James came up and shoved him from behind, paying him back. “I’m going to make a score with more than the damn basketball you missed on. I’m going over to Southern Lights Art Gallery this afternoon and reintroduce myself to a gorgeous woman. I hear she’s great in bed.”
Blind rage coursed through Jesse and he planted his fist in James’s face. James punched back with a right upper cut and they went at each other like rabid wolves. Jackson and Jared shouted on the sidelines, egging them on. Jesse bounced on his feet wanting like hell to pound James’s grin off his face. The need ran red hot through his blood just as burning and dark and consuming as his need for Alexi. He went at James again.
“What in God’s heaven are you boys doing out here?” Jesse heard his mother yell, but he kept after James. His little brother wasn’t holding back on his punches and must have been in several brawls over the years because he wasn’t a greenhorn anymore. James was giving him hell.
“That’s enough, boys.”
Jesse thought about lowering his fist, but then James grinned and said, “I like hot women. Is she as good as you said?”
“You touch her and I’ll kill you,” Jesse roared, going after James. Suddenly a cold blast of white foam smacked him in the face. He wiped the foam from his eyes to see James yell and get a mouth full of foam. Jesse swung around to see his mother brandishing a fire extinguisher at them. He held up his hand to deflect the spray from his face. “Okay, I’ll stop.”
“You’re damn right you two are going to stop and unless you tell me what in the hell is going on, neither of you will be allowed back here for a good long time. I won’t put up with this kind of behavior. I raised you boys better.” Emma Weldon’s blue eyes were blazing and it was hard to picture that this outraged, avenging angel ever wrung a dishtowel around her hands praying.
In thirty years, it was the first time Jesse had ever heard his mother curse. He and his brothers had fought as kids, but they’d always--at the advice of their father--kept fighting out by the creek or on the far side of the pasture. She didn’t hold ken to physically hammering out problems.
“Now you’ve one minute to tell me what’s going on.”
Jesse shuffled his feet, looking at James, and hating like hell that he felt like a naughty two-year old. “I hit James first.”
“I provoked him,” said James.
“I don’t want to hear who did what. I want to know what’s turning my sons against each other.”
Nobody said anything.
“You’ve got thirty seconds left.”
“James told Jesse that he was going after Jesse’s ex girlfriend. And Jesse went ballistic,” Jared said. Jesse sent Jared a look that told him they were going to go for a round by the creek. Jared had always tattled first.
“Interesting,” Emma said. She looked at James. “You’re wanting to date Alexi Jordan?”
James shuffled his feet. “If Jesse doesn’t get his ass back on straight, I will. He’s screwing up his life. If he can’t be man enough to admit that he loves her, he’s going to lose her.” James shrugged. “I figured he’d be better off realizing it now and said something about Alexi that I shouldn’t.”
The bottom of Jesse’s stomach fell out and he sat. James had only verbalized Jesse’s own attitude about Alexi back to him. At least what he’d tried to convince himself his attitude was. Shit.
“James, you go clean up. Jackson and Jared, one of you go get the fried chicken out of the deep fryer and the other take the truck and go fetch your father. He’s up the road at the McCades’ playing checkers.”
Jesse watched his brothers scatter, wishing like hell he’d stayed at home today instead of coming to Sunday dinner. But his memories of Alexi and her damned picture had chased him out of his house. Nothing had been livable since he’d sent Paul to Alexi with her stuff--minus her camera. That he sent to a lab for fingerprints. Come hell or high water he’d find out who’d developed that picture.
He expected to get a big lecture from his mother. Instead she looked at him sadly. “Are you still running from the man inside yourself, son? Either love her or let her go. Don’t make her and everyone else pay the price of your own insecurity.”
His mother went back inside and Jesse slowly got up and left. He wasn’t fit company for anything or anybody.
When he arrived back home he found Paul waiting for him.
“Hey, boss. I tried to call, but couldn’t get through to you.”
Jesse smacked his own head. “I left my cell at home.” He couldn’t seem to concentrate or remember anything.
Paul looked closer at him. “What happened to you? Get dragged through a pig sty and stomped on?”
Jesse ran his hand over his face, feeling several bruised and swollen places, especially the same eye that Alexi had nailed with a rock. Damn, a tide of emotion rammed at the memory. “I ran into another door.”
“Looks like multiple doors and something else, too.”
“I’m sure you didn’t come here to discuss my face or my clothes. What’s up?”
“We have an address for Kevin Taylor. He’s still at that homeless mission.”
“You mean the man has been down and out there for what? Three years?”
Paul cleared his throat. “Not exactly. Kevin Taylor is now on staff at the mission. He doesn’t go by Kevin anymore. He calls himself Jonah now. That’s why we weren’t able to track him down earlier. I’m going to go have a talk with him today.”
“Jonah? Why--never mind. I don’t want to know.”
Paul grinned. “Maybe he had a whale encounter?”
Jesse groaned at Paul’s poor attempt at humor. “Maybe you do need to do security for the home and garden expo this spring. Anything else on Roger, Benny, or Andy?”
“No. All three men have been sticking to their normal routines. I’ll tell you what though, Roger sure does spend a lot of time at home having the Sugar Girls clean his house. They even come on the weekends.”
Jesse whipped his mind to alert status. “What did you say?”
“That the men have—“
“No. The Sugar Girl bit.”
“It’s a house cleaning company that Roger uses.”
Jesse shook his head. He’d given Robert Jordan an invoice from the cleaning company, last week. It’d been the paper he’d found on the mirrored elevator at Alexi’s father’s office. “If you’re here, where’s Alexi?”
“At the hospital with Nan. She’s planning on being there all day and maybe most of the night. A little girl she knows has taken a turn for the worse. Alexi’s going to call me when she’s ready to come home.”
“Lucy?” Jesse could barely get the name out. He grabbed Paul’s shoulders. “Is it Lucy who’s worse?”
“Yes, I believe that’s the name Alexi mentioned this morning.”
“This morning!” Jesse glanced at his watch. It was already two o’clock. He cussed a blue streak. “Hold off on going to see Jonah Taylor. I may be going after the man myself in less than an hour. I have a few things I want to say to him. Do me a favor and dig up everything you can about the Sugar Girls.” Jesse headed to his car. First he’d go to the hospital and see how worse Lucy was before he went after her father.
* * *
“I can’t seem to stop my tears,” Alexi swiped at her eyes with a balled up tissue. Lucy’s situation had nose-dived in just a matter of days. This had happened before and Lucy had pulled out of it. It wasn’t like Lucy was in immediate danger of dying, but Alexi couldn’t seem to reign her emotions back in. Her heart kept wringing around in knots and at every moment throughout the day and night, she’d see Jesse and feel Jesse in the minutest detail of her life. Even here at the hospital, she couldn’t escape her memories of him. Even here, she saw images of him giving Lucy balloons.
Nan sighed with concern. “You’re crying more now, because you didn’t cry at all since you fought with Jesse. You’ve been suppressing hurt by throwing yourself into work, and now that you’ve another excuse to
cry your body’s making use of it. One of these days you’ll have to admit that you’re being stupid by not going to him and trying to work out your problems.”
“I’ve already told him that I love him and he didn’t return the statement. What else would you have me do?”
“You can tell him that you believe in him.”
“I do but—”
“No buts. We’ve already hashed this out. Jesse wasn’t the only one with access to your camera before the auction as you’d first thought. You need to tell him you took the camera to the gallery to take pictures of the donations and the preparations.”
“What good will that do, Nan? It wasn’t really my doubts that he’s running from. It’s love.”
“I still think you need to let him know. If he knew that you believed in him, he might start believing in himself and you together. You were both upset, confused, and angry last week. I’d take everything you said and he said with a grain of salt. Both of you were so stunned by what happened that I don’t think either of you remembered Roger and Andy’s reaction to your photograph. By the way, the picture was beautiful and nothing to die over.”
Alexi shook her head, almost emitting a giggle amidst her tears. “You’d go screaming into the Okeefenokee Swamp if that had happened to you, so don’t go smoothing over the situation.”
Nan’s face skewered. “You know me too well. But we’re straying from the subject here. Nobody seems to think that it’s significant that Roger was there laughing and the way Andy kept running around and telling everyone how much you resembled “Botticelli’s Birth of Venus”, you’d have thought he’d uncovered a long lost antiquity. I think you need to tell Jesse.”
“Tell me what?” Jesse’s rough edged voice came from directly behind them.
Alexi jumped and clutched her chest as she swung around to see Jesse standing behind the row of chairs.
“Jesse,” she breathed. He looked as if he’d tangled with a meat tenderizer and lost, but he never looked better. God she was hopeless when it came to him. She swiped at her eyes.
“Tell me what’s wrong with Lucy,” he demanded.
A lump of disappointment welled painfully up in Alexi’s throat that he wasn’t here for her, but she immediately stamped on the feeling. How could she be so selfish? It was Lucy who she had to think of, not herself, and she was glad Jesse had come. Still Alexi couldn’t seem to make her vocal chords work. After a long silence, Nan answered.
“Lucy’s situation is worse.”
“How much worse?”
“They’ve had to take her off the new medication and now they’re trying to stabilize her.”
“In other words, she needs a new kidney now more than ever,” Jesse said tersely.
“Yes,” Alexi said, finding her voice. Jesse ran his gaze over her and she ached inside, but she wasn’t going to let him know it. She ached to touch the bruises on his face, but forced her hands to fist instead. “What happened to you?
“A door ran into me and then something else broadsided me. There’s quite a bit we need to talk about, but first I’m going to get Lucy’s father.”
“Lucy’s father is here?” Alexi shot up from her chair.
“No. Not here, but not far. He’s across the Savannah River in Hardeeville, South Carolina.”
“How do you know that?”
“After meeting Lucy last week, I had a man in my company hunt him down. Lucy needs her father.
Alexi grabbed her purse, her heart swelling with what Jesse had done. “I’m coming with you.” She caught Nan’s hand. “Call me if Lucy gets worse.”
Nan lifted her brow as if to say I told you so and Alexi shook her head. She had no illusions. Jesse wasn’t here because he loved her. He was here because he cared for a sick little girl. But still, a tiny bit of warmth filled her heart.
The ride to Hardeeville passed in silence. For her part, Alexi knew that if she looked at Jesse, if she even once started to speak to him, she’d cry, and she wasn’t about to humiliate herself any more than she had. She loved him with every ounce of her soul and that hurt too much right now to even open the communication channels between them. Since Jesse didn’t make any attempt to speak to her, she assumed the silence suited him as well. So she closed her eyes and concentrated on the smell of him, she soaked in the sensual aura that radiated from him, and tried to ease her hurting heart with that. Comforted, she fell asleep, something she’d done very little of over the past week.
“We’re here, Lex.” Jesse said. His hand scorched her shoulder through the silk of her blouse and brought to mind so many nuances of his touch, of his body, of his passion that a sharp pain stabbed through her. Rather than opening her eyes, she squeezed them shut harder, forcing back the tears that wanted to betray her.
“Give me a minute.” She sat up and turned from his hand. His grip on her shoulder tightened.
“This isn’t the time or the place,” he said. “But I think both of us need a little something to help until we can talk.”
Before she realized what he meant to do, he caught hold of her chin and covered her mouth with his. This kiss started off light, as if he just meant to reassure her. Then he groaned and the demand of his lips upon hers became unrelenting in its search for her response.
She tried to turn away. She tried to withhold herself from falling back into the turbulence of his passion, and she failed. Her lips parted, and she opened to his kiss as her own passion erupted from her heart.
Jesse groaned and dragged her across the console. Her hip lay painfully against the hard leather. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the feel of him. She wound her hands into his hair and his palm cupped her right breast. Nothing mattered. Nothing but what the sum of his passion and the sum of her passion added up to. They were afire.
“Holy Hell, Lex,” Jesse gasped between kisses. “I’ve been dying for you. But we have to stop or in another second there will be no stopping me from hammering us to heaven right here in the parking lot in front of this church.
“Church?” Alexi sucked in air and tried to look out the car window. She couldn’t see. The windows were completely fogged over. Just then someone rapped on Jesse’s window.
Oh no! Alexi quickly pushed away from Jesse’s chest, trying to propel her upper body back to her side of the car, but her hand slid against his shirt and landed in Jesse’s crotch.
“Oh God,” Jesse yelled, agony in his voice.
His car door opened and a man wearing a preacher’s collar dipped his head into the car. “Did I hear you call God? Do you need some assistance, son?”
Jesse, visibly biting his tongue, just looked at the man. It was the first time she’d ever seen Jesse rendered speechless. After brazening through her nude photo debut, Alexi felt this was a piece a cake. Also the kind twinkle in the man’s eyes that said he understood the foibles of human weaknesses helped—a lot. She cleared her throat, settled herself back into her seat, and smiled at the pastor. “Sorry. We were working on a problem we have. We’re here to see Kevin Taylor. Have we come to the right place?”
The preacher frowned.
“Jonah Taylor,” Jesse finally said, his voice high.
“You’ll find Jonah in the kitchen this time of day. I’ll take you there. My name’s Sean O’Malley. I’m the pastor here at Haven Mission.”
Alexi got out of the car and sent the pastor a puzzled frown. “Your mission makes a regular donation to help one of the children at Memorial Hospital. A Lucy Taylor.”
O’Malley smiled. “I’d let Jonah tell you all about that if I thought he would. It’s Jonah’s paycheck. He insists on donating the money, but has always chosen to remain anonymous. I’ll let him tell you anything else.”
As Alexi followed O’Malley, she could see by the puzzled frown on Jesse’s face that he was thinking about the implications of the pastor’s words. Lucy’s father had been sending money for Lucy’s care for years. But why hadn’t the man ever come to see her?”
When they f
ound Jonah, and O’Malley said they were here about the donations for Lucy Taylor, Jonah didn’t look happy to see them. After thanking O’Malley, Jonah nodded to the back corner of the dining hall.
“Let’s go talk over there.” When they were settled, Jonah spoke first. “How can I help you?”
Jesse didn’t pull any punches. “We’re here about your daughter Lucy. You obviously know she’s in the hospital, but maybe you don’t know how dire her situation is.” Jesse held up his hand and inched his thumb and forefinger together. “She’s this close to dying and needs to have a kidney transplant.”
Jonah paled. “I know she’s gravely ill. I pray for her every day. Why are you two here? Does Karin know?”
Alexi sucked in air. The man sounded as if he didn’t want his ex-wife to know he existed. “No. Why are you hiding? Why haven’t you come to see the most wonderful little girl in the world whose greatest wish is to have a daddy for her own?”
Jonah stood. “I wish you hadn’t come. You won’t understand. I left Karin and Lucy because I’m a drunk. Before I left I got so drunk one night that I beat Karin. For years I wandered around hating myself until I found this place and O’Malley. I’m doing what I can for Lucy when I can. I’m no good at relationships. Lucy and Karin are better off without me.”
Jesse’s gut clenched as he heard Alexi’s gasp in response to Jonah’s words. Up until Jonah’s last sentence, Jesse wanted to pound the man into the ground. What kind of guy copped out of life like that? But Jonah’s last confession hit too close to Jesse’s own words. I suck at relationships.
Jesse stood and looked Jonah in the eye. “Here’s the deal. Lucy is dying. Lucy wants her father and I don’t think she gives a rat’s ass if that father is perfect. But more importantly, has it ever occurred to you that you could be the one person on this earth to save her life? Since she’s your daughter, odds are you’d be a good donor match. Are you going to hide here when there’s a chance you can save her?”
Jonah looked shocked. “They’d use me? After all the rot gut I’ve consumed?”
“How long have you been sober?”
Wild Irish (Book 1 of the Weldon Series) Page 24