Hotblooded (16 page)

She looked from the photograph to the house and shuddered slightly. “I hate pink.”

“Were you embarrassed by her?” he asked.

Brooke faced him again. “Yes. Almost constantly. Even before I found out what she did for a living.”

“You didn’t know?”

“I thought I did. She told me she sold cosmetics. Which, actually, was true. But little did I know that selling lipstick doesn’t bring home this kind of money.” She gestured at the house.

He saw the change in her face. He couldn’t really describe her expression, but he wasn’t sure he was prepared to hear what she was going to say next. He asked anyway. “What did she do for a living?”

Brooke leaned toward him slightly and looked directly into his eyes. “My mother was a prostitute.”

Brooke watched Jack’s face. It almost, in that moment, didn’t matter how he reacted. It was such a relief to have confessed. To him. Everyone else in town knew, and she wished they didn’t. But somehow she wanted Jack to know.

She liked Jack. That was the simple truth. For a few days the idea of telling all had been brewing inside of her. In spite of—or maybe because of—his obvious disappointment with how she handled the patients and town, she wanted him to know. Then, if he ran, fine. She would know and her silly teenage fantasies about falling in love with him would go away and leave her alone.

If he didn’t run… Well, he would still have to go away and leave her alone. But at least she would know her taste in men had improved.

Regardless, it felt good to tell him.

He blinked a few times as if thinking over her statement.

“A prostitute?” he finally asked.

“A very highly paid call girl. A hooker. A—”

“Okay, I got it.” He looked back at the house in front of them. A long moment of silence passed. Then he said simply, “She must have been good at it.”

Brooke stared at him. She wasn’t expecting that. She let the comment sink in. Then she felt a smile begin as she glanced back at the house. Well, he had a point.

“Yeah, I guess so. In San Antonio most of her clients were millionaires. My mom loved men with money.”

“Did she do…that…here?” he asked, stumbling over the words as if unsure how to exactly ask.

Brooke could easily recall the sick feeling that started in her chest and spread to her stomach when she’d come home early from school one day in San Antonio and caught her mom “at work”. She’d confronted her mother about what was going on and Dixie had refused to lie. At least Brooke could respect that. From then on Dixie had been far too open about it all.

She shook her head. “We moved here to be near the man who wanted her as his mistress. Just his. They’d had an on-again, off-again relationship for a few years as he traveled for work, but finally he wanted her just for himself.”

“He asked her to move here?”

“No. He wanted her to sit in San Antonio and wait for him to come to town here and there. But mom thought that wanting her to himself meant that he was in love with her. She loved him too and wanted to see him more often.”

“She didn’t think that might be a problem with his wife and the town?”

“You have to know my mom. She thinks about five minutes ahead. She’s incredibly spontaneous. She just figured she’d stay out of the way but be right here whenever he wanted her.”

Jack sat quietly, and Brooke wondered if she’d scared him off. Well, she’d gone this far. If she’d lost him, she’d lost him. He hadn’t exactly been hers in the first place. She might as well tell him everything so at least he would understand what was going on with her and Honey Creek.

“She was Walter Worthington’s mistress.”

Jack jerked and looked at her with shock. “Walter?”

Brooke felt bitter and tired whenever she thought of her father-in-law. Walter had been a weight on her shoulders for so long. She wondered if she’d ever be out from underneath his pressure.

“Yep. And she ruined his life. Well, most of it. I finished off the rest.”

Jack’s eyebrows arched.

“I overheard them one night talking and arguing. Walter had been over, as usual, and was getting ready to go home. I heard my mother tell him she loved him.” Brooke felt the years-old resentment rise up even now with the retelling of the story. “And he laughed at her.”

She felt Jack’s fingertips rest lightly on her shoulder. She leaned into the contact slightly and went on. “I’d never seen my mother cry until then. She was the most upbeat person I’d ever known. I’d also never seen her embarrassed or humiliated. We were close, then anyway. My mom is so fun. She would order pizza and have it delivered at school for lunch. She would wake me up in the middle of the night to watch an old Broadway musical on TV. One time she took me out of school early and we drove ten hours straight for a Bon Jovi concert. She was spontaneous and outgoing and made an impression everywhere she went.”

Talking about her mom made Brooke’s chest ache. She hadn’t seen Dixie in nearly two years. Dixie sent her a text message every other week. Brooke responded to about half of them. They stayed connected, but just barely. She hated thinking about it. She blamed her mom for things in Honey Creek being uncomfortable and unwelcoming for her. She could be honest about that.

Dixie didn’t know how things had been for Brooke after she’d left and she had, after all, given Brooke the chance to leave too. In fact, at any time she could have called her mom and Dixie would have come to get her. But she wanted more than life with her mom could offer.

She didn’t approve of how her mom had come by her money, but without a man supporting her, Dixie wouldn’t have been able to afford having Brooke live with her or go to college. College had been the biggest issue. Brooke was determined to go, to make something of herself so she didn’t have to depend on someone else. Dixie wouldn’t have been able to afford it and Brooke was not going to take money, even indirectly, from Dixie’s next guy.

“I assume your mother stopped seeing Walter?” Jack’s voice broke into her memories.

Brooke nodded. “But that wasn’t enough. She only knew one way to get back at him and she used it. She seduced his biggest client, became that guy’s mistress, and married him after he left his wife. Then she convinced him to drop Walter as his supplier completely.”

Brooke couldn’t help her smile. It had been the most devious thing her mother had ever done. Most people, of course, judged her harshly. Brooke didn’t necessarily approve either, but she couldn’t fault Dixie for standing up for herself.

“Wow,” Jack commented, looking down at the picture of Dixie. “She really got him back.”

“Yeah. But it affected a lot of people. Like I said, my mom wasn’t a big forward thinker. Because Walter lost his biggest contract he had to downsize, which meant he had to lay a bunch of people off, which affected the town’s economy. They definitely haven’t forgotten that my mother almost single-handedly ruined Honey Creek.”

That sounded melodramatic, but wasn’t entirely untrue.

“That must have been strange for you and Mike.”

“How so?”

“Well, being in love like you were, having your parents involved, then having them hurting each other like that had to be hard.”

Right. That would have been hard. If she and Mike had actually been in love.

She needed out of the close confines of the car suddenly. Partly it was the nearly overwhelming urge to throw herself into Jack’s arms and ask him to hold her. But she was also feeling claustrophobic with all of the old memories crowding in and the emotions that seemed to constantly fill the space between them.

“Want to take a walk?” she asked as she wrenched her car door open and slid from the seat.

Jack got out of the car on his side and, without a word, came around the car to stand next to her.

It was strange how the house seemed to grow bigger without the windshield between her and it. As if sensing her tension, Jack took her hand. She was amazed at how good and calming it felt. They stood like that, looking at the house, each lost in their own thoughts for several minutes.

She couldn’t remove her hand from Jack’s, though in a corner of her mind she wanted to. The less he touched her, the less he looked at her like he cared, the easier it would be for her to ignore her heart screaming for more.

Finally she looked down at their joined hands, not wanting to see his face just then. “Mike and I were never in love.”

She felt his whole body suddenly go rigid.

“What did you say?” he asked softly.

“Mike and I were friends. We got along great. Mike was angry at his dad for what he did to my mom. But we were never in love.”

“You married him.”

Jack’s voice sounded tight but she didn’t dare look up at him.

“Yeah. We made a deal.” She sighed. She had never, ever, even once betrayed Mike’s secret or their arrangement. But she had to with Jack. For some reason she needed him to know everything.

“A deal?”

“Walter ran Mike’s life. He’d decided what school Mike would go to, what he’d study, he’d even decided—assumed—that Mike would marry Amanda. He had it all planned out. But Mike didn’t want any of that. During high school he went along with it because it was easier, but he wanted to go to med school not business school, he wanted…not Amanda. We were seniors in high school when all this went down with my mom and Mike saw a chance for he and I to both get something we needed.”

She felt Jack’s grip tighten on her hand.

“Brooke.”

His voice was low, laced with emotion but she still couldn’t look at him. She had to finish this story first.

“The deal was, if I married him, Mike would make Walter pay both our tuitions and a living allowance for college. I didn’t want anything more than to go to college and didn’t have any better options, so I agreed. We got married by the Justice of the Peace in Amarillo before we even approached Walter. Once we were married there was nothing he could do—we were legal adults who’d entered marriage willingly and knowingly. Mike told Walter that he had to pay for both of us or Mike would cut himself off from the family for good.”

“And Mike got away from Amanda and you in his bed every night. Pretty sweet deal.”

She couldn’t help but glance up at that. There were so many emotions in Jack’s eyes that she couldn’t identify just one. In general, he looked worked up.

“Let me guess,” he went on, almost angrily—the first time she’d experienced that emotion from him since meeting him. “He’d always had a crush on you but no chance until suddenly you needed something he could give you. Paying to sleep with you was better than not sleeping with you at all. Besides, it was daddy’s money.”

Brooke stared at him, feeling like he’d just slapped her. She jerked her hand from his. His assumption hurt. Which was stupid, because it was what everyone in Honey Creek thought. And it was what she and Mike had let them think. That was the plan from the beginning. Mike professed a long infatuation with her and everyone knew Walter was giving them money. They added two and two together. Her end of the deal was to never let on that the last thing Mike actually wanted from her was sex.

“I was never in Mike’s bed.”

Jack didn’t say anything to that.

“He didn’t marry me because he’d had a crush or to get away from Amanda. I was his cover, his protection.”

“Protection from what?”

“Being disowned.”

Jack scowled. “Being disowned for what?”

“Being gay.”

Several seconds ticked by as Jack clearly processed the new information. Shock, then confusion and finally understanding crossed his face. “Walter would have disowned him for that?”

“In a heartbeat. And Mike was still coming to terms with it. Being married, to a woman, helped him in a lot of ways.”

Jack focused on the horizon instead of her face. “You did it for the money?”

She swallowed hard. “Yes. Kind of. I was eighteen, the daughter of the most hated woman in town. She left for Vegas and I knew if I went with her college would never happen. Mike was absolutely my best option. I could have gotten loans but this was a chance to go to college
and
be debt free. Plus…”

The rest didn’t paint her as a very nice person and she hesitated.

“Plus what?”

She sighed. She’d already come this far. “The idea of getting to spend Walter’s money without my mom having to sleep with him was appealing. And a Donovan woman got the Worthington name after all.” It had seemed like sweet justice at the time.

And it was a great deal. Until they finished undergrad and wanted to go on to med school and PA school. Walter had put his foot down then. Unless Mike was pursuing his MBA, Walter wasn’t footing the bill anymore. Hence the deal with Honey Creek to pay their student loans back.

“You stayed married after college though,” Jack pointed out.

She shook her head. “Actually, no. We got an annulment as soon as everything settled down. We had to actually get married because we knew Walter would check for the license and everything, but once we were in school with the tuition paid, we annulled it. We lived together, as roommates, but that was it.”

“So why’d you come back here?” Jack seemed weary suddenly.

“I didn’t intend to. I was already working for the Girls Home. Mike and I were still living together because it was easier, but we were just friends and he was in love. I figured as soon as he finished med school, he’d move on. But…” she sighed, “…he had a gambling problem. He got in way over his head and needed to be bailed out. He finally went to his dad who agreed to help, but only if he came home. Mike arranged it to have his school loan paid off too if he worked in Honey Creek for two years.”

“How’d you get dragged into it?” Jack was scowling again.

She shrugged. “Everyone here still thought we were married and Mike was afraid to tell his dad the truth. Mostly because he didn’t want to let his dad think he’d been right about me, but he was also concerned his dad would try to bully or manipulate him into staying. Married to me there was no fear—Walter didn’t want me to stay. I remind him too much of my mom.”

Jack nodded. “A lot less flashy though.”