Jade's Spirit (Blue Collar Boyfriends Book 2) (2 page)

Do you feel that, Mercy, love?

Mmm,
she sighed, waking like a relaxed cat. She stretched, and her tendrils caressed his sensitive core. Even as pure spirit, she retained the sensuality and grace that had first drawn him to her.

She snapped to attention and perked toward the resonance that had awakened him.
Oooh! Pretty!
She lunged for the source.

He drew her back.
Not so fast, my hungry little witch. Night has not yet fallen.

You’re strong enough, darling. Please? Please let me go to it. It feels so lovely, like it was made for us.

He stroked the silky essence she’d been reduced to when he took her life over a century ago.
Ah, but your confidence is inspiring. If only your belief were enough. I am not strong enough to protect you above. As soon as the sun sets, I will send our talented Joshua to explore. Small loss if his tether breaks. But losing you, love, that would be a tragedy.

But it feels so good. I want to wrap myself in it. Please, please, please
.

Enough.
He stabbed a spike of power through her as a warning.

She flattened her essence in submission. Meekly, she said,
It feels of youthful passion and desire. I have not felt such things in so long.
She inched back up, and he rewarded her contrition with a tingle of pleasure.

She is indeed something special. As you were.
He only hoped the woman intended to spend the night. He dared not wish for more than that. One night of feasting after so long a dry spell would ease his punishment, if only a little.

Do you suppose her dreams will free us?
Mercy gave voice to his deepest longing. The stupid bitch.

Never speak to me of freedom! It’s your fault we’re trapped here in the first place.

He wrenched her into a knot of pain until her shrieks soothed the ache of hope her words had created.

Chapter 2

“Is that my Jade?” Grandma Nina’s face lit up when Jade marched into her room. She was sitting up in a cushy bed with lowered rails. Her face was thinner and more wrinkled than Jade remembered, and the white roots fading to orange meant her hair hadn’t seen the underside of a salon hair dryer since before her fall. If not for the iPad on her lap chirping with Angry Birds sounds, Jade might have felt sorry for her.

She fisted her hands on her hips. “When were you going to tell me you moved out of your house?”

“Lovely to see you, too, dear. Come on in and stay a while.” Grandma Nina smiled, a perfect blend of innocence and mischief.

The wind went out of her sails. It was too good to see her grandmother to stay annoyed at her for keeping a secret of this magnitude. Going to the bed, she took her grandmother’s outstretched hand. Nails painted a shimmery opal. It was nice to see her attending to the details she could while she was stuck in bed.

“Why didn’t you tell me you needed help?” she asked, hitching a hip on the bed. The lip of the rail made it uncomfortable, but she needed to be close. She’d missed her grandmother. “I could have come up after the fall. It’s not like I had anything going on. Even if I did, family comes first. You didn’t have to check yourself into this place.” She looked around the room, noting the soft carpet, mauve-painted walls, crown molding, and flat-screen TV on the wall. She’d been expecting something sterile and institutional.

“
This place
has round-the-clock nursing staff, a whole wing for PT, three square meals a day that I don’t have to cook or clean up after, premium cable, and a shower with a seat in it. I don’t got any of that at the house.” She set her tablet on the bedside table and held out her free arm. “Now come give your crippled Grandma a hug.”

She folded into her grandmother’s embrace, breathing in her familiar scent of pressed rose soap. “I missed you.”

“You too, sweetie.” Her grandmother patted her on the back.

Jade curled up beside her in the bed. “Can you afford all this?” All those amenities sounded great, but it had to cost a fortune.

“Don’t you worry about that. Your Grandpa Earl knew how to invest. If the old dog could see me now, he’d be so jealous.” She chuckled and squeezed Jade’s knee before taking her hand again. Her grandmother had always been affectionate with her. She was like a one-stop oasis of love and acceptance. “Maybe if he’d stuck around, he’d be living the high life with me.”

Jade studied their hands, one tan and smooth, the other pale and wrinkled. Why did good people have to get old? “How long you going to stay here?”

“Long as I can, that’s how long. I like it here. And it’s not all intermediate care and assisted living, either. There are apartments across the parking lot for us independent folks. Right on a golf course and everything. Did I mention the Jacuzzi? Or Fred Beltlinker? Now that’s a hunk of man if I ever saw one. I don’t mind that he’s only got the one leg. He’s got everything else that counts, and some of his own teeth, too. Moved out of intermediate yesterday and stopped in this morning to tell me his son brought him a new floaty thing for the pool. Personally, I wouldn’t mind a midnight skinny dip with that man.”

After scrubbing that image from her brain, Jade asked, “What about the house?” And what the heck would she do with herself now? She’d come up believing Grandma Nina was laid up at home, needing help to do every little thing. She’d made the trip with a purpose. Now she felt useless. Grandma Nina was better than fine. She was in senior heaven.

“Figured the smart thing would be to look for a renter.” She waved her hand to indicate the room. “Help offset the cost of this place. It’s a good house. Paid for, too. Don’t want to sell it. It’ll be yours after I go, you know.”

Jade sat up in her chair. “What?”

“It’s going to you. In my will. Jillian’s getting the money. You’re getting the house. With your mom gone, rest her soul, it’s just you girls I’ve got left, and don’t think I’m going to blow everything on pampering myself. There’ll be plenty left for each of you to have a little something. Why, the house was worth a good three-hundred
G
s at the last appraisal. And property value only goes up. Land is where it’s at. Land and gold. You never go wrong with either.”

Jade groaned. “I don’t care about the house, Grandma. I mean, why are you talking about dying? This is crazy. You’re not dying.”

“Sure I am. We’re all dying. Some of us are just closer to it than others. According to the statistics, I could very well go this year. Did you know a woman’s risk of death doubles in the year after a hip fracture? It’s true. I saw it on
The Doctors
.”

“You’re not going to die.”

“Of course I’m going to die. If not this year, it won’t be far off.”

“You’re not
dying.
Stop it. You just broke your hip. They fixed it. You’ll do some PT. You’ll go back to your house. I’ll be your on-call nurse. I’ll even get a job and pay for your cable and internet. I’ll drive you over to see Mr. Belt-whoozit whenever you want. So, who do I have to talk to to sign you out or whatever?” She was sitting up now, facing her grandmother with a leg crooked on the bed. Her knee was bouncing.

Grandma Nina gave her The Look. That one with the narrowed eye. When she was little, she used to swear that look gave her grandmother the power to read her mind. As usual, The Look zeroed in on the one thing Jade didn’t want anyone to see, especially her grandmother.

“I hope you gave as good as you got,” she said quietly.

Jade pressed her lips together and looked away.

“Your mother always tried to cover the bruises, too, but makeup doesn’t hide the swelling. Was it the Italian Stallion? What’s his name, Brad?”

Jade blew out a breath, making the wisps of hair around her face tickle her cheeks. She nodded.

“You stay in the house as long as you need to, honey.”

Jade heard her own pulse in the silence. She was so busted. Grandma Nina had been able to tell in ten minutes she hadn’t come up to help, but to run away. She was supposed to be taking care of Grandma Nina, but Grandma Nina was taking care of her. Just like always.

“So,” her grandmother said. “How’s The Palace? Casey treating you right?”

She must have the only grandmother in the world who asked how it was going at the strip club like it was an ad agency and her boss was a classy businessman in a suit and tie. Guess when your daughter died a crack addict you didn’t mind so much if your granddaughter took off her clothes for money. At least Jade never did drugs.

“I kind of quit.” She winced, feeling like an idiot. Maybe she’d overreacted to Brad hitting her. Most people didn’t leave their home, job, and state because their boyfriend hit them. But then most people probably didn’t grow up witnessing what could happen if they stayed.

Logically, each repeat offense should be harder and harder to forgive. Too bad her mother had never subscribed that particular bit of logic. The first time she’d been battered was the closest she’d come to ending things. Each succeeding black eye seemed like less of a big deal until violence became part and parcel of relationships.

Jade hadn’t wanted to take the risk she would be the same way. She’d vowed that if a boyfriend ever hit her, he would get zero second chances. That’s why she ran when Brad hit her. He couldn’t do it again if she wasn’t around. Seemed like a no-brainer at the time. Now, it seemed like overkill.

Grandma Nina shrugged one shoulder. “You’ve been talking about quitting for a while. Everything happens for a reason. Maybe it’s time to put that Classics degree to use.” She folded her hands over her stomach, relaxed. “Why don’t you stay a while? Look for a position at a library around here. Lord knows I’d love to have you closer. And your friends in Boston are just a few hours away. I don’t need you, honey, but I sure do like having you around.”

Jade’s throat closed up with warm emotion.

Her grandmother saved her from having to say anything. “You’ll pay me rent when you get a job. Until then, you’re my guest. Now, Joe McIntyre shut up the house for me, so you’ll need to get the keys from him or Betty. They’re in the white house next door. I think he flipped the breakers. Make sure to stop in the basement first thing and turn them back on. Oh, and you’ll need to run the water ’til it clears. Sediment builds up in the pipes something awful. Now, what’s Brad’s number? I’m going to give that loser a piece of my mind.”

* * * *

When Jade made it back to the house, she was greeted with a cellophane-wrapped plate of snickerdoodles and a business card stuck between the sun porch door and the jamb. Tucking a Perfect Pita take-out bag under one arm, she plucked the card free. It was for Herald and Son Lawn Service. The handwritten message on the back said,
I meant to give you this when you stopped by earlier. This service does a wonderful job, and they are affordable. All my best, Betty M.

“Okay, okay, I can take a hint.”

An hour into their visit, Grandma Nina had announced she needed a nap and told Jade to get some lunch and move her stuff into the house. Like the dutiful granddaughter she was, she obeyed to the letter. Once she’d dragged all her bags up to the master bedroom, which her grandmother had insisted she take, she headed for the shed out back to look for a lawn mower.

It would suck mowing a lawn in the hazy Vermont humidity, but after a three-hour drive, fast food, and the best snickerdoodles known to man, a workout was in order. Besides, it was weird being in the house alone. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d been inside without her sister or her grandmother or Grandpa Earl. Mowing the lawn would give her time to work up the courage to stay in the big, old house all by her lonesome tonight.

The backyard used to be beautiful with its three acres of lawn sloping to the bank of a lily-pad covered pond. A screened-in gazebo near the bank made the perfect summer-night refuge for two little girls with sleeping bags and flashlights. Tall pines, maples, and birches blended with neighboring properties to create a magical woodland ripe for exploration. It had been a kid’s paradise.

Now the grass was patchy and knee-high. Weeds hid the lattice-skirt of the gazebo. Even the quaint red shed behind the house sported streaks of rust. Grandma Nina would flip if she knew how bad it looked. Good thing she would never know. Jade would get it ship-shape in no time.

The smallest of her grandmother’s keys opened the padlock on the tool shed. Jade let her eyes adjust to the dark then scanned the interior for a lawn mower. There. Huddled among the hanging, rusty yard tools was one of those push mowers with twisty blades. Those were rusty too.

“Well, damn it.” With the grass high enough to lose a toddler in, a rust-locked push-mower wasn’t going to cut it. Seeing as she didn’t owe Grandma Nina rent until she landed a job, she figured she could cover lawn care until she could afford to splurge on a mower from Sears.

Shutting out the heat with the kitchen’s sliding glass door, she dialed Herald and Son Lawn Service and listened to the voicemail kick in. The isolation of small-town life must have already started to sink in, because the friendly and masculine invitation to leave a message had her thinking about lazy hours around beer-stained pool tables. Shaking off the wistful longing, she left her message then went up to the turret bedroom to unpack.