Dancing Barefoot (24 page)

"I'm sorry, that was never—"

"Think of Jessica, think of the scandal, think of your family. Just go along with it until she gets whatever it is she wants."

He hit reply on the phone, his fingers shaking as he typed on the keyboard. He had promised Jessica a life of extraordinary possibility...He had an image of her on an Italian beach, long hair flying around her shoulders as she had screamed at the top of her lungs, "
I believe in love!"
He smiled at the memory, his thumb hovering over the send button. She had gone back for him. It hadn't been a lie. He needed to trust it would last even if they delayed things for a while.

"Don't do it, Jacques. I'm on your side in this and so is Jessica." Kevin stared at him with an intensity that bordered on desperation. "Cut the head off the snake, goddamn it."

He lifted his gaze to Ava's.

"Please, Jacques, I cannot stand the idea of this. Tell her you will be on her side, that we all will be." Ava looked visibly ill at the thought. "My business is finally taking off, so are you."

He nodded and sent Simone a text saying he would comply. He chose option one.

Kevin grabbed the phone and tossed it onto the table. "
What's next? We compromise all of our integrity for Hollywood?"

"We leave in a month for the Amazon, by the time I return she will have moved on with whatever she wants to do with this." He felt hollowed out and ruined as he looked Ava in the eye. "Are you happy now? Jessica will never trust me again after this."

"Love always finds a way," she said softly, gaze averted.

"Says the woman who hasn't had a date in years." Kevin shook his head in disgust. He faced Jacques. "This time I really do quit. I can't work for a sell out. What about Jessica? You two are officially engaged again, isn't that what you said?"

"What?" Ava gaped at him. "But it has only been a few—"

"Too late for you to ask questions now,
ma chère sœur
." He sneered at the words 'my dear sister', hoping she picked up on the sarcasm.

They all turned at the sound of the Entertainment News show's introduction. Simone came into view, looking flawless. Her reality show, International
Supermodel, aired on this network. She sat with the host and smiled directly into the camera. Her smugness needed no translation.

"Let her transition begin," Jacques said with a sigh. He turned his back on the television and faced Ava. "
She is using us all, cares nothing about anyone but herself. Perhaps you can relate to her more than you thought, yes? You will be the best of friends now."

"
That isn't fair." Ava's eyes filled with tears again as she sank onto the sofa and stared at the television. "If I had known about any of this before tonight, maybe I could have thought it through more, but we didn't have time."

"
It is done." He sighed and shoved his hands through his hair. "I will explain it to Jessica and we will make it work."

"Jessica—"

"Forgives me." He shrugged in disbelief, a sense of awe filling him from deep inside. "She knows everything and forgives me. We are starting over, as we are now, past forgiven. You should spend more time with her, maybe learn something about being a selfless person."

"That isn't fair." She tilted her chin up in defiance and glared at him. "It is because of me that you two are back together."

"It is because of you that we now have to be apart." He spat out the words, his frustration taking a toll on his restraint.

"No, that is all your doing. You and that slut Simone and all of the whoring around you did across the fucking planet." Ava stood and pointed at him. "You were raised better. You are a Sinclair! Think about what this would do to our father. We have a name we are proud of and you will go to your exhibit on Saturday with Simone by your side and you will smile and say all of the right things until we can finally say goodbye to her like civilized people."

"There is nothing civilized about pretending to be something we are not." Never in his life had been this furious with his sister.

"You are wrong, that is how most people live." More hair fell from the loose twist as she paced around the room. "You are the exception,
mon cher frère.
"

"Here we go..." Kevin looked at the screen, his arms folded over his chest, and sighed as images of Simone and Jacques in the prison came into view as Simone's voice spok
e of the horror they had overcome.

"
I never wanted any of this to come to light. There is not one thing that I am proud of about that experience," he said to Ava. "I have spent years trying to forget it."

She said nothing, remained still and unmoving on the sofa, arms hugging herself as tears silently rolled down her face. His heart broke
for all of them because he knew their relationship had now splintered and morphed into something he no longer recognized.

With a final look at the television, he left the room alone.
He rode down in the elevator, his thoughts a thousand miles away, anger long gone and replaced with sadness for the idealistic young people they had all once been and remorse for the jaded adults they had become.

Chapter
Sixteen

Weary from the past few hours, Jessica walked up the stairs to her building with Sela and Jane by her side. They carried Chinese take-out and bottles of wine. Thanks to Sela's connections, no charges had been filed. Instead they had taken Julie to the hospital and committed her to a seventy-two hour psych hold. She had fought them the entire time, not recognizing Jessica and screaming about being abducted.

"Marc set this up, you know that, right?" Jane had been the first one to say what the others had been thinking. "He didn't even try to help us when he saw what had happened. Isn't he always visiting your mom? That's one reason I always thought you two might eventually get together, he had this closeness with you that the rest of us didn't."

Jessica sighed and dropped her things on the floor next to the door. Shoes off, she walked to the kitchen, mind still filled with the images of her mother screaming and spitting at them.

Sela walked to the bedroom and returned dressed in a pair of borrowed jeans and a sweatshirt. They sat on the floor around the coffee table in silence as they distributed the food onto their various plates.

When the do
or opened, all three turned to look at Jacques who looked startled to see them. Shirt untucked and partially unbuttoned, hair a mess as if he'd been shoving his hands through it for hours, he grinned at her before tossing his suit jacket over the back of the sofa.

"Either the food sucked at the restaurant or something went wrong." He slid onto the floor next to her, his long legs beneath the table and arm looping on the sofa cushions behind her back. "I'm Jacques," he said to Jane who gaped at him. "We have not met yet."

"This is Jane, she's a high school counselor and we've also known each other since college," she said as she poured him a glass of wine. "My mom showed up high at the restaurant—a complete mess. The police were called, she was hallucinating. We ended up at the hospital with her."

So matter of fact.  She felt devoid of emotion as she stated the facts before piercing a piece of sesame chicken with her fork.

"He knows?" Jane tucked a long strand of brown hair behind her ear and studied her from across the table with troubled eyes. "I don't understand why you kept her a secret from us. We would have understood. Just about everyone I know has an addict in their family. I was a psychology major, for God's sake."

Jacques dropped his hand to her shoulder and squeezed. "Secrets do not always make sense to others, but shame can be a powerful motivator for keeping them, even when others do not understand
why you would feel like that."

"I love you," she said out loud in front of her friends for the first time. She pressed a hand against the side of his face, looked him in the eye, and smiled despite the tears that burned the back of her eyes. "I love you so much."

"I love you, too. Always have, always will." He squeezed her shoulder again, pain shadowing the depths of his green eyes. "Simone made her announcement on an interview with the Entertainment Network tonight. Ava is very upset with me."

"That's why you left?" Sela asked from where she sat cross-legged across the coffee table from them. "Where is Kevin?"

"With Ava." He drank his wine while gazing around the table at the Sela and Jane. "Where is Marc?"

The women all shared a look and said nothing.

"Is there more to the story?" he asked.

"This really sucks as a celebration dinner." Sela moved her food around her plate with a fork, not really eating any of it. "So Jessica tells me you have a hot single friend named Carter. Is he coming to town soon?"

Jacques tipped his head back and laughed. "Carter? You said he is my hot friend?"

"Is he
not
hot?" Sela pointed her fork in her direction. "Jessie, you said he'd be my type."

"Women hate Carter." Still laughing, Jacques reached for one of the cartons and investigated their contents. "Actually, they only hate him after they have dated him. I have never thought of him as
hot.
"

"He's sexy." Jessica winked at Sela.

Jacques looked at her with raised eyebrows. "Really? You think of Carter as sexy?"

"Oh, please, look at these two." She motioned to her friends. "Are you telling me you don't think of these two as hot? How would you describe them to Carter?"

He drank the wine and looked at each of them before shrugging. "I see your point. They are both beautiful women, but I do not want to sleep with either of them."

"Gee, thanks." Jane leaned back on her palms, legs stretched out on the floor, ankles crossed, and sighed. "That is the story of my life. Men don't want to sleep with me."

"You are too good for most, I am guessing." Jacques relaxed visibly, his smile lazy as he pulled Jessica against his side. "You are classy, smart, caring. I imagine you are a hopeless romantic."

"I am." Jane agreed, tilting her head to the side and looking at him through narrowed eyes. "Know anyone who would be good enough for me? Sounds like Sela has laid claim to this Carter character."

He laughed again, the sound refreshing to hear after her night. She dropped her hand to his thigh and sighed. "I can see her with Kevin."

"Kevin?" He sputtered with surprise.

"Yeah." She tilted her head up to look him in the eye. "He's one of the good guys, right? He strikes me as very loyal. He's good looking—" she looked back at Jane—" the kind of good looking where you think he must be gay because he knows how to dress and takes care of himself—"

"Kevin?" He laughed again.

"I can see it," Sela said after finishing the wine in her glass. "I met him. You two would be a stylish pair. Very chic."

"
My
Kevin? The assistant I fire every day?" Jacques refilled his glass with wine, a smile remaining on his lips. "He is a good man, I can admit that. Loyal to a fault, some might say. As for the rest...I have no comment. My mind is blown by this—Carter is
hot
and Kevin is
sexy
. I had no idea."

"Why do you fire him every day?" Jane's lips twitched over the edge of the wine glass.

"Probably because he is loyal to a fault and stands up to me." He sighed and helped himself to the sesame chicken on her plate. "He quit tonight, though, says he is never working for me again. This also happens every so often."

"How bad is the fallout going to be from the Simone thing?" Sela asked, her smile fading.

"Bad." He shrugged and ate the Chinese food without looking at any of them. "I am going to go along with her plan for awhile to keep the peace."

"I thought you were going to tell her to go to hell."

"Ava..." he met her gaze, "We had a falling out. I did this for my family."

"Am I supposed to pretend not to know you then? Will you be with her when she returns?"

"It is temporary. Trust me, Jess."

She gulped down her wine, absentmindedly looking at the time on her cell phone. Almost eleven. Work would be interesting tomorrow after what Charlie had seen. She squeezed Jacques' thigh beneath the table, thankful that he had come home.

"We are all coming to your exhibit on Saturday," Sela said with a supportive grin in his direction. "We need to see our Jessica's debut as a nude model."

He laughed before looking up from his plate. "
You should see the photos I did not publish."

"Those should be destroyed."
She looked at her friends and felt a twinge of guilt for not trusting them enough to confide in them about her mother. "Thank you, you're both the best, you know that right?"

"We do." Jane said as she reached for the wine bottle.

"I can see why you would think she and Kevin would get along." Jacques winked at her. "As for the exhibit, I appreciate you wanting to come, but it may be uncomfortable. A lot of—"