Page 2 of Jameson’s Salvation

“That he’s some sort of PI.”

That wasn’t entirely true, but it wasn’t false either. Gemini Group did more than private investigations.

“Why do you need a PI?”

Kennedy’s smile faded and she unnecessarily looked around the yard. They were alone. Holden was at the office where he spent most of his time. Weston and Chasin were taking their Saturday to go kayaking on the Chester River. Nixon was at his house with his woman and her siblings. So that left Jameson alone on the farm to finish painting the roof of the old milking parlor.

It had taken a shit-ton of man hours and elbow grease, but the old farm had been restored to its former glory. No more peeling paint, rusted tin, falling down barns, and the forest of weeds and grass had been mowed down. The place looked great, and he was happy to help. Nixon had been seriously depressed when he’d come home and found his father’s farm in disarray after he’d passed away.

Nixon Swagger loved his old man and the land he’d grown up on. After Nix had separated from the Navy his plan was simple; come back to Kent County, fix up the house and barns, and rent out the land. Then he was supposed to go back to Virginia Beach and they were going to start their business there. But he’d met McKenna. Everything had changed for him and he decided to stay. And if Nixon was there, the rest of them would be, too. They were a team.

“You remember the guy who was in my face at the Tea Party?” she asked.

Jameson remembered. He’d been walking around the street fair and when he couldn’t take another minute of the crowd and people bumping into him, he’d split and taken a walk down a residential street. He was enjoying the solitude until he saw Kennedy and the man. He was indeed in Kennedy’s face yelling at her, and the beauty was yelling right back.

The first thing Jameson had thought was, he was impressed the woman was standing her ground and not taking shit from a man who towered over her and outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds. It wasn’t muscle that accounted for the size difference, the man had looked like he’d never met a cheeseburger he didn’t like and had never seen in the inside of a gym. Or knew that such a facility existed.

His next thought was, she was crazy. She should’ve gone back into her house and called the police. People did fucked-up things, especially in anger, and the man had looked furious. But so had Kennedy.

“Yeah, I remember him.”

“Well, he’s a pain in my ass. I guess I don’t need a PI to find him, since I know who he is, I just need something on him to make him stop. I was thinking that maybe Nixon could find that something.”

“You wanna blackmail him?”

“Blackmail’s an ugly way to put it. I don’t want anything from him other than for him to stop harassing me. And men like Reggie Coleman don’t stop just because you ask them to. And most especially if you’re a woman.”

Jameson’s eyes narrowed and his body went tight. “What do you mean, especially if you’re a woman?”

All sorts of crazy thoughts were floating through Jameson’s head. Ones that made him want to mete out violence. Was the man sexually harassing Kennedy? Had he physically hurt her?

“Reggie’s a good ol’ boy. You know the kind.”

“No, I don’t know the kind,” Jameson lied.

He did know plenty of men who behaved like assholes because they thought just because they were male they could treat women like they were inferior. It was bullshit, it went against everything Jameson believed in. Even though he hated most things, one thing he never wavered from was women were precious and should be protected and treated as such. And just because he felt the need to protect them didn’t mean they weren’t equal. As a matter of fact, in Jameson’s eyes women would always be superior to men.

“He’s a land developer and he lives by the notion, you don’t pitch the bitch.”

“What does that mean?” Jameson had never heard the phrase.

“When he’s working his contracts trying to pay pennies on the dollar for land he’s trying to strong-arm the owner into selling, he never speaks to the woman. Even if she’s the landowner. He’ll try to circumvent her and go to her father, brother, male cousin, hell, even a friend if it means he can speak to a man.”

“He was talking to you,” Jameson noted.

“Only because my dad’s dead, I’m an only child, I have no cousins local, he tried approaching my friends’ husbands and they all told him to take a hike. So that leaves me. As you saw, he’s not happy about it, and even less so since I’ve told him to fuck off more than once.”

“You told him to fuck off?”

Jameson was impressed, Reggie Coleman sounded like a dick.

“Well, yeah. I didn’t start out being so crass. I tried to politely decline his absurd offer but he likes being told ‘no’ by a woman only slightly less than having his balls twisted. So after the twentieth time of him coming around I finally told him to fuck off.”

Jameson couldn’t help it, his lips tipped into a smile.

“You had first-hand knowledge on his thoughts about his balls being twisted?”

“I see your point, I don’t. Perhaps Reggie Coleman enjoys that sorta kink. You never know what floats someone’s boat. Now that you mention it, I could see him getting off on it.”