With a shake of my head, I say, “Why would you even want to fight for a woman who does you like that? You make no sense. Is that hour of time you said she gives you once a week worth me beating your ass?”
“I’ll get in a few punches,” he says, as he seems to be sizing me up. “And the answer is, yes, that one hour a week with her is worth it. That woman can give head like no one I’ve ever met.”
“Sorry you said that,” I tell him, then throw a punch.
My fist connects with his jaw and he’s out right away. I feel awful for doing it but I couldn’t let him talk about the woman I’m going to marry like that.
And then it hits me as I turn around and leave, before I get mobbed by the throng of people who are coming to see why this guy is lying out on the floor.
I’m going to marry Brittany Caldwell!
Chapter 3
BRITTANY
Against my better judgment, I go to Jason’s place anyway. I might find a woman with him, but I have to let him know I didn’t do anything with Josh. I took him to the ceremony, then my driver dropped him off; no sex was involved.
As I enter the lobby, I see a tall, slender redhead and she seems to be waiting for someone as she sits on one of the plush seats. I glance at her as I walk over to the private elevator that goes up to Jason’s penthouse.
“Who are you?” she asks as I press the button to go up, but it glows red at me. “That’s locked. Jay isn’t home yet.”
“Jay?” I ask, but I know she has to be one of Jason’s women. He just hasn’t let her in on his real name. And I won’t be doing that, either.
She looks me up and down. “Yes, a man by the name of Jay Caldwell lives in the penthouse.”
I nearly laugh out loud as I hear the last name he’s told her. “Oh, my bad. I must be in the wrong building. I’m looking for someone else.”
Her light green eyes narrow at me, and I think she suspects I really am here for the man she must consider to be hers. “What’s his name?”
I grapple with a name and come up with, “Todd Strangerfield.”
The last name, I’d like to retract, but it’s out there and I feel very stupid. No one is named stranger anything!
“Strangerfield?” she asks with skepticism. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that surname before. What ethnicity is it?”
My eyes roll with the woman’s question, as I see her as the type of woman I call boorish. An uptown, natural New Yorker who thinks her bloodline makes her something a bit above everyone who isn’t a native of the big city.
I decide to take a seat and wait for my man. The place right next to her will work just fine. We’ll see how he reacts with this little scene when he gets here.
At least this way I’ll be able to see if he was serious at all about letting the other women go and giving me the faithfulness I demand from him.
I am aware there’s a real chance he either won’t be back tonight and sleep in another woman’s bed, or he may come back with another woman under his arm. And then this lady here will know she’s not his one and only thinks she is.
I stretch my legs out in front of me and cross my ankles and jangle my flip flop as I lean back on the cushioned sofa. “My guy’s an American Indian. He changed his name when he became a U.S. citizen.”
A confused expression runs over her really pale face. I don’t think she gets out in the sun much at all. She really doesn’t look at all like Jason’s type.
Who am I thinking about? Jason doesn’t have a certain type. He wants to screw all women! I forgot who the hell I was thinking about for a second there.
“A United States citizen?” she asks me.
“Yeah,” I say, and look at my toenail polish that has a tiny chip on the left pinky toe so I know I need to get to my mani-pedi lady tomorrow.
“An American Indian needs to become a citizen of the United States? Is that what you’re saying?” she asks me, as she looks at me as if I’m stupid.
“Of course he does.” I roll my eyes at her again and it hits me like a brick.
Fuck! I am a terrible liar!
But I won’t be telling her how I’m lying. Instead, I sit quietly as she looks me over. I look her over out of the corner of my eye, too.
“So what is it you do? What did you say your name was, again?” she asks.
Not bothering to look at her, I answer, “My name is Brittany Caldwell. I design book covers.”
“Caldwell? Just like my fiancée?”
My head turns very slowly to look at her, then down at her left hand. And, sure as fuck, there’s a goddamn big ass diamond on it. I bite my lip and have to hold in a scream.
After waiting a few moments to stop myself from storming out of here and never talking to Jason again, I swallow back the scream and say, “I’m from the Texas Caldwells. I doubt your, fiancée, did you say he was?” I wait for her answer.
“Yes, Jay is my fiancée. But he’s from Tennessee, not Texas. I suppose that’s a typical southern name.”
I nod and hold out my hand. “May I see that gorgeous ring he put on your finger?”
She goes pink in the cheeks as she holds out her long fingers and wiggles the one with the rock on it. “Well, he didn’t actually give this to me. It was my great grandmother's. When he told me he wanted me to be his and his alone, I took it out of the safe deposit box my family has kept it in and put it on my finger to keep other gentlemen away from me until he gets me one.”
“Oh, so no formal proposal yet then?” I ask, as I take a silent sigh of relief.
“Well, not a down-on-one-knee proposal, but he did tell me that he’d get me a proper ring. But he wants it to be very special and very expensive. He’s searching for just the right one and then he’ll officially ask me to be his forever.” She gazes at the ring on her hand and I find her very sad.
To have such a belief in a man that you would give yourself a ring, well, that’s just really sad, I think.
And even sadder when you take into account that man has a ton of other women you are completely unaware of.
And now I feel bad for this woman. She seems like a nice person. Just not real man-savvy, is all.
“Wow, what a great guy. Tell me about him. Tell me what made you know he was the one for you. What did you say your name was?”
“Pamela Watterson.” She smiles, then places her hand on her leg so she can still see the awesome ring she thinks will keep the man she thinks is hers. “Jay was a man who caught my attention. He’s a shy guy.”
I stifle a laugh. Jason is anything but shy. “Oh, yeah?”
She seems to be reflecting back to the time they met and her face is all glowing. “I found him in a hospital. He was there checking on a patient. Jay Caldwell’s parents died in an auto accident when he was ten. He lived in one foster home after another. It’s a miracle he managed to make anything out of himself. He became a billionaire after inventing a device that he sold to the medical industry.”
“And what was this device, may I ask?” I am really bewildered that this woman hasn’t done a bit of research to see if he’s telling her the truth. Which he isn’t.
“I don’t know the name of it. I only know it’s a tiny plastic piece that can replace a piece of the human heart. That’s all I know about that. It doesn’t matter how he got his money, after all. It’s the fact he’s such an awesome man, with a heart as big as they come.”
It’s not his heart that’s big, it’s his lies!
“So how come you don’t have a key to his place? Or did you just forget it?” I ask as I tap my chin with my finger and look at her.
“Jay is a private man. I can’t blame him. He’s been robbed so many times. And once he was held captive by a robber who was trying to get a ransom. Only there was no one to give the robber a ransom, and he ended up letting Jay go, after holding him for thirty hours,” she tells me as she clutches her throat. “I was so worried during that time. I’d shown up unexpected, and when I called him to tell him to buzz me up, h
e whispered to me what was happening.”
“Why wouldn’t you have called the police?” I ask, as this woman is a fucking moron.
“I told him I would, but he told me the man said he’d kill him if they came. He told me to go home and wait and he’d come to me as soon as it was over. He assured me it would be over by the next day. One way or the other, he or the robber would be dead.” She goes a shade paler, somehow.
“That must’ve been hard on you,” I say, as I want to wring Jason’s neck for what he did.
If he’s doing shit like this to her, what kind of antics has he pulled on the tons of other women?
She nods. “I didn’t sleep or eat until he came to me. Then he held me tight, and we made love for hours.”
My stomach lurches and I run my hand over it. “How sweet,” I say with a grin.
This man needs to be stopped. I’ve never felt it more than I do as I sit here and listen to the shit he’s done to just this one woman.
“My Jay is sweet. He’s the sweetest man in the world. He’d give the shirt off his back to anyone who needed it. I mean that literally.” She fans herself with her hand, the one with the ring on it. It seems she likes to flash it around.
“Literally?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says, and gets this silly smile on her face. “You see, once I was walking down the sidewalk, and I saw Jay’s car and driver. I waved and went to the car as they were stopped in traffic. Jay took a minute to roll the window down and when he did, he barely did. I could see his bare shoulders and asked him where his shirt was. He told me he saw a homeless man and gave it to him.”
“How nice,” I say, and know there’s much more to the story than that. “So did you get in the car with him?”
“I was going to, but he said he had to get to an important meeting about his invention and he’d see me later.” Her eyes show me she had a bit of an idea he might have had another person in the car with him.
The windows on his car are so dark you can’t see in. “Weird he wouldn’t let you tag along, huh?”
She shrugs it off. “Like I said, my Jay is a private man. He did come over later that night, around midnight. He made love to me like he’d missed me so much. It was spectacular. I just wish the man didn’t have such a thing about condoms. He always wears one, even though I’m on birth control. It makes me feel as if he thinks I am some disease-ridden mongrel.”
He’s the mongrel!
I pat her shoulder. “Be glad he does that. One never knows for sure how faithful someone is, after all.”
“My Jay is faithful. I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.” Her smile is wide and her eyes are shiny and I’m beginning to think this is an awful thing I’m trying to do here.
She’s an innocent in this game Jason is playing. I have to say at least I’m an honest person who tells the men I mess with exactly what I’m doing. If I’m with one man and another guy calls, I tell them who I’m with or that I’m with someone else and I’ll call them when I get time.
Jason is making these women think he’s serious. He’s making them think he’s going to marry them one day.
He and I are going to have a long talk, whether he’s mad at me or not. I can’t let him keep doing this to women. It’s just wrong.
I get up and give the poor woman a smile. “I think I’m at the wrong place. It was nice to meet you. I hope everything works out for you, Pamela.”
“You, too,” she says with a wave. “Have a nice time with your American Indian, Brittany. I can’t wait to tell my Jay how I met a woman with his same last name while I was waiting for him.”
“You do that. I bet he gets a kick out of it. Bye, now.” I leave the building and walk to the edge of the sidewalk to hail a cab.
What am I going to do with this man?
Chapter 4
JASON
The car stops and Donovan starts to get out of the car. “I can open the door for myself, Donovan.”
“No, stay in the car. Or you’re going to be very sorry,” he says, then gets out.
I’ve been looking through my cell phone at the many messages Brittany’s sent me and not paying attention to anything else. I look out the window and see Brittany standing on the sidewalk in front of my building. And just inside the lobby, I can see Pamela sitting on a sofa inside.
Shit!
Donovan hurries to Brittany and they come toward the car. I scoot over and she gets inside. “There you are, Jason. Where the hell have you been?”
I shake my head. “No, you don’t get to ask that.”
Concern fills her face. “You’re slurring.” Her arms are quickly around me and she’s hugging me. “Jason, I’m sorry. I didn’t think. It all happened too fast. I’m so sorry.”
After a second it computes that she realized I found out about her and the hot man she was with earlier. I run my hands through her loose, dark waves and kiss her neck. “I hate that you did that, baby.”
“I know,” she says, then pulls back and looks at me. She runs one hand over my cheek. “Baby, you look like hell.”
“Man, why do people keep saying that to me? Do I really look that damn bad?” I run my hand over my face and then through my hair.
“Well, you’re normally so gorgeous, it’s just that you look completely stressed. Please don’t tell me I did this to you all on my very own?” She takes my hand and kisses my palm. “I didn’t mean for anything to bother you about that ceremony.”
I stare at her, trying to see deeper into her than I did before. “Why didn’t you ask me to go with you? I don’t understand any of this, Britt.”
She nods. “You want to come home with me, Jason? We can talk all about everything.”
“To her place, Donovan,” I call out to my driver. “Did you talk to that woman who was in the lobby of my building?”
I cross my fingers she didn’t. When she nods, I uncross them and let out a sigh.
“You really have been lying a lot, haven’t you, Jason?”
Laying my head back on the seat, I groan, “Britt, my life’s a fucking wreck. I’ve gotten myself in so deep, I had to create that app to keep up with all of my lies.” I roll my head to the side and look at her. “I need you, baby. And you need me.”
“I know you need me, Jason. As for me needing you, well, honestly, I don’t.” She looks out the window.
I laugh, “Ha! You sure as hell do need me. You see, I happened upon one of your men, Brittany.”
She looks back at me with narrowed eyes. “And just how did this happen and who was it?”
“At the little bar I went to. It was this guy named Ryan.”
“Ugly Ryan? You met him?” She runs her hands over her face.
“You call him that? So uncool, baby. I get it, but so uncool. That guy really likes you. He tried to fight me over you.” I laugh. “I knocked him out with one punch.”
“What?” she asks with a little shrieking sound. “Why did you hit him? That’s so not called for.”
“If you knew what he said to bring that out of me, you wouldn’t think that. He actually said you gave great blowjobs. I had to knock him out.” I nod as she shakes her head.
“Over that? You hit him over that, Jason? Oh, man, this is terrible. I need to call him and you need to apologize. He’s not even a violent man. He’d never have hit you.” She looks a little pale as she pulls out her cell phone.
“No way!” I shout and grab her phone. “You’re not calling him. I told him you guys were over. That’s why he wanted to fight me. So you don’t have to tell him anything. He knows I’m making you mine. He understands. Well, not really understands, but he knows, anyway. I don’t want you to talk to him ever again.”
She makes a terrible laugh, kind of like a witch. “Give me my phone.” She holds her hand out and I shake my head. She punches me in the arm and I laugh as she cries out, “Ouch! What are you made out of, steel? Damn it, Jason! Give me my phone and don’t tell me who I can and can’t talk to.”
&nbs
p; I put her phone in my back pocket. “I’m not giving it back to you. And I will tell you who you can and can’t talk to. You need me in your life to help you straighten it out. Just like I need your help.”
The sound of a cat growling comes out of her mouth and she’s on me like a little spider monkey. Before I know what’s happened, she has her phone and is crawling off my lap.
“Thank you,” she says with a nice calm voice. “I don’t like not having my phone. It makes me anxious.”
Trying to make sure I still have all of my limbs intact, I run my hands all over myself. “You don’t say.”
“So, what did you tell Ryan?” She looks at me like she didn’t just attack me. “Because you know you had no right to do that.”
“You and I came to an agreement last night, if you’ll recall. So I felt like I did have a right to tell him you’re off the market. And would you like to tell me what you told the woman in the lobby?” I brace myself for what she’s about to say.
“I didn’t tell her a thing. I felt sorry for her stupid ass, Jason.” She looks at me with sadness in her deep green eyes. “She thinks you two are getting married. How sad is that?”
I bite my lower lip. “Yeah, she’s not the only woman who thinks that. I’m kind of an ass that way. I don’t actually ask any of them. I do tell them I want to be exclusive because I don’t want them to be with anyone else. Some of them get the idea that one day we’ll get married.”
Her dark brows furrow. “You are a super asshole!”
“I am aware of that. But I try very hard not to hurt any of them. Telling them the truth that there is no real future is mean. Don’t you think it would be mean?” I look at her for some compassion.
She shakes her head, making her dark, silky waves crash around her shoulders. “What’s mean is lying to anyone, baby. How do you not know that? I know your parents didn’t raise you to think lying was okay.”
I smile with her words because I made a phone call today and my parents were ecstatic to find out she and I were back together. “I called Mom today. She and Dad are very happy about us getting back together. They want us to make a visit soon. I bet your parents will be happy to have a visit from you, too.”
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