Take My Dare (Stark International Trilogy 4)

He stretches out, and I curl up beside him. I don't know when he managed it, but he's put the baby monitor on the table in front of us, and I can hear Jeffery starting to stir. Ronnie, I know, will sleep until eight if we let her. But if by chance she wakes up without us, she'll come and find us here.

I think about both of them. Ronnie, curled up with Fred watching out for her. Jeffery, safe and warm in his crib. I feel the same way after Jackson's tending. But even now, with the feel of him still lingering inside me, pinpricks of worry start to needle me, and I shift closer to Jackson, seeking the comfort of his strength.

He bends to kiss my forehead. "Tell me," he demands gently, and I can't help but smile; of course he caught my shift in mood.

"It's nothing," I say. "Not really. I just can't shake the feeling that Reed's still haunting us."

I feel more than hear Jackson's sigh. "Reed's ghost will always try to haunt us. But we know how to vanquish ghosts, Sylvia."

"Yes, I know." I frown, not sure how to put my chaotic thoughts into words. "But it's not ghosts I'm afraid of. Not really. I guess--I mean, it's just that I don't know that my father really ended anything. It's just a salve, a balm. And someday those damn photos are going to turn up again."

I shudder. The day I visited my father in prison, I told him he had to tell the police about the pictures because maybe they would help with his defense. At the very least, their existence might go to a plea of temporary insanity. He refused, though. And the truth is that I'm so damn grateful he did. Because I don't want anyone to see those photos. Even one detective is too much, and if they were released to the public, I don't think I could survive it. I don't want the photos released. Hell, I don't want them to even exist in the universe.

I remind Jackson of that as I lean against him, safe and content. "I feel as though I somehow tempted fate when I told him I could handle it. And now those pictures are going to leap out when we least expect it."

"If they do, we'll fight them. We're strong. And we've already survived hell once." He twists around to look at me more directly, his face full of confident certainty. "What can't we handle if we're together?"

I let his words sink in, hoping that he's right. Then I snuggle against him, my cheek to his chest, just breathing in the scent of him.

He's right. We can handle it.

But even so ...

What I really want is for there to be no potential crisis to handle. But I know that isn't possible. The facts and the photos exist. More than that, they have power over me. And no one can ever change that.

Not even Jackson.

Chapter 4

++

"Sylvia? Are you okay?"

I've been standing on the patio staring at, but not really seeing, the three bottles of Pinot Noir on the table in front of me. Now I blink, forcing my thoughts back to the present as I turn to look into Stella's dark brown eyes. "What? Sorry. No, I'm fine. Just wondering how many bottles of wine we'll need."

She smiles, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes, and I know I'm not fooling her. Stella had taken care of both the house and Ronnie during the years that Ronnie lived with her great-grandparents. When Ronnie came to live with me and Jackson, Stella had stayed behind in New Mexico. But after Jeffery was born, she'd phoned to ask if we needed a nanny. She missed Ronnie, she'd said, and would love to help with the baby.

We'd said yes immediately and never looked back. She's in her mid-forties, a woman who got pregnant at fifteen and dropped out of high school, then took whatever work she could in order to raise her daughter, now thirty, as a single mom. She's caring and efficient and she adores both the kids, not to mention Fred. And though it took a full four months, Jackson and I finally convinced her to call us by our first names.

Now, she looks around at the wine, spirits, and food piled high onto the long table we've set up on the patio for a casual, buffet-style meal. "I wouldn't worry about the wine," she says gently. "Everything's going to be just fine."

"Thanks." I smile, understanding that she's not really talking about the food, but about the situation. My father, a confessed murderer, returning home.

As far as she and the general public knows, Douglas Brooks killed movie director Robert Cabot Reed in order to stop the movie he intended to make about the Fletcher house--a house that Jackson designed and built, and which became the center of a murder-suicide. A movie that would have pried into the personal details of not only Jackson's life, but Ronnie's, because it was her birthmother who pulled the trigger.

When my father confessed to killing Reed, he told the court that he did it to protect Jackson, the man his daughter loved. But that reason was fabricated. He killed Reed as retribution for me. To erase from the earth the man who had abused me as a child--and who, over a decade later, was using those horrible photos to blackmail me and Jackson into allowing the movie to be made.

Stella has no way of knowing the true motive behind the murder. But I'm certain she knows that there is a history between my father and me, and that whatever else today is, it's not an entirely joyful reunion.

"Everyone will be here soon," she says. "I'm going to go get the smaller plates for dessert."

"That would be great."

She heads off for the kitchen and I continue to stand there feeling uncomfortably nervous and at loose ends.

I draw a deep breath, telling myself I'm being foolish. I'm dreading the moment my dad walks through that door. And at the same time, I wish they'd hurry up and get here so that we can get this over with.

My father was scheduled to be released from Lompac prison at three in the afternoon. Originally, my mother and brother were supposed to pick him up and bring him here for some quiet family time with me, Jackson, and the kids. As it's a two-hour drive, the plan was that they'd arrive around five, we'd have a casual dinner and talk, and then they'd drive the rest of the way to my parents' home in San Diego so that my father could spend his first night of freedom in his own bed.

But the more that plan gelled, the more nervous I'd become. And so I'd ended up inviting Damien, Jackson's half-brother, and his wife Nikki on the pretense that they were family, too. Then I added Cass, my best friend, because she's as close as a sister. Then I added Wyatt Royce to the roster, a good friend who is a professional photographer, saying I wanted candid photos of my kids meeting their grandfather for the first time.

I told myself that Dad would want to be surrounded by people who are living their own lives with absolutely no interest in jumping him in the shower or sticking a shiv between his ribs. In truth, I wanted to make sure I had a crowd to get lost in. Jackson saw the truth, of course, and stopped me before my nerves had me inviting each and every one of my co-workers at Stark Real Estate Development.

Now those nerves are kicking into high gear again and a wave of longing for Jackson washes over me. I sigh, wishing that he were beside me instead of in the nursery, where he'd gone to check on Jeffery.

Reflexively I turn toward the stairs, then smile when I realize that he's back already, just a few yards away in the kitchen. I watch as Stella puts a pile of plates in his arms. He's dressed casually in jeans and a pale blue henley, but neither his casual attire nor the fact that he's carrying dishes lessens the power that he projects. He is confidence and control, and he commands the room simply by being in it.

When he reaches me, he smiles, and I can't help but smile back, my nerves calming simply by virtue of his presence.

"Jeffery?" I ask him, as Stella starts to climb the stairs.

"Just waking up. Stella's going to get him changed and dressed." He cocks his head in the direction of the front door. "They'll be here any minute. I saw Ethan's car turn onto the street from the nursery window."

"Oh." That sense of calm I'd been enjoying disappears in a flash, as if chased away by a swarm of crazed butterflies. "But Cass and Ronnie aren't back yet." I'd sent them to Ralph's, the nearest grocery store, to get slice and bake cookies since Ronnie wanted to "bake" with her grandfathe

r. I'd hoped they'd be back by the time my dad arrived, but the rising panic I hear in my voice is disproportionate to the crisis.

"Hey," Jackson says, putting down the stack of dishes so that he can take my hands. "Everything is going fine."

"I know. I do." My shoulders rise and fall as I take a deep breath. "I'm just..." I trail off with a shrug.

"Nervous? Why wouldn't you be? But, baby, all he cares about right now is that he's free and that he finally gets to hug his grandchildren. That, and what you think of him."

I don't mean to, but I grimace, remembering something else I'd said to my father after he confessed. I told him I wasn't sure I could forgive him, but that I wanted to try. Now he's coming to my home expecting things to be better. As if his jail time had been a line in the sand and now that he's crossed it, everything is sweetness and light, hugs and puppies.

Except it isn't. It really isn't.

"I know," Jackson says simply, obviously understanding my unspoken thoughts as he so often does. "Just tell him the truth, baby."

"The truth?" My voice rises as if in irritation, but is in fact nerves bordering on hysteria. "That I'm still not sure if I love or hate him? That I love what he did for me even though a man is dead because of it. That I want to forgive, but that I'm having a hell of a time letting myself, because isn't that like saying that what he let Cabot do to me doesn't matter anymore? Is that the truth you mean?"

"Yes," he says simply. And then, as I gape at him, he raises my fingers to his lips and kisses them. "Sweetheart, that's exactly what I mean. Your father made a deal with the devil and you were the currency. Maybe it's time to forgive him, or maybe it isn't. Only you know that. But you don't owe him a thing, because killing Reed didn't magically balance the scales."

He draws a breath, and I watch as he forces his body to relax. "But he already knows all of that. He knows the truth. He knows what he did. So whatever the truth is--whatever you now feel about him and however you want to deal with him--that's what you have to tell him. The truth." He caresses my cheek, then meets my eyes, sharing his strength. "It's what you both should expect," he says. "And it's what you both deserve."

"Oh," I say, as the doorbell chimes and my stomach does another backflip. I draw in a deep breath. "I love you, you know."

"I do." He grins. "And I love you."