CHAPTER 64 JAMESON
JAMESON
It had been two years since Jameson and his brothers had seen their mother, but desperate times called for desperate measures. All four of them went. Toby, too. Zara had refused. Grayson wasn’t happy to be leaving Lyra, but he’d promised he would, and Grayson was nothing if not a man of his word.
And Skye, for her part, took one look at her sons and brother on her doorstep, smiled, and led them into her lawyer husband’s sprawling home without a word.
She always had loved holding court.
“To what do I owe the pleasure,” Skye said, taking a seat and gesturing for all of them to do the same, “of any of my sons remembering that they have a mother, let alone all four?” Skye loved little more than playing the victim.
She was clad in a free-flowing caftan—and diamonds. A copious amount of diamonds.
But that wasn’t what drew Jameson’s attention—or his brothers’.
“You’re pregnant.” Nash’s drawl did nothing to soften those words.
Skye put a hand protectively over her round belly. “It’s a girl this time,” Skye announced. “I always did want a daughter to name after myself. Men do it all the time.” Skye nodded toward Toby. “Case in point,” she said, “and speak of the devil.”
“Hello, Skye.” Toby seemed to be rationing his words. Jameson followed his uncle’s example and resisted the urge to ask: Is wanting to name a child after yourself the only reason you’ve always wanted a daughter?
“I mourned you, Toby,” Skye said dramatically. “My darling little brother, who never even bothered coming to see me after his miraculous resurrection.”
First she’d mentioned wanting a daughter and now—resurrection.
Was she baiting them? It would have been so easy to push those topics, to take the bait, if that’s what it was, but Jameson, his brothers, and Toby had game-planned on the ride over, and they’d all been in agreement: They could not let on that Alice was alive if Skye didn’t already know, and they couldn’t let Skye glean that Avery was missing, either.
“We all know how you mourned Toby.” Grayson purposefully drew Skye’s attention, and Jameson recognized the maneuver for what it was.
Skye was a storyteller at heart. The more they could get her to talk, spinning stories—she loved the ones with villains best—the easier it would be to steer her toward what they really wanted to know.
“If you want someone to blame for your existence, Gray, darling, blame your father.” Skye had “mourned” Toby’s presumed death, more than two decades earlier, by sleeping with a married man, and Grayson had been the result.
“But then, you can’t do that, can you, darling?
I understand Sheffield Grayson is still in the Maldives somewhere, evading taxes, federal investigations, and anything else that can be evaded.
Your poor half sisters—and Sheff’s poor wife.
” Skye shook her head. “Poor, poor Acacia Grayson.”
Sheffield Grayson wasn’t in the Maldives. The man was dead, but Skye clearly didn’t know that.
“Acacia is more of a mother to me than you ever were,” Grayson said calmly, setting Skye up for another round.
“You see what I put up with?” she asked Toby. “But better Acacia playing mommy than Zara, I suppose. Our sister always did want what I have.”
What do you have, Skye? Just us? Just children? Or…
“That, or you always had to have what Zara wanted,” Nash offered. “Could go either way, I reckon.”
Skye twirled her diamond necklace around one of her fingers but seemed to decide against engaging Nash. “You’re being awfully quiet, Jamie. And, Xander—look at you, so very handsome these days, very much your father’s son. How is Isaiah?”
Isaiah was Xander’s father, the one Skye and the old man had kept from him for years.
“Isaiah’s great,” Xander replied cheerfully. “I introduced him to Acacia, and they really hit it off.”
That seemed to take Skye off kilter. Well played, Xan.
“Still so quiet, Jameson.” Skye’s finger twirled through the diamonds. “And so very alone. Where is our little heiress?”
Missing—but you don’t know that, do you? Jameson pretended as though Skye’s question had hit its target, allowing the muscles in his shoulders and neck to tense just a bit as he shuttered his eyes.
“Don’t tell me our little Ava’s still half in love with Gray?” Skye said. “Did she really run off to lick her wounds now that your brother’s finally gotten around to sowing some wild oats?”
Grayson’s eyes narrowed. “Wild oats?”
“I can hardly blame you for indulging,” Skye told Grayson. “But she’s a no one from nowhere. What else could it be?”
Toby responded before Grayson could: “That’s enough, Skye.”
Enough to tell us she has no clue whatsoever where Avery really is, Jameson thought. Not even a trace of suspicion.
“Toby,” Skye replied, “my darling brother, I always knew you were far too stubborn to die in a little fire.”
Jameson knew the agony the words little fire must have caused Toby, but their uncle didn’t even bat an eye.
“You thought me too stubborn to die but not the old man?” Toby waited for that to land. “His death, you believed?”
“You know something.” Skye’s eyes widened. She stood, caftan flowing, looking down at them. “All of you. You know something. About Daddy?”
Bait, taken. And it wouldn’t have been if she knew about Alice, about the Gilded Blade, if she was aware, on any level, that the old man was never truly the real player in the family.
“We don’t know a damn thing,” Nash said, and Jameson could practically hear him thinking, And neither do you.
“You can’t fool me, Nash Hawthorne,” Skye insisted. “None of you boys ever could. I’m your mother.”
“Are you?” Toby said. “Because our mother—she was there for us, Skye. Alice wasn’t perfect, but she was there. We had a mother. We were loved.”
Jameson saw what Toby was doing, bringing up Alice just to see what his sister would say.
“And what good did our mother’s love ever do us?” Skye asked. “It was Daddy’s that mattered, and he left everything to a stranger in the end—if it was the end. You all obviously came here for a reason.”
“We came here,” Nash said, rising from his chair, “so I could tell you that Libby and I are expecting twins.”
So far, Alisa had managed to keep a lid on that in the press, but Libby was starting to show. It wouldn’t be much longer before the story broke. Still, Jameson hated that Nash had been forced to use that for cover. They all knew that Skye was never getting anywhere near his girls.
Nash nodded toward Skye’s protruding stomach. “I hope she calls you Mama, the way we never did. I hope that this time, you bandage knees and kiss away tears and tuck her in at night. I hope you stay.”
“She’s going to love me.” Skye’s voice shook just a little. “I’m going to name her Skyla, and she’s going to be everything—and no one’s but mine.”
The muscles in Jameson’s throat tightened. Skye liked to act like she’d had no choice but to give them to the old man, but Jameson and his brothers had always known that she wanted her father’s money and his favor more than she’d wanted them.
“Love her more than she loves you,” Nash told Skye. “Let it be hard this time. Let her be hard.”
“I don’t know how,” Skye said, and the admission was so unlike her that Jameson believed it.
She doesn’t want a daughter because she needs a female heir. Jameson was as sure of that as was humanly possible. She just thinks a baby will fix things—the same way she always has.
“Love her enough to figure it out,” Jameson told Skye, standing and making his way to the door.
“And if you don’t,” Grayson said, following Jameson’s lead, “if you can’t—you bring her to us.”