“I came up to cool off a bit after you got me all hot and bothered,” she replied, her gaze veering back to her screen. She was almost at the end. She was pretty sure she only needed a couple more sentences, and they were right there, fresh in her head...
“It’s your birthday party.” Theo frowned at her computer as he entered her room, closing the door behind him with the heel of his shoe—his fancy, hand-tooled, Italian leather shoe. Jo didn’t pay any attention to fashion, none at all, but her sister Meg did, and she was forever sighing over the gorgeous things that the Lawrences had.
Things the Lawrences had. Things the Marchandes did not. Neither family talked about it, but the difference in their positions in life was always there, the elephant in any room in which members of both families had gathered.
At least, it was always there for Jo. It hadn’t been, not always—back when her dad had been alive, they’d enjoyed a lot of the same privileges that the Lawrences had. She knew that Theo and his dad couldn’t have cared less that there was now a class difference between their families, but it also meant that when it came to certain things, like money, Theo especially just didn’t understand.
“Are you working?” Hastily Jo tried to close out of her document, but when she looked up and saw the puzzled expression on his face, she knew that he’d seen. “Why are you hiding up here working when everyone is downstairs waiting for you?”
“I told you. I came up here to cool off a bit.” She could hear the defensiveness in her voice and pulled in a deep breath. “I read a few lines of my article and got sucked in.”
“Well, come back down.” He reached for her hand. “It’s present time. Amy’s about to pee herself, she’s so excited.”
Jo started to rise, but something about the way he was being so insistent had her hackles rising. Lowering herself back to her chair, she crossed her arms over her chest, the movement stiff. “Tell them I’ll be down in ten minutes. I just have a few more lines to finish.”
“Forget the lines, babe.” Theo’s smile was charming, deadly when he aimed it at you, but Jo had known him long enough that she could steel herself against it—well, sometimes. “It’s your birthday. Finish them another time.”
“I can’t.” Her eyes narrowed—why was he pushing? “My deadline is tonight. I should have handed the piece in already.”
“Does it really matter?” Clearly confused, Theo waved a sure hand through the air—the lord in his manor. “Blow off the deadline. I don’t see what the big deal is.”
“The big deal is that they’re counting on me to hand the piece in. If I don’t, they have to scramble to find something else for that spot.” Jo’s voice was incredulous—why was this so hard for Theo to understand? “And also, if I don’t hand the article in, I don’t get paid.”
“They pay you peanuts. What’s the point?” Theo reached for her hands again, and this time instead of just avoiding him, she swatted them away. Rising from her chair, she stood to face him, clenched fists growing sweaty at her sides.
“A hundred dollars is not peanuts.” Her voice was shaking. Damn it, Theo knew—he knew—that this job was important to her. “I’m saving it for school, and you know it.”
“Well, a hundred dollars isn’t anything to me.” He shrugged dismissively, and Jo felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. “Just...please. Just forget about the article. I’ll give you the hundred dollars, okay? Just please come back downstairs so that I can give you your birthday present.”
For a long moment she was speechless. She actually kind of felt like throwing up.
She and Theo had their differences, but she loved him. She’d given him her body. Her heart.
And here he was pushing her to forget something that meant the world to her, just so he could get his way right now.
“You think I’m going to take money from you?” Horrified, Jo rubbed her hands over the hips of her jeans, trying to ease the clamminess. “After what we just did last night, how do you think that makes me feel?”
Understanding dawned on his face—at least, the tiniest inkling of it. “No, no. Jo, Jojo, that’s not what the money is for. Please—”
“No, of course it’s not.” Damn it, she was shouting. This was nothing new for her, not with her temper, but she couldn’t ever remember feeling exactly like this, sickness mixed in with the growing rage. “The money is so that I will ignore what I have repeatedly told you that I want right now, on my own damn birthday, and so that I will go do what you want. Lord Lawrence gets his way yet again.”
“Don’t call me that.” A dangerous spark flickered through Theo’s eyes. Lord Lawrence was what they’d all called him when he’d been younger and acting like a bit of a brat. “You know I fucking hate that.”
“Sucks, doesn’t it,” Jo taunted, finding a sick pleasure in getting some kind of reaction out of him. “When someone ignores what you’ve repeatedly said you want so that they can do what they want instead.”
“Wait a minute.” Theo suddenly stood up ramrod straight. He scrubbed his hands over his face before looking back at Jo. “You’re not talking about last night. Please tell me you’re not talking about last night.”
“Jesus Christ, Theo.” An inarticulate scream burst from her throat. “No, I’m not fucking talking about last night. If I hadn’t wanted your hands on me, you would have bloody well known it.”
“Right. I know,” he replied hastily, his restless hands now moving to rake through his hair. “You’re just so mad. And if we’re just talking about the article...”
If we’re just talking about the article, then I don’t know what the hell you’re so worked up about.
Her mouth, the mouth she’d used all over his body not twenty-four hours earlier, fell open with disbelief. Theo’s indifference to the gifts he’d been given had been a bone of contention between them before, but it had been...a small bone. A fish bone. Something that a sweet smile from him could help send into the garbage disposal.
This? This was a dinosaur drumstick, too big to be ground down in the kitchen sink.
“Look, I shouldn’t have done that.” Theo spoke hastily, trying to smooth over what he’d said. “That was wrong. Let’s not fight on your birthday.”
“Are you saying that because you’re actually sorry?” Resentment was bitter on her tongue. “Or are you saying it so that you get your way?”
She watched, almost as if she’d stepped outside herself, as temper flared in those caramel-colored eyes. Copper fire—that was what it looked like.
“Why are you acting this way?” He bit his words out the way he always did when he was angry, as though it took more effort to form them. “I just wanted to spend your birthday with you.”
“That’s not an answer.” He growled in response, actually fucking growled, and took a step toward her. She held up both hands and thought she might even have hissed. They’d been reduced to animals in their fury, and she was really fucking tempted to bite him.
And not in a fun way.
“Get out of my room.” Her voice was shaking. As she pointed at the door, she noticed that her hand was, too.
“What?” Incredulity lent an almost comical cast to his face. “Are you fucking serious right now?”
“I said get out!” she screamed, her voice echoing off the small confines of her room. Theo reeled back as if she’d slapped him, and her palm itched to do just that. He must have read the desire in her eyes, on her face, because his face reddened, the effect of his own temper, but he took a step back. With one last look, he spun on the heel of his ridiculously expensive shoes and stormed out of her room, slamming the door behind him. Minutes later, Jo felt the frame of the house shake as he slammed the front door as well. Crossing to her window, she hugged her arms to her chest and watched as Theo’s tall, lanky figure strode across the lawn, climbing over the short fence that separated their properties, his movements je
rky.
He would drink now, she knew that absolutely. He’d pull one of his dad’s priceless bottles of scotch from the ornate liquor cabinet and numb everything he felt with the gilded liquid. He would retreat into a sullen cocoon, erecting the barriers that were his first line of defense.
He’d never erected those same barriers against her, but she knew him inside and out. And knowing him as she did, she saw with sudden, startling clarity that he truly wouldn’t understand why she’d responded the way she had. Why she hadn’t been able to just jump onboard Theo’s Fun Train...because to him, responsibility didn’t exist.
Knowing him the way she did, she wondered why she only now understood that this particular quirk of his meant that they were never, ever going to be able to work.
Acid churned in her belly as she sank down to the floor. It rose to her throat when Beth, the sister she was closest to, cracked open the door and stuck her head in, and she couldn’t reply.
“We heard you guys yelling.” Her sister’s bright blue eyes were wide, meaning that she was as shocked by the argument as Jo was. “Are you okay?”
Jo looked up at her younger sister, the one she most often confided in, and felt the first small crack reverberate through her heart. Wordlessly, she held Beth’s gaze and shook her head, just the smallest bit.
And when Beth crossed the room, sank to the floor beside her and wrapped Jo in her skinny tween arms, Jo burst into tears.
And that pissed her off, too.
CHAPTER FOUR
Then
THEO LAY SPRAWLED in the massive leather chaise that occupied the corner of his bedroom at one...or was it two in the morning? He lifted the bottle of scotch that he’d brazenly lifted from his dad’s supply, squinting as he tried to discern just how much he’d had to drink.
He was pretty sure that the bottle had been full—a brand-new one, in fact. After the first couple of shots from a heavy crystal tumbler, though, he’d decided to forgo the glass and swig straight from the bottle. And then he’d spilled some on the floor in the hallway, leaving a sticky lake of amber liquid for the cleaners to find in the morning.
So basically...he had no idea. He knew he’d drunk a lot, but it wasn’t having the effect he’d hoped for. The buzz he was chasing kept dancing just out of reach, and instead the alcohol was filling him with lead, weighing him down until he thought he might never move again.
“Why do you do this to yourself?”
He didn’t have to move to know that Jo was standing in the doorway of his room. He caught a whiff of spicy cinnamon, heard her quiet sigh as she entered, closing the door behind her.
He remained motionless, listening as she moved around his room. She straightened his sheets, probably pulling down his covers for him. He tracked her footsteps to his bathroom, heard the tap and knew that she was getting him water and aspirin. Finally she closed the space between them, reaching out for the bottle he still held.
Because he was in the mood to be a dick, he held tight. He heard a grim hum from her lips, and then she smacked the bottom of the bottle, twisting it over in his grip and upending the contents onto his lap.
“Fucking hell, Jo!” Shocked into motion, he scrambled upright. A tight smirk of satisfaction was on that fascinating face of hers, and she simply stood back, arms crossed over her chest as he reached for the closest thing he could find, a sweatshirt, to mop up the liquid on his lap.
“I’m going to bed,” he informed her. She didn’t move. He wasn’t surprised. Damn it, what the hell was going on with her? All he’d wanted to do was make sure that she enjoyed her birthday. She didn’t have to write those freaking articles. She’d just turned eighteen today—no one expected her to contribute. And if she was worried about money, he had plenty, and he was happy to share. So what the fuck was the problem?
“Theo.” Her voice was a sigh again. He glared up at her as she pulled his footstool closer to his chair, lowering her small frame to a perch. “We need to talk.”
He was just drunk enough that talking seemed like a horrible idea. As he looked at her sitting there, her pert, perfect breasts clearly outlined in the flimsy blouse that he knew Meg had made her wear for her party, he thought of something that sounded like a lot more fun than talking.
“C’mere.” He gestured, overshooting and making his arm swing wildly. “I still need to give you your birthday kiss.”
She closed her eyes, muttered something beneath her breath and then pinned him with thunder in those storm-gray eyes. “It’s not sexy time, Theo. Sexy time is not on the menu anytime in the near future. Just sit up and answer something for me.”
Theo rather thought that he could convince her on the sexy-time front if she gave it a fair shot, but the clipped quality of her voice finally sank through the scotch-soaked folds of his brain. Warily, he scooted to the edge of his seat, bracing his elbows on his knees and trying to look like he was sober.
From the grimace she made when she caught a whiff of his breath, he knew he wasn’t fooling her. Sighing, he scrubbed a hand over his face, then gave her his full attention. “What do you need to say, Jojo?”
Her question was like a punch in the kidneys. “What are your plans, Theo?” He waited for her to elaborate, but she just waited for his response, her entire frame unnaturally still.
“You mean like...my plans for you?” Anxiety pitched his words higher than usual. He loved her, but wasn’t it a little...soon...to have that talk?
“You are such a jackass,” she muttered. He scowled, opening his mouth to reply, but she forged on. “No. Not your plans for us. Which, incidentally, would be our plans, but whatever.”
His brain wasn’t moving quite fast enough to keep up with that train, but he put all his energy into focusing so that he could catch her next sentence.
“I’m talking about you. Your plans for your own life. What are you doing with it? What do you even want?”
“I—” He paused, unable to verbalize the tangle in his head. “I don’t—what do you mean?”
She studied him, the sharpening of her features making her appear faintly birdlike. Not like a sweet bird, though, he thought grumpily, like a canary or something. No, she was putting him more in mind of a raven, or a crow, maybe a hawk—something gorgeous and wild and more than a little bit dangerous.
“What I mean, Theo, is that you have so many opportunities. So many. More than anyone I know.” When he didn’t respond, she threw up her hands. “What I mean is...do you see yourself going into business with your father? You could, you know. He’d love that.”
“Not bloody likely,” Theo muttered, thinking of the nasty little altercation he’d had with Theodore Sr. last night.
Jo ignored him, plowing on. “What about school, then? You can afford to go anywhere. Anywhere. Doesn’t that excite you, even a little bit?”
“Don’t be stupid. There isn’t a school in the world that would take me with my SAT scores.” Theo snorted with disgust, making sure Jo didn’t know that disgust was actually with himself. “College isn’t an option.”
“That’s ridiculous.” The glare she shot him was like a laser beam, slicing right through to his core. “You can retake those any time you want.”
“I can retake them, but I won’t be any smarter.” Shrugging as if he didn’t care, he took another large swig from the scotch bottle. When he swallowed, the alcohol felt like acid in his gut, eating away at him from the inside out.
Jo threw her hands up in frustration. “You won’t get any smarter if you won’t freaking try, Theo. It’s called studying. The people who get good SAT scores do it.”
“Why are you on my case like this?” He couldn’t handle even one more of her biting observations, because each one was like the lash of a whip, slicing away another sliver of his defenses. Soon he’d be left open, raw and bleeding, all of his insecurities out for her to see.
No one was
allowed that close. Not even Jo.
“I’m on your case because I don’t understand what’s going through your thick skull.” Her temper was up now, and so was her voice. “You have opportunities that some people only dream of, and you’re throwing them all away because...what? You’re just going to lounge around and drive your dad crazy forever?”
Theo stilled. “My dad treats me like shit. Since my mom died, he can’t even look at me. You know that.”
“You don’t treat him any better!” Jo’s harsh words reverberated off the walls of the room. “You might not get along, but he’s still trying to help you make something of your life, and you thwart him at every turn!”
Theo had known that Jo had a temper since the second day of their acquaintance, when they’d gotten into a fight during an impromptu softball game and she’d accidentally beaned him with the bat when she’d thrown it in a rage. His anger management wasn’t much better, though, and she’d just stuck a crowbar into his most tender parts and cranked it.
He fisted his hands at his sides, blood rushing to his head so fast that he felt dizzy.
“Thwart? Who actually says that in conversation?” he sneered, his words aimed to pierce her delicate skin. “I get it now. It’s not that you care, that you’re worried about me. It’s that I have chances you don’t, and it’s driving you crazy!”
Jo’s mouth fell open in disbelief, and her eyes were wild. “I’ve known you were a lazy prick with entitlement issues since the day we met, but stupid me, I thought you’d grown up a bit. But you never will, will you? You’ll never figure out what you’re going to do with your life, because you don’t want to do anything!”
She sucked in a big breath before continuing. “Your mom is the one who died, Theo! Not you! So why the fuck do you keep acting like you went with her?”
Theo couldn’t think past the roaring in his ears. Grabbing her by the shoulders, he fought the urge to give her a shake. He’d never hit a woman in his life, and he didn’t intend to start, but Josephine Marchande sorely tempted him to.
Between the Lines Page 3