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‘Lucy’s my sister and I didn’t kidnap her… I offered her sanctuary,’ Polly declared loftily.
‘Sanctuary?’ Rashad echoed, visibly appreciating that choice of word. ‘I don’t think I would employ that particular word with Jax, Lucy.’
‘Jax is here?’ Lucy flew off the sofa as though jet-propelled and then stilled, colour rising in her cheeks below her sisters’ interested scrutiny.
‘Let the rehabilitation commence,’ Ellie remarked softly.
‘Have I been interfering?’ Polly asked worriedly.
‘No, I was hugely grateful for the support,’ Lucy told her warmly.
Lucy couldn’t think straight. It had taken Jax less than forty-eight hours to come out to Dharia and she was sharply disconcerted. In the back of her mind, she had feared that he would let her go and write off their marriage as a mistake. After all, how could he possibly want to stay married to a woman whom he had such a low opinion of? But then letting her go could well be what he had arrived to discuss, she reasoned unhappily.
Jax was in no better mood after his long flight to find himself in a room decorated like something out of an Arabian Nights’ fantasy, which dovetailed beautifully with the royal palace of Dharia. Rashad, the King, had seemed fairly normal though, acknowledging that he too would have been very ‘put out’ to find his wife and child had staged a vanishing act.
And then Rashad had murmured, ‘But now that you’re part of the family I should warn you that when the sisters get together, they plot and plan. You’re either with them or against them.’
‘You’re my brother-in-law…well, half-brother-in-law,’ Jax adjusted, recognising that the three sisters had all had different fathers.
‘They don’t think of each other as half anything,’ Rashad cautioned him.
‘Catching up?’ another voice interposed, a voice that Jax recognised and he tensed, slowly turning round to arrange his thoughts before meeting the eyes of his former business partner, Rio Benedetti. ‘Well, isn’t this a small world?’ he breathed uncomfortably.
‘Relax,’ the Italian billionaire urged. ‘I ran into Franca last year and she brought me up to speed on past events. No disrespect to Franca intended, but I had the lucky escape and you had—?’
Jax winced. ‘I owe you a wholehearted apology for what happened but let’s not talk about it,’ he retorted wryly of that sobering experience.
‘Let’s not,’ Rio agreed, leaning closer. ‘A word of advice though,’ he added in a rueful undertone. ‘The word “alley” will be etched on your gravestone…’
Momentarily, Jax froze as if a gun had been angled at him and faint colour rose over his sculpted cheekbones. ‘Is that so?’
‘The sisters don’t keep secrets,’ Rio imparted. ‘Nothing is too sacred to be discussed. Cross one and you cross all three and none of them are batting for you.’
That was information that Jax could well have done without. He knew he had messed up but everyone else knowing how badly he had messed up made him feel worse. He had had forty-eight hours in which to think and he had done more thinking within that forty-eight hours than he had done in all his twenty-nine years. And having reached obvious conclusions, had even decided what to say.
But Jax’s prepared speech flew right out of his head when Lucy walked into the suite he was wafted off to. Lucy was wearing a long flowing dress in shades of blue and it fluttered round her as she moved and just seeing her again, just looking at her again, made Jax feel stuff he couldn’t suppress any longer.
‘I came because…’ he began.
Jax looking gorgeous as usual, Lucy was noting, striving to be cool and composed after Ellie had advised her to play hard to get. But she couldn’t play hard to get with Jax, which was the crux of her problem where he was concerned: she loved him. She had always loved him and what had been rather insta-love in Spain when she barely knew him had turned into something much deeper and more binding the second time around. Jax might be hopeless at some things, like talking about feelings and paying compliments, but he was very, very good at other things.
‘Yes…you were saying?’ Lucy prompted, striving to take control of their meeting.
Jax raked a deeply frustrated hand through his tousled black hair, green eyes glinting from below black lashes, and her heart jumped. ‘I don’t know what I was going to say. I had it all planned out but now it’s gone. This is all new to me,’ he muttered in a sudden surge. ‘But the only really important thing I have to say is that I love you and I need you and I want you to come home with me…’
And just like that and with the unexpectedness of an explosion, Jax stole the wind from Lucy’s sails. She didn’t have time to try and work out how to play hard to get. He took the breath from her lungs and the arguments from her brain because what he had just said was what she felt as if she had been waiting all her life to hear.
‘I’ve never said those words to anyone else,’ Jax admitted gruffly as the silence dragged. ‘I married you, not because of your father’s blackmail, but because somewhere deep down inside me I wanted to be married to you. My head was telling me I didn’t want to get married but my instincts were pushing me in a very different direction. Is that weird?’
‘No…’ Lucy almost whispered the word, scared to move, scared to speak lest she interrupt him and stop him speaking.
‘My father reminded me that over one two-week period I flew back to Spain five times to see you. My attachment was obsessional,’ he conceded grudgingly. ‘I loved you then but I was afraid to accept that. Possibly when you said it suited me to believe that file and…the other stuff there was a shred of truth in that. Love has always been something that hurt and damaged me. I loved my mother, my father, my little sister, my half-brother and years before I met you I fell for a woman, who turned out to be a very troubled alcoholic, whom I had to place in rehab for recovery. I was determined not to get hurt again.’
Lucy nodded like a vigorous little marionette, wanting so badly to reach out to him and hug him and cover him in kisses but knowing it was wiser to let him say what he needed to say to explain the past and the present. ‘I can understand that—’
Jax released his breath on a hiss. ‘How can you? You keep on caring about people even when they hurt or disappoint you. That’s brave—’
‘Or plain stupid,’ Lucy slotted in wryly. ‘That’s just me. I tend to look for saving graces in people and stay optimistic but you’re a giant pessimist, who always sees the worst possible conclusions.’
‘Pretty much,’ Jax conceded.
‘And thinks the worst,’ Lucy added with spirit, thinking about the alley. ‘Even if there’s no justification for it.’
Carefully avoiding the word Rio had advised him to avoid, Jax straightened his shoulders. ‘The alcoholic that I fell for was repeatedly unfaithful to me. She couldn’t help herself—she was a mess until rehab. But like my mother before her she conditioned me to distrust women. I’d seen that file. I saw a woman I thought was you and it seemed to fit, it seemed to be exactly the sort of thing that happened to me—I had got in too deep and you weren’t who I thought you were—’
‘Like with this alcoholic lady? That would be…er… Franca?’ Lucy checked. ‘Rio told Ellie about her and Ellie told me.’
Jax took on board the second of Rio’s warnings. ‘Yes, it was Franca. After her I was very wary and cynical with women. I didn’t have faith in my own ability to read a woman, to really know her and, life being life,’ he groaned, ‘that meant I screwed up very badly with you. I ran when I should’ve stayed. I thought I was protecting myself but you had already burned me.’
‘Burned you?’
‘I never got over you. I kept on thinking about you at random times and reminding myself how bad you were…you know the—?’
‘Alley stuff?’ Lucy enunciated with precision, bright blue eyes gleaming.
‘Yes, that,’ Jax muttered, desperately keen to move on. ‘Obviously I was wrong and I am very sorry that I believed tha
t was you. I just saw the dress and the blonde hair and—’
Lucy moved closer and closed both arms around him. ‘It’s all right,’ she murmured softly because his voice was ragged and too troubled for her to bear without touching him. ‘It’s all right. I forgive you. You made a mistake. It’s over, done and dusted—’
Jax stared down at her with suspiciously bright green eyes. ‘I don’t deserve you. You probably don’t even believe that I love you and that I loved you right from the start and I don’t know how to prove it to you.’
But Lucy didn’t need any more proof. Jax had wanted to stay married to her even though he believed she had once been unfaithful to him and that spoke volumes on its own. He had loved her warts and all, carefully schooling himself to overlook what any man would have seen as a monumental flaw and betrayal and predictably keeping his thoughts to himself. And then he had come clean and what he had been keeping secret had shocked and distressed her but at the same time it had set both of them free.
‘I love you too,’ Lucy whispered, planting a flyaway kiss on his freshly shaven jaw line, which was as high as she could reach even on tiptoes. ‘So much that when you’re not there it hurts.’
