Things were going well. She was actually bonding with India and Sandy, painting in her free time, getting some much-needed rest, taking some online courses so she’d be able to return to teaching in a different capacity, and had even polished off a few novels. All in six months, they had developed a wonderful life routine that he had taken for granted. Caring for India and showering her with the love and affection both had lacked in some form growing up. Breakfast together every morning, dinner every evening. Live comedy shows and concerts most weekends. Reading novels to each other at night. Enjoying and exploring different types of music and art. Stolen kisses here and there that ignited a flame that they both feared to stoke.
“With no father?” he asked.
“She’s young enough to adapt,” Temple shot back but the doubt in her eyes said she wasn’t so sure.
Jai took in her determined stance and conceded with a nod. “I understand.”
“Do you?” she snapped, her shoulders tense with defiance as though she had expected him to put up more of a fight.
“No, but I know that’s what you need to hear for you to walk out of here and find your way.” Simply saying the words sent a thousand daggers into his heart. “I’m not in the habit of fighting battles people don’t want me to win.”
Her eyes watered but no tears escaped those dark-brown orbs that pleaded with him, but for what? For him to beg her to stay?
Jai was all for fighting to keep Temple and India with him, but she had to meet him halfway. Every time it looked as though they were getting closer, she pushed him away. The need for her had become so strong, it sent Jai to Khalil to ask for help in sorting through the possible scenarios that made her reluctant to commit. Jai had been in what he termed minor relationships, but they weren’t as fulfilling on a spiritual level. The women loved the idea of him being a healer, but failed to see why he couldn’t embrace the more traditional—more financially rewarding—line of work. He had never felt the desire to become part of a machine that was the end of a cycle that kept people unwell and in poverty.
“I’ll have Sandy gather up the rest of your things and send it wherever you like,” he said in an expressionless voice. “India should have something familiar, since it won’t be her surroundings.” Or me.
Temple hoisted the baby bag on her shoulder and gave him her back to ponder. He sent a quick text to Daron Kincaid before he gathered the items she had stashed in the foyer and took them outside to an unfamiliar SUV that waited in the driveway. The driver didn’t bother to get out to help, causing curiosity to mingle with anger. She could have at least allowed him to take her wherever she wanted to go. Maybe she meant more than a clean slate. This felt more like “cutting all ties.”
“If it’s not too much trouble,” he said, coming back into the foyer for the next set of bags. “Could you drop me a line to let me know how you all are doing?”
She froze and closed her eyes as she pressed India closer to her breasts. “I don’t … I don’t think that’s a good thing,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “A clean break is best.”
Pain slashed across his heart. This chilling action came from left field and was knocking him for a major loop. He stared at her, unable and unwilling to understand the reason Temple would put them through this unnecessary agony.
“Fine,” he said in a terse tone. “Whatever.”
Temple’s jaw clenched as she first clamped down on whatever it was she planned to say, then her own anger came through. “Why are you so upset? You wanted me to bond with the baby, so I did. You wanted me to want her, now I do.”
“I’m not upset,” he countered. “Especially not about that. I’m disappointed that you would uproot our lives this way, but not upset.” Jai moved in and stood a few inches from Temple, not to intimidate her, but to look into her eyes to see what was going on with her. “Just so you know, she’ll always have a place in my heart and in my life, as you will. You’re welcome to come back if you need me.” Jai placed a hand on the crown of India’s head before leaning in to kiss her forehead.
She reached for him, showing her bare gums in a grin, and it took every effort to hold true to his resolve to let them go. He had so many questions but asking them right now would not be the wise thing.
“I know what unconditional love is about, even if you can’t wrap your mind around it.” Despite his effort, his words emerged with a harsh edge.
Temple brushed off any further offer of help, snatched open the door and was outside attempting to dodge the pellets of rain before he could cover her with the umbrella he had snatched from the foyer closet. She looked as he watched her slide into a car that had the ride-share emblem on the back window.
Jai never knew his heart could hurt so much. The Knights were right. Having someone to come home to, to fill his days with laughter and his heart with joy, was such a beautiful thing. He’d had no idea he needed this in his life. They hadn’t even pulled out of the driveway and he was missing them already.
His phone vibrated. Daron was on the other end of the line.
“You want me to track her?”
Yes. Yes. And yes.
“No, she’s going out of her way for me not to know where she’ll end up,” Jai responded and closed his eyes against another unwelcome shaft of pain that washed over him. “I need to respect that.”
“Are you sure?” Daron asked.
“She knows how to reach me.”
And she knows how to hurt me.
* * *
Temple had the driver wait for a moment. Her heart constricted and she resisted the urge to run back to tell Jaidev she was wrong and had changed her mind. Every day she was falling deeper for a man who had dropped into her life under the most unusual circumstances. There was no need that Jai didn’t anticipate, no matter how small. The way he took care of her endangered her independence. If she wasn’t careful, she’d become addicted to him.
He couldn’t love her. Not someone as broken as she was. The man believed in obligation and responsibility, taking those elements to a whole new level. At no time did it make sense that he would fall in love with her and welcome a ready-made family. She never had that kind of luck.
No, leaving Jaidev Maharaj was the right thing to do. She had witnessed firsthand through her mother how being totally dependent on a man could destroy a woman, and she wasn’t going to be that woman.
Temple had to find her own way. No matter that her heart felt as if someone had smashed it to a pulp with a sledgehammer.
CHAPTER 27
“So now the focus is on this new place,” Jaidev said to the men after he had taken them on a full tour of The Castle. They now sat in the boardroom with their attention turned to the screen. “This new facility we’re going to build in Jeffrey Manor. I’ve given you all of the recent mishaps. You’ve already mapped out a better operating and procedural system, but this medical center within The Castle walls is also going to be a place that is under our direction. How can we make it better? When you finish reading this, come up with a plan that will—”
“Mr. Maharaj, what’s going on with you today?” Andre, the quietest of the Knights, asked.
The men remained silent, seemingly as interested in the answer as well.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He quickly turned his attention back to the screen. “When the issue with Chetan is all done, this will be our next facility. This is just a dark place in the center’s life right now. I have to believe in the light.”
“But you don’t believe in love,” Hiram asserted and Jai wondered where the hell that came from.
“What do you mean?”
“How is Ms. Temple?” Falcon asked.
Jai inhaled, already weary from a sleepless night, wondering if she was all right, if India was missing him as much as he was missing her. So many times, he wanted to send another text to Daron and have him activate the earrings he had placed in India’s tiny ears the moment she came home from the hospital. Yes, early, even fo
r that, but he had her safety in mind. He resisted, but the struggle was truly real. “She’s gone.”
Everyone seemed to speak at once, but the common question was, “Gone?”
“She took the baby last night and left,” he said, and those were the hardest words to pass his lips. “Said she needed a fresh start.”
“Now that’s some …” Hiram shook his head and tossed his pen on the table. “I can’t believe you, of all people, fell for that line of bullshit.”
“What she said is that she needs space,” Jai countered, a little miffed that they were coming at him this way. He felt bad enough that he had no reason why things had gone south, and didn’t need them rubbing it in. He tapped his fingers against the tabletop, wishing the meeting was over.
“What she meant is that she wants to be sure you’re in it for the right reasons,” Hiram said, placing a hand over Jai’s, halting his nervous movements.
“You know how y’all came together was kind of different,” Michael said. “She might feel you’re only there from guilt, and not because you actually care about her.”
Hiram laughed, taking in Jai’s expression, which given his state of mind had to reflect the confusion within. “I’m surprised you haven’t figured that out yet. You might be a genius, but you’re a little slow when it comes to that love thang, my brother.”
“Man, you’d better listen to what this dude right here is saying,” Ryan chimed in, clasping a hand on Hiram’s shoulder. “Go get your woman. This flowers, peace, hair grease program ain’t going to fly all the time.”
They all laughed and Jai felt a smile tilt the corners of his lips as he joined in. “I’ll take that.”
“My girl held me down all those years,” Falcon admitted. “Now I can give her anything she wants, but what she wants is me. She loves this me.” He pointed an index finger to his chest. “The man who goes off to work and is with people who are living right, got their heads on straight. Keeps me going on the right path. I don’t want to do anything to mess that up.”
Jared leaned back in the chair and flexed a little. “I got a savings account with some extra money in it, and I’m not talking about funny money either. Those things you did to make sure we don’t fail—life skills, stuff we didn’t learn growing up—who does that? I mean, for people like us. Dudes from the hood.”
“My mother struggled,” Hiram confessed and all eyes went to him. “She lived paycheck to paycheck and had to borrow from her friends to make ends meet. Credit cards were always maxed out, drowning in debt all the time. Then high blood pressure kicked in, heart disease and not taking care of herself. She couldn’t teach me how to live, how to do the things that I know how to do now. Her way is not the way I want to live.”
“How any of us should live.” Andre looked at each one of them. “I’m on this side of the bars and learned that just because people didn’t end up doing a bid like me doesn’t mean they live much better.”
Kevin nodded at Jai, gratitude in his gaze. “You look at the person’s heart; make sure you have happy employees and good vibes all around, man. That’s … church.”
They chuckled at his use of the word that Hiram had made famous.
“I feel some kind of way on my days off,” Chris admitted, pushing the laptop further away. “Like I’m missing something. Nobody’s talking like that about their jobs. None of the people in my family …” He shrugged. “They hate their jobs. I can’t say that. And I’m grateful for that.”
“We got this,” Hiram said, waving him toward the door. “Go get your woman.”
Jai shook his head. “I need to give her a little more time.”
The special earrings that Daron fashioned for the Kings and their family were securely placed in India’s ears. At any time, he could find where she was and that brought him a little peace. But riding the line between encroaching on Temple’s space simply to satisfy his own personal need to be in control, was exactly the thing she had pointed out. He had chosen a life where he had managed nearly every aspect of it. This experience with India and Temple from beginning until now had caused such an upheaval he didn’t know which way to go.
Andre inhaled and let out a long, slow breath as he slid down in the chair. “Women say they don’t believe in fairytales or any of that happily ever after stuff, but they like for us to come a little close.”
“I hear you, but I’m expecting a visit from Marilyn later this morning to start the process for getting this place up and running again.”
“We’ll handle it,” Chuck said, and the others nodded or voiced a verbal agreement. “You trust us with everything else, trust us to do that as well.”
He couldn’t come up with another objection, so Jai threw his Knights a grateful look.
“Awww, look at you trying not to break out with that ugly cry,” Falcon teased, nudging Jai in the side.
Jai grinned and gathered up his belongings from the table. “Thank you. I said I wasn’t going to ask but is everything all right with …”
“A little tough on the home front, since the crime lab is now saying the second set of DNA results the police recovered is missing,” Chuck explained, sliding his notes to Jai. He had been the one commissioned to keep Jai up to date on things.
“Missing,” Jai roared. “Now that’s some bull—”
“Church,” Hiram agreed. “But the lawyers have put in a motion for the court to accept the DNA results from the lab you hired.”
“Don’t worry,” Falcon said, gesturing to the pages Jai held. “The lawyers are doing their thing, then people will see how wrong they were. They still weren’t happy about us not pushing for that DNA. But if we hadn’t had this challenge, we wouldn’t know how this end of things work.
Hiram tapped the edge of the small-scale model of the new center that was situated next to the replica of one made from the medical center in The Castle. “Man, I like this right here. It feels different.” He nodded as though agreeing with some unspoken thoughts rolling through his mind. “Like it’s ours somehow.”
Ryan stood and stretched. They had been at it for a while. “I’m thinking about maybe taking up some architecture classes because you’re going to build some more of these? And not just in the States, right?”
“Indeed.”
“Then we’d like to be the ones who do this part,” Jared said, tapping an index finger on the edge of the documents in front of him. The others seemed to be in agreement. “You know, the building, the planning, the zoning, the structure, program, systems, electronics and security—stuff like that.”
“He’s right,” Hiram chimed in. “I kind of saw this happening as a bad thing, but something good is coming out of it, too. I don’t think I’ve ever looked into doing something more than what I’ve had going on.”
While Jai realized this crew was beneficial to rebuilding after everything the state had done to tear things down, the men actually had a point. He hadn’t even told them that he had another task for them related to The Castle. He wasn’t able to do much with the Center on The Castle grounds until everything was resolved with Chetan. What he did know was that the place had access to treatments that weren’t available on American soil and medications that would never make it to the American market. Once again, he was finding evidence that cures and targeted treatments were available and the American pharmaceutical industry was well aware, but were not producing them because money was not made in cures, it was made in research and treatment. He was going to do his best to change all that. The Castle’s medical center held a wealth of information and options. No wonder the wealthy members didn’t suffer too long when diagnosed with certain illnesses, even the deadly ones.
“Do you think I should—we should. How can we bring something to the table if we can’t help build a table?” Hiram spread his hands out. “What I’m feeling here, is that it’s better to be on the top end of the spectrum where I’m making the decisions, than coming to a company with my hands out for a job and decisions are being made
for me. You’re putting all of us on top. I’m feeling all of that.”
He scanned the faces of the men around the table, and Chuck, who sat near a smaller round conference table off to the side, seeing something else in their eyes that he hadn’t witnessed since they stepped through the doors of Chetan. Determination.
“Go get your woman,” Hiram commanded, snapping Jai out of his thoughts.
Jai hesitated. Maybe a little too long because Hiram added, “And we need you to put a little pep in your step while you’re at it.”
He relented and made it to the door before Hiram said to everyone else, “I’m going to walk him to the car.”
“He doesn’t know the way,” Michael teased.
“You’ve got jokes,” Jai shot back.
Ryan chuckled. “Just say you want to talk to him about some personal things you don’t want us to know.”
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