by Gigi Moore
Tamara searched Jess’s face as if she could find her answers there, but all she found in his determined expression were questions.
“I can’t make any promises beyond this.” She closed her eyes and flexed her inner muscles, feeling their cocks twitch and throb inside her, both men groaning.
They pulled her so close between them that she thought they would smother her.
Panting, she hugged them back, one arm drawn around Jess’s waist, the other flung behind her, nails digging deep into Jax’s thigh as both men thrust and drove into her.
Tamara matched their rhythm, moving her hips back and forth until the maddening friction drove her over the edge, and she tumbled headlong into an orgasm that nearly sizzled all her brain cells as it rocked her world.
Both men continued thrusting inside her, reaching their climax together and seconds after she had reached hers.
Jess kissed her face and neck, pausing to inhale and suck her skin into his mouth before lightly nibbling and still holding on to her tight.
Jax pushed her hair aside so that he could kiss and lick the back of her neck before he pulled out of her with a low grunt.
She felt so empty without him, only half-alive.
Jess didn’t allow her to dwell on it, pulling her into his arms as he turned onto his back and took her with him.
Tamara giggled and sat up to straddle him. She looked down into his face, so serious and stern, and swallowed hard. “What is it?”
He shook his head and averted his blue eyes, which struck her as odd because Jess wasn’t a shy boy, never had been. Sometimes he could be aloof and quiet, especially with outsiders and strangers, but he had never been shy.
“Tell me what’s on your mind, Jess.”
She felt Jax slide back into the bed behind her, his calloused hand sending a vibration through her body when he caressed her back.
“He doesn’t want you to leave. Neither of us does.”
Tamara sighed. She’d known it would come to this, that neither man would let her get away with evading them forever.
Should she make this her moment of truth, or continue to string them along which, as ugly as it sounded, was what she did?
“Let’s just get through the funeral, guys. I can’t handle many more life-changing experiences than that right now.”
She looked down at Jess, who stared up at her now, gaze so old and knowing she suspected that he knew she stalled, even though there had been a lot of truth in her words.
He gently rubbed her arms as if trying to soothe her or convey his acceptance of what she had said, which only made her feel ten times worse than the excuse she’d had to make.
Tamara dismounted Jess, left the bed and began looking for and gathering her clothes to put on before she tip-toed back out to her room. She needed to take a shower before she went back down to the kitchen for supper. It was one thing for Maria and Jeremiah to assume what went on between her and the boys, but another to rub it in their faces, especially when she hadn’t made a decision about whether to stay or go.
Jess and Jax followed her from the bed and started looking for their clothes too.
Quickly dressed, she stood by the door to watch her boys. She’d give anything to get back into bed with them. She wanted to languish in a shower with the two of them before she went down to face Maria and Jeremiah. But someone had to be the strong one, and it looked like that someone had to be her.
Funny thing, she didn’t feel very strong at all when she turned her back on Jess and Jax and left the room.
Chapter 27
Tamara had pressed so much flesh and been the recipient of so many hugs and kisses and solemn condolences since the funeral, she didn’t know how she kept it together.
Each face held more sincerity and sadness than the last. Each expression of sympathy brought more heart-felt sentiment. And people brought so many dishes of food that she suspected Maria wouldn’t have to set foot in the kitchen to cook for a good month.
Her father probably turned over in his freshly dug grave with all the outpouring of emotion and commiseration. Her dad had never been demonstrative with his affection, except toward the end when he had told her he loved her.
Tamara wondered if maybe her mother had robbed him of that, his softness and ability to emote, but in the end even he hadn’t been able to hold his anger against his ex-wife, so she wondered if she should.
Tamara stayed in the kitchen trying to keep a low profile, but keeping an eye on things in the living room.
Like radar, Jax seemed to lock onto her sadness and sidled next to her. He slid one arm around her before she could take a deep breath to gather herself.
He rubbed her arm as if to keep her warm and squeezed her close to his side. “How are we holding up?”
“As well as could be expected.”
“I know.” He pulled away to look down at her, and she returned his gaze. “You’re a lot stronger than you think you are.”
“You think so?”
He nodded. “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you, or Jess or Pop. I don’t think I’d be cordially greeting people and directing them to the food without falling apart.”
She wanted to tell him not to remind her of what she wanted to do, that his, Jess, Jeremiah and Maria’s strength, held her together.
Tamara had been so close to breaking down in the last week she had lost count. If it hadn’t been for the boys and Jeremiah and Maria, she didn’t know what she would have done.
She glanced toward the staircase and just caught a flash of Jess and Jeremiah talking, rather animatedly from what Tamara could make out.
Did they argue, about her?
Far from making her feel special, the idea that father and son were at odds because of her made her heart sink. But she’d noticed a lot of the secret conversations between Jeremiah and the boys—either all three together or the boys with each other or either boy with Jeremiah—the last week.
The doorbell rang, and Jess seemed to use it as his excuse for an escape, leaving in a huff and disappearing behind the staircase.
A moment later, Tamara heard a door slam shut and assumed that Jess had gone into the study to get away from everything.
Jeremiah came from behind the stairs to answer the door and Tamara didn’t miss that he took several deep breaths before he opened it.
A small party of well-dressed and perfectly coifed females stood on the doorstep. Jeremiah greeted them, hugging the oldest woman like she was a long-lost friend. He then warmly welcomed the two younger women who looked so much like each other and the older woman, Tamara knew they must be her daughters.
They seemed familiar if only because Tamara had a vague memory of seeing them out at the burial site earlier that afternoon. She probably wouldn’t have paid them more than a passing glance if they weren’t among the few black people outside of her who had been present at either the funeral or the burial site.
“I’ll be right back. Got something to tend to.” Jax squeezed her arm before he released her to leave. He must have had a second thought and paused to ask, “You’ll be okay?”
She smiled and nodded. “Tend to your business. I’ll be here when you’re done. Got nowhere else to be.”
Tamara watched him go and visually followed him to the staircase, not surprised when he turned behind it, and she heard the study door open and close again.
The cloak-and-dagger air tempted her to go see what went on between the twins. Obviously something significant, and with the arrival of the mysterious woman and her daughters, she had a couple of scenarios to fuel her curiosity and suspicions. Actually she didn’t know where to begin to feed her reservations.
The lawyer in her told her to go forward and introduce herself to the new arrivals, but the scared, abandoned little girl froze her feet where she stood. Uncertainty kept her from following the boys into the study to find out what the big to-do had been between Jess and his father.
No one could tell her that something wasn’t
up and that her grief hadn’t made her blind to the signs that something went on and that someone kept her out of the loop.
Tamara stood for several long moments just crowd-watching as the new arrivals mingled with the rest of the mourners, the older woman introducing herself in some instances and in others, people evidently already knew her.
She got a bad feeling about the identity of the woman and her daughters, especially when she remembered her father’s vague words about her mother before his death.
He’d been trying to tell her something, something he hadn’t gotten out to either of their satisfaction.
“You look like you are thinking very hard on something, chica.”
Tamara grabbed her chest and almost leaped out of her skin at Maria’s silent voice behind her. She turned, smiling at the older woman and wondered why she hadn’t thought of tapping this particular resource earlier.
The housekeeper and butler in a household almost always knew what went on between the people they worked for. But then Maria was also like family, which made her even more of an intimate in the know. “Maria, you liked to scare the bejeesus out of me.”
“Not y intention, nina.” She frowned as she stared at Tamara. “You were deep in thought. Is there anything I can do to help?”
Great, I’ve got my opening. “Actually, I wondered anything’s going on around here that I need to know about? Something between the boys and Jeremiah maybe?”
Maria frowned and slowly shook her head. “Your guess is as good as mine. I know they have all been a little on edge the last several days with the preparations for the funeral. But I think that is to be expected, no?”
“I suppose.” Tamara wasn’t buying it. She didn’t think that Maria knew anything, but that didn’t mean that something wasn’t going on.
She put the glass of soda she had been nursing down on the island top. “Please excuse me, Maria. I have something I need to tend to.” She caught herself using almost the same words Jax had right before he left her and easily she wove through the crowd of mourners and well-wishers and followed his path to the study.
The epiphany dawned on her as her hand touched the doorknob of the study door. She remembered all the remorseful expressions directed at her when they thought she wasn’t looking, all the guilty glances averted—and she wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before.
And if she needed any further proof of her suspicions, the awkward looks that the twins gave her when she flung open the door sealed the deal. “You knew, didn’t you?”
When the boys’ faces flushed, Tamara had her answer.
“How could you? You knew he would die soon, that he had a limited amount of time, and you didn’t tell me?”
“We couldn’t, Tam,” Jax murmured so low she barely heard him.
“Couldn’t?” She gawked. “You robbed me. You robbed both of us.”
“Believe me, it wasn’t our choice.”
“When I think of all the time I wasted…” She turned her glare on each of them, moving farther into the room and watching their eyes widen as she neared—like they thought she would carry out some physical violence on their persons.
She had to admit that she did consider hitting them, the first piece of retribution that came to her mind. What good would it do, though? Then she remembered how good it had felt to hit Jess after she found out he had lied to her. She wasn’t normally a violent person and it hadn’t solved anything, but she’d felt better for just that one moment in time—vindicated.
The hangdog looks on each twins’ faces, however, gave her pause. She could see that she couldn’t beat up on them any more than they already beat up on themselves and probably had been beating up on themselves for some time now.
Still she couldn’t let them completely off the hook. “Why couldn’t you tell me that he was dying? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“If you’re going to blame anyone, Tamara, blame me,” Jeremiah said from behind her.
Tamara turned as he shut the door and took several steps across the carpeted floor until he stood within a few feet of her. She looked from him to his sons and thought how earnest well-meaning men surrounded her. She knew this, but their lies still hurt, and she needed to know why they had done it. “Why, Jeremiah? Why would you all do this? If I’d known what was going on, that he was dying I would have—”
“Acted differently around him? Made him self-conscious with your pity?” Jeremiah shook his head as if he already knew her answer. “Bailey didn’t want that.”
“Why was it okay for all of you to know, be trusted with the information, and not me?” When no one answered after a moment, Tamara just shook her head, disgusted. “Typical, male chauvinist behavior to the end.”
“Tam, it wasn’t like that,” Jess said, speaking up for the first time since she entered the room.
She turned on him, heated. “Oh no? Then what was it like? Why don’t you tell me?”
Jeremiah caught her by the arms and turned her to him. “Don’t be angry at the boys. They only did what I asked them to—what Bailey wanted. And they only just found out about Bailey’s condition recently.”
“How recently?”
Before Jeremiah could answer, Jess stepped forward and put a hand on his father’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Dad. You don’t have to protect us. We went into this with our eyes open.” He turned to Tamara as Jeremiah released her. “We didn’t find out until after you’d arrived. Jax stumbled onto the information when he took me to the hospital after my fall. Bailey asked him not to say anything to anyone, but Jax told me. It was our decision to continue to keep things hush-hush. We thought we did the best thing.”
“For who?” Tamara paced back and forth, mind reeling.
Jess had been thrown by that horse a good couple of weeks before her dad’s death. Two weeks she could have spent with her father not arguing, making his life easier and less painful…
Pitying him.
Jeremiah’s words rang in her ears, and she knew he erred on the side of good sense and loyalty. She knew her father—too stubborn and proud to the end.
“Tamara…”
She glanced up to see the tears in Jeremiah’s blue eyes—so beautiful and evocative like his sons—and her heart clenched in her chest.
“Bailey was my friend. I loved the old coot like a brother, and I would have done anythin’ for him.”
Tamara shook her head, tears filling her own eyes. “But what about me, Jeremiah? How could you keep that from me?” Erroneously, she made the situation about her. Her father had been the one dying. He had been the sick one, and he’d made a choice to tell who he wanted to tell—his loved ones, the ones who had been there for him the last eighteen years.
She realized she wasn’t angry with Jeremiah, Jess or Jax for keeping her father’s secret. She was hurt and disappointed, most assuredly, but mostly angry with herself. “I wasted so much time arguing with him. Fighting…”
Jeremiah wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against his chest, crying in earnest now. He hadn’t cried at the funeral, had been strong through all the arrangements, the wake and everything leading up to this moment—the strong man, the solid friend, the rock.
“I’m so sorry, Jeremiah. I had no reason to blame you or the boys. It was me. All me…” Tamara sobbed and felt Jeremiah’s hand rubbing and patting her back in a comforting, hypnotic way that actually made her feel like less of a selfish heel. “I know you loved him, and you were there for him—more than I had been.”
“It wasn’t a contest, gal. He loved you too. He just lost his way, forgot how to show how he felt about you, even once you arrived. He knew he erred in shuttin’ you out, and I reckon that made it even harder for him to show you how much you meant to him.”
Tamara didn’t think Jeremiah had said so much in one sitting since she’d known him. She smiled at the thought, at how much things had changed since she’d left—at how much things had remained the same.
“Never meant to hurt you, gal.�
�� Jeremiah pulled away to look at her, thumbing stray tears away from her eyes. “That was the last thing I wanted to do. But there’s somethin’ else I have to tell you that might not sit right with you…”
Someone knocked on the door, and before anyone could answer, it opened.
The black woman who Jeremiah had greeted earlier came into the study trailing the two younger women. Tamara had a bad feeling about why they all seemed familiar outside of having seen them earlier. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Jeremiah. I’m just so anxious to meet—” She cut herself off when her gaze landed on Tamara then covered her mouth, eyes widening.
In that moment, Tamara knew.
How could she not? The woman looked like an older, mirror image of herself. And the younger women with her must be Tamara’s…sisters?
She stumbled back at the realizations, shaking her head. She didn’t think she could take any more shocking revelations today.
“Tam?”
If the woman expected a warm family reunion, she had another thing coming.
Tamara shook her head again, unable to verbalize what she wanted to say for several moments before “I can’t. I can’t!” finally flew out of her mouth, and she pushed passed the three startled women to sprint out of the room.
Chapter 28
Jax already made it to the door by the time Pop’s forceful voice rang out behind him.
“Don’t boy.”
Everything in him rebelling against the command, Jax turned to his dad. “She needs someone right now.”
“She needs to be alone right now.”
“Maybe if I talk to her,” Jasmine suggested, more timid than Jax would have ever expected. From all the stories he’d ever heard about her, he’d thought she’d be more of a fire-breathing dragon. But the woman before him appeared to be just an older version of Tamara—darker with a chocolate-brown complexion, beautiful, poised, and everything about her screaming class.
Of course, Tam had gotten back her cowgirl edges since she’d been back the last few weeks, but Jax didn’t miss the poise and class under the hoyden, rough-and-ready gear.