Chapter 32 Jack
JACK
Jeremiah
You got an onboard date yet?
Jack
About that. I really appreciate the offer, but I’m staying put in Aspen Springs.
Jeremiah
Making the manny position permanent? Still don’t know how to wrap my mind around that.
Jack
Nah, she goes back to school in September, so she won’t need a full-time babysitter past summer.
Jeremiah
So what’s your next move, then?
Jack
No fucking clue.
Jeremiah
Jack Price doesn’t have a plan? Now you’re scaring me.
It took Maya exactly three minutes to abandon us for her tadpoles. The second she disappeared from view my hands were on Janie like we had been separated for weeks instead of maybe an hour.
“My mom invited us to dinner. Not tonight, with Maya just getting home, but maybe next weekend?” I breathed the words in between little kisses, my hands shaping her waist.
“Us?” Janie reared back. She grabbed me by the face and stared at me with wide, panicked eyes. “Us?”
“As in you, Maya, and me.”
“Why?” Her voice edged toward shrill.
I would have laughed if it hadn’t felt like a direct hit to my solar plexus.
“Relax, Ace.” I rubbed at the tension I found in her shoulders.
“I haven’t told her anything. She likes you and Maya, and she thought it would be fun.
That’s all. I suspect she wants me to get to know her new boyfriend, and she thinks I’ll be on my best behavior if you’re there as witnesses. ”
She leaned into my touch, her head lolling to the side to give me more access. “I’ll agree to anything if you keep doing that. Oh, my god, Jack.” She moaned softly.
My dick twitched awake. “Don’t,” I warned. “Any second now Maya is going to get tired of staring at her tadpoles and she’s going to come out here wondering what we’re doing. So don’t make sounds that will get my dick up.”
She laughed. “Don’t be silly. Maya never gets tired of tadpoles. Especially now that their little leg nubbins are coming in.”
Nubbins. My body shuddered involuntarily. “Don’t say that word.”
“What word? Nubbins?”
I shuddered again. “Ugh.”
She tipped her head back on an incredulous look. “Nubbins? Seriously?”
Full body cringe. I couldn’t help it. “Stop saying that word!”
“That’s your weakness? The word nubbins?” She snort-laughed. “Does the enemy know about this? Mr. Special Forces can hold up to waterboarding but taps out if you say—ackk!”
She shrieked as she found herself airborne and tossed over my shoulder. I brushed my palm over her ass teasingly. “Say it again, Janie. I dare you.”
“Nubbins!” she hollered because my girl could never resist letting her bad out.
I gave her cheek a quick, sharp smack, making her giggle.
A loud gasp—definitely not Janie—had me spinning around.
“What—what’s going on?” Maya’s eyes jumped from me to her mom’s butt and back again.
Janie twisted to look at her daughter over my shoulder. “It’s okay, ladybug. We’re just joking around.”
Maya looked at me uncertainly.
“Your mom said a bad word,” I explained.
Maya’s eyes widened. “Was it fuck?” she whispered.
Janie’s body shook with suppressed laughter. I squeezed her thigh. “No, scamp. Not fuck. I like that word, as long as you don’t say it in school. She said a word I don’t like.”
“What word?” Maya asked, intrigued.
“Nubbins!” Janie yelled.
I spanked her again—softly.
Maya’s mouth popped open. “What happens if I say it? I don’t want to get spanked.” But there was a look on her face. She might not want to get spanked, but she wanted in on the fun somehow.
“My mom told me kids don’t get spankings. Only adults. So I can’t spank you, Maya,” I said gravely. Janie wheezed. “But if you say that word, I’m going to have to throw you over my shoulder like your mom and spin you until you’re dizzy.”
Maya’s gaze shifted sideways. “Nubbins,” she said slyly.
“Now you’ve done it!” I roared. With Janie still over one shoulder, I scooped Maya over my other.
“Hold my hand, ladybug,” Janie stage whispered. “One…two…three…”
“Nubbins!” they both shouted.
I spun them around and around as they shrieked with laughter.
It was the most beautiful sound in the whole world.
I had a mug of tea waiting for Janie when she returned from putting Maya to bed. She padded into the kitchen in thick wool socks and those tiny ass shorts, her hair mussed from snuggling with Maya and her eyes suspiciously wide and bright.
“That took longer than I expected. Your tea might need warming up. Did Maya want extra books to make up for the weekend?”
Janie smiled as she dropped into the chair across from me. “She did talk me into an extra book, but I actually fell asleep for a couple minutes. She was super snuggly and the bed was warm. So now I’m wide awake.”
“Up for a game of strip poker?” I suggested. “You win a hand, you might finally find out why I call you Ace.”
She snorted. “I only win when you let me. And I only have one secret left.” She circled the rim of her mug with her index finger, contemplating me. “I could just tell you.”
“About Maya’s dad?” My pulse quickened. I wanted to know. “Do you want to tell me?”
She rolled her lips, forehead furrowed. “You know what? I do. I’m tired of carrying it around with me. The weight of it is so fucking heavy, sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe through it.”
“So tell me. If I can take some of that weight from you, I’ll do it. Like you did for me.” I brushed my thumb over her knuckles.
“Okay.” She bobbed her head like she was psyching herself up. “Okay.”
I waited.
She took a deep sip of tea.
I waited some more and tried not to get antsy about it.
“Okay,” she said again. “I was twenty-one. Fresh out of college. I had a low level job at Senator Rupert Warren’s office in Denver.
He’s a state senator. Not national,” she explained but it wasn’t necessary.
I knew who he was. He was a powerful name in the ranching community.
“Anyway, mostly I answered phone calls from constituents. I attended every meeting and took notes. I was the youngest and the greenest, so even with a Georgetown degree, I had to prove myself and move up the ranks like anyone else, and I was determined to do that. Rupert took me under his wing, probably because the name Belmont carries a lot of weight.”
My neck prickled with foreboding. There were plenty of good men in the world.
Men who would see a smart, talented young woman with a fancy degree and mentor her because it was the right thing to do.
But I had a feeling that Senator Warren was not one of those men, because if he were, Janie’s lips wouldn’t tighten every time she said his name.
“I thought he was…” Her gaze went sideways as she searched for the word. “Exceptional. I thought he was exceptional. He was so smart and he knew how to get things done that other people said were impossible. Good things, things I was proud to be a part of. I was in awe of him, honestly.”
She took a sip of tea and licked her lips. “Not just in awe of him. I was in love with him. And I thought he was in love with me, too. I know I was dumb.” She held up her hands. “You don’t have to say it.”
“I wasn’t going to.” It was hard to speak over the rage.
“Well, I’ll say it. I was really fucking dumb, Jack.
” Her laugh was all hard edges and self-loathing.
It made me want to tear something apart with my bare hands.
Preferably a certain state senator. “He was twenty years older than me and married. Married.” She laughed again.
“I knew that. Everyone knew that. But he told me that they were separated. His wife was in England teaching a summer program at Cambridge. He said it was a cover. It was harder to fake a happy marriage when they had to be in the same room together, so they put an ocean between them. Constituents like their politicians married, so they planned to quietly divorce when it wasn’t an election year.
That was what he said. And I was stupid enough to believe him. ”
Fuck that. “No.” The word sliced out of me. I wanted to be gentle, but fucking hell. I was pissed. “You weren’t stupid. You’re a good person, and you expect other people to be good, too. That’s not something to be embarrassed about. He’s the one who should be embarrassed.”
She didn’t respond to that. That was fine. I’d tell her every day until she believed me.
“His wife came home in August. Caught us in bed together.” Janie looked away, swallowing hard.
“I had no idea what was going on. I couldn’t understand that he had lied to me.
He wouldn’t return my calls and suddenly I was out of a job.
I was a mess. I would go for these long drives so I could cry where no one could see me.
And then one night a bear ran in front of my car.
I woke up in the hospital. That was how I found out I was pregnant. ”
“Jesus,” I whispered.
“I don’t remember much from being in the hospital. But Rupert was there and my parents were there and everyone had a lawyer. I signed everything they told me to sign.”
She sighed. “There’s some verbiage about denial of parentage and keeping Maya out of the public.
” Her mouth twisted in a grimace. “Heterochromia—Maya’s eyes are exactly like Rupert’s.
If people saw her, they’d know. But it’s not like I have to lock her in a dungeon.
She hates my parents’ parties, anyway. But as she gets older, she has more questions about who her dad is. I hate that I can’t tell her.”
“That can’t be legal,” I said. “There’s no fucking way anything you signed in that hospital would hold up in court.”
“It only has to hold up in court if I take them to court, and I won’t be doing that. It’s fine. My parents made sure Maya and I were taken care of. Rupert set up two trust funds, one for each of us. Maya gets full access to hers when she turns twenty-five.”
A trust fund. Suddenly things were starting to make sense. “This house?”
Janie nodded, her gaze sweeping around the kitchen.
“My account is set up so that I got one large initial payment, and then smaller annual distributions until Maya’s twenty-fifth birthday.
I used the first payment to buy this place free and clear.
My parents weren’t thrilled, but I was desperate to be on my own.
” She wrinkled her nose. “The smaller payments aren’t enough to live off of, but with my job at the Painted Cat, we get by.
I can request additional distributions, but my mom is the trustee.
Asking her for money—even money that’s technically mine—is just…
it’s the fucking worst, you know? She never says yes without demanding something in return.
I’m so tired of people controlling my life. ”
Oh, hell. It wasn’t the same. What I had done, that was completely different. But somehow, I didn’t think she’d see it that way.
Janie pulled her mug of tea closer but she didn’t drink it. It had to be cold by now. She pushed it away again. “So that’s my secret. That’s everything.”
“Janie. Shit.” I scrubbed a hand over my face, feeling sick. “I have to tell you something, honey.”