“Okay, fine,” Jenna said, growing irate. “You know very well I am going to get you a deal too. Let’s just get the truth out there. You feel a bond to Jack, he won’t go with you because of his job, so you feel obligated to be the girl and stay behind. To give up your whole world for him. That about it?”
Erika’s jaw tightened. “Yup.”
“It’s not real, Erika. Or…not really as strong as you think. You’ve been through a lot, and you’re latching on to what you think is safety. It’s like Stockholm syndrome, only…you know, with trauma instead of kidnapping. You feel the bond because of the situation. It might turn into more, but you can’t give up everything for that faint hope.”
“I’m taking a chance. So it goes bad, so what? At least I am taking a risk.” Erika stood up. She was getting mad too.
“Erika, you’ve taken risks all your life. You have taken risk after risk with men. More power to you, I say. Meet Phil’s family after a few weeks. Go for it. Almost marry some dude you met in a bar in Vegas. You’re a shortsighted moron, but it’s your life. But this is my life too. This also concerns me.”
Erika deflated. “I don’t want to leave Jax, plain and simple. I know you don’t like him, but there it is.”
“I have nothing against Jack! Have you taken crazy pills? What, because I don’t want you to change everything that makes you you, I hate him?”
“Everyone close to him calls him Jax. You call him Jack. Coincidence? I doubt it. I chose him. Why can’t you accept that?” Erika had tears in her eyes.
Jenna itched to slap her, but kept her composure. Barely. “Josh explained it like his platoon, or troop or whatever the hell you call a bunch of army guys, called him Jax, and he didn’t invite me to call him that, so I stuck with what he said his name was. As for you picking him—if I didn’t like him, I would have raised a stink. As I haven’t, you obviously know that I like the guy. Stop being stupid and take some responsibility for your life. You are making a huge choice based on a week’s worth of crazy. That is not rational. Why can’t you date the guy for a while? Then, if you want to settle down and have puppies, you have my blessing. Quit, move, call yourself Moonbeam. Whatever. But please, keep your sanity for six more months, help me, and then I’ll help you. Okay? Hell, I’ll move you myself. Six months, it’s all I ask.”
“I don’t want to leave him.”
“If he was a real man, he would let you go, or come with. He wouldn’t ask you to make all the sacrifice.”
Jack’s eyes met Erika’s. “I said I’d go.”
Jenna stared at Jack for a second, mouth open, eyes blinking. She rounded on Erika, “You are so lucky I don’t punch you in the mouth right now.”
Erika scowled. “It’s not that easy. Jax said he wouldn’t go without Josh. And you said you didn’t want Josh to come…”
Jenna’s stomach plummeted. She needed Erika—not only for the building, like she’d said, but because she was closer than a sister. She had not been lying to Jack about that—Erika was her world. She was her backbone when Jenna got soft, her charge when Jenna was on top of the world, and her light whenever the darkness took over. Without Erika she didn’t know how she would function. Plain and simple, Erika was her security blanket.
But she didn’t want these feelings with Josh following her into her real life. This was a messed-up vacation, that was all. She couldn’t handle this level of need and vulnerability tagging along to New York. She didn’t want to worry about him cheating on her, or leaving her, or any number of things that would rip her heart out. And she certainly didn’t want to see him with someone else. She could barely handle the strength of her feelings, and it had only been a short time. If she grew more attached, and he turned out to be like Lewis…
She shuddered, and her gaze swept to Josh with something close to abject fear. He stared back, waiting.
Everyone stared, including the general. Erika wore traces of smugness, as if she knew Jenna would get wedged into this corner. As if Jenna had been backed here on purpose. Erika knew the only way to get Jenna to make this decision was to argue about it, decide what she couldn’t live without, and barter.
What Josh said about Erika manipulating her was true. Erika was playing her like a child and probably always had. Since she loved her friend dearly, that fact hadn’t really bothered her before.
Right now, though, Jenna felt betrayed and extremely uncomfortable.
“Dick, how about a scotch?” she asked as she turned her back on the others. “It looks like three people are trying to gang up on me in the manipulation game, and I’m too nice to retaliate.”
“Wait, Jenna—” A guilty look crossed Erika’s face.
Jenna continued into the library with the general, waited while he poured her two fingers, straight, and took a big gulp. The burn down her throat was welcomed.
“That happen often?” Dick asked after a lengthy silence in which each of them pondered life, swirled their scotch, and looked out the window.
“Which, people ganging up on me, or trying to manipulate me?”
“Either. Both.”
“Ganging up on me—all the time. I’m wily, though. Manipulation—not usually. Although it seems Erika has been doing it for a while. She can read me pretty easily. I’ve given her a cheat sheet a few times. She’s going to have to change her tactics, though. I’m onto her.”
Dick nodded and said, “My Molly would have liked you.”
“Molly? Was that Josh’s mom?”
Dick nodded. “Josh is very like his mother. Same likeness, same sensitivity, same soft heart. He needs a woman who can take charge.”
“Oh, Josh does just fine taking charge, I think. Too good at it, maybe,” Jenna replied dryly.
Dick assessed her, evaluating, calculating, saying nothing of his findings. After a while he said, “You seem to have come to know him quite well in such a short time.”
“We’ve been cooped up in small places with danger lurking. You get to know a person.”
“Yes. I’m familiar, though I’ve never experienced it with a woman.”
“Count yourself lucky. We’re a hard lot to maneuver.”
Dick chuckled. “I can imagine.” Another lengthy pause. “It’s fairly obvious that you like my son.”
Just what she needed: more prying into her romantic affairs. “Ah, but we tend to hurt most those we love dearest.”
“You’ve made quite an impression on him.”
“I make an impression on most people. It isn’t always a positive one, though.”
“I heard you talking to your boss.”
Jenna got whiplash from that hairpin turn. She waited for him to make his point.
“You have a good head on you. A head for business. You get what you want.”
“I don’t work for fun. Well, that’s not true. I love what I do. I don’t deal with bosses for fun. I expect to be compensated for my efforts.”
“You don’t hide behind your father and his money.”
Jenna got a pang of irritation. She didn’t like this subject any more than talking about Josh. “I don’t hide behind anyone unless I hear gunshots. As for his money, I have my own. I don’t need his.”
“Still, he must be relieved his daughter went off and made a name for herself.”
“Actually, he, like you, would rather have his child tucked securely in his shadow with strings that make controlling him or her easy. I don’t like to be controlled. Simple as that.”
“Not that it is any of your concern, but you are wrong about what I’d like for my son.”
“Am I? You mean you were relieved when he stepped out of the career you wanted for him?”
She could see Dick’s blood pressure rising from across the room. She’d hit close to the mark on that one.
“My son made a mistake and now he’s paying the price for that.” He sounded firmly in control, if a little sharp.
“He made a choice. It just so happens that choice wasn’t the one you wanted him to m
ake. That’s your problem, not his. You keep playing this control card, and your relationship with him will end up like my father’s and mine—nonexistent. Eventually you will think back to the moment you pushed him away and wonder if it was worth it. In the meantime, your family will drift away and you won’t know your grandkids. I’m not a wise person, but it doesn’t take Gandhi to know any of that.”
Dick stared at her with murder in his eyes. She held his gaze until she was sure she’d made her point and proved she wasn’t going to back down. She gracefully rose, drink finished, and headed to her room. She’d just run out of people to talk to. It was an aggravating day.
In the early evening, Josh found her in their room. She was doing what she did best, besides ostracizing herself: she was working on her building. He came in quietly and sat down on the bed. She ignored him the best she could until finally he said, “Why are you trying to push me away?”
“I’m not. I’ve shared, I’ve cried—all I seem to do is cry—and I’ve had a great time. But this isn’t a vacation anymore. I need to go back.”
“And you are shutting me out of it. Why?”
She leaned back against the bed. “Josh…what did you think would happen? How did you see this ending?”
“I didn’t.”
She could feel her last nerve of sanity fray. Things were so out of whack and beyond her control emotionally that she was derailing. “Oh? So logistically, you would quit your woodsman job, move to the big city, and do what?”
“I hadn’t thought that far ahead, Jenna. This is new. All of this is new. But I think we have something. We are a couple of smart people. We can make this happen somehow.”
“I’m sure we could, but… Look, I’m sorry, Josh. I just don’t know what to say…”
Josh put his head down and breathed slowly out of his mouth. “You’re not going to keep me from you, Jenna.”
“Yes I am.”
“How?”
“I’m going to get a giant dog that eats man flesh.”
Josh got up to leave. “This isn’t over.”
“No, I don’t expect I’m that lucky, but you are talking to the girl that walked all day in shoes that chopped up her feet. I don’t yield.”
“Like your shoes, I guess I’ll have to make you yield. By the way, dinner’s ready.”
“Not hungry.”
“You’re eating.”
“I’m sick of following your rules, Josh. I am a big girl. I’ll eat when I’m hungry. Or maybe you can bring Erika up to try and convince me for you.”
Something snapped in Josh’s hazel eyes. She felt a thrill of fear. She forgot for a second the wildness that crouched in his head.
Faster than she could blink, he bent down to her, grabbed her, and lifted her in one fluid motion. She struggled at first, like a rabbit caught in a wolf’s jaws, but then let her mind take over. He wouldn’t hurt her. She knew that. He’d already been past the edge and back—she knew what to expect now, and it wasn’t physical harm.
Especially not with all the witnesses.
She was jostled down the stairs and taken outside, where twilight descended gracefully. Erika and Jack were sitting close with plates on their laps, talking and laughing like lovers do, when she and Josh came through the door. Erika’s eyes grew wide and Jack smiled.
“Caught a big one, huh, Josh?” Jack asked with a whoop.
Josh turned so he was walking away from them, with her draped across his wide shoulder. It took two beats to know where he was headed. Then she reacted.
“Don’t you dare throw me in the pool, Josh. This is a new dress and it’ll be ruined!” She pinched him and kicked, but apart from a grunt or two, it wasn’t making any difference.
For a breathless second she went weightless, before she splashed down into chlorine-filled water that would effectively destroy the fabric of her dress. She had to flail and dog-paddle to get to the shallow area, before she could stand, then paused for a second. He’d just made her point.
An anger so fierce she barely understood where it came from welled up inside her. She shouldn’t have snapped, but this was way overboard. And overbearing. And completely unacceptable! It was a form of aggression she would not tolerate.
“You are such a fucking asshole,” she screamed up at him. “All you do is try to bully me into what you want. You demand too much, Josh. Too much. I don’t want to give it. I simply don’t want to. I didn’t want to say what I said last night, and I’m sorry, but I don’t want to hear it, either. I want to leave on Tuesday and finish my life’s dream. Look at me here, fully clothed and soaking wet, and you wonder why I don’t want to be with you?”
“No, I don’t wonder why you don’t want to be with me,” he said in a calm voice that made the itch between her shoulder blades erupt. “I know why. It’s because you are a scared little girl afraid of getting close to anyone. You think you are tough, but you’re just as scared of monsters as the next little girl.”
Jenna got out of the pool and walked up to him, ignoring the warning in his eyes. In his face she said, “You’re right, I am scared of monsters, Josh. Monsters like you.”
Hurt flashed across his face. “Is this the part where we say things we’ll regret?”
“Yup. I’ll go first. I can’t imagine your mother would be proud of what you’ve become, hiding behind your father, hoping for the world to go away. You try to hang on to control with both hands, afraid of what’ll happen if you let go. Afraid it will suck you under. I’m just another buoy, like your father.”
Rage replaced hurt. It bubbled to the surface and spilled over. He seethed with it as he leaned over her, every muscle taut. Murder was in his eyes, a rage so white hot he was barely controlling it. She reached into that rage and flicked away the last support beam that held him immobile as she said, “You’re so desperate to be loved, you have to force it on others.”
Looking back, she wasn’t clear why she said it. She knew what she was doing, knew what buttons she was pushing, and knew that it would send him over the edge. It was the pain and insecurity he had struggled with since his mother had died. The question was, how could she let herself be that cruel? Was it retaliation for all the punishments? Retaliation for dredging up the worst hurt within her he could imagine, then throwing it in her face? Or was it her last defense against falling in love? Hurt him so bad he won’t want me anymore.
Whatever cruelty made her do it, it was a bad idea. All it took was a beat of her heart for his hands to be around her neck, and her air supply nonexistent.
Her brain went to code red and her heart started to hammer. She reacted hard and fast. She lifted her arms and to the sides, twisted, and jerked her left elbow down. His arms were dragged downward a fraction. Then she flung her left arm back and elbowed him in the nose and mouth with all her weight and strength.
Most men would have fallen back. Her instructor let go every time. But Josh was bigger and stronger than most men. All it did was make him loosen his grip a fraction.
It was enough. She followed her elbow with a firm punch to the throat, then rammed her heel into the arch of his foot. If this was life and death, she would probably lose. He wasn’t responding as he should, with a lot of gasping, sputtering, and falling. Instead the pain of it cut through his blind rage. He blinked three times, those long, lush lashes touching down in a flutter, and then he released his grip and backed up, a look of shock and confusion on his face. Followed by a hurt so profound Jenna’s insides buckled.
She was good at what she did, and that included hurting those she loved. The best defense was a great offense, they said. They were right. Josh wouldn’t want her after this.
Jack yanked Josh backward. The general was two steps behind. Erika came to her, trying to comfort. Jenna shrugged her off. She didn’t deserve it. She’d crossed the line, and it was tearing the middle out of her to witness the effect. If she had been Josh, and someone had said something like that to her, said something so cutting it shook the very foundation of
one’s ego, she would have done everything she could to ruin that person’s life. What she’d done to Lewis was child’s play compared to what she would do to someone who hurt her like that. Josh had said she deserved better than Lewis, but now he knew better.
“Here’s how it’s going to go,” Jenna said with iron in her voice to hide the desolation. She desperately reached for the warm blanket of anger to sooth her frayed nerves. Fear, ache, pain—with effort, it all turned into vehemence. She needed that now. She no longer had Josh to turn to. She’d just seen to that.
“I will not be eating. I will be taking my friend, the nine millimeter, and hiking into the tree line to get away from all of you. I don’t want to see a single one of you. Not one. If I get killed, so be it.”
“No,” Josh stated automatically, looking like he wanted to curl up and die.
Before Jenna could react, Dick said, “Let her go, son.”
With a defiant look at Josh, and then at his father, Jenna stalked up to her room, got the gun that was lying in Josh’s stuff, loaded it, and headed out. She went out through the front door. No slinking, no staying near bushes, no hiding from anything. If anyone wanted to shoot her, she couldn’t say it wouldn’t be welcomed. Some things were easier than facing one’s own guilt.
Chapter Eighteen
Josh stood still, even after Jax had released him. He brought his hands up and looked at them for a long time, not believing what he’d done. Not understanding it. This wasn’t him. He didn’t do things like that. He’d never, ever put a finger on a woman. Never! Not even his sisters growing up.
“Maybe she’s right. She deserves a better man than me,” Josh muttered to himself.
“Don’t be an idiot,” Erika said. He felt her small hands tugging at him. He let her lead him back to the house and into the kitchen. “She deliberately tried to get your goat just then. She didn’t mean it. Choking her might have been a bit much, but she can handle it. I’ve wanted to do that a few times myself, but she’s bigger than me. Don’t give up. She won’t run forever. She likes you. A lot. She will put up with you because you’ll put up with her.”
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