Up in Smoke (Kisses and Crimes Book 2)

by Natalie E. Wrye

  “So, what do you propose we do?”

  Jackson finally looked up at me. His blue eyes were purified ice. His expression was grim.

  “We make sure his stops beating first.”

  WHERE THERE’S SMOKE, THERE’S FIRE

  PENELOPE

  The drive to Delilah’s was longer than I remembered.

  It was Friday night and the Lincoln tunnel was crowded. I sat in the passenger seat of Jackson’s polished car with my briefcase, some toys… and the most unpredictable man I’d ever met.

  Like the car in which he drove, Jackson Reed was darker on the outside than in, his blue eyes masking the emotion beneath.

  Concern contorted his features, and as he drove me to my sister’s house with my niece’s presents in tow, I couldn’t help but stare at him—to stare at the man who’d just a day ago warned me to stay away from him.

  Who warned me to avoid him like the plague, doing everything he could to make me run for the hills.

  And it wasn’t the first time.

  Four years ago he’d done the same thing, making me promise to stay away from him, holding me to a vow he knew I couldn’t keep.

  He went out of his way, constantly, to let me know just how dangerous he was, to show just how untrustworthy he could be.

  And I couldn’t lie: I had believed him…

  What else could you do when a person did everything to make you hate them? And I did hate him.

  At least, I wanted to…

  But the look of worry in his eyes, the fierce protectiveness in his face and the fear carved into his features made me believe for the first time… that maybe it had all been a lie.

  Because people you couldn’t trust—the truly treacherous and unreliable—wouldn’t go against their own interests to help someone else. But that’s exactly what he was doing.

  So, what was it all about?

  Why was he constantly saying one thing and doing another? He never claimed to care about Jordan Chambers, me… none of it…

  And what did he want with the Jordan Chambers file anyway?

  I didn’t have much time to think about it because as soon as I did, we were slowing down in front of my sister’s address, Jackson’s Audi sliding into the parking space right outside her door.

  He put his black automobile in park and waited.

  I stalled for time.

  “Jackson, about the Jordan Chambers file…”

  “I screwed up. I shouldn’t have brought it up tonight,” he interrupted. “This isn’t the time or the place.”

  “I know, but we never talked—talked about why you…”

  “Oh my God!” I heard from forty feet away. I turned… and my sister was standing at her front door.

  Her face, makeup-less and beautiful, was bare, as were her feet. She had glasses on, her hair pulled up into a messy brunette bun and a robe draped over her pink, plaid pajamas.

  How she saw into Jackson’s passenger side window, I’ll never know, but I guessed it was from years of watching me, years of being forced to look after me when our old aunt Reba was too blind and preoccupied to notice my mischief.

  I remembered how Delilah never missed a beat. I used to joke around when we were kids and say that she could pick my earlobe out of lineup.

  Unfortunately, the same was true for us as grownups.

  Through the dark and dimmed windows, I saw her wave to me as if I were standing in daylight. I had to laugh to myself.

  I giggled her name as I opened the door. “Delilah…”

  She rushed towards me.

  “I heard a car pull up. Darren’s out of town so I had to pull out my baseball bat. You’re lucky I didn’t take a swing.”

  She hugged me.

  “Peabody, I’m so fucking happy to see you.”

  I buried my face in her shoulder, feeling the tears well up as I embraced my beautiful big sister for the first time in months.

  I’d been on FaceTime the last time I saw her. The time before that? In Paris.

  My niece Melanie was growing up without me, and my work for the firm, for Governor Price, and whatever the hell I had going on with Jackson was taking up most of my time in the city.

  I missed my sister—earlobes and more. I grabbed her so tight I thought I might suffocate her. I breathed in her neck. I inhaled her hair.

  “Del…” I started. “I’m sorry it took so long to make it here.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” she exhaled. “Just be glad you did.”

  She let me go and stepped back. Her eyes were as wet as mine, and when she rubbed them from beneath her frames, her gaze diverted over my shoulder… and the tears that threatened to fall just a minute prior readily dried up.

  She gaped at the man who’d come to a standstill on the other side of the car.

  “Jackson?” Her voice was disbelieving.

  “Del,” he rumbled, his voice deeper than the dark. “It’s nice to see you. Didn’t think it would be tonight, but I’m not surprised. I told Pea I’d take her wherever she wanted to go.”

  He looked at me from atop his black car, his towering presence taking up the entire other side as he stood.

  “I should’ve known that place would’ve been here…”

  “You’re damned right,” Del responded. “And I’m holding you responsible for all the missed time.”

  She rounded the car, giving Jax a hug.

  She backed away, and as she walked closer, I could see the questions in her eyes. My sister was a certified pro, however. She covered up her curiosity with a smile.

  She motioned towards the door.

  “Well, let’s get inside. My husband isn’t here, I haven’t slept in two days, and I’m about five seconds from falling asleep on my feet.”

  She walked back towards her front door with Jackson and me on her heels, and the silence between us stretched with each step.

  I had to admit: It was a strange feeling.

  Like the prodigal children, returning home after a long hiatus, Jackson and I had somehow found ourselves back in a fold that was a decade and a half in the making.

  It seemed we always came back to each other—Jackson, Bishop and I, and no matter how many years had passed, we always managed to ease again into each other’s lives with a finesse that was less like friends and a hell of a lot more like family.

  Except there was nothing familial about the way Jackson was touching me.

  A wayward thumb, large and hot to the touch, skimmed the skin at the small of my back. With one hand in his jeans pocket and the other on me, Jackson escorted me into the entrance of my sister’s Hoboken home with very little to say.

  But his touch was doing all the talking. It was speaking to me in a way only I could understand.

  The small brushes, the slight touches, made every nerve ending on my body come alive.

  I nearly jumped out of my skin when Delilah said my name.

  “Pea…” she turned.

  “Yeah.” I stepped away from Jackson.

  “Could you come help me in the kitchen really quickly? I whipped up dinner and left an absolute mess.”

  I nodded, squeezing my jacket tighter around my shoulders.

  “Sure.”

  She motioned towards Jackson in the living area.

  “Jax, why don’t you have a seat? Make yourself comfortable? I can get you a beer or something to eat.” She smirked at him. “I promise it won’t be peas.”

  He nodded his gratitude, removing his jacket and, with it, any bit of sanity I had left. The hard lines of him pressed against every inch of his well-fitted flannel shirt and as he sat, he rubbed an absent fingertip along his lower lip and, without thinking, I knew I wanted to taste the places he’d just touched.

  I stood staring until finally Delilah grabbed my hand. She pulled me into the confines of her newly remodeled kitchen.

  Going for the refrigerator, she finally released me. She replaced her hand in mine with a bottle of amber-colored ale.

  She pointed at t
he beer in my hand.

  “Drink,” she commanded.

  And then she left.

  With two more beers in her hand and her robe flapping behind her, my sister headed into the living room without another word.

  One minute of muffled talking later, she was back. And the questions in her eyes had morphed into accusations.

  She pinned me with a critical stare. And then she burst into a fit of giggles.

  She threw her head back.

  “Jeez, Peabody. You didn’t waste any time, did you? What’s it been? A week and a half, and you two are already drooling all over each other.”

  “Excuse me,” I snapped, looking back at the closed kitchen door. “There’s been no drooling. In fact, I’m here for the little person who is allowed to do the drooling.” I sat my beer down. “Where’s Melanie?”

  My sister sighed. “Oh, she’s asleep…”

  I scoffed in disbelief before getting interrupted.

  “Come on, Peabody. She’s three, not thirty-three. If you want to see your niece, you’re going to have to visit at normal times. Like everyone else.” She glanced at my untouched beer still sitting on the counter. “Now, drink.”

  I grabbed the bottle, bringing it to my lips on command. I leaned towards the kitchen door, pushing it slightly open.

  “Can he hear us out there?” I whispered.

  Del shrugged. “Not likely. Game’s on. I put the TV remote in his hand. That should occupy him long enough for us to clean the kitchen.”

  I looked around. “Del, the kitchen’s already cleaned.”

  “Well, shit. You should know me by now. When I say ‘clean the kitchen,’ I mean ‘tell me how hard your temples are getting banged against the headboard because I know you’re totally boning Jackson.’”

  “You shithead.” I threw a dishrag at her. “I am totally not.”

  “Okay fine. Tell me about the rug burn, the ass chaffing, the overhead light swinging…”

  “Excuse me? Ass chaffing…?”

  “Come on, give me something. Darren is on a work trip, and I haven’t been banged since Eisenhower.”

  “You weren’t even alive during Eisenhower.”

  Del pointed at me with the edge of her own beer bottle.

  “Start talking, or I’m going to start making up things in my head.” She swallowed a huge gulp of her beer. “Now, drink.”

  She let the bottle swing between her fingertips, and I took a huge swig of my own. I sucked in a hungry breath.

  “Sorry to disappoint, but… there is no boning. He’s just helping.”

  Delilah opened her mouth.

  “And before you start,” I kept going, “no, he isn’t helping himself to me. We just so happen to be going after the same thing. I’m off limits, and this is strictly a business relationship.”

  Crossing her arms, Del cocked a brow. She smirked, motioning towards the door.

  “Yeah, seems like business to me. You two keep circling each other like planets around the sun. You two keep pushing this ‘business’ relationship… and one of you is likely to get burned. Him, most of all.”

  “Him?” I stood straighter. “How is he going to get hurt?”

  I cracked the kitchen door, and as I did, I saw a little stowaway sneak onto the living room couch.

  With barrettes in her hair and bunny socks on her feet, she plopped herself next to the unsuspecting man watching the game.

  She smiled into his face. He looked down at her—surprised—and smiled right back. I felt a kick in my heart.

  Delilah was still babbling.

  “… not to mention he put up with your awful cat.”

  I froze, drinking from my beer bottle. “You’d better be talking about Katie, my actual cat.”

  Del laughed.

  “Of course I am. That cat, Katie, was Satan. I never fed the little bitch. She’d scratched the hell out of you if you even tried to come close. Jax barely liked cats, so the fact that he put up with that spawn of hell is really saying something about the kind of boyfriend he was. I would have snapped her neck in a minute.”

  I rolled my eyes, tapping on the edge of the amber ale’s glass.

  “No, you wouldn’t have.”

  “Well, no. I was scared shitless of Katie. And probably so was Jackson. But he was more afraid of losing you…”

  She shrugged as if she’d just said the most natural statement in the world. She continued rambling about Katie, but my sister had already lost me.

  I was still sneaking a peek at the adorably odd pair on the sofa.

  One pink sock was already on Melanie’s head, and the other was nearly in her mouth. My niece rocked back and forth on the cushions, giggling as the man beside her nudged one of her little feet.

  For a person who was eleven times the age of the energetic toddler, he seemed fully captivated by her conversation. He nodded when spoken to, grinned as she grinned, and when she tilted her little head back and laughed, I almost heard his chuckles.

  The large chest beneath his white crew neck shook as he laughed without restraint, looking carefree and charismatic all at once, his manner drawing me to him like a magnet.

  I felt as if I were staring in a stranger’s face—at least one I hadn’t seen for fifteen years.

  I peered closer.

  Who was that man? Attentive, paternal and patient?

  The dark blond man in the living room who was showing me things I’ve never seen, things I’d forgotten existed, things that made the most sensitive parts of me swell…?

  Like my heart… and places below the waist I’d rather not mention.

  I closed the door.

  I tuned back into my sister’s tedious one-sided dialogue. I sat my drink down.

  She looked up.

  “Have you been listening?”

  I didn’t miss a beat. “Yup.” I took a drink—without instructions, this time—and smiled as she launched into the strangest topic of the night.

  Bishop.

  She mentioned his name just as I was taking a swig from my bottle.

  “Have you heard from the almighty pope?” she joked.

  I shook my head. “No, not for a while. But I get the feeling that Jackson has. I heard him take a call at my house.”

  Del leaned in. “Your house?”

  “Quit,” I warned. “It wasn’t like that.” Hell yeah, it was… but I wasn’t letting Del know that. “But when he did, it sorta sounded like a personal call. Didn’t really sound like much business.”

  My sister’s brown brow furrowed.

  “Maybe he has a girlfriend.”

  The comment hit like a dagger. A sudden pain poked my chest dead-center, and as soon as I felt it, it was gone.

  I wondered if it was even there at all.

  I tilted my drink to my lips again and swallowed.

  “Doubtful,” I mumbled.

  “Why don’t you check his phone?”

  I glanced at Del. “One: I’m not fucking crazy… Two: Jackson doesn’t do girlfriends.”

  “Maybe things have changed,” she mentioned. “And that was a long time ago, Peabody. We’re getting old, if you haven’t forgotten. And that was before you.”

  I nodded, sipping. “Yeah, right before me. I should have listened the first time.”

  “Or maybe you could have just paid better attention...”

  Her assertion made me stop. I lowered my bottle. Delilah sat hers down.

  “You ever wonder why Jax always pushed people away?” She leaned in. “Why he always lowered everyone’s standards of him? Why he went out of his way to make sure everyone expected the least from him?”

  I sniffed, shifting the weight on my feet. My voice sounded hollow to my own ears.

  “No…”

  “Well, maybe you should have. Jackson made sure everyone around him held him to the lowest standards. But I guess it was hard for you to see… you were too busy holding him to Bishop’s.”

  I straightened my back. “What the hell is that su
pposed to mean?” I threw the question at Del.

  “It means,” she motioned absently, “that there’s no room around you, Peabody. No room for error or mistakes. Everything is business; everything is ‘rules.’ Pinky-promises are interpreted as binding contracts, and when people step outside of your little box of benchmarks, you dismiss them.”

  I exhaled harshly, having a hard time hearing my sister say these words to me. I tried to remain flippant, despite the hurt beating in my chest.

  “You sound like Jackson,” I commented, tapping on my beer bottle. “At least you’re not going as far as to say something stupid like I’m in love with Bishop the way he did…”

  She bit her lip. “Well…”

  “That’s fucking it.” I slammed down my beer bottle, feeling woozy. “You’re both disowned.”

  Del held up a hand.

  “I’m not saying that you are, babes. I know you aren’t, but you’ve gotta admit… it’s been hard for any man to measure up. Bishop was like a brother to you…” she pointed out. “And I know it was hard because we needed all the family we could get. I mean, Mom and Dad had that accident when you were barely two. Great Aunt Reba did her best, but was blinder than a bat, and then there was Bishop—understanding because of the death of his own parents, kind… and always there. I get it…”

  She shook her head slowly.

  “I just also get why Jackson doesn’t…” she finished. “You met Jackson’s dad. You remember what that was like…”

  Fuck. Do I ever…

  When Jackson came to New York for college, his Georgia roots weren’t actually too far behind him. A mountain of a man, more drunk than he was sober, his high school football coach of a daddy had paid his only son a visit as the boys, Bishop and Jax, were moving in.

  And it would prove to be his last.

  I never forgot the depth of defeat I saw in Jackson’s eyes that day.

  I shuddered at the memory, and Del continued hammering the point home.

  “Look, I know it goes against the rules of ‘woman-code’ to say this, but I love my business. I love my family even more. Success is great. Winning journalism awards and taking care of myself has made me the woman that I am, but it’s ok to admit… that, sometimes, I need to be taken care of, too. It doesn’t make you weak to let emotion in, Penelope.” She pointed a finger at me. “It shows a lack of strength if you allow it not to.”