Kaeden pulled up into her yard just as Jade hopped out of the driver’s seat. She turned and looked at him in surprise.
The sight of her made his heart race—even as he wished it didn’t.
Kaeden was startled to see that her eyes were slightly puffy and reddish. Like she’d been crying. Probably over her man. Did they break up? he thought.
“Kaeden? What are you doing here?” she asked, her keys jiggling in her hands as she placed her hands on her wide hips in the strapless print maxi dress she wore.
“Were you crying?” he asked in concern, stepping out of the car to walk up to her.
Jade averted her eyes briefly before she shook her head. “Listen, what do you want, Kaeden?”
“For your man to give me ten feet at all times,” he told her. “You know that fool just stepped to me at Donnie’s.”
Her eyes widened and then shifted to the reddish bruise on his cheek. “Did you two fight?” she asked, reaching out as if to touch his bruise, but then she pulled her hand back like she had second thoughts about it. “I’m so sorry.”
Kaeden frowned. “First, stop looking at me like I got my behind whipped. Secondly, sorry for what?”
“Darren asked me about that night,” she said quietly.
“And you told him.”
“I wasn’t going to lie to him—”
“Like you lied to me.”
Jade’s mouth fell open. “I never lied to you!” she exclaimed.
“You never told me you had a boyfriend,” he volleyed back.
“Because I didn’t. Darren and I were only dating when that night happened. Let me clue you both in, since you’re both lost in the sauce, but dating someone is not the same as being exclusive or sleeping with them.”
Kaeden did a double take. “You never slept with old boy? Come on, miss me with the BS, Jade.”
Jade stepped up closer to him. “Well, if it’s not Mr. High and Mighty looking down his nose at someone. Puh-leeze. Miss me with your BS, Kaeden.”
He hated that the sight of her eyes fiery with emotion made him want her even more. “What BS?”
She looked him up and down before rolling her eyes. “Shouldn’t you be somewhere getting fitted for your tux or something?” she asked, sounding tired and annoyed all at once.
Kaeden frowned. “A tux? For what?”
Jade laughed a little as she looked up at him with the wetness of tears still clinging to her long lashes. “The wedding,” she snapped and then wiped her mouth with her hands.
“Whose wedding?” he asked, completely lost.
The look she gave him was incredulous. “Yours. Is it secret or something?” she asked, becoming just as confused as he appeared to be.
“So secret it’s not true,” he said.
“Whatever, Kaeden. You don’t have to lie to me. Congratulations to you and Felecia.”
Kaeden’s frown deepened. “Did she tell you we were getting married?”
Jade shook her head as she shifted the sandals on her feet in the dirt. “No, I saw her getting fitted for her wedding dress.”
Kaeden’s stomach dropped. “Nah, you were mistaken. Trust and believe that.”
Jade waved her hand. “Whatever. I know what I saw, and you don’t have to lie to me,” she said before she turned and walked into her house, soundly closing the door behind her.
Kaeden made a move to follow her and knock on the door, but he changed his mind. He had no right coming to Jade’s house anyway. It was another bad choice on his part. He’d just fought a man—her man—over her, and if Felecia caught whiff of that and the fact that he went to Jade’s house, then he was going to get a lot of headache over something he was fighting hard to put into the past.
Kaeden climbed back into his BMW and this time made his way to Walterboro without a chance of him turning back.
And the whole seeing Felecia in a wedding dress had to be a mistake. Why on earth would she be doing that? She had been talking about her cousin’s wedding that morning. Maybe whatever Jade saw was in reference to her cousin’s wedding and Jade just misunderstood. Or maybe it wasn’t a wedding dress but just a white evening gown. Or maybe she was the same size as her cousin and tried the dress on for her?
He ran over a hundred different explanations, and the more he wondered, the more improbable and farfetched they became.
Regardless of what Jade saw, one thing he knew for sure: Kaeden Strong was not getting married.
Regardless of what Darren thought, Kaeden Strong was not involved with Jade Prince.
Regardless of what his mind tried to reason with him, Kaeden Strong knew that of the two, there was one thing he wanted more than the other.
Jade. And regardless of whether he was with Jade or not, as long as he had this hidden infatuation for Jade, he wasn’t being fair at all to Felecia.
What had caused Jade’s tears? His heart ached at the thought of her shedding one solitary tear. What was it about that woman that called out so deeply to him? Why couldn’t he shake her? Sighing, he turned on his satellite radio and hoped the right song would come on to help him get lost in anything but his own reality.
Chapter 15
Jade was thoroughly embarrassed.
She still couldn’t believe that Darren had started a fight with Kaeden and sparked the flame of gossip through the small town that the fight was over her. So on top of all the other drama, she was sure many people mistakenly thought she was dealing with both men making her a bona fide hoochie mama.
This last week had been filled with lots of side-eyes, whispers as she walked past, and bold people flat-out asking her about the fight.
Drama.
“What’s wrong, Jade?”
She shifted her eyes back to her mother, who was sitting across the table from her in their favorite Charleston restaurant, California Dreaming.
“Nothing,” she mumbled before she took a bite of her salad.
Deena took a sip of her glass of wine as she eyed her daughter over the rim. “There’s a group of fellas across the room and they are looking this way. Don’t look.”
Jade looked anyway. She shot them a look that would discourage any and all thoughts of approaching their table. “I have enough drama regarding men. Last thing I need is to add to the mix, Mama,” she said, turning her head to look at her mother.
Deena sat her fork down on her plate. “I heard about the fight,” she said.
Oh great, Jade thought, avoiding her mother’s assessing eyes.
“How is everything at the business? You know, everything with Darren?”
Jade shrugged as she pushed the food around on her plate. “He left me a note saying he was taking the week off since we didn’t have any tours scheduled. I haven’t seen him since their fight, and he won’t answer my calls.”
Deena reached across the table to lightly massage the top of Jade’s hands. “There’s only one good thing about a rumor floating around a small town.”
Jade looked at her mother in question.
“It doesn’t last long because someone else will be the topic of conversation real soon. Trust on that,” she assured her with a soft smile.
“We’ll see,” Jade said, sounding sad.
“Oh no, you don’t. You hold your head up, Jade Prince. That’s your life, and you live it how you want and don’t be ashamed. That’s a definite no-no.”
Jade just shrugged as she reached down to pull the top of her strapless dress up higher on her breasts.
“Just one thing, baby girl. In the woods?” Deena asked with a wink. “Now that’s a new one on me.”
Jade froze. “Who told you that?” she asked sharply.
Deena took a bite of her shrimp. “You didn’t know that everyone’s saying you and Kaeden slept together in the woods on the camping trip?”
Jade’s heart thundered in her chest as she tightened her grip on her fork before she released it to clang loudly against her plate. “No. No, I didn’t.”
Deena leaned across th
e table. “So…did you?” she asked with a bright gleam of interest in her eyes.
“Mama,” Jade snapped.
“What?” Deena asked with an air of innocence. “Listen, you can’t control where passion takes a hold of you, and you shouldn’t. Now, it took me almost twenty years to rediscover mine, and I don’t want that for you. Life is too short and those Strong brothers are too fine. Humph, Lisha and Kael made some good-looking boys.”
Kaeden.
Jade thought of him. She got those nervous stomach flutters like a high school crush. Who knew a square like Kaeden Strong would have her head so messed up?
“Do you like him, Jade?” Deena asked.
“Huh?” Jade said, pushing away a hot image of Kaeden’s hard and curving length hanging away heavily from his lean frame.
“I said do you like him?” Deena repeated.
“Who?”
Deena sighed impatiently. “Kaeden Strong. Do you like Kaeden Strong?”
“I had sex with the man on a dirty ground in the woods…. I would say that’s a yes.” Jade instantly hated the sarcasm dripping from her voice toward her mother. “Sorry, Mama.”
“So it is true. That’s my girl. Seize the day! Hell, seize the—”
“Mama,” Jade cut her off quickly, her eyes widening.
Deena just laughed before she took a small sip of her wine.
“Mama, I really can’t explain it,” Jade admitted with a lick of her lips. “I barely knew Kaeden, but in that moment it felt like there was nothing else in the world I would rather do than be with him, and I don’t understand because we are so different, Mama.”
Deena smiled softly at her daughter before she reached across the table again to clasp her hand.
“I mean, I was dating Darren and…and he wanted to sleep with me but I just kept putting it off and putting it off, but with Kaeden…with Kaeden, Mama, it was like the most natural thing even though it was nothing like me, but it felt right.”
“That good, huh?” Deena joked.
Jade closed her eyes and got lost in the memories of that night. The heat. The electricity. The passion. The oneness. The completion. The fulfillment. The pure unadulterated satisfaction. “Yes,” she admitted in a whisper, amazed at the tears that welled up in her eyes behind her closed lids.
“Maybe there is something there that is bigger than whatever differences there are between you two. Maybe you need to give in and stop fighting it. Shut off your head and listen to your heart.”
Jade shook her head. “I’m not in love, Mama. That I know,” she stressed emphatically.
“Listen to your soul, then.”
Jade opened her eyes and looked across the table at her mother.
“What if this Mr. Seems to Be Wrong for You is actually Mr. Right for You, Jade?” Deena asked.
Jade thought of Felecia trying on the wedding dress and just shook her head. “He’s Mr. Right for Someone Else,” Jade said softly before picking up her neglected margarita to sip deeply.
Plus her mind was filled with another more pressing matter: Did Darren or Kaeden tell of the tryst in the woods?
That was one question she was going to get answered.
Kaeden adjusted his new glasses as he followed Felecia inside her apartment. The lingering scent of whatever Sunday dinner she’d cooked was in the air and his stomach growled in response. “I am starving,” he said, glad that Felecia had cooked before going to church that morning.
“Did you enjoy the service?” she asked as she removed the heels matching her pale peach suit before she walked into the kitchen.
“It was good,” he told, glad that he’d attended church with her.
“Good, I’ll be sure to tell my daddy,” she called out from the kitchen.
Kaeden rolled up the sleeves to his crisp French blue shirt as he walked across the living room and down the short hall past her bedroom to the bathroom. He paused in his steps, frowned deeply, and then took a few steps back to stand at her doorway.
What the…
A flash of white had caught his eye, and he thought he saw the sparkly hem of a wedding dress just barely peeking out from the closet. But he had to make sure. And sure enough, there it was.
Kaeden pushed the bedroom door open wider and walked across the room to open the closet door. The sight of the wedding dress hanging there made him take a step back.
Of course, proper etiquette didn’t mean going into someone’s room uninvited and snooping, but Kaeden felt he had every right.
Felecia had lied to him.
When he told her about “someone” seeing her at the bridal boutique wearing a wedding gown, Felecia had laughed it off as ridiculous.
“Why would I be trying on a wedding dress?” she said. “Did they speak to me to be sure it was me?” Then, “Well I must have a twin, because I was not at the Bridal Boutique,” she lied.
And there was no mistaken that what hung before him on the door was most definitely a bridal gown. “What the hell is going on?” he asked himself, just as his eyes fell on the open chest against the rear wall of the closet. Kaeden’s eyes widened as his frown deepened. He stepped into the closet and used both arms to push back her clothing.
His jaw fell open at all of the wedding paraphernalia he saw inside. Wedding favors, magazines, an aisle runner, hundreds of laminated clippings—even down to shoes that resembled glass slippers. He bent down to pick up a picture of a bride and groom with a cutout of his face attached to the groom’s body and a cutout of her face attached to that of the bride. He dropped that and picked up an engraved invitation:
Reverend and Mrs. Roderick Craven request the honor of your presence at the marriage of their daughter felecia Annette to Kaeden Tyler Strong son of Mr. and Mrs. Kad Strong on Saturday, the eighth of May two thousand and ten at six o’clock in the evening Insert wedding location Reception immediately following the ceremony Insert reception location
“Kaeden,” Felecia called out from the living room.
He rose and turned to step out of the closet just as she stepped into the doorway of the bedroom. “What’s this all about, Felecia?” he asked, waving his hand at the dress and the chest, not hiding how disturbed he was by it all.
She rushed over to the closet to pull Kaeden forward enough to close the door soundly. “That’s my cousin’s wedding dress. She’s keeping it here so her fiancé doesn’t see it.”
“Stop lying, Felecia,” he told her, holding up the invitation.
She reached up and snatched it from him. “Why are you in here, anyway?” she snapped.
“Why are you planning a wedding?” he asked, staring down at her with incredulous eyes. “Listen, we are nowhere near being ready to get married. I’m not even sure we’re working out and you’re around here planning a wedding for us—or I guess for whomever. Do you want to get married that badly, Felecia?”
She arched a brow. “Don’t say that,” she told him.
“Say what?”
“That we’re not working out,” she yelled, tears filling her eyes.
Damn. Kaeden knew at that moment that his relationship with Felecia had to end: his continuing feelings for Jade, his knowledge that he’d turned to Felecia in his hurt because she was the anti-Jade, Felecia scheming to get them married and holding out the sex until she was married. All of it added up to mismatch that needed to end, ASAP. The process was not going to be easy. “Calm down, Felecia,” he said to her, taken aback by her emotional response.
She closed her eyes, swiped away her fallen tears as she breathed in and out like she was trying to calm down. “Don’t do this, Kaeden,” she said softly.
“Listen, we want different things, and I knew for a while now that I shouldn’t have started things back up with us, so I apologize. Okay?”
She balled the invitation up in her hand and flung it across the room to hit the wall. “We are meant to be together and you know it,” she told him vehemently. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I realize n
ow that you want more out of this than I do, and that’s not fair to you,” he tried to reason with her as the tears filled her eyes again. Kaeden just said a silent thank-you that they’d never slept together.
“So you led me on?” she asked, her face pain stricken.
“You’re the one who introduced yourself to my mother and ambushed me with your family and has a creepy wedding hope chest. No, I didn’t lead you on, Felecia. I think maybe you saw what you wanted to see and not what was really going on.”
She looked insulted as she took a step toward him. “You saying I’m crazy?”
Yes. Yes you are. “No, I don’t think that at all,” Kaeden lied, thinking he’d better make his way to the exit because he wasn’t all the way sure Felecia wasn’t about to flip.
He walked past her and made his way to the door.
“Where are you going? We’re not done,” she told him.
He opened the front door and paused to look back at her. “When you calm down and you’re ready to talk about why I’m ending this, please call me, but yes, yes, we are over,” he told her, knowing that it was hurting her and hating that, but knowing he had to do it. With one last wave he walked out the door and closed it firmly behind him.
Darren walked into his living room with three bottles of beer, handing them to his brother, Mikal, and his two first cousins as sports highlights played loudly on ESPN on the television. His cell phone vibrated on the table. He reached to pick it up but just smirked at Jade’s number on the caller ID. “Now she calling your boy,” he said, tossing the phone across the table to his brother. “Man, forget her.”
“Maybe she wanna give it up to you in the woods,” his brother joked.
“He can have my sloppy seconds. I got the best of the puddycat anyway,” Darren lied, motioning his hands like he was slapping Jade’s rear while he stroked her from behind.
His brother and cousins laughed, but inwardly Darren still seethed with anger for Jade. Anger and the need for a little payback.
Give Me Fever Page 14