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He shifted against the desk, recrossing his arms. “About two weeks,” he admitted after a round of jaw flexing.
“Yeah...” She pursed her lips and found to her annoyance that his eyes latched instantly to them. He was such a man. “Did you expect me to sit there and wait for you to decide...whatever?”
“I didn’t think you’d just disappear from school, just like that,” Carter said, a touch of...something in his voice. “And then I couldn’t find you.”
Just how well did you look? But she wasn’t getting into that game with him. After he disappeared, she’d taken it stupidly hard, running back to her parents and seeking a shelter with them that she’d absolutely not found. It hadn’t been a game of hide and come seek. She’d been deadly serious and thought she’d left everything to do with Carter far behind her. Except for that one important thing.
And now he was here. They were here together, dancing around something that was dead and should’ve been long buried.
Jade needed it to be in the ground. Maybe then, it wouldn’t hurt so much.
“There was no reason to find me, Carter. That afternoon, I was stupid. I was just shocked I read Hudson wrong, that’s all. I didn’t know he and I were in an open relationship. Believe me, after I walked in on him and my replacement, I knew.”
Jade hadn’t always had a boyfriend in college. She’d gotten there single and naive and fallen immediately in love with Carter. But after nearly two years of pining after him, she agreed to be Hudson’s girlfriend.
Worst. Decision. Ever.
That disaster lasted until their senior year when Hudson cheated on her, using the excuse that Jade never put out so he’d needed to get his sex fix from somewhere else.
“You knew, huh? What exactly did you know?” Carter adjusted his stance against the desk. A tall mountain of a man with blazing brown eyes. Watching her.
“I knew I was better off with my boyfriend. Yeah, he was with another girl, but I was just angry. I was jealous. I wanted to get back at him and show him I could have some fun somewhere else too.”
“Somewhere else?” His look sharpened.
God, she wished she knew what he was thinking. But that transparent boy had vanished out of her life ten years ago never to be seen again.
“Yes. Somewhere else. I’m sorry I made it seem like more than what it was. I just wanted to see how different it could be with another guy. You were protective and it felt good to touch somebody who was...” Tender. Always good to me. “...just different in bed.”
Part of that was true, at least. Carter had been tender with her that afternoon in his sun-drenched dorm room. He’d kissed the tears from her face, licked her all over and touched every part of her that could give pleasure.
He’d been nothing like Hudson. Carter had gotten much further with his gentle touches and kisses than Hudson ever got with his threats of telling everyone how frigid she was. In the end, though, Carter had been just as bad. Worse.
That day, she’d been furious with her cheating boyfriend, and miserable. She only wanted comfort from Carter, the one person who showed her consistent kindness and understanding. But he used her body and discarded her, left her feeling worse than when she’d walked into his room.
Jade would never let him know that, though.
“I was just using you, Carter,” she snapped, finally stating it bluntly since he didn’t seem to get it when she used nicer words. “I just wanted a different man in bed for a change. Don’t think if you’d come back any sooner there could’ve been anything between us.”
Anticipating an angry reaction, maybe even something physical, Jade clenched her teeth and braced herself, hands curling around the edge of the couch.
But Carter only gave her that same devouring stare. His expression gave nothing away.
What the hell was she even doing?
This was stupid, trying to get a rise out of him. And why?
Jade sighed and trailed fingers through her low-cut hair. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. All that is in the past and we’re working together now so that’s that.”
“What if I don’t want that to be it?”
“I don’t care what you want,” Jade said.
Growling low in his throat, he pushed himself off the desk and moved toward her, but before he could reach where she sat, Jade jumped up from the sofa and grabbed her briefcase. Finally, a reaction out of him. But maybe not something she was ready for.
Carter slid himself between her and the door, a halfway-there obstacle to her freedom. “Wait,” he said.
“No. I did that when I was a dumb kid but that’s not my style anymore.”
His Adam’s apple slid up and down as he swallowed. “How long did you wait for me?”
An emotion moved across his face. Hope? Whatever it was looked out of place. This placid and nearly emotionless version of him would take some getting used to. At least until it was time for her to finish up in Miami and leave again.
If the handle of her briefcase were a neck, she would’ve strangled it by now. Why were they even talking about this? Yes, she was still mad, but it was nothing a strong glass of whiskey and another ten years couldn’t cure.
Jade released a slow breath. “You know what? It doesn’t matter.”
Suddenly feeling hollowed out, she twisted away from his infuriatingly calm face and headed for the door. She couldn’t look at him another second.
“Where are you going?” he called after her. “We still have to talk.” Carter hesitated. “About your work with the Diallo Corporation.”
“We don’t have anything else to talk about. Your troublemaking brother and I, though, he and I need to have a conversation sometime soon. Preferably in the next one to two days.” She gripped the door handle and wrenched it open. “Now, if you have nothing else to say, I’m going to go earn the ridiculous amount of money your company is paying mine.”
Without looking back, she walked out. The secretary didn’t look up from her computer when Jade walked past, the height of professionalism. How many pissed-off women had she seen walking out of Carter’s office over the years?
Not that it mattered to her. None of it did.
She just had to do this job then get the hell out of Miami and back to San Diego where she belonged.
Carter Diallo was a heartbreaker. He’d pummeled hers to bits before and she didn’t have a spare to offer him for a repeat performance. No matter how good he looked in a suit.
Chapter 3
Someone once told Jade she wasn’t the forgiving type.
It wasn’t true. She forgave plenty.
She just never forgot or gave people the chance to screw her over again.
Jade didn’t want to be that person, but she could only be who her parents raised her to be.
With her head swimming from their conversation, she left Carter’s office. Her exact destination was unclear as hell, but who needed a destination when getting out of his presence had been the only priority?
In the Diallo Corporation parking lot, she climbed into the silver Aston Martin Vanquish she’d had shipped ahead from San Diego so she could drive it while in Miami. It was an expense. Too much, really. But her parents had raised her to be cheap and thrifty and now, these days, she wanted to throw all of that away. So the Aston Martin it was.
Sleek, seductive and sexy. Basically, the car was everything she wished she was.
And it was what she’d felt like in Carter’s arms the one time they’d been in bed together. Despite the tears and her anger at Hudson, that afternoon with Carter had been a revelation. For once, she’d allowed herself to...just be. No fears, no expectations, simply pleasure and a heart-opening recklessness.
She’d never felt that way with anyone again.
Jade breathed in a deep lungful of the Miami autumn air and started the car. The Vanquish came to life with a sensual growl she could never get enough of.
“Hey!”
She nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw a girl standing next to the car. The girl had appeared there like a ghost. Skinny and big-eyed, waiting there in cutoff shorts and an electric-blue tube top that showed off more slender limbs, daggers masquerading as collarbones, a fierce look in her wide brown eyes.
“Can I get a ride?”
“What?” Jade didn’t know this girl from Eve, and there was no way she was going to let a scrawny stranger into her car. She could be a crackhead for all Jade knew.
“No. Not from me,” Jade said with a shake of her head.
“Hey, whatever happened to the kindness of strangers?”
If she didn’t know better, she could swear the girl was making fun of her.
“This is the big city, stranger. And this is the year two thousand and whatever.” Jade waved off the actual year as unimportant. “No one is kind for free.”
“So what are you gonna charge me? I need a ride.”
You have to be kidding me. This girl had to be crazy.
Or maybe you’re the crazy one, still parked and talking to this girl when you could’ve easily pulled off and left her in a cloud of dust.
The voice inside her head could be a bitch sometimes.
But she was still vibrating from the conversation with Carter. Willing herself to think about business, and nothing else. Certainly not about the way his dark and spicy cologne had smelled good enough to lick. And the way it made her remember...everything.
Jade didn’t want to face herself yet. And that self was the only thing waiting for her back in her hotel room, or even back with her parents’ lawyer.
Jade reached over and opened the passenger-side door. “Where do you want to go?”
The girl threw her a grin and slid into the car, long bare legs flashing in her high-waisted denim shorts, red Converse sneakers the same bright shade as her lipstick.
“Wherever you’re heading is good,” the girl said. She looked around the car and gave an impressed whistle. “This is a sweet ride.”
“I thought you said you need a ride somewhere.”
“I do. Just out of here. Where you’re going is good. As long as I don’t have to be here.”
Jade should’ve kicked her out of the car then. But the careless way the way the girl spoke, like she didn’t really care where they went and just wanted an escape, spoke to exactly what she was feeling.
She put the car in gear and took off.
The girl giggled and threw her head back in the seat. “This is some monster you got. I bet you get in trouble speeding all the time.”
I wish. The truth is nothing so interesting.
“Not really. I brought it with me here from San Diego but I probably won’t drive it much.”
“What do you mean? Miami is Flashy-car Town, USA. We probably passed a couple of million-dollar rides pulling out of the building.”
The building’s parking garage hadn’t been all that impressive when Jade arrived. All she’d wanted to do aside from make sure no one hit her baby, was to get into the building and get the job done. Now she was too keyed up to notice more than this random girl begging a ride.
“You know you shouldn’t jump in strangers’ cars like this. You never know where they’ll take you.”
“I can take care of myself,” the girl said, settling more comfortably into the black leather seat. She pulled a pair of sunglasses from on top of her head and slid them over her eyes. “The last thing you’d ever have to worry about is me,” she said with a quick sideways grin.
Something about that smile and arrogant tilt of her nose struck Jade as familiar, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
“Where are we going, anyway?” the girl asked.
Really, what the hell was she doing hitching a ride in the parking lot of Diallo Corporation? Had she just wandered off the main road and decided to check it out? There were definitely more interesting places out there. This was Miami after all.
Jade flicked on her turn signal and changed lanes close to a slow-moving black Mercedes. “I’m driving to a place up north, near Boca Raton.”
The declaration jumped from her lips, unsummoned.
Okay. I guess we’re going to my parents’ house.
She’d told Carter she needed to work on his PR crisis but truthfully, she needed to get up to her parents’ house and take a look at it. She’d been putting it off for far too long. Three days in Miami and all she’d seen were the inside of the lawyer’s office, her hotel room and the car.
Looking at the house and deciding what to do with her parents’ things was the reason she was here. Being a coward usually wasn’t her way. But she was breaking a lot of new ground this week.
She cringed, remembering how she’d practically run out of Carter’s office with her tail between her legs.
“Boca...” The girl leaned over to mess with the dual temperature control. Cool air gushed from the vents on her side. “Where the old folks are, huh? Thinking of buying a place up there?”
God, that sounded like a nightmare.
“No, not really,” Jade muttered, barely resisting a shudder of distaste.
“Good.” The girl fiddled with the radio, scrolled through a few stations before plucking her phone from her back pocket and pairing it with the car’s Bluetooth. “If I ever bought a place, I’d stick to Miami. It’s pretty boring up there.”
If she ever bought a place... Jade eyed the girl. Nothing about her stuck out as particularly poor. The little cloth fanny pack around her waist looked like any you could pick up for a couple of dollars at the fair, her Chucks were clean and seemed relatively new, and the rest of her was clean too. She smelled like fresh oranges.
“My parents lived up there,” Jade finally said after giving up on guessing what was up with the girl.
“That sounds about right. What, they realized they’d die of boredom if they stayed up there?”
“No, they just died.”
She felt the girl’s eyes on her, like she was checking to see if Jade was lying. “That’s rough,” she finally said. “Sorry.”
Jade was still trying to figure out if she was sorry. “It’s fine. We weren’t close.”
“Seriously? I can’t imagine not being close to my family. Even when they’re being asses.”
“That’s good. It means you love them.”
“Yeah, I do...” She turned a brilliant smile to Jade then leaned back in her seat, tapping her feet to the music, sexy and hard-driving reggaeton Jade had never heard in her life. The woman on the track rapped about a man who’d done her wrong on the dance floor. And she planned on doing the same to him. Repeatedly. The song sounded good though, so she didn’t complain.
The girl chattered on about the specs of the car, obviously excited. All these things Jade knew about it; after all, those were the reasons she bought the car in the first place. “And it must be custom. I’ve never seen one like this at the car shows.” She touched the buttons and the gleaming surfaces, clearly appreciative, but not at all covetous. It was interesting to watch. Refreshing.
Then she took a series of selfies with the car’s controls in the background.
“So,” the girl said when she’d finished her photo shoot. Her impish smile showed itself again along with the ultrasharp-looking canines that made her look both wild and oddly childlike. “My name is Dee, what’s yours?”
Names. Right. Asking the young stranger’s name probably would’ve been the sensible thing to do before she even got into the car.
Jade tilted a look at the girl but kept an eye on the road. Dee, huh?
She was tempted to tell her J and see what the girl would make of it, getting a fake name in exchange for a fake name. Whatever her name was, that was a crap attempt at subterfuge. Why, though? It wasn’t like Jade was interested enough in the girl to try to find out her real name. No reason at all to do that. Although young, she seemed over eighteen. If she had parents that she had run away from, the girl had her reasons. Although from what she’d said earlier, her family meant the world to her.
“My name’s Jade.”
The girl cracked a laugh. “Was your mom a fan of China or something?”
Jade shrugged. “No. That was the name my father’s favorite girlfriend went by.” Probably wasn’t even her real name.
Dee stared at her, wide-eyed. “For real?”
Jade shrugged again. It was one of those things she’d grown up knowing, something her mother had thrown at her father during one of their arguments that Jade never forgot. She didn’t even know if they’d been aware she was there, twelve years old and shocked.
Not just that her parents were having an argument—one of the two she remembered—but that her mother had allowed it. Hearing that revelation, she realized then at twelve why her mother very rarely called her by her name. It was “honey” or “sweetie” or something along those lines. Only when her mother was mad did she become “Jade.”
“It’s just life,” she said to Dee. “Some facts are pretty, some aren’t.”
“God... I’m sticking my foot real deep in it every five seconds with you.” Dee slumped back in the seat, the corners of her lips drooping down. She stopped tapping her feet to the music. “Damn.”
Jade’s mouth twitched and she clenched her hand on the gearshift to stop herself from patting the girl in reassurance. It was her tragedy after all, not Dee’s.
The silence from anything but the music felt almost oppressive and Jade bit her lip to stop herself from filling it with her own pointless rambling. This was what waited for her in her hotel room. This and the trying to forget.
But was going to her parents’ house any better?
The side street to her hotel was coming up fast. She eyed it, then watched it pass by. The car rumbled as she shifted and passed a pair of white Priuses in a blur. She needed to get off the major streets. The fastest way to get a cop on her butt was to speed around here. She raced toward the highway, up the on-ramp and darted into the car pool lane, flying fast.
“Cool! This car can really take off!” Dee giggled, her good mood returning with the car’s speed.
Who the hell was this girl?
Hell, who was Jade in this moment?
This woman who ran from her problems wasn’t the real her. Ever since her parents left her to fend for herself, she’d faced everything head-on, convinced that nothing but more pain lay the way of postponing the inevitable.
So far, the only thing she’d been wrong about was the direction of the pain. It wasn’t a single arrow shooting into you once your feet turned in the wrong direction. Instead, it was an ocean, spreading out on all sides, deep and overwhelming. This pain was one of life’s certainties.
“It’s one of the reasons I got it,” Jade said with a twist of her lips. “I thought it would help me run away from my problems.”
Dee chortled. “You’re over twenty-five so you must know better by now.”
Jade looked the slight girl up and down. “Are you over twenty-five?”
The girl rolled her eyes. “Obviously you’re making a joke. I’m just mature for my age.” She took another selfie, this one with duck lips, her bright red mouth pointed at the camera like a weapon.
All too soon, they got to the house Jade had been avoiding for days.
“This place is nice.” Dee stepped out of the car and onto the driveway.
Jade firmly closed the driver’s side door, staring up at the two-story colonial-style house she grew up in. “Yeah, it is.”
As a kid, she hadn’t thought they had that much money. Enough to keep her in the latest random stuff she wanted, finance a vacation for the three of them someplace in the Caribbean twice a year and pay the mortgage on the house.
Through the eyes of an adult, she saw that they had been solidly upper middle class, her father a family lawyer and her mother an accountant who mostly worked from home. From what the lawyer’s documents said, the house, three blocks from the lake in a respectable Hollywood neighborhood, was now worth a little over eight hundred thousand dollars. Or a million, if you rounded up.
Jade took the keys out of her pocket and began the walk up the long driveway.
“Why are we here anyway? It looks deserted.” Dee shoved her phone in the back pocket of her tiny shorts and hiked toward the front door at Jade’s side.
At nearly five o’clock in the afternoon, the house did look deserted. No cars in the driveway but Jade’s. Sensor lights clicking on above the door although it wasn’t dark enough for them do any work. The lawn was neatly cut. Immaculate. But the yard and house felt completely empty. And they hadn’t even gotten inside yet.
“I’m here because I need to sell it,” Jade said with a wry twist of her lips. Already, she could feel a tide of something unpleasant pushing at her from her house. Sadness, most likely. Memories. “I’m not sure why you’re here.”
Which was a bit of a lie. She was there as Jade’s distraction. Or a messed-up idea of moral support. Depending on how truthful she was being with herself at the moment.
“Don’t be mean,” Dee said with a tiny frown. She took a quick picture of the house then shoved her phone back into her pocket.
With a twist of the key, Jade unlocked the door. Immediately, the alarm began to wail.
Her parents always had the alarm on, even when they were home. It always made Jade feel trapped. Even leaving her room to get a glass of juice in the middle of the night filled her with dread.
Damn motion sensors. Damn her parents.
Her father had been a controlling hypocrite and the worst of liars. He had a mistress, always quoted the Bible, forbade Jade from knowing anything about birth control and made sure she went to college as innocent as a lamb being led to slaughter. And her mother had let it all happen.
Heart pounding, Jade put in the code the lawyer had given her to silence the screaming alarm and stepped into the house she hadn’t been inside for years. She flicked on the light switch in the hallway.
“Wow...”
Yeah. Wow was right.
The inside of the house looked nothing like the old and antiquated place she remembered. Reddish hardwoods, maybe bamboo, gleamed in the entranceway. A pretty, modern chandelier glittered above their heads. And, as they walked down the hallway and through the rooms, Jade saw that the furniture was all very current, very vibrant.
The house felt so empty. Like they’d renovated it just before they died and never got to enjoy it before the car crash stole their lives.
Staring at everything she saw, Dee went one way in the house and Jade went another. It was as beautiful throughout as it was at the entryway. Elegant, updated, contemporary. What had once been a massive living room had been transformed into a large bedroom suite—bedroom, sitting room, giant walk-in closet—looking out over the pool. The king-size bed was made up with what looked and smelled like brand-new sheets. Even the very air of the room, of the whole house, smelled crisp and untouched. Like Dee said, deserted.
In the kitchen, Jade found stainless steel appliances, a ceramic cooktop and harlequin-tiled floors. Nothing of the dark and kitschy setup she remembered.
This was a home for a modern couple. Which her parents had definitely not been.
“Oh my God!” Dee’s voice came from upstairs.
Jade ran up there to see what Dee was freaking out about. In the hallway, she froze. Or at least what had once been the hallway leading to the other three bedrooms upstairs. All that had been gutted and renovated and turned into...nothing.
“This is amazing!” Dee twirled in the center of the large space.
It was all one big room with a bathroom on each end, tall and gleaming columns of wood breaking up the monotony of the oversize room, like they had been load bearing and couldn’t be removed.
The wall and doors that had once stood between the upstairs patio and two of the bedrooms was now a screen of sliding glass doors looking down to the pool, the rest of the pristine backyard, a garden and the lake.