Once Upon A Half-Time: A Secret Baby Romance (65 page)

I braced for war or, at least, the flash of a blade. But Maddox took the wine list and stared at Nolan.

“What are we having tonight?” he asked. “I heard the steak is good.”

Nolan met his challenge. “I’m surprised you know. No one in your family has ever afforded a meal here. You aren’t good enough to wash the dishes.”

“Fuck washing them.” Maddox seized a bread plate and cracked it on the edge of the table. The restaurant silenced, and he pointed a shard at Nolan before I could stop him. “You got ten seconds to explain what the fuck you’re doing here with my girl.”

Nolan didn’t fear the shattered edge. “She didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

My throat dried, but I couldn’t have spoken louder than a whisper anyway. “I’m selling my property.”

“No, you’re not.” Maddox answered immediately. “Forget the offer. She’s not interested.”

“Granddad got moved to another floor. I don’t have the money.”

“We’ll find a way,” he said.

“Maddox—”

“I said we’ll find a way.” He wasn’t playing. A simmering rage boiled through him, a fury I didn’t recognize. “Let’s go, Sweets. I’m sure Mayor Rhys has better things to do tonight than dine with my woman.”

“Charming,” Nolan smirked. “Very charming.”

“Yeah. My dad always said I got the charisma in the family.”

“The only thing they couldn’t sell for drugs.”

“Believe me.” Maddox hauled me from the chair. “They tried. We’re done here.”

“The offer is good only for tonight, Josie.” Nolan sipped his wine, like he expected that I’d agree to sleep with another man while the one I loved held my hand.

“Sorry for wasting your time.” I counted the last few dollars in my bank account. The number scared me more than Nolan’s intentions. “I’ll find a way.”

“Bake sales with your boyfriend?” He chuckled before his voice turned sour. “For a relationship built on lust and poverty, you promise each other the world. It’s sweet…given your circumstances.”

I tugged on Maddox’s arm. “Come on.”

“Especially after your prison sentence.”

Maddox took the bait even though I begged him to leave. “Josie knows I’m innocent.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.”

I wasn’t letting this happen. Not here. “Maddox, please.”

“It’s just amazing how easily you’ve forgiven her.”

Maddox scowled. “Forgiven her for
what
? Josie’s done nothing wrong. She’s the victim.”

Nolan shrugged. “It’s a funny thing, becoming the mayor. I’m privileged with more information than most people in the town.”

Oh god. I wished I had just signed the papers and offered him my body. At least then Nolan couldn’t have threatened me with something worse than his slimy touch.

Nolan captured Maddox’s attention with a veiled warning. “As mayor, I have access to police reports and files. I learned everything about the fire that destroyed Sweet Nibbles.” His gaze fell on me, enjoying how I squirmed, panicked, silently begged him to stop. “Did you know about the anonymous tip called in after the fire? Someone pinned the arson on you, Maddox.” He grinned. “And here’s the thing about anonymous tips. They aren’t so anonymous.”

My heart didn’t break—I no longer had one.

“Do you know where the call came from?” Nolan asked.

Maddox shrugged me off his arm. “Where?”

“Freedom General Hospital. It was a female caller, and she refused to give her name.”

The world crumbled beneath my feet, but I didn’t fall. My lies pinned me, immobile and agonized.

Trapped in Maddox’s pained stare.

“I always wondered if you knew who framed you for starting the fire?” Nolan enjoyed my misery. “And what you’d do to her when you found out.”

Tears rolled over my cheek.

Maddox said nothing. The truth spoke for us both.

I was the caller who slipped the police the tip about the arsonist. I was the one who said it was Maddox that burned down my shop. I was the reason he went to jail.

And he’d never forgive me for it, even if it saved his life.

T
he wine tasted bad
—even more bitter than usual. Nolan asked how it was. I forced a smile and spat most of it back into the glass with a disguised nod. I never got tipsy so quickly. I felt awful, and it wasn’t the company I was keeping.

Or the threats he made.

“Do we have an agreement?”

Like I had a choice. I already broke up with Maddox at his request, but Nolan wasn’t satisfied with me sleeping in an empty bed.

Not when he wanted to lie next to me.

“Why?” I whispered. “He’s nothing to you.”

“But he’s everything to you.”

“I won’t let you hurt him.”

“Then all you have to do is sign.” He toasted our
deal
once more. “Come on, Josie. To our business and our future. Drink up.”

Drinking gave me time to think of a plan, but every gulp dizzied me more.

I couldn’t do this.

“No.” I rose to my feet. My legs didn’t want to hold me upright. “You won’t get my shop. You won’t touch Maddox. And I swear to god, I’ll expose you for threatening him and propositioning me.”

“If you leave here tonight without me, he dies.”

“I’ll protect him.”

“Josie—”

I ignored his shout, stumbling from Jackson’s as I fought the wine’s hold and forced step after step towards my shop. The road blurred and shifted. I fell into Sweet Nibbles’ door. It swung wide open.

Unlocked?

Why?

I smelled the smoke, but my body felt too heavy to move. I crashed through the dining area, tripping over a chair. Then another. I blinked, and I was in the kitchen. Couldn’t remember getting there. I turned, and my toe caught on the stair case. I tripped. Hit my head. Or was I already in pain? How did I get upstairs?

The heat surrounded me. I coughed. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t hear anything over the crackling.

The walls groaned and splintered. The stairs creaked. It wasn’t safe.

But his arms grabbed me, held me, and he promised to help.

The world turned to smoke, and I woke in the hospital. Nothing made sense, and no words stuck in my mind. They told me I survived the fire. The shop was destroyed. Granddad was hurt.

The doctors injected me with something that made it even harder to think over the beeping machines and fretting nurses. The fire was only Nolan’s first retaliation. He wouldn’t stop until he destroyed everything I loved.

Maddox wasn’t safe. How could I protect a man everyone feared?

I needed a plan to separate Maddox from Nolan, to prevent Maddox from murdering Nolan before Nolan killed him.

But what could I do while I was trapped in the hospital?

* * *

P
resent Day

“Maddox,
please
listen to me!”

He didn’t, and I deserved the betrayed silence.

He packed his clothing and belongings into a duffle bag. The motel emptied of his things, but Chelsea’s still lined the counter. She left in a hurry when he burst through the door and didn’t even give me a second glance.

But I saw her and her badly blackened eye.

Maddox’s jaw flexed tight. He swallowed a profanity. I wished he’d just curse at me, talk to me.

I wished he’d let me explain.

Maddox was a force of utter destruction to those who challenged him. This time, he aimed that rage at himself. He chugged the half-empty bottle of whiskey from the bathroom counter and threw the bottle once he finished. The glass shattered against the wall. The amber liquid dripped onto the carpet.

“Nolan was going to
kill
you!” I stood in front of the door, slamming it closed when he tried to get past. “You don’t understand. I
had
to do it!”

He grunted, his voice rough with whiskey. “You
had
to frame me for arson?”

“I had no idea they’d convict you. I thought they’d only hold you for a day.”

“For Christ’s sake, Josie. Without your call, they didn’t have enough evidence to hold me for an
hour
.
You
caused this fucking disaster!”

“I was at dinner that night with Nolan. He threatened you. He knew how much you meant to me, and he was using you against me.” Every word clawed from my unwilling chest. “Don’t you see?
He
was the reason I broke up with you a year ago. He made me leave you or he said he’d hurt you. It wasn’t because I stopped loving—”

He sneered, baring his teeth. “Did you think that little of me or that much of him? Why the fuck didn’t you just tell me?”

“Because you would have gone after him. You’d have murdered him first.”

“Damn right.” He swore. “I would have protected you from him.”

“He was serious about it, Maddox.”

The bag dropped at his feet. “So was I! About
everything
! You told me you loved me. You wanted to marry me.”

“I know.”

“You wanted to start a family!”

“I did!”

Maddox dragged a hand through his hair. “But you didn’t trust me enough to tell me I was in danger? That a fucking scrawny ass momma’s boy talked a little tough to you?”

“It’s
Nolan Rhys
. He had the means to hurt you then, and he’s still threatening you now. He’s been controlling me and every decision I’ve made for a year. I couldn’t risk him hurting you!”

“All you had to do was tell me the truth.”

“It wasn’t that simple—”

“You put me in
jail
, Josie!”

“I never thought you’d be put away.”

“Oh, well. I feel much better then.”

“Nolan was going to kill you that night. I couldn’t go to the police and tell them to drag the
mayor
in for questioning. Even before I knew that Chief Craig was—”

“A bastard looking to lock me in chains?”

I couldn’t breathe. He wasn’t listening. He didn’t understand.

I was losing him.

“Nolan couldn’t touch you if you were in jail.”

Maddox’s laugh was hard, humorless. “No.
He
couldn’t. But a lot of other people could.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“You have no idea what you did to me.” He unzipped his jacket, practically tearing the shirt from his abs. He flashed a scar on his side. “That was from the first week at state. It was an orientation of sorts.” He pointed to the second scar, a white, jagged mark on his pec. “I looked at the wrong guys in the cafeteria and got jumped in the yard.”

“I didn’t—”

He held up his left wrist. “This was broken during a fight in the showers.” His scowl grew, dark and menacing. “You don’t want to know what they planned to do…and you sure as hell don’t want to see how bad I bloodied the bastard who tried it.”

My stomach twisted into knots, and that was fine. I no longer had a heart to take up room inside me. “If I knew that would have happened—”

“You didn’t have to know! What you did is unforgivable. You said you
loved
me. You said you wanted to be with me. And fuck…you didn’t even come to see me in prison? Didn’t write? Didn’t
call
? I thought you believed I was guilty—”

“And as long as I stayed away, I could pretend you were guilty. I could do my own investigation unhindered.”

“Bullshit.”

“I wanted to prove Nolan was the arsonist and put him in jail. I was close, Maddox. So close. I know he caused the fire that night—”

“For fuck’s sake, Josie, it wasn’t Nolan!”

I quieted. Maddox looked at me in a way he never had before.

Frustrated. Angry. Like no longer recognized me as the woman he loved.

“Nolan isn’t the arsonist. Your shop was on fire when you got there. He didn’t have time to order anyone to throw a match—much less start an
electrical fire
—before it burned to the ground. He didn’t want the land. He had plans for the
shop
, for that bed-and-breakfast he thought he’d open.” Maddox turned away. “You sacrificed me because you were too hell-bent on revenge.”

“I don’t want revenge.”

“Bullshit. Maybe yours isn’t bloody, but don’t pretend you’re after
justice
. You wanted to humiliate Nolan as badly as I wanted to kill him. That’s the only reason you lied to the police about me, why you got me out of your way—”

“Christ, Maddox. I didn’t
frame
you because you’d ruin my plans. I wasn’t sending you back to jail for
murder
.”

“What’s another twenty years to my sentence? You’d already ruined enough of my life. Why not fuck over the man you love, lose your property, and get tangled in Nolan’s perversions?” He didn’t let me answer. “I’m amazed you think Nolan Rhys is capable of hurting me. Not when you do it so well.”

“I never meant to hurt you.”

“Glad to hear it.” He banged a fist against his chest, over his heart. “Because this feels like shit.”

Everything fell apart, and I had no idea how to stop it. My worst crises came in bags of the wrong brand of flour or when I burned the last of the butter. Losing Maddox was worse than losing the store to the fire, if only because I had no idea how to rebuild a love that precious and rare and
broken.

“I’m trying to fix things,” I said. “That’s the only reason I was with Nolan tonight. I told him I’d sell the property, and I hoped maybe that would satisfy him.”

Maddox shook his head. “You’re not that naïve. Did he ask you to sleep with him?”

“I wasn’t going to do it.”

“Fuck. You never should have been in that position. You shouldn’t have met him at all.”

“I had no other option,” I said. “Granddad is
sick
. He can’t care for himself anymore—he can’t even take his own medications without accidentally hurting himself. Don’t you get it? I’m trying to keep us all alive here, Maddox.”

He didn’t answer. The fight extinguished from him, the fire burned out, starved of any reason to care. A shell remained—cold and hollow.

A shadow.

A fading memory of what we once had together.

“I didn’t have a choice,” I whispered.

He lowered his head. “Well, I’ll make this one easy on you, Sweets. I’m leaving.”

“Please, let’s just talk—”

“I’ve wasted enough time talking, trying to prove I could take care of you…” He swore again, the word torn from his throat. “I never said I was a good man, but I thought I’d pretend for you.”

“Don’t go yet. I can make you understand.”

“Save it.”

“Maddox, I love you.”

His eyes darkened, and I couldn’t stand the way he stared at me.

“Yeah, we all make mistakes. Just so happens, most of mine were made for you.”

The door closed behind him.

I sank onto the bed and clutched my cellphone. The text message came immediately. Nolan must have followed us, watched as my life crumbled and Maddox left me with my regrets.

His text set my teeth on edge.

I hope you said goodbye
.

Goddamn it. This ended now. No more threats. No more warnings. No more buying my body so I could buy my freedom.

Nolan wasn’t hurting either of us anymore.

I opened the app on the main screen, replaying the sound recording I made of Nolan.

“
Like I would trust you around Maddox.”

“You can trust this, Josie. If I wanted Maddox dead, he’d be buried by now.”

“I’m tired of your threats.”

“Meet me at Jackson’s in an hour or it won’t be a threat any longer
.”

My thumb hovered over the
send
button.

Even if Maddox left, I could still protect him from Nolan’s jealousy.

Maybe it was revenge, and maybe it would eventually destroy the little of me that remained, but I wasn’t letting Nolan Rhys control my life any longer.

First, I’d protect us from Nolan.

Then, I’d get the man I loved back because it was never a mistake loving him. It was a mistake to lose him.

I sent the text and recorded clip to Nolan, wrapped in my own dire threat.

Come near us, and I’ll end your campaign, your reputation, and your life. Your move, Mayor
.