logical-thinking, reason-worshiping mind, she had finally come to accept that yes, there were such things as ghosts, and yes, she and Jordan Gatewood were soul mates.
Gone Inside
LOATHING HIM WASN’T ENOUGH. Despising him for what he’d done to her couldn’t change the feelings she still had for him. Robin’s desperate need for Jordan was turning her into a madwoman, crazed with twisted thoughts of punishing him and getting him back.
“I guess you’re still not taking me seriously,” Robin said unemotionally over the phone, staring at the picture sent to her by Liza’s detective, of Jordan hugged up with Abby Rhodes.
“You need to lose my number, Robin,” he responded bitingly.
She recognized the club they were in. It was one of the most exclusive clubs in Dallas called A Little Piece of Heaven. You needed a special pass to get into a place like that, and Jordan had dragged country trash inside it.
“No. I need to see you, Jordan,” she said, summoning him.
“I don’t have time for this. I don’t have time for you.”
“What part of I can ruin you with a single phone call to the press don’t you understand?” she said intensely. “I need to see you. Maybe I need to truly drive my point home to you in person.”
She abruptly hung up and continued studying the photographs e-mailed to her. Jordan had a thing about kissing this woman. He couldn’t keep his mouth off her for some reason, which stabbed at Robin’s heart. He’d always acted as if kissing were a vile act. Jordan always told Robin that he had a thing about it. It turned him off. But apparently only when it came to kissing Robin.
She hated him for how he’d made her feel. Inadequate. Undesirable. Ugly. Angry. Bitter. Insecure. The toll all these emotions were taking on her was immeasurable, transforming her into someone whose face she hardly even recognized when she looked into the mirror. No man had ever had this effect on her. No man had ever given her such an overwhelming sense of self-loathing. This was the truth that Robin curled up next to every single night since she’d found out about this other woman. And every single day, she wrestled with just getting out of bed in the morning and struggling to make it through the day without breaking down in fits of self-pity or rage.
* * *
“Is he in?” she asked defiantly, marching past his assistant’s desk.
“Yes, but he’s on a call,” the woman said, rushing over.
Robin ignored her, walked into Jordan’s office, and immediately shut the door behind her.
“I’ll have to call you back,” he said before hanging up on whomever he was on the phone with.
“Now is not the place and time for this,” he said, bolting to his feet.
In the hour since she’d first called him, Robin had run the gamut of emotions and stood before him now, utterly drained of the energy to fight.
“Sit down, Jordan,” she told him.
“I need for you to leave,” he demanded.
The tone of his voice, the disdain in his eyes cut into her like hot steel. Robin straddled the fence between love and hatred for him, and it tormented her so badly that she couldn’t just leave.
“I need to make some things clear to you, Jordan,” she said gravely.
Jesus! Couldn’t he see what was happening here? Did he truly not understand the depths to which she was willing to go with him?
“This has got to end,” he said, calming himself. The reasonable and rational Jordan gradually appeared in the place of the angry bull sinking into his chair behind that desk. “You’ve got to get past this, Robin. It’s not worth it. You are an exceptional woman. This … this is beneath you.”
Robin listened carefully to the things he said, and they hit home. She nodded slowly in agreement. “Yes,” she whispered.
The longer she held his gaze to hers, the more he started to look as if he cared. There was sincerity in his eyes, a warmth and genuine concern for her. “I am so sorry for what I have done. I’m sorry for having misled you. I had no right to do that. And I take full responsibility, Robin. I do.”
Jordan Gatewood was such an impressive man. He had a way of luring you in and making you feel as if you were the most important person in his life. And you believed him. But Robin knew all his tricks, and she had made up her mind never to fall for them again.
“You’re afraid,” she tenderly offered.
He appeared to be taken aback by her comment.
She smiled. “You’re afraid that I’ll tell everyone what I know about you and Lonnie Adebayo.”
“There’s nothing to know,” he said convincingly.
“I don’t believe that,” she murmured more to herself than to him.
Robin had reached her own conclusions about Jordan and Adebayo. She’d drawn lines and connected the dots to the only scenario that made any sense. Jordan had been caught in an affair with the woman. His wife, Claire, had discovered his secret, confronted him about it, and killed herself because of it. At some point, Jordan had had an altercation with Adebayo, and he’d either murdered her himself, or he’d hired someone to do it. Frank Ross? Maybe. It would explain why he was paying for the man’s defense, especially if Ross had planned on coming clean about the whole scheme and risking a scandal for Jordan.
“Speculation, Robin. You managed to get your hands on a few dangling particles of information and stitched them together to fabricate some story that you can’t even prove. Even if you were to go to the police with what you think you know, a team of decent lawyers could unravel your story before it even went to trial.”
Robin’s eyes filled with tears. “Ah, but it wouldn’t even need to go to trial to ruin you, Jordan,” she said, gloating. Looking at the sudden change in his expression, she almost felt sorry for him. But not quite. “You truly underestimate me, but that’s okay.”
“You’d ruin all these months of hard work, yours included, over a relationship?” he asked in disbelief. “Really?”
Robin nodded and swiped her hand across her cheeks to dry her tears. “Yeah. That pretty much sums it up.”
“That’s madness, Robin.”
“I agree. But that’s the effect you have on me, Mr. Gatewood. It’s maddening.” Robin took a daring step closer to Jordan. “You’re right.
I’ve got my speculation, my circumstantial evidence, hearsay. I know that you and Lonnie had an affair, but of course, there’s no proof. Yet.”
He did his damnedest not to flinch.
“I’m pretty sure that Claire found out about it and killed herself over it. Lonnie wasn’t the first, but your wife was sick of your shit. And suicide was the only way she knew to escape you.”
He lowered his head. “You have no idea,” he muttered. “I’m not going to let you hold me hostage over some bullshit theories.”
“A few billion dollars isn’t worth being my hostage, Jordan?” She smirked. “Staying out of prison isn’t worth being my hostage? Losing every damn thing you own isn’t worth being my hostage?”
She let her questions marinate with him for a few moments.
“They still have that DNA sample that they found inside Lonnie the night she died,” she continued. “Never matched it to anyone, not even Frank Ross.” Robin sighed. “But then, I imagine they probably just never got around to finding the right person to compare it against. This is the point where you ask me what it is that I want.”
It was likely that Jordan had never met his match before. He was used to winning, always. Not this time, though. She knew it, and from the look in his eyes, so did he. He would give her anything she wanted. Robin held him in the palm of her hand, ready and able to close her fist around him and squeeze him until there was nothing left.
He had stripped her of her dignity, peeled away her self-esteem until she was raw and exposed. Robin would never recover from this, from him and how he’d left her reeling in this unfamiliar territory of despair.
“There is no happily ever after for either one of us, Jordan,” she said sorrowfully. “People like us, like you and me, we don’t get to be happy. Not really. Oh, we have all the trappings of success and happiness—money, cars, and homes, fancy friends, and our parties. We look so damn good on the outside, but inside, we’re rotten apples. It’s a trade-off.”
“What do you want from me?” he finally asked.
“I want you,” she finally admitted.
Robin swallowed what little pride she had left to say those words to him, and she meant them.
Jordan looked at her like she had lost her mind. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No,” she said softly. “I want to be Mrs. Jordan Gatewood. And I want you to show me off to the world, to be proud to have me as your wife, and to devote yourself to me for the rest of our lives together.”
In lieu of everything that he could lose by Robin making one simple phone call to the press, Jordan had no choice but to make peace with her.
“This is insane, Robin. You want a man who doesn’t want you.”
She cringed at his words. “Don’t. Don’t ever say that to me again,” she warned. “You want me … to keep my mouth shut, Jordan. You want me to keep your secret. You want me, and you will show the world that you do, or I swear I will destroy you.”
Oh yes! Finally. Finally, he understood. Robin could see it in his eyes, a reflection of resignation and defeat. He was no longer in a position to dismiss her. He no longer held the power in this relationship. She did.
“If you ever see her again, I’ll know it,” she threatened. “If anything happens to me, a letter will be sent to The Dallas Morning News with all the dirty details of what I know, and I know so much more than you realize.”
Robin had just secured her future and put her life back on track. She slowly walked around his desk and stopped beside him, embraced his face with her hands, turned it to her, and kissed him.
Holding Myself Close
“I LEFT HIM A MESSAGE earlier today, but he hasn’t called me back,” Abby said to Skye over the phone. “I figured he’s been pretty busy with all this press conference stuff.”
She sat down on the sofa with a bowl of freshly popped popcorn and a glass of white wine.
“So, do you call him bae?” Skye asked.
Abby laughed. “No. Once you meet him, you’ll understand why. Jordan is no bae, Skye. He’s more like a honey or a darling. Sweetheart.”
She picked up the remote and turned to CNN. This announcement was so much bigger than just local Texas news. This was national news.
“Channel thirty-four,” Abby told her.
“Got it.”
“Okay, I’ll let you go. I don’t want to miss a word he says.”
She and Skye hung up, and Abby waited another ten minutes before the press conference started. She gasped at the sight of him, wearing that dark gray suit and navy-blue tie. Abby started smiling. He looked so handsome, so distinguished. Jordan didn’t look like he was even a bit nervous, but Abby was sitting there on the sofa in her robe and slippers actually trembling like she was the one about to make that announcement.
“I’m so proud of you,” she whispered lovingly.
To think that this was her man. She squirmed, laughed out loud, and then felt silly about it as her stomach fluttered with the sensation of butterflies.
“It’s a great day for Gatewood Industries,” he casually began, looking out at the press snapping pictures of him. “We took a chance, a pretty big one, in competing for this very high-level, high-visibility contract with the Department of Defense. Compared to most of our competitors, we were the little guy, and we went in to this thing knowing that we’d probably lose.”
Jordan paused, seeming to reflect on what he would say next.
“My father broke barriers in the oil and gas industry. He had a vision for what could be and fought tooth and nail to get it knowing that odds were against him, that society as a whole was against him. But still, he pushed forward until he saw his dream realized.”
A lump swelled in Abby’s throat as Jordan spoke about his father.
“After he died, I inherited more than just the responsibility of running his company. I had to continue his legacy and continue to embrace his vision of taking Gatewood Industries to the next level, beyond oil and gas. And with this endeavor, we’re taking it to outer space.” He smiled, and cameras flashed like crazy.
Abby’s heart beat so fast in her chest, and she couldn’t stop smiling. He was the most amazing person she’d ever known.
“Gatewood Industries has competed for and won one of the largest contracts in the history of the federal government. Partnering with the US Air Force and NASA, we will begin developing rocket engines powerful and efficient enough to carry men and women to Mars and beyond. With some of the greatest scientists and engineers in the world, we will begin to take space exploration to exciting new levels.”
She watched with tears in her eyes as Jordan finished his speech and then answered questions from the press like he had been doing it his whole life. After he finished speaking, some military guy came up to the podium. Skye called immediately.
“Oh, my gosh, Abby,” she said, excited. “That’s him? That’s your Jordan?”
Abby nodded. “Yes,” she said as if she couldn’t believe it either.
“I am so jealous!” she yelled. “He’s so fine, girl! He’s like royalty if we had royalty in this country.”
“Exactly. That’s exactly what he’s like.”
“When’s he coming back here? Because I want to meet him.”
Abby smiled, warmly. “I’ll make sure you do.”
By the time they finished gushing over Jordan, the general was wrapping up his speech, and he and Jordan reached out to the front row of the audience and began shaking hands.
“Let me let you go,” Abby said quickly. “I’ll call you back.”
She couldn’t call him right now, of course, but she’d give him a few hours and then try him again, if he didn’t call her first. Abby took a sip of wine, and that’s when she saw her coming up to the side of the stage and reaching for Jordan. It was Robin Sinclair, smiling up at him and taking hold of his arm as he stepped down. It didn’t make sense at first. Why would she be there? Jordan stepped down next to her, looked at her, and paused. Robin pulled his f
ace to hers and kissed him on the lips. Jordan jerked back, slightly, and returned an awkward smile to the woman.
Abby’s phone immediately started to ring, but she didn’t answer it. Robin looped her arm in Jordan’s, and the two of them disappeared from the screen together. Abby sat frozen, confused by what she’d just seen. She didn’t know how long she sat like that before finally picking up her phone and dialing his number.
“Jordan. Call me, please. I-I saw the press conference.” She paused. “Call me. Okay?”
Abby spent the better part of the night trying to make sense of what she’d seen. Jordan had made it clear that there was nothing between the two of them anymore. Abby had no reason not to believe him. It was strange seeing the two of them together like that. It wasn’t natural. In her gut, she knew that something wasn’t right. Robin was desperate for him. And maybe she’d used the media to her advantage, knowing that he wouldn’t reject her in front of generals and television cameras.
Skye kept calling, and eventually, Abby answered.
“What happened?” Skye asked. “Who was that?”
Abby had no idea what to say. “I-I’m not—,” she said, finally beginning to give way to tears.
If she’d told Skye that it was the woman who’d stopped by her house a few weeks ago, it would open up a whole other conversation that Abby wasn’t prepared to have right now.
“Have you spoken to him?”
Abby shook her head, and the tears started falling. “No. Not yet.”
“I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation, Abby.”
“Oh, I’m sure there is.” She swallowed and dried her eyes. “He’ll clear it up when I talk to him. But, I’ll call you tomorrow, Skye,” Abby said, hanging up.
Jordan had been so busy lately, that that had to have been the reason why he hadn’t returned any of her calls. When Robin came to her house, it took every ounce of Abby’s resolve not to give in to doubts about him. For the first time, Abby wanted to be the kind of woman that didn’t run at the first sign of trouble. She wanted to be a rock for him and for herself, because love required commitment. And if she wanted forever with him—or with anybody, for that matter—Abby was going to have to learn to stand fast.