Wilde Forever (Wilde Women Book 1) (43 page)

A message? Oh God. How much had she told him? She shut her eyes and swallowed hard. Brynn wasn’t so sure she wanted to hear this message. When her eyes opened she found Jax watching her closely with those hazel eyes that sometimes seemed to look right into her soul. How in the world was she going to explain what was going on?

He reached a single finger out and tapped her slightly on the shoulder then withdrew. “Honey, I told you—relax. Everything’s going to be all right. Trust yourself Brynn.” She nodded and bit the inside of her mouth, a nervous reflex. Not used to being the scene causing type, she had no idea what to say.

Sighing, she murmured, “Tell me.”

He smiled into her eyes. The reassurance felt like a warm blanket on a cold winter evening.

“Her exact words were – tell Brynn her crazy old grandmother loves her a million trillion butterscotch candies.”

It was an old tease—something they’d been saying to each other since Brynn was a little girl. A choked sob shot from her mouth at the loving message Nana gave Jax to share. Tears came from nowhere with one big fat hot drop quickly rolling down her cheek. He reached out a swiped it away with his thumb, then put his fingers under her chin so she had to look straight at him.

“See. I told you. Nothing that can’t be fixed.”

Brynn nodded and almost leapt into his arms in relief. The only thing holding her back was the story forming in her mind that wanted to be told. That needed to be said. No more bullshitting around. She had to speak her truth and let the chips fall where they may.

“I knew from the start that my marriage wasn’t going to last, but I did it anyway.”

He looked surprised at where she started. Clearly a discussion of her ill-fated matrimonial experiment wasn’t what Jax was expecting.

Shrugging, she continued on as scenes from her past played out in her eyes. “In high school, I was the girl who was friends with everyone—the jocks, the dweebs, the stoners, the outcasts. While Rhiann was the cheerleader, I was the captain of the debate team and the student body president.”

He chuckled and gave her a toothy smile that told her he wasn’t in the least surprised. Brynn half-giggled and said, “Shut up.” But she wasn’t annoyed. More amused at how easy it was to open up to this man.

“Don’t get me wrong. I went to my fair share of keggers in the woods. We lived in Happy Valley…” A laugh burst out of him that she immediately shared.

“No really. That’s what the area around State College was called. With my dad working at the university we grew up on the outskirts of a university town. It was a great place to be a kid—right smack dab in the center of the state halfway between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.”

“Understood,” he chuckled. “Born and raised in suburban Virginia. Big dose of southern charm wrapped up in a ball that included the nation’s capitol and just about every good ol’ boy form of outdoor shenanigans a couple of rowdy boys could find.”

“Yeah. That’s the way it was for us girls too and while I went to those keggers, it was always me looking out for everyone else. I’d end up being the Key Master—making sure nobody drove drunk. There’s something to be said for being a good girl,” she smirked. “Only thing was, I didn’t see that being everyone’s friend also had a downside.”

She clutched the pillow tighter and felt warmth moving along her neck that she knew was going to bloom into an embarrassing blush.

“I never went to my prom. Nobody asked me. Never even occurred to me until it was too late that none of the boys saw me that way. I was good Brynn. Funny Brynn. The girl who would help you with your homework and lie like a rug to the assistant principal to keep you from getting into trouble. My friends relied on me but …” She shrugged. What else could she do?

“When it came time for college, my parents encouraged me to live in a dorm so I’d get the whole university experience even though we lived less than a half hour from campus. I think they thought that being around kids my age and all the fuckery that is a normal part of the college experience would loosen me up a bit. I met Roger during my sophomore year at an especially rowdy frat party. He had a head for facts that appealed to my inner nerd and wasn’t all that tough on the eyes. I was flattered at first and saw right away that having a boyfriend upped my social standing in a big way.”

Brynn punched the pillow and fidgeted at the memory. “God, I was so stupid. Roger Ellis was one of those guys who already knew what his path was in life. He was going to run the family business. His upwardly mobile folks expected him to marry well. I think they wanted him to run for the town council where they lived so some wild assed co-ed wasn’t going to fit the mold. He started cheating on me right away. It wasn’t exactly his fault.”

Jax snorted and made an angry face that let her know he didn’t agree with how easily she was letting Roger off the hook.

“Let me explain,” she muttered. “I’ve already said he wasn’t exactly playing from an honest deck and the culture at the time was one of easy hook-ups. I mean, shit—my college roommate’s vagina was like a tollbooth on the Jersey Turnpike, there was so much traffic. And some of the repeaters had easy passes. Roger was a sucker, and I wasn’t exactly a femme fatale in the bedroom.”

“He needs his ass kicked,” Jax mumbled.

“Yeah, well—it is what it is. There were two of us in that relationship, and I was as much to blame as he was. He’d fuck up, and I’d let him make excuses. I knew when we got married that it was a mistake. In a way, I think I was just waiting for him to screw up royally so I wasn’t all that surprised—or hurt—when he did. Somewhere along the line I felt that part of being the good one, the smart one, meant that being married was the way to go but if you look at the way we married…well, the handwriting was on the wall. I had a thousand bulleted items on my list for why a big wedding was stupid—all of them practical with not a whit of romance attached to any of them. Everyone heard the warning bells but me.”

She inched her shoulder closer to the tips of Jax’s fingers, wanting to feel his energy as she relived a dismal time in her life.

“Hindsight is twenty-twenty, y’know? Looking back I can see that we never had a real marriage. Shit. It wasn’t even a partnership. I went about chasing the career I thought everyone expected of me while he lock-stepped perfectly into his family’s vision of how his life should unfold. No need for him to be ambitious. It was all there laid out ready and waiting for him. We were perfect strangers in a marriage of convenience. Finding him ass fucking some local bimbo was almost funny. He ranted and raved about how I was so driven to succeed that I didn’t, and I quote—fulfill my wifely duties. Those wifely expectations were an anathema to me. Being married was one thing. But sharing a bed with him wasn’t even on my ‘to-do’ list.”

“Why are you telling me this Brynn?” Jax asked silkily. He looked relaxed, but she could see anger swirling in his gaze. A man with the moral center that Jax had didn’t make excuses for lowlifes like her ex-husband.

“I don’t know. I suppose I’m trying to explain my rather jaded view of marriage. My parents had such a perfect relationship, but when I looked around at my friends and how our generation went about the whole man woman thing, I didn’t see a snowball’s chance in hell of finding something as special and unique as they had. Most of the people I knew had divorced parents, some with multiple stepparents. I’m not like Rhiann with her strong belief that one day my prince would come. Once the divorce was final, it felt like a huge relief. I’d tried, it didn’t work—end of story. Relationships and romance were for other people not for me.”

Anxiety was bouncing around in her stomach. She hated talking about her mistakes, hated admitting she’d been such an utter failure at anything. This time it was Jax who reached for her shoulder, resting his fingertips on her skin, looking at her with hooded eyes that gave little away. She saw something in his expression but couldn’t quite put her finger on what that was.

“I thought I’d dodged the relationship bullet—the one where your parents and family expect some non-existent happily ever after—until a few weeks ago.”

Brynn fidgeted with the pillow in her arms and shifted her butt on the sofa cushion. How much she should tell him? The answer was painfully obvious. If she hadn’t wanted to confess the whole thing, she wouldn’t have gone down the path of recollection she had.

“Nana Wilde holds the deed on this entire property. Ever since I can remember she’s let me think that I’d inherit it. She and my parents got it into their minds that I couldn’t handle the responsibility of the house, the land, and the business without…well, without a man.” She heard the fierce derision in her voice and tried unsuccessfully to reel it in.

“That’s what we argued about today. She changed the terms of her estate to include a provision that states unless I’m married when she passes, the land and the house will go to my asshole cousin Seth. I get to keep my little business but would be totally under his thumb.”

“I think she knows she went too far.” Jax fed into the ensuing silence.

“Did she tell you that? Do you know about her crazy plan? Oh God. This is so embarrassing.” He rolled a shoulder and focused on where his fingers were lightly stroking her shoulder. When he didn’t look directly at her, she groaned out loud.

“She may have told me a little bit,” he admitted.

Brynn snorted and growled, “Oh I just bet she did. She said all sorts of things about, well…never mind. It doesn’t matter what she said. It just occurred to me that them trying to manipulate my personal life felt like being offered to the highest bidder. I didn’t want to ever get married in the first place. But I did, and it was an epic disaster. What the hell are they thinking?” She was yelling by the end of the tirade.

“I told Nana that she won. When the lease for this place comes up in the next few months, I won’t be renewing. She can give it all to Seth. Showing up here with Roger was no coincidence. Those two always were too close for comfort. I’ve no desire to be humiliated and manipulated by my own family.”

Jax was having a hard time staying calm. And quiet. Hearing Brynn explain away her ex-husband’s tomcat ways made him furious. Fuck. The hook-up culture was a way of life, but it wasn’t an excuse for wagging your dick at every available pussy that walked by. The little douchebag had disrespected her in the worst way possible and then tried to blame her for his behavior. One part of him was glad the dumb shit had lost her but another part wanted to do the fucker serious bodily harm.

“Your grandmother said you considered taking on a beard just to thwart her plans.”

Brynn’s eyes flashed and caught his. “She told you that?
Christ
.”

“Did you say that Brynn? Had you thought of contracting a husband?” He was having a hard time not exploding.

“Kobayashi Maru,” she muttered.

Holy fuck
. Just like that all his anger receded. Laughing wasn’t an option but that was how he felt. Jesus. She was his very own James T. Kirk, only a female version. Change the rules of the game to win? Yep. That was his Brynn. Failure was not an option. Yet, even so—in a moment of anger she’d thrown in the towel. That didn’t seem like her at all. Had his sudden and unexpected appearance in her life shaken her that much? He suspected the answer was a resounding yes.

“What are you thinking?” she asked in a small voice that astonished him. So, his little spitfire wasn’t all that sure of herself. Interesting.

“What am I thinking?” he said back to her. “In all honesty babe, what I’m thinking is I wish we’d met two months ago. I’ve learned the hard way that regrets and wishing things were different only leads to bigger problems, but even so, in this situation I can’t help it.”

“Nothing would be different,” she smirked.

He grinned at her cheeky response. She was referring to how quickly they lost their clothes once they
had
met. Considering the strength of the lightning bolt of white-hot lust that hit him the moment she opened her mouth to speak, he couldn’t disagree.

“No. You’re right but that wasn’t what I was referring to.”

She looked at him puzzled, so he stopped fingering her shoulder and laid his big palm on the side of her neck. To him the gesture was possessive and reassuring at the same time. He hoped she read it that way.

“I just mean that if we’d met two months ago, before you had all this shit hanging over your head, I’d have a better chance of you believing me when I tell you that I’d marry you in a New York minute.”

There. He’d said it. The countdown to her inevitable knee jerk explosive reaction had begun. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six…

She was nothing if not totally predictable. “Oh fuck. Look! You do
not
want a piece of this. For real. I don’t know why you’d even suggest it.”

The expression of undiluted panic on her face wasn’t any different from what he expected. Jumping up from the sofa she started to retreat, her feet hammering on the hardwood floor. Jax sighed.

She didn’t exactly run. It was more like power walking with precise deliberation. Watching the back of her move away from him when they were at such a critical moment drove home at least a dozen points. The demons in her past had left damage. But all that shit also made her stronger and wiser in ways he was saddened to realize that she didn’t see. It only made him want her more.

“That’s not how this is going to go,” he called after her. “You don’t get to run, Brynn. Come back and face me.”

There was a moment in almost every cartoon when the animators drew a character’s feet hastily running, doddering slightly, almost tangling, until the retreat slowed and came to a halt. Miraculously, that was exactly what happened here. She stumbled so slightly he might have missed it if he wasn’t watching her with such intensity.

Turning on him with flashing eyes, he watched her mind search for a response. “I don’t want to talk about his,” she snapped. When she crossed her arms defensively across her chest but didn’t keep moving away, he knew he had her. That didn’t mean, however, that she was going to come back and be docile or meek. No. Not his Brynn. There were still a few more caustic, foolish remarks she’d feel compelled to get in. He wasn’t wrong.