Page 19 of Say You'll Stay
“You two are always kissing,” Jasmine interrupts.
“Sorry.”
“You’ll get used to it.” Both West and I say it at the same time.
“It’s kind of sweet.” Jasmine sits down at the end of her bed. “You two seem more like a real mom and dad.” She swings her legs back and forth. Jasmine doesn’t remember her mother. I often wonder how Thomas was with her.
"That's what you want?” I shoot West a glare.
“It would be nice to be normal.” She shrugs one shoulder.
“Normal isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.” I get up and sit next to her. “West and I didn’t grow up anywhere near normal.”
“But you had each other,” Jasmine points out quickly.
“And look,” West cuts in. “You’ve got us too.”
That makes both Jasmine and me smile.
Chapter Fourteen
WEST
“What are you really doing in my home, Evers?” Thomas Ware's eyes follow me as I wander around his study. I get the sense that he’d like to plant his boot in my ass and send me across the street. Sad for him, but I spent a decade in the military. I’m immovable when I want to be.
I take a seat. “You have a problem, but you’re too busy doing Wall Street stuff to see it. Fortunately for you, I’m here to protect my girl and yours.”
A muscle in the back of his jaw twitches. “Are you going to tell me what it is or do I have to come around the desk and beat it out of you? I’m happy to do the latter.”
“Why’d you marry? From what I read, you seemed to have been disinterested in holy matrimony. No one saw you with any woman at all, and then suddenly your wedding announcement to a random social climber appeared in the paper. Some speculated that you got Roberta pregnant, but no baby ever showed up. You don’t love her, so that’s not why you tied the knot.”
“Are you an expert on love?” He hands me a glass of whiskey and returns to his place behind his desk.
I take a sip. The stuff is good. “I am now.”
He grits his teeth. “Do you think your past with Vasey gives you the right to question my personal decisions?”
“No. It’s my future with Vasey that gives me that right. I’m trying to be respectful here, Ware. We don’t need to fight. Not with our fists or our wallets, but I’ll spend every last dollar of yours and mine to secure a future with my woman.”
His jaw muscle ticks again, but after a few beats of silence, he gives way. “I did a background check on Roberta. My people interviewed her friends, family, even her parents. She’s greedy and vain, but she’s a devoted mother who puts her child first and presents no danger to her family.”
So he married her to provide a mother for Jasmine in the form of Roberta. “You miscalculated. Her loyalty only extends to Gideon. The only child she is protecting is hers, and she doesn’t consider Jasmine hers.”
“Spell it out.”
“Jasmine has been the recipient of several dead animals. All small—rats, mice, frogs. The latest was a bird whose neck was wrung. I followed Gideon the other night to a shady club where he was cutting a sex worker’s hair off. That’s what he paid to do. Not to have sex with her but to mutilate her appearance. I gave him a card to my friend’s boxing gym so that when he showed up, I’d have someone beat some fear into him, but Jasmine isn’t safe with him, and neither is Vasey.” I explain to him what happened to Vasey this morning and how Roberta planned to blackmail her. “Obviously, I won’t be allowing him into my school where he could terrorize other girls, and I won’t leave your home until you do something about him. You can fix this or I will.” I get to my feet. “Thanks for the whiskey. I can see you have decent taste in some things.”
I arrive at Vasey’s room to see her pacing. She stops abruptly at the sight of me and then races over to pat my face, myshoulders, my arms. “Are you all right? You didn’t fight, did you?”
I capture her hands and press a kiss to them. “No fighting, and I’m fine. Come over here and I’ll tell you all about it.”
I lead her over to the set of pretty chairs situated by the window overlooking the stone terrace and the river beyond. I drop into the chair and draw her onto my lap. “Is Jasmine sleeping?”
“Yes, it took her some time, but eventually she drifted off. I had to put a chair under her doorknob and show her how no one could get in and I promised to do the same to my room.”
We both look at Vasey’s unprotected door.
“I knew you were coming,” she says in protest.