by Ann, Jewel E
“You brought your sister along. Interesting choice.”
“How so?” Luke asked.
Jackson shrugged. “Safety reasons. Plane hijackings. Slamming into a semi on the icy roads. Any number of things could happen. I would have left her at home. That’s all.”
“Well my dear sister is stubborn.”
“I know the feeling.” Jackson dove into his breakfast. Reason nine hundred and ninety-nine why he would never let Ryn go: the woman had mad skills in the kitchen. Too bad the Jones siblings had to distract him from fully enjoying it.
“I had hoped since we talked on the phone that you would have reconsidered looking for your sister.”
Jackson shook his head, mouth full, taste buds in heaven. “She’ll come home when she’s ready. Sorry you wasted your time coming here just to hear me say the same thing I told you on the phone.”
Luke stared at his food. The guy’s brain never shut down.
“Where is your restroom?”
“Down the hall on the left.” Ryn smiled at Jackson, eyes big as if she worried answering that simple question somehow crossed a nonexistent line between her house and his.
Jackson grinned at her. He liked how she’d made herself at home. If his plans for the future worked out, they wouldn’t need two homes.
“Thank you. Excuse me.” Luke walked past Jackson, his expression filled with words he held back from Ryn’s ears. For that Jackson was thankful.
“Are you in college, Lake?” Ryn asked.
“No. I was before the accident, but I haven’t gotten back on that horse or any other for that matter. I volunteer at the hospital, working with young amputees.”
“I heard about your accident. Sorry to hear about your leg.” Jackson felt the need to say something, but he wasn’t good with emotions and the words that went with them.
“Thanks.” Lake stared at her plate. “It’s never a good time to lose someone you love.” Lake looked at Ryn. “My boyfriend died.”
Ryn reached her hand over and rested it on Lake’s. “That’s terrible.”
Lake nodded. “But if it had to happen I wish it could have been on a different day. Any other day.”
“Oh?” Ryn’s brow furrowed.
“We were on our way to a wedding.” She looked at Jackson.
He tried not to react, but his jaw muscle twitched anyway.
“Luke’s wedding.”
“Oh no. Your poor family.”
“Yeah, he didn’t get married that day.”
“But he did eventually, right?”
Lake shook her head. “I was in a coma so the wedding was postponed.”
Jackson looked away the minute he saw tears pooling in her eyes.
“His fiancée died in her own tragic accident before I came out of my coma. I woke up to no leg, no boyfriend, and no Jessica.”
Jackson flinched at the mention of her name.
“Life isn’t anything if not heartbreaking and unpredictable.” Ryn wiped away a tear of her own.
“I’d better make sure Luke didn’t flush himself down the toilet.” Jackson stood, eager to leave the hot mess of emotions at the table.
The bathroom door was open with the lights off, but the door to Jillian’s room was shut. He cracked it open. Luke sat on the bed, holding Jillian’s sweatshirt to his face. He didn’t startle or show a shed of guilt for being in her room, smelling her clothes.
“You love Ryn?”
Jackson shut the door behind him and leaned against it. “I do.”
Luke laughed. “Never thought I’d see the day. I honestly questioned if you were capable of it.”
“Jude wasn’t. But I’m not him.”
“You have to do that don’t you?”
“Do what?”
“Separate yourself from the man you were and the life you left behind. It’s the only way to keep your sanity, isn’t it? She did it too. Jessica couldn’t love AJ, but Jillian did.”
“I never claimed to have my sanity, even now. This life is easier. Everything that plagued Jude is dead.”
“The anger plagued you. You were always angry. Jessica knew it, but she didn’t know why. Are you saying your parents made you angry?”
“Listen, Doc, I don’t need you to psychoanalyze me. I’m not the one sniffing my ex’s clothes.”
“If someone took Ryn from you today and you were without her for almost a year, you’d be sniffing her clothes.”
Jackson wanted to deny it, but he couldn’t. He was a little pissed at her for washing his sheets after they got wet from sex after their shower. He wasted no time getting her naked and rolling around in his bed again. “I don’t know where she is. I’m not lying.”
“But someone does. Knox knows, doesn’t he?”
The brilliant doctor didn’t have a clue. Some things in life had no explanation. Some people lived without accountability. Knox was one of them.
“He tracks her phone. She doesn’t have a chip inserted into her neck or anything like that. If he were concerned about her whereabouts, then he would have had her followed. She took a plane to Portland for a funeral. He called me after she left, wondering why she was still in Omaha. I told him she forgot her phone.”
“You lied?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“She needed time alone without anyone following her, and I didn’t want Knox thinking she went AWOL.”
“I have to find her.”
“You won’t.”
“Then you find her.”
Jackson shrugged. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
Luke glanced around the room. “Look through her stuff. Find a clue to where she might be. Maybe she went somewhere with him before he died and she’s gone back there to feel close to him. Maybe she said something to his family at the funeral. Maybe—”
“Stop with the fucking maybes. I spent years anticipating the behaviors of other people, guessing their next move, where they would be, where they might go. But she’s not predictable like that. She could be in Maine or Florida, Indiana, Alaska … hell she could be staying at your fucking hotel for all we know. She’s carrying cash, nothing to track.”
“Call Knox. Tell him she’s gone AWOL. Make him find her.”
Luke had lost it. He wasn’t hearing anything Jackson said. “Sure. And if by some miracle he finds her reading a book on the beach in the Keys, he’s going to be fucking pissed for the wasted man hours and so is she.”
“She’s not on a goddamn beach in the Keys. Something’s wrong!”
“How do you know? Huh? How the hell can you possibly know something is wrong?”
Luke dropped his head, clenching his hair. “I just … know.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Day
The below average January temperature greeted Jessica with a maddening gust to her hair as she emerged from the building. The number of women in her self-defense class nearly doubled from the previous weeks. The holidays sucked the life out of attendance.
“Mrs. Jones?”
She turned around, wrestling with her ponytail whipping her face like a fly on a horse. Luke stood leaning against the passenger’s door to the GTO with Jones shoved into the backseat. Her fiancé looked GQ handsome in his black wool coat with the collar up protecting his neck from the frigid wind.
“Mrs. Jones? Really? Not until next weekend.” She walked into his waiting arms and just like that she was home.
“I’m just trying it out in public. Seeing how it sounds when I holler it in the middle of the busy sidewalk.”
She clenched his lapels, looking up with complete adoration. “And how does it sound?”
“Incredible. Didn’t you see those people looking around like a celebrity had been spotted or the queen was in town?”
“I must have missed that.” Suspicion pulled at her eyebrows.
“Are you getting cold feet?”
She slid into the car as he held open the door. “No, my socks are a wool/cotton b
lend.”
He looked at her with his typical I-don’t-want-to-grin-but-I-am smile as he fastened his seat belt. “The wedding. Are you getting cold feet about the wedding?”
“Nope.” She twisted her body, petting Jones on his chest.
“Are you sure?”
“I swear.”
Luke laughed as he started the car. “You swear, huh?”
“Yep. I swear on my uncle’s grave I’m not getting cold feet over marrying you.”
He pulled away from the curb. “That’s not very comforting.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You don’t have an uncle. Your dad’s an only child and your mom has a younger sister who lives in Canada.”
“Exactly, I’ve only seen my aunt once in my life. She basically divorced the family when she moved to Vancouver with her rich lover. My mom didn’t even send her an invitation to the wedding. Fucking Cathy got an invite, but not my aunt, which is fine. I don’t really want either one of them there. But in my dreams I had this amazing uncle who was a NASCAR driver and he let me drive his car around the track as fast as I wanted and whenever I wanted. When I was younger he took me for ice cream—twist cones dipped in chocolate. He tragically died after winning Daytona. An RV in the parking lot backed over him. So when I say I swear on my uncle’s grave, it means a lot.”
Luke stared at the road ahead, taking a right into the parking garage. As soon as the car was nestled into its parking spot, he unlatched his seat belt and readjusted his body to face her. She’d seen that look on his face a million times. It was the one that said I love you, but you need help. You need an emergency session with Dr. Jones.
“I’m a little concerned that you’ve constructed this imaginary world with an uncle that never existed. I’ve always assumed you and your father had a good relationship, but this makes me question that. Is there something about your father that you’ve never told me?”
She frowned, looking down at her gloved-hands resting in her lap. “Well … there was this one incident. The door was cracked to my parents’ bathroom. I thought it was my mom, but upon closer inspection I noticed my father standing in front of the mirror in a pink lace bra and matching panties. Beneath the tough guy uniformed exterior, he liked wearing lingerie. I think that day a little piece of me died. The man I looked up to was no longer truly a man.”
“Jess …” Luke whispered, touching his hand to her cheek.
She looked up and grinned. “Just fucking with you. God … you’re so gullible.” She hopped out, letting Jones out as well.
“What the hell?” Luke chased after them as they made their way to the elevator. “You were joking? About your father?”
The disbelief in his voice cracked her up. Ruffling Luke’s feathers was her favorite past-time.
“Yes, joking about my dad and my imaginary uncle. Joking about all of it.”
The second the doors opened, he shoved her to the back of the elevator, pinning her against it with his body. Her heart pounded, certain he would give her a pounding of her favorite kind very soon as well.
“You made the whole story up?” He pinched her sides.
It tickled and hurt at the same time.
Jessica giggled. “The look … oh my gosh, the look on your face was …”
He clenched her ass with an iron grip, yanking her body to his. She felt the evidence of his angry desire hard against her belly.
“Payback’s a bitch, sweetheart.” He sucked at her neck just short of leaving a mark.
Out-of-control Luke made Jessica all kinds of crazy. Their bed was too far. She wanted him right then, not a second longer to wait.
“Tell me I’ve been a bad girl, daddy.”
Luke froze, lips still pressed to her neck. “What did you just say?”
“I’ve been a really naughty girl, big daddy, you need to spank me.”
He released his grip on her ass so fast she could barely remember the feel of it.
The elevator doors opened. His long strides took him to the door twice as fast as hers did.
“You’ve ruined the moment. We may never have sex again.”
She felt like a masochist. Her actions left her turned on, yet she couldn’t resist. Cold feet over marrying Luke? Not in a million years.
*
“Luke?” Jessica mumbled.
His sexy, naked fiancée often talked in her sleep.
“Dammit, Jones! Answer your phone.”
She wasn’t asleep.
“You’re on top of me.”
She nuzzled her face into his neck. “You love it.”
He did. They started their love affair in separate beds then separated by the great wall which came down, leaving an empty gap of complete trust, but one night she fell asleep on his chest. He risked life and limb for a night of her naked body against his. His lips on her head and hands on her perfect ass awoke her the next morning. She didn’t flinch. He proposed to her three days later.
“I do love it, but it’s 2:00 a.m. and you’re demanding I get my phone.”
She rolled to the side and he lumbered from the bed to grab his vibrating phone that danced along the dresser.
“Hello?”
“Luke?”
“Who’s this?”
“Deborah.”
“What is it, Deb?”
Why was his ex-fiancée’s mom calling him?
“It’s Fran.”
He held the phone to his ear with one hand and rubbed the sleep from his eyes with the other.
“Yeah?”
“She died an hour ago.” Her voice cracked. Painful sobs bled through his phone.
“I’m sorry, Deb. I really am.”
“Y-you loved … her … r-ri-right?”
Luke grabbed the back of his neck, looking at the woman sprawled out on his bed—the woman who would be his wife in five days. He never went to see Fran, even when Jessica told him to go. They found a match and she received the heart transplant she needed, but it was never a guarantee and he’d heard from mutual friends that she wasn’t doing well.
“Yes. Of course I did.”
“The … the f-funeral is Sat-Saturday. You’ll b-be there?”
“I’m sorry, Deb. I can’t. I have other plans.”
She sobbed harder. “What can be m-more important … than F-Fran’s funeral?”
“I’m getting married. Give Matt my condolences.”
Luke pressed End. After slipping into his pajama bottoms, he headed to the kitchen. He grabbed a glass of water and stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the hazy lights of San Francisco.
Arms swimming in his stolen red hoodie wrapped around his waist. A warm cheek rested on his bare back.
“Fran died?”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes life sucks.”
Luke loved, with his entire being, the woman who clung to him. He loved that every single one of her imperfections made her absolutely perfect for him.
“Yes.” He turned, using his free hand to cup the back of her head, pulling her into his chest. “And sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes we weather the storm, mourn the casualties, and find the sun on the horizon has never been brighter. I’m blinded by mine, and I’m certain for the rest of my life it—she—will leave me breathless.”
“I hate how much you’ve lost to get to me.”
“I feel the same way about you.” He kissed her head as she kissed his chest.
“The funeral is on Saturday, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“You’re going to think of her that day, there’s no way you can’t.” She looked up at him. “And I’m going to love you even more for it. You hide behind your structured life, a three-piece suit, and the plaques on your office wall, but your heart is so damn big. Everyone who really knows you loves you, it’s impossible not to.”
“Don’t ever leave me,” he whispered.
“I have to work tomorrow.”
He chuckled. She called his sense of humor dry, but he
rs was just as dry.
“Oh you meant it more like a stalker, didn’t you? Like ‘Don’t ever leave me … because I’d find you.’”
“Yes, but not really in that voice.”
“Were you good at hide-and-seek? I sucked at it. Jude would talk stupid gibberish while looking for me. Stuff that would make me giggle and give away my hiding spot. He’d say things like, ‘I ran out of dental floss so I cut the strings off your tampons. Is that going to be a problem?’ or, ‘I masturbate in the shower. Don’t you think it’s odd that you never run out of conditioner?’”
He laughed with her. It was easy to imagine Jessica and Jude as kids because they still sucked at being adults, especially when they were in the same room.
“I dominated hide-and-seek. Especially the seeking part. So yes, I would find you in the most creepy, no-other-man-will-ever-have-you kind of way.”
“I should be disturbed by your confession. I should report it to Dr. Jones, but I love to think about you finding me. You’ve saved me from so much, I can’t image a life where you’re not there to make it worth living.”
He walked to the kitchen, holding her to his chest like a slow dance. After setting down his glass, he lifted her onto the counter. She wrapped her naked legs around his waist, her arms around his neck.
“Hold onto me, Luke. Never let me go.”
He slid his hands under the hoodie, feathering his fingers along her abs and up her ribs.
“I’ve got you. I’ll always have you.”
She pressed her palm to his chest, over his heart. He closed his eyes because that’s exactly where he kept her.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Knight
Jillian’s stomach roiled in pain. She didn’t have a fat reserve for unexpected kidnappings. Stupid her. After being in the same basement with Claire, that lesson should have been learned. Gandhi went twenty-one days without food and survived. Drifting in and out of sleep and consciousness left Jillian unsure of how many days she’d been in that dungeon, but not twenty-one. Yet.