“I don’t think you have to worry about missing Sheldon’s call,” Kiki said, turning on the TV. “It’s way past his bed time.”
“Who asked you, smart ass?” Sela was stunned when she saw the name on the phone. It wasn’t Sheldon; it was Jaxon. Why the hell was he calling her? She rushed down the hall and closed her bedroom door so her sister couldn’t eavesdrop. “Hello?”
“Hey, Sela, did I catch you at a bad time?”
His deep voice still made her tingle in places she had no business thinking about when talking to her ex. “No, I just got in. What’s up?”
“I wanted to talk to you about something. Do you have a minute?”
She could have claimed she was too tired to talk, but curiosity got the best of her. “Sure.” She balanced the phone between her shoulder and chin as she unbuttoned her blouse and tossed it on the chair in the corner of her room before unzipping her skirt and stepping out of it.
“What are you doing?” He sounded tense.
“I’m getting ready for bed. Why?”
“Jesus, Sela, do you have to do that now?”
She didn’t appreciate his sharp tone. “Given that it’s two in the morning and I’m dead on my feet, yeah, I do. If you have a problem with that, you can call me at a decent hour… or not at all.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry. Do your feet hurt from wearing those high heels all night?”
Sela closed her eyes as a poignant memory came flooding back. When she worked late at Joe’s, she’d often go to Jaxon’s downtown penthouse instead of heading home. He would usually be up waiting for her, and he’d slip off her shoes as soon as she sat down so he could rub her feet. It was so intense, so erotic, they usually didn’t make it to the bed before the rest of her clothes came off.
“You’re thinking about what would have happened if you’d come to my place tonight instead of going home,” he whispered.
“No, I’m not.” She pressed her hand against her stomach when she felt the familiar flutter of excitement only Jaxon could elicit. God, she missed that. She thought of slipping on a nightgown but decided against it. Her sheets were cool against her skin, making her suppress a little moan. She needed to cool off. She was getting way too hot.
“What are you wearing, beautiful?”
She attempted to laugh at the tired line, but the sound got lodged in her throat. There was nothing funny about where his mind was headed. “You need new material, Jax.”
“God, I miss you so much.” His voice sounded strained, as though pain was blocking his airway. “It hurts just thinking about where we’d be now if I hadn’t messed everything up.”
A tear glided down her cheek when she turned to look out the window. She spotted a star, but it was too late for her wish to come true. “We can’t go back.” When she realized she sounded remorseful, she forced herself to say, “I don’t want to go back.”
“Really? Are you sure about that?”
Chapter Four
The silence was deafening as Jaxon waited for her to respond. He was crossing the line by asking that question before she was ready to answer, but when he saw her leave the bar at the end of her shift, it had taken everything in him not to chase her down. He’d wanted to take her back to his place and love her as he had hundreds of times. But when she told him she loved him, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to roll over and fall asleep without responding.
“Say something,” he said quietly. “Please.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.” Her voice was shaky. “I missed you so much I could barely breathe the first few weeks.” She took a deep breath. “But I got better. I stopped waiting for you to call and tell me you’d made a huge mistake.”
“I did make a mistake, the biggest mistake of my life, baby.”
“You don’t get to say that to me now,” she cried. “You should have said it then, when I was dying to hear it. But I don’t want to hear it anymore. Don’t you get that? I don’t want you to make me feel anything!”
Jaxon was encouraged by the fact he could still make her feel something. “I’m sorry, you’re right.” He had to back off unless he wanted her to tell him where he could shove his job. “I have no right to walk back into your life like I didn’t turn it upside down.”
“You’re right. You don’t. If you ever cared about me, you’d be happy that I’m happy.”
In theory, she was right, but she was asking the impossible. No way could he be happy that she’d found another man to love her. “Are you happy with him, or are you just pretending to be?”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “If that’s what you called to ask me, I’m hanging up now.”
“It’s not. This is about Sabrina.”
A beat of silence passed before she asked, “What about her?”
“I’d like to bring her to your sister’s wedding… as my date.” He hated himself for trying to make her believe Sabrina would ever be more than his friend. “I was wondering if you’d be okay with that?”
“I don’t even understand why you want to come,” she said, sounding frustrated.
“I spent a lot of time with Chad and Kiki when we were together. We were close, and I’d love to see them take their vows. Why is that so hard for you to understand?”
“Maybe because you always claimed you thought weddings were a waste of time? You said you didn’t understand why people felt the need to stand in front of their friends and family and recite a bunch of meaningless words when half the time it ended in front of a judge deciding who would get the china and bread maker.”
Jaxon winced. He remembered saying those words, but more importantly, he remembered the flash of hurt in her eyes when she realized they’d never walk down the aisle together. “I really was a cynical bastard, wasn’t I?”
“People don’t change that much in the span of a year.”
“Maybe most people don’t, but I did.”
“Oh yeah? What caused this epiphany?”
“I don’t want to end up like my mother: bitter, alone, and hateful.”
“How is your mother?” she asked gently.
“I just told you how she is.” It was still hard to think of his mother confined to a home, no matter how luxurious it was. She’d been a free-spirit who loved to live life, especially when it was on his dime.
“You’re the one who sounds bitter and resentful now.”
“Maybe I am. I realize now how much she took from me, all the years she spent making me feel guilty and indebted to her.” He hadn’t talked to Sela about his childhood when they were together, mainly because he was ashamed, but opening up to her would help prove that he wasn’t the same man. “Whether she meant to or not, she made me feel responsible for my father’s death.”
“That’s terrible,” Sela whispered. “She didn’t actually say that, did she?”
“She didn’t have to. She implied it all the time.”
“How?”
Jaxon closed his eyes as he remembered her nasally voice reprimanding him for doing all the things kids do, like playing with a ball in the house or forgetting his homework at school. “She’d tell me how much my father used to hate it when I did this or that. She’d say maybe if I’d tried harder, behaved better, he’d still be with us.”
Sela gasped. “She did not say that.”
“Yeah, she did.” He didn’t want Sela to feel sorry for him; he just wanted her to understand how he’d grown into a man who would force an amazing woman like her out of his life. “When I ended things with you, I began to realize something.”
“What’s that?”
“I let what happened when I was a kid define me.” He stared at the ceiling, admiring the crystal light fixture that had cost more than most people earned in six months. He thought about how little he cared about his material possessions. “I was afraid of becoming my father, someone who took the easy way out when things got hard.”
“So you toughened up and refused to let anyone get the best of you.”
&n
bsp; “I was still letting my mother get the best of me though.” He rolled onto his side. He wondered how Sela would feel if she knew he kept a framed picture of her on his nightstand. “Until I lost you. That’s when everything started to change. I realized I’d given her a hell of a lot more than she deserved, and it was time to take my life back.”
“But you still go to see her, don’t you?”
Jaxon wasn’t surprised by her question. Sela was one of the most compassionate women he’d ever known, and she’d hate the thought of his ill mother living the rest of her life in confinement and alone. His last visit to see his mother ran through his mind, and he wondered why he still made the effort. She didn’t even know who he was anymore, and she was so filled with rage that she lashed out at anyone within a few feet of her. “Sure, I do. She’s still my mother.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” She sighed. “Regardless of what you say, I know you’d never be able to live with yourself if you abandoned her when she needed you most.”
“You’re right about that.”
“Jaxon?” she asked, sounding hesitant.
“What is it, sweetheart?”
“Why did you abandon me when I needed you?”
That innocent question tore through him, leaving his heart open and exposed. “I’m so sorry I did that, Sela. If there’s one single thing in my life I could take back, it would be that.”
“I have to go now,” she said, as though rehashing the past was too emotionally taxing. “I have to get some sleep.”
“About the wedding—”
“Of course you can bring Sabrina. For what it’s worth, I think she’s a great girl, Jaxon.”
He wanted to say that as beautiful and smart as Sabrina was, she paled in comparison to Sela, but if he did, his reason for attending the wedding would be painfully obvious. “Yeah, I think so too. Thanks.”
“For what?”
“For talking to me tonight. For listening.” It had been a long time since he’d opened up to anyone about his family. There was more he hadn’t told her, but he hoped he could fill in the missing puzzle pieces later, when they were closer to finding their way back to each other. “It helped a lot.”
“Thank you for confiding in me. It helped me understand why you were the way you were when we were together. I think I needed that closure. For so long, I thought there was something wrong with me, and that’s why you couldn’t love me. Now I know you weren’t capable of loving anyone back then.”
Closure? What the hell was she talking about? He was trying to repair the rift he’d caused, not give her the closure to move on with her life. “Uh, listen, maybe we could grab a drink when you get off work tomorrow night? I’d love to hear about what you’ve been up to, and your plans for when you finish school.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Why not?”
She sighed. “Have you forgotten I have a boyfriend?”
How could he forget? “So you’re not allowed to have male friends?”
She laughed. “We both know it’s not a good idea to get too friendly with someone you used to sleep with. Good night, Jaxon.”
“Good night.” He wanted to say more, to try to change her mind about spending time with him, but before he could, the line went dead. “I love you, Sela.”
* * *
“Are you listening to this, Sela? Your sister has lost her mind!”
Sela forced her attention back to her mother’s rant about which flowers should be attached to the pews. She was being forced to endure another wedding lunch with her mother and sister before her late afternoon shift at High Rollers. Sela took a sip of her sparkling water. She was tired of being the peace-maker between her head-strong mother and sister. For all Sela cared, they could attach hot pink balloons to the church pews. “I’m sure it will be lovely either way.”
“Why do you seem so distracted today?” Andrea Richards asked as she smoothed a hand over her coiffed silver bob, or as Kiki liked to call it, The Helmet. “I hope you and Sheldon aren’t having problems?”
“The problem is that Jaxon’s back in the picture.” Kiki looked positively gleeful as their mother’s face transformed from annoyance to shock and dismay.
Andrea’s jaw dropped, but she snapped it shut when she saw their waiter approaching. Before he could offer to refill their drinks, Andrea waved him away. “You can’t be serious. Why would you want anything to do with that dreadful man after what he did to you?”
Her parents had never been Jaxon’s biggest fans, but since he broke her heart, he was at the top of their hit list.
“People make mistakes, Mother.” Sela was surprised to find herself repeating Jaxon’s claim. She never thought she’d be able to forgive him, but she had sensed genuine sincerity in his words last night. Maybe he had changed. Or maybe she was just a sentimental fool looking for something that wasn’t there.
“Don’t tell me he’s trying to con you into giving him another chance.” Andrea tossed her white linen napkin over her half-eaten chicken salad. “I can’t believe you’d be foolish enough to fall for his lies again. Didn’t you learn anything the first time? That man can’t be trusted. He’ll hurt you again if you let him get too close.”
“I guess that means you didn’t tell Mama about your new job,” Kiki said, smiling sweetly as she reached for her diet soda.
Sela was going to kill her little sister. Sela had hoped to keep her parents in the dark about her job at High Rollers, since it was only a temporary arrangement. “I haven’t had a chance yet.”
“What new job?” Andrea looked from one daughter to the other. “What happened to Joe’s?”
“He had to let me go,” Sela said, trying not to feel ashamed that she’d been fired from what her mother considered a menial job that was so far beneath her it was laughable. “Things were kind of slow, and the full-timers needed the hours.”
“So what’s this about a new job?” Andrea asked. “Where are you working, and why are your father and I the last ones to know about it?”
“Dylan offered me a job at High Rollers as a hostess in their V.I.P. lounge,” Sela said, feeling the need to inform her mother the offer hadn’t come directly from Jaxon.
“Oh, for the love of God,” Andrea said, pressing her fingertips to her temple. Her mother had a flair for dramatics, especially when she had a captive audience.
“Please, it’s not like I told you I’m working as a stripper.”
Kiki laughed out loud, slapping her palm against the table. “That’s a good one, Sela.”
Andrea looked around the upscale country club to determine if anyone had witnessed her younger daughter’s outburst. “Kindly keep your voice down, young lady. You’re not in one of those classless sports bars now.”
“High Rollers is not a classless sports bar,” Sela said through clenched teeth. “Quite the opposite. A lot of very famous, very powerful people frequent their establishment.”
“Athletes,” Andrea said with disdain. “You know how I feel about people who make an obscene amount of money for throwing a ball around.”
Andrea was on the board of dozens of local charities. While she claimed she loved giving back to the community, Sela and Kiki knew she did it because she enjoyed organizing black-tie fundraisers.
Sela reached for her water glass. “Careful, Mother. A lot of those athletes donate a lot of money to your causes.”
Andrea adjusted the cuffs of her white silk blouse, fixating on the way the diamonds decorating her hand caught the light. “I never said they were worthless. I just said they’re overpaid.”
“Kind of like Jaxon?” Kiki asked, tongue in cheek. “Can you imagine how huge his dividend checks are now? How many bars do they have, sis? Fifty? Sixty?”
Sela glared at Kiki. “I really don’t know. Why don’t you ask Jaxon when you see him at the wedding?” It was time for Kiki to get a taste of her own medicine.
“Surely you’re not talking
about your wedding,” Andrea said, fixing her baby with a stony glare. “I know you have better sense than to think your father and I would allow that.”
Sela knew her sister had been playing with fire when she’d extended the invitation to Jaxon, but it wasn’t until she saw the color creeping up Andrea’s neck that she realized Kiki may have ignited an inferno that would destroy them all.
“This is not up for debate, Mama.” Kiki seemed unaffected by her mother’s reaction. “I’ve already asked, and Jaxon said yes. End of story.”
“That’s what you think,” Andrea said, her breath coming in short gasps. “Wait ‘til your father hears about this. He’ll have no part of it.”
“Maybe now you know how I felt when you invited cousin Roy to be the M.C. at our reception without asking me and Chad first.”
Sela should have known including Jaxon was Kiki’s way of getting back at her parents for something. Her sister always had an angle.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Andrea said, reaching for her sparkling water. “He’s family, not to mention an up-and-coming politician. He knows how to entertain a crowd. He was the logical choice.”
Kiki narrowed her eyes. “According to you and Daddy. Did it ever occur to you that Chad and I might want to choose our own Master of Ceremonies? That maybe we would have asked one of our friends, someone who actually knows us as a couple? The only time we ever see Roy is at weddings and funerals. The last time we saw him, he called Chad Carl.”
Sela laughed before pinching her lips together when her mother scowled at her.
“So he’s not very good with names,” Andrea said. “That doesn’t mean he won’t do a good job.”
Kiki tapped her bright pink nails on the table. “If you want Roy, I get Jaxon. It’s only fair.”
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