The Pursuit of Jesse

Missy looked reluctant to let the topic of a possible Sarah-wedding go, but she did. “I’ve been dying for Dee Dee’s cranberry almond salad with tofu crumbles. So I brought you her Caribbean chicken.”

Missy was the island’s only resident vegetarian, and she’d started off a bit of a health kick for Sarah. “Yum,” Sarah murmured. “Sandwich or salad?”

“Salad, of course.”

“That’s going to hit the spot.” The mango, black beans and jicama mixture over a bed of mixed greens sounded wonderful. “I just need to finish this arrangement before I eat, but you go ahead.”

Missy took off her coat, unwrapped the colorful scarf around her neck and hung them both over the back of her chair. “You coming to yoga tonight?”

Missy taught twice-a-week classes up at the community center. Sarah tried to make it as often as she could, but she never seemed to have enough time in the week for consistent workouts.

“I think I can come after I get Brian to basketball practice. You might have to start without me.”

“We can wait. I don’t think anyone will mind. Oh, that reminds me. Did you hear the latest?” Her voice took on a conspiratorial tone. “Sherri cut my hair this morning and she said Garrett Taylor’s brother moved to the island. She was in the Rusty Nail a couple nights ago and out of the blue this guy she’d never seen came walking in from a virtual blizzard. She said they talked and danced…”

Just talked and danced? That’d be the day.

“…said something about a quick trip to the bathroom…”

There you have it.

“…and all she knew was his first name. She didn’t find out he was Garrett’s brother until the next day when Crystal Stotz came in for a color. His name’s Jesse. The baby in the family, and Sherri says he’s as different from Garrett as curly from straight.”

She had that right.

“She said he’s going to be here for a while.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Missy’s eyes widened. “You knew about this and you didn’t tell me?”

“There’s nothing to tell. Garrett can’t do the work on my house, so Jesse’s taking care of it.”

“You don’t sound happy about the situation.”

Sarah shrugged.

“Has he started working on your house yet?”

“Apparently.”

“Is he not doing a good job?”

“I’ve gone up there a couple times.” After their run-in the other day, she’d done her best to go to the house only when she knew he was gone. She wasn’t sure she could handle again the way he looked at her, as if he knew his touch would very likely set her skin on fire. The way he called her boss, as if she was no such thing, as if with a flick of a wrist he could get her to do his bidding. “The job seems to be getting done in a…competent manner.”

The fact was she’d been surprised by how good a job he was doing, and had been hard-pressed to come up with improvements. Still, she’d wanted him to know she was keeping a close eye on him, so she’d—basically—manufactured things for him to do in the notes she’d left for him.

“Buuuuut?” Missy said, pressing for more.

“I just…I don’t like him,” she said decisively.

Missy raised her eyebrows.

Sarah held stubbornly silent. Although they’d moved to Mirabelle within a few months of each other and had been best friends since, there were things about Sarah’s past she hadn’t shared with Missy. Sarah had wanted to start fresh here on Mirabelle. As time had gone on, it’d gotten easier to let the past lie.

“What’s this all about?” Missy said softly.

“Let’s just say that you’re not the only one with a past you’re not too proud of and leave it at that.”

“Tough to argue with that.”

Missy’s skeletons had rattled their bones in an effort to come out of the closet late one evening last summer when her presumed-dead husband, Jonas Abel, had shown up on her doorstep. It wasn’t long after that Missy had felt compelled to share everything with Sarah, even the fact that she’d come from an extremely wealthy family. Sarah had been angry at first, but their friendship had been too important to toss aside.

“Does this have anything to do with Brian’s dad?” Missy asked.

It had everything to do with him. Everything. Avoiding Missy’s gaze by fussing instead with the flower arrangement, she pulled out one stem after another only to replace each one in the same spot.

Jesse’s smirk. His deep voice. His laugh. The look in his eyes that made her skin flare with heat. How could she explain that Jesse reminded her a little of every man she’d ever dated before coming to Mirabelle, of the recklessness with which she’d once lived?

“Sarah, you’re my best friend.” Missy touched her hand. “There can’t possibly be anything in your past that will change our relationship today.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that.” If Missy knew the whole truth then she would never look at Sarah the same way again. In the back of her mind, it would be there. Always.

“If it’s something you did, didn’t do, I don’t care. You forgave me, didn’t you?”

Not the same thing. All Missy had been hiding is that she’d once been listed as one of the richest kids in America.

“You’re not giving me much credit,” Missy said.

Maybe she could share part of the truth. Only part. “It’s a long story, Missy.” She stuck one last iris stalk into the vase and called it a day. She could mess with this arrangement forever and it would never be perfect. “You sure you want to hear?”

“Come on, Sarah.” Missy smiled gently. “Tell me what’s going on with you.”

CHAPTER SIX

SARAH PUT THE ARRANGEMENT in the cooler and then turned. This was it. Time to get this off her chest—at least some of it—once and for all. “You knew I grew up in Indiana,” she said, leaning back against the wall and letting her thoughts wander back in time, an indulgence she rarely allowed herself. “But I’ve never told you much about my childhood. My family.”

“No,” Missy murmured.

“Well, as wealthy as your family was? Is, I should say. Mine was on the other end of the spectrum.”

“I’ve met your mom and dad,” Missy said, confusion on her face. “They seemed…middle-class.”

“You met my stepdad,” Sarah said. A few years back, when Brian was too small to take care of himself, her mom and stepdad had driven to Mirabelle to help with Brian during a particularly busy wedding season. “My real dad died when I was ten.”

“I’m sorry, Sarah. I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay.” It really wasn’t, but maybe talking about him might help. Sarah’s real father had been the only bright spot in an otherwise dreary childhood, and she still missed him with a vengeance. “Before my dad died, we were dirt-poor.”

“That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“It’s nothing I’m proud of, that’s for sure. Maybe if my parents had only had a couple children things might’ve been different, but I’m smack-dab in the middle of seven kids. They could never afford a house, so all of us were crammed into a second-floor apartment, above a drugstore.

“My dad worked at an orchard. Long, back-breaking hours during certain times of the year. We hardly ever saw him at harvest time, but in the winter he made up for it with all of us. Work hard and play harder. That’s what he’d say.”

She smiled, remembering. She had only a few pictures of her dad, but in every one of them he was smiling or laughing. “He was always happy. I don’t think I ever saw him angry. At us kids. Or my mom. God, he and Mom were so much in love. He could make her laugh like no one else.

“I remember them talking quietly about buying a house. My dad wanted to start his own apple orchard, and my mom used to say that a house was the key to happiness.” Sarah looked away. “She also used to say, after he died, that he was all talk and no action.”

“Oh, Sarah.” Missy reached out and briefly squeezed her hand. “How did he die?”

“He got sick. Had a low fever. Didn’t seem to be a big deal.” She paused, not wanting to remember anything more than that. The rest was too painful. “A few days into it, he got really bad, but we couldn’t afford a doctor. By the time my mom realized how sick he was, it was too late. He died of complications from pneumonia. How stupid is that? All because we didn’t have enough money to pay for a doctor.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I was devastated. Heartbroken. We all were. My mom didn’t come out of her bedroom for days. Not long after that, we moved back to my mom’s hometown to be by my grandparents and she met my stepdad. He was an okay guy. Quiet and dependable. Nice enough—a banker—but boring, especially when compared to my dad. I understand now why she married him, but at the time I couldn’t forgive her.”

“For marrying again?”

“For betraying my father. More than that, for, I guess, settling. It wasn’t long before I started to feel…almost…claustrophobic. I couldn’t wait to get away from Indiana.”

“So you left,” Missy said.

Sarah nodded. “Right after high-school graduation, I went to Miami. When I got there, I felt shell-shocked. I’d been so sheltered.”

“A good girl in a big, tough city,” Missy murmured.

“I did okay at first. Picked up a lot. Fast. I got a job within the first week working for a well-known wedding planner. Her clients were only the richest and the most famous.”

Having grown up as a Camden, one of the wealthiest families this country had ever known, Missy had probably run in the same crowd until she’d turned her back on her family and tried for her own fresh start.

“I wasn’t as strong as you were, Missy. Before I knew it, I’d fallen in with a crowd that loved to party. Damn, I met some men who knew how to have a good time. But then, I guess, so did I.” She glanced at her friend, hoping to gauge her reaction. Instead of judgment, there was only compassion and understanding. Still, she knew she couldn’t share everything.

It’d been a long time since she’d let herself even think about the past, let alone talk about it, but as she relayed her story to Missy, it hit Sarah. She was lucky to be alive. “I did a lot of crazy things back then, you know?”

“Didn’t we all?”

There was no way Missy had stepped out like Sarah, and Sarah’s brief step out of line had been the biggest mistake of her life. “That’s when I met Brian’s dad.” Along with a few other bad boys she hadn’t been able to resist.

“You told me he died. I figured the rest would come when you were ready.” Missy frowned. “He is dead, isn’t he?”

“Yes.” Sarah chuckled. “This is one man who won’t be coming back from the grave. Good riddance to him, too.”

“That bad?”

“Robert Coleman, Jr. Name ring a bell?”

“Coleman and Coleman Enterprises?” Missy asked.

Sarah nodded.

“That company’s the largest health and beauty manufacturer in the world,” Missy went on. “That’s a lot of money. And power. How did you meet him?”

“At a nightclub. I was out partying with girlfriends when he and a couple other guys asked us to dance. Before you know it, we were all heading to Bobby’s yacht. Turned out I was a real sucker for a man’s smile. His was something. The kind that could charm a rosebud into blooming. Or a woman into bed. It wasn’t long before Bobby singled me out. One thing was for sure, that man knew how to have a good time.”

“When you have that kind of money, it’s one temptation after another.”

“For him or me?” Sarah shook her head and decided it was best to leave out a piece of the next part of her story. Just one small detail. “Then I got pregnant.” She held Missy’s gaze. “Overnight everything changed. Bobby mostly cleaned up his act and asked me to marry him. I agreed.”

Missy’s eyes misted with tears. “You loved him.”

“I suppose, in a way. There must’ve been a part of me that knew it wasn’t going to work because I set the wedding date for after the baby’s due date.”

More likely a part of her had known what she was doing had been wrong. She’d justified it by saying Bobby was cleaning up his act, but that had been no excuse.

“The wedding plans zipped along. Bobby and his mom pulled out all the stops and I fell deep into the quicksand, getting caught up in all the excitement. Saffron flowers and orchid bouquets. A handmade wedding gown. Over seven hundred guests at his mother’s estate in Miami Beach for a sit-down dinner.”

“Then Bobby screwed up.”

“Yeah. He completely disappeared for a few days. When he came back, he was like a little boy he was so sorry. Went straight again. Promised me the world. I believed him. That happened at least three times before Brian was born.

“He was out partying when I went into labor. Bobby showed up at the hospital the next day, all smiles and apologies, but looking like death warmed over. Still, I didn’t call off the wedding. I kept thinking that being a father would change things. It didn’t. I couldn’t even trust him to babysit.”

“So what happened?”

“A month before the wedding, he went off the deep end. Got busted with so much cocaine and heroin he could’ve supplied a small army for a few months. That’s when his mom entered the picture in a big way.”

“Trish Coleman?” Missy asked. “One of Fortune 500’s most powerful women?”

“That’s her.” Sarah nodded. “Since I’d signed a prenup, she’d been cordial throughout the engagement and Brian’s birth. But when they charged Bobby, she went on the warpath. When she couldn’t get the police to drop the charges, she turned on me. Blamed me for what happened. Said that if I hadn’t gotten pregnant, Bobby would’ve been fine. That the pressure of being a father was too much for him.”

“So it was all your fault.”

“Basically. She said I’d been a bad influence and hired a private investigator to dig up anything he could on me. And, trust me.” Shame swept through Sarah as she glanced at Missy. “He found plenty.”

“Did she threaten to take Brian away from you?”

“Not right away,” Sarah whispered.

“Was Bobby in jail yet?”

“No. He was out on bail.”

“He did nothing to stop his mom?”

“Worse than nothing. He told me she didn’t matter. He told me that the possibility of going to jail had scared the hell out of him. He promised he’d straighten out. He promised he’d be there for me and Brian. He promised everything I needed to hear. And I believed him.”

It was his damned smile.

“I always knew you were a softy at heart,” Missy said.

Sarah sighed. “He went to jail, but Trish got him out on probation. He spent one night with me and then took off with friends. They found him dead a day later in the back room of some club. Heroin overdose.”

“I’m sorry, Sarah.”

“Probably the best thing for everyone.”

“Did Bobby’s mom sue for custody of Brian?”

Sarah looked away. “Yeah. She did.”

“But you won.”

She nodded. “That’s when I moved back to Indiana.” In truth, she’d gone back to her mom and stepdad’s house defeated, her tail between her legs, and stayed there for years. Until she’d drummed up enough courage to strike out on her own again with Brian and move to Mirabelle.

“I don’t blame you for not wanting to talk about this.” Missy reached out and rubbed Sarah’s arm. “I would’ve closed the book on that chapter in my life, too.”

“Would’ve been nice if that chapter had never been written in the first place.”

“I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss what happened.” Missy smiled, her own experiences lending a quiet wisdom to her gaze. “It’s what’s gotten you to where you are today.”

In fact, she almost hadn’t lived through that time in her life. “Brian and I coming here for a long weekend is what got me to where I am today.”

That summer five years ago, she’d known almost upon stepping off the ferry that this was where she and Brian needed to live. Mirabelle had been the answer to getting out on her own for which she’d been looking. She’d been living—hiding—at her parents’ home long enough. It’d been long past time to strike out on her own again, and Mirabelle felt better than home.

“So much for my walk on the wild side,” Sarah said, smiling.

“So I take it Garrett’s brother reminds you all too much of Bobby?”

“They have the same smile.” Sarah swallowed, remembering Jesse’s face, the curve of his lips.

“The one that could charm a rosebud into blooming?”

Sarah laughed. “Exactly.”

“You’re attracted to him.”

“I didn’t say that.”

Missy raised her eyebrows. “Is that so bad?”

Just looking at him brought back every one of those good-timing men Sarah had lost herself in. There was no way she was going down that path again. “It is when it’s coupled with jail time.”

“Garrett’s brother went to jail? What did he do?”

“I don’t know. Garrett’s leaving it to his brother to tell people, and when I asked Jesse, he refused to enlighten me.”

“Sarah, you know Garrett wouldn’t let anyone dangerous work with you on your house. Jesse must have his own reasons for keeping his past to himself. It’s hard to say what those reasons might be, but I’m sure they’re good ones.”

That was Missy. Always ready to give people the benefit of the doubt. Well, that wasn’t Sarah’s way. “That all depends on what Jesse did to land himself in prison, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose,” Missy said. “But if you were immune to Jesse as a man that wouldn’t be a problem, would it?”

But she wasn’t immune. Not even close. One walk on the wild side had almost ruined her life. What kind of damage could a second one do?

THE PHOTOGRAPHS WERE ALWAYS the WORST, the hardest to look at on the entire website. Family positioned around Hank Bowman’s hospital bed. Hank forcing out a smile for the camera. His wife holding his hand. His mother looking at him, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

Sitting on the bed with Garrett’s laptop in front of him, Jesse made himself face the images head-on. He forced himself to flip through every single photo and every single journal entry that had been loaded onto the website Hank’s sister had set up for their family and friends to keep track of Hank’s recovery.

Hank had spent not only his birthday in the hospital, but also that first Christmas and New Year’s after the accident—assault was more like it. He’d had to go back into the hospital several times over the course of the next couple of years for more surgeries. In every single one of the pictures Hank looked pale and bruised, thin and sickly.

Over the past four years, more than three thousand messages from friends and family expressing their best wishes for Hank’s recovery had accumulated and Jesse had read every single one of them at least once. Had even memorized a few.

There were also newspaper articles about the trial, or lack thereof. There was even a picture of Jesse handcuffed and coming out of the county jail. Family members expressed not only their disdain but also outright hostility toward Jesse. He didn’t blame them in the slightest.

There was only one bright spot in Hank’s entire ordeal. Hank had started a new career as a motivational speaker and already had released two successful self-help-type books. As far as Jesse was concerned the use of a man’s legs was too high a price to pay for financial success.

Finally, Jesse closed down the laptop and stood, knowing he wouldn’t be able to sleep for a while yet. His throat dry from the winter air, he headed toward the kitchen. The moment the voices registered, quiet and intimate, he stopped and backed up.

“Come here,” Garrett whispered.

“Is that an order, Chief Taylor?”

“Damn right it is.”

So much for a glass of water. Jesse went to his bedroom and plopped down on the bed. Now they were moving around upstairs. One person went into the master bathroom. Then another. Then the sounds of water running. A shower. Together.

The more Jesse tried not to listen, the more his ears trained to the sounds. Footsteps across the floor. More footsteps in chase. Quiet laughter. Jesse laid on his back in bed, his eyes wide-open, sleep nothing but a pipe dream. He glanced at the clock. Past midnight. He had to get out of this place, but where the hell could he go?

More laughter.

That was it. He couldn’t stand another second of it. Pulling a sleeping bag and pad out of the closet in his room, he packed a bag with a few things and quietly walked outside.

Sarah’s house was empty. Hell, he spent most of the day there as it was. What difference would seven or eight more hours make whenever Erica and Garrett got a little too frisky upstairs? It’s not as if he’d make a regular habit out of sleeping at Sarah’s, so she’d never have to know.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“BRIAN, GO GET ME a Philips screwdriver.”

Seemed as if no matter what Jesse said or did, the two boys stopped by here almost every day after school. He’d finally decided that if he was going to be stuck with them, he might as well make the most of it. Today Brian had come alone. Apparently, Zach had too much homework and would be by later.

Brian came back with the wrong type of tool.

“That’s what you call a standard screwdriver. See the flat head?” Jesse straightened and headed from the bathroom into the hall. “Come on. Let’s go have a lesson on tools, so you know what’s what.”

The boy followed him out into the main living area. One by one, he explained the name of every single tool Garrett had let him leave at Sarah’s house and how they were used. Then he explained the difference between the various type of screws and nails. “If you use too small of a screwdriver, you’ll strip the head off a screw.”

“What does that mean?”

“See these grooves?” Jesse pointed. “You’ll tear them right up if your tool doesn’t fit properly.”

“You know a lot about construction,” Brian said. “How did you learn all this stuff?”

“My dad.”

“You’re lucky. I wish I had a dad to teach me things.”

Jesse snorted. “You probably wouldn’t be saying that if you’d known my dad.”

“Why?”

“He wasn’t very nice. If any one of us four boys stepped out of line even the slightest, he’d whack us. He threw a shovel at me once and hit me in the back of the head just because I wasn’t moving fast enough after he’d told me to go get a hammer.”

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