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“It’s really for the best Jessica.”
Jess attempted to swallow the rage she felt building, but it didn’t stay down. Instead, it consumed her. Everything she’d been through since the accident came bubbling up to the surface. She felt the burn in the back of her throat as her voice grew louder. “The hell it is! You want me out, and you’re using my accident as a means to an end. You know, it’s a really convenient way to spin the bullshit that regularly spews from your mouths.” As she stood, her voice grew louder until all eyes in the room were on her.
“Jessica, this isn’t the time or place,” Shannon whispered in a vain attempt to silence her.
But this only added fuel to Jess’s fire. She threw up her hands to signify just how wronged she was. “Here you are, ‘oh, poor, pathetic Jessica,’ let’s relieve her of her duties so she can recover. Well, fuck you! I’m not one of your charity cases, Shannon. You think you can hide behind your Manolo Blahnik’s and your fake smile… but you’re crazy if you think you’re kidding anyone, Mrs. McCain.” Jess stepped forward and spoke slowly, making sure her voice lingered over every word she was about to say. “Everyone knows your husband spends more time with his flavor of the month than he does at home.” An audible gasp filled the room, but Jess didn’t let it detour her. She smoothed her dress. “Besides, you can’t do this,” her words slurred as she nearly lost her balance. “It takes a board vote to relieve a member of their duties.”
Shannon chuckled slightly and stepped back, clearly caught off guard. “Like I said, this is clearly a conversation for another time.”
While Jess pictured a righteous ‘fuck you’ exiting in her mind, her body, as it had done so frequently as of late, once again betrayed her. Instead, she doubled over and vomited the contents of her stomach all over her former friend’s expensive shoes.
Needless to say, this would be the last time Jess would see any of the Ladies Who Lunch for quite a while. It’s hard, even for women of their educational and economic stature, to know what to say to a cripple who can’t control not only her body, but also her mouth. To them, it probably seemed just as easy to stay away. And just as Jess had predicted without saying a word in that first session with ‘the relentless dammed therapist,’ they did.
Chapter Five
Six Months Later
Early Spring
As Myles gathered the few belongings he possessed and carefully placed them in a duffle bag once issued to him by the Navy, he considered how little knowledge he had about his next assignment. Going in blind wasn’t exactly his style. To his credit, he did know a few things. His new employer was some ultra-rich family (that much Google had told him), and the lady of the house had recently suffered some sort of injury, and he was told that her husband had left on an ‘extended business trip.’ He also knew (thanks to Google Maps) that the family owned a twenty-two acre estate that needed managing. Most importantly, he was informed that his most important task was to watch over ‘The Missus’—whatever that meant, he hadn’t a clue. He only surmised and based on his experience, it didn’t sound good.
But it hardly mattered anyhow. Myles was certain that anything would be better than the current gig he’d held up until a few hours ago overseeing Old Man Thompson. His role over the previous two months had been to serve as a caretaker for the Thompson Estate. Caretaker, in this sense, was code for listen to Mr. Thompson complain, and berate his staff so that his adult children didn’t have to.
Other than managing the man’s bigotry, his secondary role had been to care for Mr. Thompson’s four poodles, which Myles assessed, according to Thompson’s meticulously well-documented regimen, had more needs than most humans he knew. While Myles wouldn’t exactly say he wasn’t an animal lover—he simply didn’t understand owning something—dog or not, which had greater grooming needs than oneself.
He wasn’t thrilled with the assignment, but he needed the work. More so, he needed to keep busy. But a few weeks later, his unspoken prayers were answered when out of nowhere, Myles found that he’d been abruptly reassigned.
He figured that the old man had decided he didn’t show his dogs the appropriate degree of affection, nor did he agree with his dogmatism and perhaps had requested that Myles look elsewhere for employment. It certainly wouldn’t have come as a complete surprise. Reassignment seemed to be the MO for him lately. But the old man seemed generally sad at the news he was leaving which was quite odd given the fact that the man never much liked him to begin with.
But, nonetheless, Myles found himself with a Greyhound ticket headed south. Three days earlier a woman by the name of Addison Hartman from the agency that had placed him, phoned with an unexpected offer. She’d informed Myles that she had what she called ‘a necessary reassignment’ in mind, and if he passed the initial assessment tests, in addition to the personal interview, he would be guaranteed a forty-five percent increase in his gross pay.
Myles, not one to argue with fate, passed the initial and then secondary assessment with flying colors. But then again, he always did. And when the interview came, he assumed it would be a breeze as well. But a few minutes into the conversation, he found himself sadly mistaken.
Myles stared at the woman opposite him on the screen and tried to reconcile the thoughts he had about her. On one hand, he found her insanely attractive—on the other, incredibly intense. In an uncomfortable sort of way. He both liked her and disliked her at the same time, and he wondered how this could be.
After grilling him for the better part of an hour via Skype, Myles was certain he was about to be turned down when Addison Hartman surprised him by offering him the job.
; This was an important assignment, she’d insisted. He had better not mess it up, she’d warned. Something in her voice didn’t sit right with Myles, and he immediately felt there was something personal about this assignment. Which wasn’t altogether bad because Myles, true to form, had decided that should he ever come into contact with Mrs. Hartman, he wouldn’t mind setting her straight, giving her something to be a little less intense about.
Aside from the above details, all he knew was that the client needed help getting ‘back on her feet.’ She needed someone who would push her without backing down and her agent felt that someone with his disposition would serve her client well. ‘It must have to do with your time in the Navy,’ she’d remarked, ‘because I can clearly see that you’re an Alpha—someone who isn’t afraid to take charge… and to say that is exactly what this situation calls for would be a vast understatement,’ she’d said.
No matter how many times he assured her he was up for the task she continued quizzing him repeatedly—this way and that way, on whether or not he understood what it was she was asking. And while Myles thought he understood, honestly, all he could think about at the moment was what it would be like to get away from the shithole of a town he’d been stuck in and to get down to Austin—where he’d find exactly what it was he needed. Women.
The selection around there had been limited to what amounted to a few ‘regulars.’ And if there was one thing Myles wanted less than anything these days, it was any sort of regularity. Especially concerning who was in his bed.
With that thought, he once again assured Mrs. Hartman that he could more than handle the job. In turn, she immediately sent him a plane ticket headed for Austin, which he then traded in for a bus ticket. Not so much because he needed the money, but because he considered flying indulgent given the bus was an option. And more importantly, because it had been too long and there was a stop he needed to make in a tiny North Texas town.
As the bus pulled into the station, the new friend Myles had made on the bus nudged his shoulder with two fingers. Once, and then again, harder the second time.
“We’re here!” the shrill voice announced in a way that instantly grated on his nerves.
Myles opened his eyes slowly so as to give the full effect. He hadn’t really been sleeping. He’d only been pretending, which he found served as a helpful tactic to avoid a woman, which one had just picked up and slept with, yet remained stuck in close confinement with for the next several hours.
This one hadn’t been too bad, he considered. She was pretty, but she talked too much. And she was young. At twenty, she was younger than he would have liked under normal circumstances. He did have standards, after all. Myles knew the girl’s age just as he knew all his lover’s ages. He’d applied the ‘always determine their age first rule.’ If finding out whether you were picking up jailbait were a game, and it was, these were the rules:
First, he stated his age. Then he offered to guess the females age by offering up a smaller number than he reasonably presumed—smaller by at least a half decade until she threw out a number stating her actual age.
