“What about the blond woman just now? The one you fired after leaving your office?”
She’s rattled all right, even if she’s doing a good job of hiding it. “I don’t hire chicks who throw themselves at me.Sexual harassment,” I emphasize the words, even though inside I’m rolling my eyes at what I’m about to say, “works both ways. Think about that.”
She’s silent for a moment, obviously thinking it over. Then she lowers her head, breaking eye contact. “I apologize.”
I didn’t expect that, and she says it so formally that, despite how pissed off she’s made me, I have the insane urge to laugh. “Apology accepted.” I can’t help myself, and tip her face up with my finger. “Stuff goes on here, Jas. I don’t need to tell you that. But there’s no whoring, okay?”
“Okay. But you can’t blame me for assuming it. Jett’s escort business was always a good earner.”
It still is. “The Hammer turns over a good profit. I don’t need that kind of sideline.”
She sighs, and tension seeps from her. “Thanks for looking out for my mom. It’s not like you needed to.”
“I only gave her a job.” And finally, I can admit why I did. She might not have been a great mom, but she was the only one Jas had. I couldn’t turn my back on her.
“Well, it’s more than a lot of guys would’ve done, after the way we split up.”
I wind a length of her hair around my finger, and she rests her head against my shoulder. There’s no need to say anything else about how or why we split. It’s over. But for the first time, unease thuds through me at the way I treated her that last day.
Forget it.I don’t owe her anything, and she sure doesn’t expect it.
Except now that I’ve acknowledged what a prick I was to her, I can’t shift the conviction that if I’d handled it better, she would never have gotten on that plane.
It’s taken you ten years to question that?
No. It’s taken ten years for me to admit I might’ve been—I was—in the wrong.
It’s not a great feeling.
“I always thought you’d come back.” Fuck, did I say that out loud?
She doesn’t pull back, but her ragged sigh burns through me like acid. “No.”
That’s all she says, but the pain in that one word is like a blade through my chest.
“I didn’t mean it.” The confession rips me open, and for a second I close my eyes.You get on that fucking plane and don’t even think about coming back.“I just didn’t want you to go.”
“I know.” Her whisper is muffled against my shoulder, and I wrap my arm around her, not even caring that I’ve just admitted to making the biggest damn mistake of my life. “It wasn’t you, Ty. I just had to get away from everyone here.”
A crazy part of me wants to demand why she didn’t trust me enough to do right by her. I was only a prospect, but she knew it was only a matter of time until I became a full member of the Bastards, and everything changes then. I’d have earned the respect and loyalty of all the brothers, and none of them would’ve disrespected her, no matter how they used her mom.
Too late now.
The words linger in my mind like an unanswered question instead of a stone-cold fact.
What the hell am I thinking?
“What d’you do in Florida?” There’s no ulterior motive. I just want to know. Nothing wrong with that.
“I’m a civil rights attorney.”
Anattorney? For a second I think she’s messing with me, because seriously. My little Jas is anattorney?
I pull back, and she gives a faint smile. “Not what you expected?”
“No.” I don’t know what I expected, but it sure wasn’t this. “Since when did you want to be an attorney?” She always made good grades at school, but she never really talked about a future career.
“It was Marina who first suggested it. I thought she was joking, but she was deadly serious.”
