The Seduction of Jason

by Fayrene Preston

  “I won’t,” she responded distractedly. “Goodbye, David.” Her mind was already on how best to explain to him that she would not be seeing him at all anymore. She would be cruel if she had to. The important thing, now, was her relationship with Jason. Nothing could be permitted to hinder it.

  #

  David’s office was in the DeWitt Building, one of the new hi-rises in the downtown area, not too far from the warehouse. As Morgan entered the building, she gave little notice to her surroundings. It was true she had never been to David’s office before—all she knew was that it was the headquarters for his family’s vast business holdings— but it didn’t matter, because she didn’t plan ever to be here again.

  Punching the elevator button for the next to the top floor, Morgan unconsciously straightened her shoulders, dreading what was to come. She hated the thought of hurting anyone, but unfortunately, she had to do it. And she could comfort herself with the knowledge that in a few hours she would be able to see Jason again.

  Just the mere thought of Jason sent a warm flush of feeling surging through her, and she stepped off the elevator looking very beautiful. The powder pink of her soft wool dress harmonized beautifully with the rose-beige of her cashmere coat and the brown of her leather boots. The cold wind had whipped color into her cheeks and snowflakes into her hair, causing her to glow and glisten with the winter day.

  David met her with his office door opened wide, his happiness at seeing her very apparent in his uncomplicated, nice-looking face. “Morgan, darling!” His arms enfolded her even before she had a chance to back away. “How I’ve missed you.” He pulled back slightly, laughing, his voice intimate. “Before I get you alone and show you just how much I’ve missed you, I want you to meet my brother. Come on in.”

  Morgan walked into a well-lit, spacious office and came to an abrupt halt at the sight of the man sitting behind the desk. “Jason!” Her heartbeat accelerated with the unexpected joy of seeing the man she loved sooner than she had expected. “What are you doing here? This is a wonderful surprise.”

  David had followed her in. “You mean you two already know one another?”

  “Jason?” Morgan’s voice dropped to a tentative level. He was sitting silent and unmoving, with his three-piece, pin-striped suit making him appear extremely dark and formidable. His brown eyes were almost black, but it wasn’t with the passion Morgan was used to seeing in them. All of a sudden it dawned on her that Jason Falco was very, very angry—frighteningly so.

  David put his arm around Morgan and cuddled her limp body against him. “This is great, Morgan. I hadn’t realized that you knew Jay. I’ve been wanting to get the three of us together for months now, but somehow I could never get all of our schedules to dovetail.”

  Jason wasn’t talking, so she turned to David. “I don’t understand. You mean Jason is your brother?”

  “My half-brother, hence our two different last names. We have the same mother, with Jay being the older by eight years.”

  There had really been nothing to warn her. Even though the two brothers shared similar coloring, they looked nothing alike; David was slightly shorter, with a softer look about him.

  “You call him Jay?” Morgan repeated the name dazedly. She was in shock. Not only with the news that Jason was David’s brother, but with the fact that Jason was incredibly angry.

  “It’s what our family has always called him. When his father died, he left Jason a fortune and a slew of businesses that were held for him in trust until he became old enough to take control. My father, in effect, raised Jason as his own, and when he died, he left me his businesses, but with Jason being in overall control of everything and with a sizable interest. We’ve consolidated our businesses, dividing up the responsibilities, yet Jason remains the head.” David paused to look at Morgan, a little perplexed. “But I’ve told you all of this before, haven’t I?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” Morgan couldn’t take her eyes off Jason. He seemed so cold, so distant. And now it was very apparent that it was she that he was furious at. What could have happened in less than twenty-four hours to make him this angry.

  “Well, if you didn’t know that Jay was my brother, how did you meet him?”

  “Martinique.” She could only manage the one word, but it said everything.

  “Oh, sure. How stupid of me. I had forgotten that you two would be down there at the same time. Jay’s schedule is usually so hectic, it’s hard for me to keep up with him. It must have slipped my mind that he’d be down there to check up on the newest DeWitt House at the same time that you would be there on a holiday. What a coincidence!”

  “Coincidence,” Morgan echoed hollowly, but her mind was racing. What was wrong with Jason? Why was he looking at her as if she were a complete stranger? She wanted to go to him and throw her arms around him, but the look of controlled rage on his face told her very clearly that she would not be welcomed.

  It was as if, when she had walked into David’s office, she had crossed the border into a foreign country, and nothing could make any sense without a translator. Yet, there didn’t seem to be anyone qualified to act as one—except Jason.

  David pulled her closer to him and kissed her cold cheek, his usual quick wit deserting him when it came to her, just as it always had. “I couldn’t be happier that you two have already gotten to know one another. Jay and I have always been close, and since one day soon, I plan for you and me to be married—Jay! What the? …”

  Jason had bolted from his seat and stalked out. Not waiting to hear anymore, he had passed his brother and Morgan without saying a word.

  “I’m sorry, Morgan,” David began, “I don’t understand—”

  “David!” she interrupted with urgency. “Where is Jason’s office?”

  “Why, it’s upstairs—wait a minute!” He grabbed her arm as she started out the door. “What’s going on here? I think I deserve an explanation.”

  Morgan had no time to be tactful. “I’m in love with Jason. I had no idea he was your brother, David, but to be perfectly frank, I’m not sure it would have made any difference if I had known. We met on the flight down to Martinique and fell in love … or at least I fell in love with him, and I thought he returned the feeling.”

  “I don’t understand. I thought that you and I—”

  “You don’t understand, because you’ve never listened to me, David. I’ve tried to tell you before, in as nice a way as I knew how, that I’m not in love with you and that I could never be in love with you!”

  “But I thought—”

  “You thought, David. You wanted it so much that you refused to believe that it couldn’t happen. I fully accept the blame. I should have been firmer. It was just that I didn’t want to hurt you and I thought that with time you would see for yourself what I had been trying to tell you. But after I met Jason, I knew there was no more time left. I came here today to break off with you, once and for all. I never in a million years connected your beloved ‘Jay’ with the man I fell in love with on my vacation.”

  Morgan could see that the facts were finally beginning to sink in with David. She was hurting him, but she couldn’t help it. She had to find Jason and explain.

  Once more she started out the door and once more David pulled her back, his voice angrier now. “You mean to tell me that after months of our dating, after months of my hoping that you would marry me, after months of my respecting your wish not to make love, you went to bed with my brother after knowing him only a matter of days?”

  Morgan’s voice gentled with compassion. ‘That’s exactly what I mean, David, but you must believe me when I say, I never meant to cause you pain. I’m sorry.” He made no effort to stop her this time, and she walked out the door.

  Finding Jason’s office on the top floor with no problem, she marched right past the startled secretary and flung open his door. “Jason!”

  Jason turned slowly from his rigid stance at the window, and Morgan suddenly knew he was someone she could no lo
nger say with any certainty that she knew, for this coldly withdrawn man bore little resemblance to the warmly demonstrative lover she had known so intimately in Martinique.

  “What do you want, Morgan?”

  She closed the door behind her and advanced toward him. “I want to know why you’re not talking to me. Why didn’t you speak up in David’s office? What’s the problem?”

  “Problem?” He dropped down in his chair so that the width of the desk stretched formally between them. “Why, whatever do you mean, Morgan? Just because I return home and find that the woman I’ve just spent days making passionate love with is my brother’s girlfriend—why should you think that there’s a problem?”

  “Look. I realize it’s a little awkward, but—”

  “Awkward!” His voice suddenly sliced at her. “Where do you get your nerve, Morgan, with your sunshine beauty and your jewel-colored eyes, to come in here and tell me that this situation is a ‘little awkward’?”

  “Jason,” she pleaded, “listen to me.”

  “No, Morgan.” The sharpness of his voice was now cutting her to ribbons. “I listened to you on the plane when you told me that there was no one waiting for you back here. I listened to you the whole time we were on the island and not once did you mention you were with someone else. I can think of countless times you could have slipped that little bit of information in, but not once did I ever hear you say anything remotely like it. So, no, Morgan. I’m not listening to you anymore.”

  “It’s true that David and I dated—”

  “Dated! My brother is crazy about you. He thinks that the two of you are going to get married. He’s thought that for months.”

  “He might have wished that before, Jason, but now I’ve explained to him about us.”

  “Excellent. That’s just excellent, Morgan. Tell me, did you leave anything out? Like the fact that I made love to you so often that I know you inside and out?”

  “Jason…” She went weak, just thinking of the times they had been together. “I told him that we slept together—”

  “And I suppose you’re going to ask me to believe that David took it well and wished us happy.”

  “Not exactly, but—”

  “Not exactly,” he repeated. “You’re damned-well right—not exactly.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I can only imagine the hell he’s going through.”

  “He’ll get over it, Jason.” The moment she said it, she knew it was the wrong thing. It was incredibly insensitive. But at the same time, she couldn’t seem to think of the right thing to say. She couldn’t seem to think at all. His reaction had stunned her.

  “I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure of that,” he said with a kind of softness that actually scared her. “I would guess that your type of scheming woman is only too easy to get over.”

  Scheming woman? “What are you talking about?” She was beginning to doubt her sanity. They had returned to St. Paul incalculably happy. How long ago was that? Just hours, surely. Yet as soon as he found out that she and David had dated, Jason had lowered some sort of iron curtain between them. Morgan spread her hands out in bewilderment. “I never misled him or you, please believe me. You and I need to just work this out— “

  “Believe you? Work this out?” He came up out of his chair with such lethal intent, Morgan wouldn’t have been surprised if he had meant to come across the desk and strangle her. Instead, he made an obvious effort to get himself under control. Resting his clenched fists on the desk, he lowered his head and took several deep breaths.

  Watching him, Morgan felt like he was killing her, slowly and by inches. How could one misunderstanding cause such havoc and pain? She wasn’t sure that she completely understood everything that was at play here, but there had to be a way to make things right again. There just had to be.

  “Jason, in the past months, I’ve tried to make David understand. I really have. But it was like he had a blind spot where I was concerned and wouldn’t hear what I was saying.”

  Jason raised his head and looked at her. “A blind spot where you’re concerned?”

  He made a movement, a shrug of his shoulders, a shake of his head. It all said nothing, it said everything, it said too much.

  “Somehow I believe that.” His voice was ominously quiet now and solidly under control, and his next words made it quite clear that there was no hope. “David is my brother. I’ve loved and protected him since the day he was born, and no woman is going to come between us. When his father, the man who raised me with care and love, died, he entrusted both David and his inheritance to me. David and I share a tie and a bond that someone like you could never understand. My loyalty is, and will always remain, with David.” He paused for a moment, making her wait before he delivered the final blow. “Now please leave. Now. I never want to see you again.”

  Morgan turned automatically and moved silently to the door, like a robot without a heart. Her hand was on the doorknob, when she heard him add, “And Morgan. If you go anywhere near David again, I’ll make you so sorry, you’ll wish that you had never heard his name … or mine.”

  #

  Daylight had gone; moonlight had not yet come. There was only twilight, that peculiar state of suspension, where there is neither darkness nor light. In her apartment, Morgan sat very still and alone, willing her mind not to work. She didn’t know how long she had been sitting there, hours probably. It didn’t matter. She had discovered that nothing mattered as long as the blessed numbness continued—that deadened feeling that had encased her mind the moment she had left Jason’s office.

  Yet, just lately, the mental void where for a while there had been no sensations seemed to be changing. Vague emotions had begun to swirl around the edges of her consciousness, trying to intrude into the empty calm of her mind. Morgan put a hand against each side of her head, attempting to push away the thoughts.

  “Morgan! For God’s sake, I’ve been beating on your door. Didn’t you hear me?”

  Taking her hands away from her head, Morgan looked up through the dim light into Sami’s worried face. “I guess not.”

  “What are you doing sitting in the dark?” Sami moved around the room, her compulsion for light making her switch on lamps. “Jerome said he saw you come up here hours ago, and I got worried when you didn’t call and check on me like you usually do. That was the whole idea of your having the phone installed for me in the first place, wasn’t it?”

  “What’s the use? You never have it plugged in anyway.”

  Morgan’s wooden tone brought Sami back to her. “You know I hate phones,” she murmured absently, her golden eyes intent on her friend’s pale face. Dropping down on her knees, Sami picked up one of Morgan’s cold hands, chaffing it. “What is it, love? What’s wrong? Tell me.”

  Sami’s soft, caring questions were the thing that finally broke through to Morgan as nothing else could have. She leaned forward, throwing her arms around Sami, and started to cry. “He hates me, Sami. He hates me!”

  “Who hates you?”

  “Jason. He’s furious at me.”

  “That’s impossible, Morgan.”

  “I know, but it’s true,” she sobbed. “He was so cold, like someone I had never met. He said he never wanted to see me again.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. The man I met at the airport was very much in love with you, Morgan. You’re obviously wrong and crying is not going to help us figure out what’s going on.” Sami pulled away, smiling gently. “If it would, I’d join you. God knows, I’ve cried on your shoulder enough times. Where are your tissues?”

  “Over there,” Morgan sniffed, pointing in an indeterminate direction.

  Sami was back in less than a minute. Thrusting a handful of tissues in Morgan’s face, she ordered, “Blow.”

  And Morgan did, reflecting ruefully that for all of Sami’s eccentricities, she could be maddeningly practical at times.

  “Okay” —Sami sank cross-legged to the floor, her sapphire silk caftan bi
llowing out around her— “what’s happened?”

  “It’s David.” Morgan gestured vaguely through the air with her wad of scrunched-up tissues.

  “David? I thought we were talking about Jason.”

  “Would you believe it, Sami? They’re brothers!”

  “Brothers? How? Where? When?”

  “You’ll have to check with their mother on that one,” Morgan replied humorlessly.

  “I don’t understand. Why didn’t they tell you?”

  “Oh, it’s all been a crazy mix-up.” Morgan got up and paced to the window, an incipient anger directing her movements. “I went to David’s office today to break off with him, to convince him once and for all that there could never be anything between us, and there sat Jason behind David’s desk. It turns out that David’s beloved half-brother ‘Jay,’ the one he has been wanting me to meet for months, is none other than Jason.”

  “Good grief!” Sami began to twist a long blond curl around and around her finger. “Well, I can see where this might make things a little awkward—”

  ‘That’s what I said,” Morgan reported glumly.

  “—but surely, with you and Jason loving each other as you do, it can be overcome and worked out.”

  “That’s what I thought, too.” Her voice was becoming firmer. Her own brand of wrath, rage and fury was beginning to vie for position within her. “We found something beautiful and rare on Martinique. How could he have forgotten it so soon?”

  “Maybe he hasn’t,” Sami reasoned, untwisting the curl and starting on another one. “But maybe for some reason he feels as if he’s been betrayed by you.”

  “He definitely does. To such an extent that he wouldn’t even try to see things from my point of view.” She clasped her hands together and unconsciously began to wring them. “But Sami, I just don’t feel I’ve done anything wrong. There was no conscious intent to hurt anyone on my part.”

  “Of course not!” Sami was nothing if not loyal to her friends.

  “And I tried to explain to him about David.”