His mom laughed. “Yes, you are.
Especially if you keep sitting there when she’s out there somewhere looking for
something only you can give her.”
He stood up and started for the door
just as someone knocked. The fucking movers. He looked at his mom.
“Go, I got this. Find her and make her
believe you.”
He started for the elevator and went to
his sister-in-law’s office instead. They were laughing and when he walked in,
they stopped and glared. He couldn’t take that any more. Walking to both of
them, he kissed them both on the cheeks and hugged them.
“Thank you.” He looked at them when
Kasey started cussing. “What did I do now?”
“She won the bet,” Kasey said as she
pointed at Kylie. “I said you’d be at least another week; she said today.” She
looked him in the face with narrow eyes. “You going after her or do I have to
beat your ass again?”
“Do you know where she is?” He wasn’t
going to point out she’d been able to kick his butt before because she’d been
six months pregnant and he’d let her win. “I want to go and get her and if you
tell me where she is, then it will be that much quicker.”
Ten minutes later, he was driving toward
the empty buildings on Tenth Street and trying his best to think of what to
say. He hadn’t realized it was so late. And he was pretty sure a simple sorry
wasn’t going to cut it.
~~~
“I see.” She didn’t really see it at all,
but knew that arguing with the man wasn’t going to get her any closer to a
place to live. She told him goodbye and left the apartment complex.
This was the fifth complex that she’d
been to today. There was something wrong with her application at the first place
and the second wouldn’t take her because she wasn’t thirty. She still didn’t
know why it mattered how old she was, but had left when he threatened to have
her arrested for trespassing. She went to the third place and was told that
without a prior, verifiable address, he couldn’t rent to her. She was pretty
sure that her home now wouldn’t be verifiable since she was living there
without heat or electricity. She had running water, all cold and all she wanted,
but no bill to show that she lived there.
This place had been the shortest visit
yet. All she’d done was say she was here about the apartment.
“Rented it an hour ago,” he’d said. She
was too tired and too discouraged to point out that the, “for rent” sign was
still hanging, and that the paper had said there were three for rent. She was
going by the little shop near her home when she looked in the window.
The help wanted sign there looked
accusatory to her. She’d been trying to get something that was more full-time,
but…the four jobs she was working now were killing her, but she didn’t need to
sleep that much, did she? She walked in and asked for an application. She had
it filled out and turned back in in ten minutes. That was another thing; not
having a phone made it difficult to have people call her back if she got the
job.
After telling the girl behind the
counter that she’d be back this way tomorrow, she left. It had started to snow
again. Shivering in her coat, she wondered how she was going to stay warm this
winter. Depressed more than she could almost handle she tried to think of
something else.
The owner wasn’t in a lot when she
applied for jobs and wondered just how they stayed in business when they never
seemed to check up on things. She walked the rest of the way to her building
with her head down and her heart heavy.
She missed the Hunters and she missed
Jesse a great deal. She missed his smile, his laugh, and especially the way he
touched her. She knew that what he’d said to her, that he loved her, wasn’t
true. Why on earth he would love someone like her was beyond comprehension. He
was a fancy, rich lawyer while she was an uneducated, homeless person who
couldn’t find a job.
It was dark by the time she walked into
the building she’d been staying in. She worked her way to the second floor,
constantly looking for anyone or anything that might try to hurt her. She
reached up and touched her jaw where just this morning someone had taken
exception to her standing at the stop sign near him. People were just strange.
When she walked into her little office
she cried out when she saw someone standing in the window. Before she could
back away, he spoke. Jesse Hunter was in her space.
“I was getting worried. I thought you’d
be back before this late.” He glanced out the window again before continuing. “It’s
coming down really hard now. We might have a foot by morning.”
Nodding, she waited. A million questions
popped into her mind and after she got answers to those she was reasonably sure
that that many more would replace them. She looked around the office she’d been
using for the past two weeks and saw that someone had brought in some more
things.
“I don’t want your charity. Whatever you
brought you can take with you when you leave. I don’t know how you found—”
“It’s mine. All of it, it’s mine. I
didn’t know if you had enough to share, so I brought some things I thought I
might need. I can get more as I see what you have.” She didn’t understand what
he was talking about.
“You have to go. As I’ve said before, I
don’t want anything to do with—”
“I love you. Very much as a matter of
fact.” That shut her up. “And I can’t, no that’s not right, I don’t want to
live without you. I miss you in my bed and—”
“I’m sure there any number of women who
would join you in your bed. You need to pack up your stuff and leave. Now. I’m
not kidding.” She watched as he moved slowly toward a box on the floor and
started to unpack it. “What are you doing? I told you that you have to take it
with you.”
“I heard you. I’m not leaving you. I
love you.” He stood up again and started toward her. “I’ve been an ass. More,
actually. I think we can add overbearing, dickhead, and prick. That one Kasey
called me several times.”
“If you think you’re going to get an
argument from me then you’ll be disappointed.” He was still coming toward her
slowly. “Stop right there. You still have your stuff to gather up.”
He did stop when he was close enough for
her to touch. And she wanted to. Badly. When he reached up and pulled her cap
off she was surprised at his smile. It was so sad.
“Do you love me, Joey? Even a little? I
think you do, but I’m beginning to realize that I’ve not heard you say so. Not
that I’ve given you reason to love me, but I would still like to know.” He ran
his finger down her cheek, and she moaned at the feel. “I love the sounds you
make when I touch you.”
“You can’t…the sex is—was good, but that
doesn’t make it lasting. I don’t want to have someone only want me around
because they are horny.” She flushed at her words. “I’m not all that good at it
anyway, contrary to what you’ve been told.”
“I don’t care what she said. Your
grandmother can bite my ass for all I care. And maybe at first we were having
sex, but after I fell in love, that’s what we were doing, making love.” She
snorted at him, and he smiled. “Would you like for me to show you the
difference between sex and making love? I’m up for it if you are.”
His brows wiggled and she laughed. “You
know what I am, Jesse. I’m a woman who has no—”
“Don’t send me away, Joey. Please? I
can’t live without you. I want you to…” He dropped to his knee and took her
hand into his. “I would like it very much if you would marry me. I would very
much love it if you’d come home with me and have children with me. I want to
spend the rest of my life loving you, showing you how much I love you. I need
you in my life.”
She wiped at the tears she couldn’t
control. She looked around the office and then back at him. “You were going to
live here with me.”
“Yes. For however long it took for you
to believe me that I love you.” He glanced around the room then back up at her.
“I don’t suppose there’s a coffee machine hidden amongst your things, is
there?”
Laughing, she answered. “No. Not even
hot water for a shower. You might want to reconsider your living arrangements.”
He kissed her hand. “Have you? I’m not
leaving here without you. And you still haven’t told me if you love me or not.”
He shifted on his knees. “I love you, baby.”
She thought about telling him no, she
didn’t love him, but she couldn’t. She looked around the office again and
didn’t look at him. What she had to say was going to be hard enough without
seeing his face. “I dated this person when I was in high school. I knew that he
was going with someone, but I didn’t know he was married. I was a sophomore and
he a senior. His wife had had to drop out of school the year before I started
there because she was pregnant. We dated for a while before I…before he…”
“Did he force you, Joey?” She backed
away from the anger in his voice as he stood up, and she hit the wall behind
her. He moved to her slowly as he spoke. “I’m going to have to kill him, you
know that, don’t you? No one hurts the woman I love and gets by with it.” His
smile was scary and she was pretty sure he was serious.
“He’s dead. She, his wife, killed him.” When
she tried to look away again, he held her chin and told her to tell him. “She
found out. Not about me, though I don’t know why she didn’t. We never tried to
be…I didn’t know there was a reason to be discreet about it. There were others.
Four of them, as a matter of fact, and two of them were pregnant. I’d made him
use a condom the one and only time.” She took a deep breath. “He didn’t force
me. I was willing, though it wasn’t all that good. He said it was me and…well,
I believed him.”
“Did she hurt any of the other women?”
Joey shook her head.
“Tell me, love. It’s eating at you and
you need to get rid of this.”
“He was with some friends of his. I’d
told him the week before that I no longer wanted to see him. He said it was
fine by him, I was a lousy lay anyway. She came up in their car with their baby
in the front seat. She simply got out of the car, left the door open, and fired
at him. The first shot hit him in the groin. The second in his head. He was
dead before he hit the ground. Then she turned the gun on herself and killed
herself.”
“Christ. You were there, weren’t you?”
It wasn’t really a question, but she
answered it with a nod. “I was working at the ice cream parlor. I was at the
window when they…Derick was…had been telling them what he and I had been up to.
I…I thought for sure she was going to kill me too. But she…the baby sat there
playing with her toys as if her entire life hadn’t just changed.”
She was sobbing now and when he pulled
her to him, she let him. He held her, ran his fingers down her back, and kissed
her head. He was speaking, saying things she really didn’t understand, but she
was comforted by it. When she felt him pick her up she wrapped her arms around
him and let him carry her from the building and to his car.
Neither of them spoke as he drove. She
wasn’t surprised when they drove up his driveway. When he came around the car
to help her out, she stopped him with a hand to his chest. It was past time. “I
love you. I think I always have. But I’m not—”
“Yes, you are. You’re going to marry me
as soon as I can get the arrangements made.” He kissed her quickly on the
mouth. “We, my dear, have not been using protection and I hope like hell you’re
already pregnant with our child.” With a loud shout of joy, he picked her up
again and took her in the house. Samuel and Lowell met them in the hall with
surprised looks. “She is marrying me and I’m going to go up and make love to
her all night. Don’t bother us unless the house is on fire.” He set her down
and reached into his pocket. “Here. If it rings, tell them…tell them I’m in
love and can’t come to the phone right now.”
With that, he picked her up and took her
up the stairs three at a time.
Chapter 21
Annamarie put the phone back in the
cradle with a smile. She looked at the people in the office with her and
grinned bigger. “He’s not coming in.”
“What is that supposed to mean? He said
he’d be here and…he’d better be on his death bed is all I can say for him.”
Royce ran his hand through his hair for the umpteenth time. “I swear he’s
getting his as…butt kicked for this.”
“He’s in love. And Samuel said that he
told them not to disturb them unless the house was on fire. Samuel said that
the young miss looked to be in the same frame of mind.” That stopped Royce in
mid-step. “I think he’s getting just what he needs.”
“He didn’t force her, did he?”
Annamarie smiled at Kasey, who she knew
told Jesse where to find Joey.
“I would really hate to have to castrate
him if he did.”
Daniel, ever practical, spoke. “Well, we
can do this without him. As you guys know, this is my last day here too, but
I’m still our lawyer in personal things. Doyle here is going to run the
security department with Kasey’s help until he has it the way he wants.” After
a few more questions from their newest employee, Doyle, they got down to other
business. Namely the Jennings issue. “There are nine buildings in the district
where we were looking. The real-estate agency that she worked for is willing to
let us purchase them cheap.” Curtis handed them all a folder. “I didn’t say
we’d take them yet. I think if we let him stew a bit longer, he’ll come down
more.”