JUSTIN
Fuck.
Why was she crying? He’d only arranged for Jake to fix her car. Most women were happy not to worry about that shit.
“I-I’m sorry I’m causing so much trouble. What can I do to thank you? I could clean your home?”
Was she serious? This wasn’t a tit-for-tat situation.
“I have a housekeeper.”
“I’m great at yard work.”
“A landscaper takes care of that. You don’t have to do anything.”
Except stop sobbing; that would be good.
In Justin’s experience, women turned on the waterworks when they wanted something, but he was struggling to work out Jessalyn’s agenda here.
Did she think breaking down would get her free room and board?
He sighed because yeah, it probably would.
Fourteen years ago, he’d turned his back on one victim of abuse, and she’d ended up dying.
Then Ruby Costello had lost her life, and there were his three failed engagements…
Justin’s track record with women was abysmal.
And now another train wreck had landed in his lap.
Sometimes, he felt as if the universe was punishing him, and maybe it was?
“Then how about I go to the grocery store tomorrow morning and batch cook some meals to go in your freezer?” Jessalyn asked.
“If I say ‘yes,’ will you quit with the tears?”
She gave a shuddering sniffle and bit down hard on her lip, a move that made Justin’s cock twitch, and what the hell was wrong with him? Jessalyn was obviously in distress, and he was…horny?
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“That makes two of us,” he muttered under his breath. “Look, we can go to the grocery store tomorrow morning if it makes you happy.” She said she liked cooking, so maybe it would calm her down. “Plus you need to file a police report. Take a couple of days to get your life sorted out, okay?”
Justin had learned lessons from the past. He’d do the decent thing.
Jessalyn could borrow his spare room for a week, two tops, and he’d help her find a new place to stay.
Could the administrator who ran the Ruby Rose Foundation help?
They didn’t have any empty properties on the books right now, he knew that much, but Isabel had connections.
Jessalyn wiped her eyes and nodded. “Do you think I’ll get the money back?”
Probably not, but Justin had to stay positive. “Worth a try.” The doorbell rang, and he sent silent thanks for the interruption. “That’ll be the food. I’ll be back in a minute.”
The delivery guy was a regular, and he beamed as he held up six bags full of food. “Mr. Justin, you’re having a party tonight?”
Yeah, a pity party. Since he had no idea what Jessalyn liked to eat, he’d asked the restaurant to send a selection, and it seemed they’d gone overboard. Still, he tipped the guy and took the food. At least the dog wouldn’t go hungry.
In the kitchen, Jessalyn had found plates, cutlery, and napkins and stacked them on the counter. She didn’t like sitting still, did she?
“Do you usually eat at the counter?” she asked. “Or should I set the dishes out in the dining room?”
Justin usually ate out of the cartons, but he wasn’t going to complain. Not if keeping busy kept Jessalyn from weeping. She seemed to have a pathological need to serve, as though it had been trained into her.
“You choose.”
She looked from the counter to the door and bit her lip again. He saw a flash of fear in her eyes that reminded him so strongly of his mom that his heart lurched. Another realisation—Jessalyn was terrified of making a wrong decision.
“In here is fine,” he said.
“Okay, great!” She pasted on a big, fake smile. “Just give me one minute.”
“What can I do to help?”
Her eyes went wide. “Help?”
“You want me to feed the dog?” Justin looked around. “Where is the dog?”
“In the bathroom. He won’t make a mess, I swear—he’s used to staying in a kennel in the evenings.”
“Do you know how he is with cats?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think he’s ever met one before.”
That would be a task for tomorrow. “Tonight, leave him in your room, and we can walk him after dinner. It’s already dark; it isn’t going to get any darker. What does he eat?”
“A cup of kibble.”
“That’s all?”
A nod. Well, that was easy. Justin found a casserole dish for water and a soup bowl for the food.
The dog didn’t make a sound when he opened the bathroom door, just sat beside the shower and watched him carefully as he turned on the faucet.
The mutt’s cowed demeanour reminded Justin of its owner.
What the hell had the pair of them been through together?
With the dog eating, he returned to the kitchen and found a feast laid out on the counter, and Jessalyn must have used every serving dish he owned. They’d have to run the dishwasher twice.
“Is this okay?” she asked.
“Looks great.”
Justin heaped food onto a plate while Jessalyn helped herself to tiny portions.
Was that all she ate? He’d never say anything, but he thought she was too thin.
Thinner even than Melanie, and Melanie had been under industry pressure to maintain her weight.
Gaunt, even, although she had a body built for curves.
“You have a beautiful home,” she said. “How long have you lived here?”
“Three months, give or take.”
“Does your girlfriend live nearby?”
Why would she think…? Ah, the make-up. Justin had scooped up a bunch of shit Melanie left behind and dumped it in one of the baskets his interior designer seemed so fond of.
Baskets and candles. Knickknacks and fire hazards.
Someone might as well use that stuff, and he didn’t think Melanie would be back to pick it up.
She’d gotten most of it for free anyway.
After her modelling career took off, companies sent her stuff all the time in the hope that she’d be seen using it.
“My ex-girlfriend lives in New York.”
Her face fell. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. It was in the cards for a while.” He decided he should try addressing the elephant in the room before it grew any bigger. “I guess that’s something we have in common, huh?”
Silence stretched between them as Jessalyn stopped chewing and stared at her plate.
“You must think I’m such a fool,” she whispered.
“Why would I think that?”
“Because I ran without a proper plan. Because I married a man like that in the first place.”
She was married? Well, fuck. She wasn’t wearing a ring, so Justin had figured they were dealing with an asshole boyfriend rather than an asshole husband.
“I think you’re brave for leaving and smart for doing it sooner rather than later. What was the plan before your car broke down?”
“Put as much distance between myself and Maine as I could, then find a job.”
“What sort of job?”
“Server, short-order cook, cleaner. Anything that pays money.”
“Did you work back in Maine?”
A quick nod.
“What did you do?”
“I cooked.”
“In a restaurant?”
“On the internet. It started out as a hobby. My friend Saylor lives overseas, and I was basically recording cooking lessons for her and putting them on a blog. Then other people began watching, and companies started sending me free products to use, and there was ad money…”
“I didn’t realise internet cooking was a thing.”
“Honestly, neither did I, but Ridge—my husband—realised we could make money out of it, and it accidentally turned into a whole career.”
“They” could make money out of it, yet Jessalyn was driving a fifteen-year-old clunker. Justin didn’t need three guesses to work out where that money had gone.
“You don’t want to go back to that? You’d rather work a regular job?”
“I’d love to start blogging again, but I don’t have a kitchen at the moment, plus I had to leave all my equipment behind.
I don’t even have a tripod for my phone.
Although in the beginning, I just taped the phone to a wooden spoon and fixed the spoon to a cupboard because I had no clue what I was doing, and…
” Jessalyn laughed nervously. “People expect more from me now. My sponsors don’t want spoon-cam.
Heck, I must have broken so many contracts when I left, but I don’t even know what they said because Ridge dealt with the legal stuff. ”
“Did you have a lawyer?”
“Yes, Ridge.”
The husband was also a lawyer? Dammit, this got worse and worse.
“Tell me he’s not a divorce lawyer?”
“He’s a personal injury lawyer.”
“An ambulance chaser?”
“If you called him that to his face, he’d sue for defamation.”
“Figures.”
“And he controlled everything. So I could make a new blog, but I don’t have access to the old one. I’d be starting again from nothing. And I want to do that someday, I do, but losing most of my money just took the wind out of my sails, you know?”
“I do know. There was a point in my life when I lost everything and had to start from scratch, and the world looked pretty damn bleak back then. But I promise you can get through it.”
Jessalyn regarded him curiously. “You got divorced?”
“I’ve never been married.” Hell, he might as well tell her. If she googled him, she’d find out anyway. Norquist wasn’t a common last name. “When I was younger, I lived in a house-share, and one of my roommates was murdered.”
She gasped. “Oh my goodness. Did they catch the person who did it?”
“Yeah, and he was our landlord, so we lost the house as well. During the trial, there was a whole media storm whipped up by his parents, and…” Better not to confess he’d been a murder suspect. “It was a bad time.”
Her bottom lip quivered, and he feared she might cry again. “I’m sorry that happened.”
“Me too. And I didn’t mean to make you nervous by talking about murderous landlords. You want me to put a lock on your bedroom door?”
He could find one from somewhere. Drive over to the workshop, or steel himself and visit his duplex, where the garage was an Aladdin’s cave of tools and hardware he’d accumulated over the years.
But she shook her head. “It’s okay. Shiro’s sleeping in front of the door.”
“I hate to break it to you, but that dog isn’t going to bite a burglar. He seems a little…shut down?”
“He’s scared of Ridge.” A pause. “I left for him. For Shiro. Ridge took him to the shelter, so I picked him up and just kept on going.”
Guess that explained the absence of a proper plan, but at least she was out of there.
That was all that mattered. Now Justin had to keep her from going back, because the husband would try to convince her she’d made a mistake; they always did.
And with every capitulation, that kind of man grew stronger and meaner and eventually burned down your house with you inside it.
Justin hadn’t been there for the fire. Hadn’t even known his mom had returned to the man she’d sworn she’d left for good this time.
A neighbour had called to break the news that she was dead, and when Justin arrived back in Decatur, all that remained was a blackened shell with crime scene tape fluttering in the wind.
And the smell. He’d never forget the smell.
Or his father’s behaviour in the aftermath—while Justin spoke with the police and arranged his mom’s funeral, his father put in an insurance claim for property damage and downloaded several online dating apps.
That motherfucker’s arrest had come as a relief rather than a shock.
Now, visiting his own duplex gave Justin PTSD, and even though no one had died there, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to live in the property again.
Speaking of which… He checked the calendar on his phone. Yes, the meeting with the loss adjuster was this Thursday.
“You did the right thing. Men like your husband never change; they only escalate. We’ll get everything straightened out, but we’re going to have to visit the grocery store tomorrow afternoon because I just remembered I have a meeting at eleven. We can file the police report first thing.”
“My car might be drivable in the morning.”
“It isn’t safe to drive. Jake said he’d bring his tow truck over sometime tomorrow.”
Justin had two vehicles, but he didn’t know Jessalyn well enough to risk handing over the keys to his BMW. She didn’t trust men—understandable—and in her shoes, Justin might have been tempted to keep on driving too.
“Everything will be okay,” he promised. “This is just a bump in the road.”
A simple problem, a simple solution. If Justin had known that the bump was big enough to rip out his entire transmission, maybe he would’ve been tempted to flee the state. But there was barely a hint of what was to come.
With the fires of hell hovering over the horizon, he picked up his chopsticks and dug into the chow mein.