Chapter 37
Mia
I GASPED FOR OXYGEN, for life, for relief, but searing, knee-buckling, soul-shattering ecstasy flew through my veins instead. Tears filled my eyes as I cried out, and Jameson let more swears fly as he pinched my clit and pushed me over the edge again.
I convulsed around him, my body putting its last bit of energy into trying to keep him in me. Instead, he scooped me up and carried me to my room. “Shhh, now, darling Mia. I’ve got you.”
I turned into him. “I feel too much for you, Jameson. Way too much.”
“And still I want you to feel more.”
I fell into the blue of his eyes, into the emotion that was there, where I felt safe now. Where I felt like I could belong and be whole. “I feel everything already.” I didn’t say I loved him aloud, but I knew I did.
“I know, baby. I know. I got you. You’re mine now. Only mine.” He didn’t say he loved me either, but I wanted to believe that’s what he meant.
And when he laid me down and tucked the blankets around me, he hovered over me, one hand on each side of my face on the pillow. “I didn’t touch Val tonight, Mia. But she was here only because I found out she betrayed me almost as badly as Lex.”
His voice held pain, and I didn’t know how to react. The woman had been close to him. My words were measured as I asked, “What do you mean?”
“She put her jealousy before Fran and ran to Trent to tell him about you women here the other night.”
“No,” I whispered.
“It may have been unintentional like she claims, but I don’t care.
She jeopardized your safety and the other women.
And it’s shown me once again that she could jeopardize Franny’s.
I had her taken away.” There was pain in his voice, and I understood it.
He wanted his daughter protected at all costs and felt like he’d been betrayed time and time again.
“Just promise me you’ll always put Franny first. Even before me.
” His words held weight and foreboding, but I didn’t care.
I knew what I’d do for Franny always. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
He shook his head as if he were working through some sort of turmoil. “I’m telling you now. We should stop this. If you fall for me and something happens to you … This isn’t the life for you. Don’t fall for me, Mia.”
My heart stuttered at his words. I rejected them immediately, but I didn’t say it out loud. Instead, I just told him, “Probably not something you should worry about, Jameson.” My fingers ghosted over his chest and his heart. “I do what I want, when I want, when I’m ready. Got it?”
He kissed me then, softly, slowly, caringly. And then he sank into bed next to me to kiss my shoulders, my hair, my cheeks, and my neck before he tucked me up against him so he could hold me through the night. I didn’t ask him any more questions because I didn’t need to know any of them right then.
Maybe I was lost in my love for him or blinded by it.
For five more days, we acted like things hadn’t changed.
He took us to the country club and invited me to meals that I ate with Franny and him.
His mother even came to one, but she mostly made small talk with me while Jameson sat quietly.
He worked all other parts of the day, men filtering in and out of his office.
Some were dragged to the basement, and they never seemed to come out.
Rosy and Archer told me that Val’s betrayal ran deep and that they didn’t want to talk about it either. Jameson didn’t accompany me to the range for shooting, so Archer went with me instead.
We acted like nothing had changed. Although it had.
He was quieter. Lost in his thoughts.
I was too.
I’d fallen in love with him, and I was scared he knew it, scared he couldn’t fall back in love with me.
Another woman had betrayed him, and I think it proved to him that I couldn’t be trusted no matter how much he wanted to believe that I could be. He slept with me, but his guard was up. I felt him building walls and growing his distance even as he smiled with me and Franny throughout the day.
After five days, he went to attend a meeting outside the house, and I sat there in the evening wondering what I was doing. I needed to make plans, needed to face reality that this position was going to come to an end, and I wouldn’t be in Paradise any longer.
Nothing was real if Jameson couldn’t be real with me, and I needed that more than anything to stay.
I was sulking in the hall when Franny rounded the corner, squealing at me. “My momma was here today … in her room.”
“What?” I glanced around immediately, that feeling of being watched from the forest back with force, but I tried to be rational. “Honey, what room?”
“The room next to Daddy’s, silly. It’s my momma’s room. In case she ever comes home, Daddy said.”
“But, baby … your momma being home … that’s not possible.
” I got down on one knee with my heart racing, my pulse thumping at the idea that Franny thought she was seeing her mother when I knew the truth.
Jameson hadn’t told her about her mother passing, and I’d have to be the one to do so if he didn’t do so soon enough.
“Of course it is. She’s as pretty as she always was, Mia.” Her smile was so happy, so genuine, that I started to get concerned.
“Is your mommy still here?”
“Yep. In her room.”
And then Archer rounded the corner, and his face said it all. It looked as if he’d seen a ghost. “Archer?”
“Jameson is on his way. He said for you to stay here.”
But then Lex Knight appeared just down the hall.
And I lost my breath.
My whole world tilted, throwing me off it.
She was freaking stunning. In every way I wasn’t. Long blonde hair that had a perfect wave, which framed her angular face. So symmetrical, with high cheekbones and full lips that were painted bloodred to match the red dress she wore. I saw where Franny got her nose, her cheeks, her body frame.
She was perfect, but in a vicious way.
“Mia Darling, come have a drink with me.” She said my name like Satan might have said Eve’s name. With a lure of sweetness laced with the risk of death.
“Archer, take Franny to play outside,” I told him. Lex may be Franny’s mother, but that girl had my heart, and I wouldn’t let anyone, even her mom, hurt her if I could help it.
“Mia,” he warned, but when I looked at him, he knew I meant it. And I hoped he saw the concern in my eyes, saw that we protected Franny at all costs.
“Please.” In that moment, I saw Archer choose between his boss and me. He held out his hand to Franny, and she took it to skip away with him.
“Be careful. Xavier’s there, but … be careful.”
I breathed a sigh of relief as I watched them retreat down the hallway.
“She’s growing up so quickly, isn’t she?” Lex said as if she’d been with her daughter every single day since she was born, like she hadn’t left at all. “Shall we?” She raised a brow at me and then turned on her red-bottom heels to walk toward that room, toward the one door he’d never opened for me.
And so I walked, one step at a time—my heart beating, my knees shaking, my world crumbling—to that room.
She didn’t wait for me but left the door cracked open. And still I froze there, my heart pounding as my eyes caught on the intricate carvings swirling like vines around the knob, coiling toward the keyhole like they’d been guarding this secret.
My fingers trembled as I pushed the door open, and the smell of patchouli and jasmine with a hint of citrus hit me. It was the type of perfume that lingered, stuck, and embedded on a place and never let go.
It smelled of her and not at all of me.
I stepped in, slow and deliberate, and her dark eyes met mine from across the room.
She sat at a window seat, an oak table next to her with another empty chair across from that, waiting for me.
The window was open, a breeze billowing through the white curtain as if to distract me from the dread that had slithered up my spine.
I heard Franny giggling outside, and Lex pointed to the chair. “Come and sit. Do you like tea?”
I glanced around to see if Xavier was anywhere to be found, but I didn’t see him. “I don’t bite, Mia,” she informed me as if my waiting in the doorway was rude.
Either way, I wouldn’t let her see that I feared her, so I moved to sit down and took the tea from the saucer. She smiled, and her eyes shifted to the garden below. “Did my daughter inform you that her mother was home?”
“She did. She seems excited.”
She nodded, a small smile playing on her red lips. “I found out that Jameson never told her I was dead.” I wanted to ask her how she’d found that out, but she tilted her head at me and asked, “It seems sort of like fate, doesn’t it?”
Was she telling me that Jameson protecting his daughter from the pain of thinking she was dead was actually a blessing for them? She had to be kidding. “I’m not sure I understand, Ms. Kni—”
“Missus,” she corrected. “And don’t you?
For a woman who’s been sleeping with my husband, I’m guessing you know quite a lot about the situation.
” She may not have meant for the husband part to cut through my heart, but it did.
She said it like it was completely normal, like they were still together.
And maybe they were. My mind was reeling, reconsidering, questioning everything.
“Jameson must think you’re very good with her. My business … our business and the responsibilities of our family have kept me away.” She fixed a piece of her blonde hair as she looked in the mirror before turning to me.
“I don’t understand.”
“Did he tell you I was dead?” Her smile was slow as the words dropped one by one like a ton of bricks on my heart.
“He’s had to have suspected for a while that I wasn’t.
Jameson was always smarter than most men.
Then again, I did quite well orchestrating all this, if I do say so myself. Don’t you agree?”
I didn’t need to answer her. The way I pulled in air as if it were scarce and the world was disintegrating before my very eyes allowed her to draw her own conclusions.
She dragged a finger over the table. “He made this room for me when they moved in, you know? He had all my stuff packed up and brought in here. And I think he keeps every part of it immaculate not because he wants to preserve the memory of me. No, it’s got to be because he believed I might come home one day … and here I am.”
“I … don’t understand.” It was all I could say as I leaned back in my chair for support.
“Catch up, Mia. He’ll be here soon, and I know he’s going to be irate.” She chuckled and rolled her eyes. “God, that man can get mad. He’ll say this is calculated and manipulative, and of course it is, but honestly, who isn’t? The man’s been just as strategic as I have. Maybe more so.”
I shook my head, wishing her away, wishing this whole stupid room away. “I wouldn’t use the word strategic to describe him.” If he’d known she was alive … that wouldn’t be the word I’d use. Deceptive. Cruel. Ruthless. “Not strategic,” I whispered again.
“Whatever.” She shrugged. “He’s made this completely and utterly way too complicated with the security he’s implemented everywhere. He had to know my coming back was inevitable. I’m sure he actually wants that after how he pushed my family’s company into a corner.”
“I don’t understand,” I whispered. My mind scrambled to grasp what she was saying, but my heart was breaking at the same time.
“For a woman who’s spread her legs so willingly, I’d expect you to know a bit more, Mia. Then again, you’re sleeping with your boss after he drugged and kidnapped you.” She sighed with the summary she painted, and I tried not to flinch at her words.
“That’s not what is happening here.”
“Isn’t it?” She tilted her head. “You’re sleeping with my husband.”
“I didn’t think he was a husband.” The words bubbled out of me fast and almost hysterical. “I thought he was a widower.”
“And instead you became a mistress.” Her attack was snakelike, as if she’d been coiled up and ready to strike. Her bite was filled with poison, leaching all the trust I had in Jameson.
“It’s not what I wanted.” I knew that much even if the whole summer now seemed like more of a lie than any part of my life now. I’d tried to be so true to myself here and instead got pushed into being within a facade all over again.
“No matter. I’m okay with the little dalliances he may have with you and others, as you realize I’m Franny’s mother and his wife.” She gave me an almost sad smile, like she felt sorry for me, like I was now the secret they’d hide behind closed doors.
“For now, I think it’s best I stay in this part of the house.
Once Jameson and I work things out and talk through all this, I hope that will help you both.
” Although her words were meant to be kind, they were laced with condescension.
I was playing checkers and she was playing chess, a hundred moves ahead and in a position to take my king before I even realized the game we were playing.
It wasn’t a fair fight. She’d come with weapons and armor and ambushed me. I stood and started to back away toward the door. I needed to call Jameson, to check on Franny. I needed to pull apart the truth from the lies, separate my emotions from the reality of the situation.
I needed out of Paradise Grove.
Even as I backed away, she kept on. “Mia, marriages have ups and downs, right?” She sounded almost dejected now, and her lip poked out.
“Well, of course, but—”
“Did he tell you about me when you first moved in here?” Her eyes were laser sharp, focused on me now, searching for answers.
“I think it’s best that you and Jameson discuss that.
” I tried to make sure my voice didn’t shake as I walked toward the door.
I was getting the hell away from her and from him.
Away from this place where I’d been deceived and made to believe I was given a whole truth when I only got half of one.
“I don’t think I’ll be here much longer. ”
And that’s when I heard the low voice of the man I loved, but it was filled with an anger I didn’t recognize. “Why the fuck are you in here?”