Jack & Jilted (22 page)

“I know that,” she said with a weary breath. “I am not trying to take it from you. But I am starting to realize that you’re going to want everything on your terms. What makes it worse is, if I’d met you before I was engaged to Gerald, I would’ve thought that you had every right to have everything on your terms.” She laughed. “Heck, I would’ve made it my life’s work to get you everything you wanted.”

He had already started scowling when she mentioned Gerald. Now his mouth dropped open. “Please tell me you’re not equating me with him.”

“No. Don’t you see? I’m the common denominator here. I’m the problem.”

Now he was flabbergasted. “What are you talking about?”

She looked frustrated and upset. He knew how she felt. “I’ve known we were going to have this conversation, no matter what,” she said. “I love it on the boat. I love the ocean. I never realized I could have a life like this. I have you to thank for that, Jack.”

“So what’s the problem?” he asked with irritation. “I want you to stay here. We can keep working together. We can keep being together. What’s wrong with that?”

“I need more than just being somebody’s girl Friday,” she said. “I want to be a part of something. I think that partnerships, in business or in love, have to be fifty-fifty, or no go.”

Now he felt offended and a tinge guilty. “Are you saying I’ve just been taking advantage of you?”

“No,” she assured him quickly. “Not really.”

His hackles went up at the “not really” part of that sentence.

“What I’m saying is, you like having me help out the team. You like being my lover. And I love being yours,” she said. “But…you don’t want to think about any kind of future unless you absolutely have to. You don’t want to lose your freedom or give up control. And I hate to be the one to break it to you, but to be in any kind of partnership, you need to do both, that is, let another person in.”

“I’ve let you in, lady,” he said, getting to his feet. He had to let the ferocious energy coursing through him out with some kind of activity or he’d explode. “I’ve changed plans and put up with things and altered my life because of you. You can’t tell me I pushed you around and did nothing!”

“I know you have,” she said, and now her voice was soothing. “I’m not saying you’re a bad guy. You’ve been very kind. And I do believe you love me.”

He swallowed hard, trying to dissolve the knot in his throat. “You’re damned right I do,” he said, stroking her cheek and catching the first tear that welled out of her eye.

“And I love you, too,” she said, curving into his palm. “But…”

He sighed. “But?”

“But it’s not enough,” she said. “Sooner or later, I’ll feel like I’m not getting enough or you’ll feel trapped. I want to be a partner in something, not just the hired help. I thought I had that here, but it’s still the Jack show, you know?”

“So what am I supposed to do, Chloe?” He felt despair swelling in him. He knew where this was going and for the life of him he couldn’t figure out how to head it off. “What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t think you can do anything,” she said. “It’s not your fault. You have really good reasons for not wanting to commit or give up your independence or your freedom. I can respect that. I used to be the same way.”

He thought of her checklists and smiled. “I let things go more than you do.”

“Yeah, you do,” she said. “I learned that from you.”

“So…you’re letting this go,” he said finally, pulling the trigger.

She pulled away from him, rubbing her arms as if she were cold. “Yes,” she said in a quiet voice. “I think I have to.”

He felt hurt and angry, so he hung on to angry. “You shouldn’t let your experience with Gerald make everything a war,” he said, his voice chill. “We could’ve had something really good here, and you’re just walking away.”

She spun on him, her amber eyes ablaze. “We do have something good here,” she countered. “And you didn’t want to think about any kind of future, not unless you had to. I deserve better than that. I deserve someone who loved me enough to want to share his future with me.” She paused, taking a deep breath. “You were selfish, Jack. You’re not a bad guy, but you have been selfish. And the worst part is, I’ve let you be.”

He straightened. “You knew what this was…” And then he shut up, remembering that terrible fight with the honeymooning Newcombes.

You knew what this was!

“I didn’t mean that,” he said quickly, but she was already shaking her head and making her way to the door. “Come on, Chloe. You know it wasn’t like that.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said. “But considering we were two people who were supposed to be in love…well, it wasn’t like that, either.”

He put a hand up, but she was already gone. He listened as she grabbed her luggage and walked off the ship.

He didn’t even say goodbye, he thought, feeling completely adrift.

It’s just as well. He couldn’t bear to watching her leaving him forever.

“I’M SO GLAD YOU could meet me for lunch, Chloe.”

Chloe looked around. The ritzy, upscale restaurant was on the marina in La Jolla. Taking a sip of her iced tea, she realized the place was probably one of Gerald’s favorite eating spots—the crowd looked more interested in seeing who else was there and being seen by the other diners than they were in the magnificent view of the ocean that was right beyond their tables.

“You should try the crab salad,” he said. “It’s fantastic. My treat, of course.”

She didn’t even bother scowling at him for that one. Damned right it’s your treat. After all the money he’d weaseled away from her and all the crap she’d taken from him, buying her lunch was the very least he could do.

“So how have you been?” he asked.

She stared at him, amazed at his nonchalant tone, as if they were high-school alumni having a reunion lunch. “I’ve been broke,” she said flatly.

He winced. “I meant, what have you been up to?” His voice had a quality of injected cheerfulness about it, as if he could simply drown out anything unpleasant with a louder, slightly more perky question.

“I’ve been trying to recoup what I spent of my savings and retirement,” she continued. “Mostly I was working on a ship that was paying me to be a chef, maid and marketing assistant. It was really hard work.” She sighed. Hard work that she’d really, really loved.

“That sounds fascinating,” he said though clearly, he wasn’t even listening to her, scanning the room. “But you’re not going to keep doing that, are you? I mean, you’re probably going to look for some real job now, right?”

“You mean, since your chiseling lawyers are finally giving me the money you owe me from what I contributed to the down payment of the house?” she asked.

He sighed, making an expression of distaste, like someone who’d just caught a whiff of an unpleasant odor. “You know, this would be a lot easier if you weren’t quite so adversarial about the whole thing.”

“Okay, what would be a lot easier?” She bit back on the desire to take a poke at him with her shrimp fork. “I thought you were here to give me my part of the down payment. If you want to make this really easy, you could just hand that over, and I could go and buy my own lunch, and you could enjoy the view by yourself. Why don’t we just do that?”

“Chloe, this just isn’t like you at all!”

She growled. “You don’t know me,” she warned him.

“Of course, I am partially to blame, I imagine.”

Her mouth fell open. “You think?”

He grimaced again. “I should not have broken off our engagement the way I did. If anything, I should’ve broken it off weeks before.”

“That probably would’ve been good,” she noted, anger burning a hole in her stomach.

“I was just under so much pressure,” he said, and his blue eyes were imploring. He reached out and took her hand—or tried to. She jerked it away, tucking it under her other arm. “You know how my family is. How crazy they make me. My mother was convinced that you were no good for me.”

“And you let her persuade you,” Chloe said.

When he used to complain about his family, she’d always been so supportive. Now she felt all of that fall away.

“I didn’t let her. She badgered me. She made everything more difficult,” he said. No, he whined. “She called me all the time. She insisted that I might even get cut out of the will, Chloe!”

She knew that was a dire threat—the architectural firm depended on the occasional inflow of Sutton money. “But I’m curious, Gerald,” she said, her voice deceptively casual. “How exactly did you screwing another woman come about, what with all this family pressure?”

She said it just loud enough to be heard by the tables surrounding her, causing a moment’s lull in the conversation. Gerald’s eyes bugged.

“Keep your voice down!” he begged, trying to smile it off as he surveyed the other customers. “I didn’t mean to sleep with Simone. She’s…well, she’s a family friend, and she knew I was going through a tough time. And you were so busy with the wedding stuff I couldn’t talk to you—”

“Of course. Somehow I got the feeling this would become at least partly my fault,” she said.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, I swear to God,” he said. “I feel terrible about the whole thing. I feel wretched. I’m…I’m slime.”

Now her eyes widened. He was apologizing. He was accusing himself.

He was up to something.

“What do you want, Gerald?”

“Just to make it up to you,” he said, and his handsome face was the picture of contrition.

“Handing over that check’s a start,” she said. “Writing another one for the balance of the wedding expenses that you agreed to pay for would probably go a long way, as well.”

He winced, then nodded. “Of course. You’re right.”

He reached into his leather organizer and pulled out his checkbook. He had a check already for the house. When she told him how much the wedding expenses came to, he blanched, but he dutifully wrote out another check. He put them on the table.

This would put her back where she’d been, she thought. She’d be able to start fresh.

I could even invest in a boat…

She reached for the checks, and Gerald grabbed her hand. “I miss you,” he said.

“Oh, Gerald.” She crumpled the checks slightly, his grip was stronger. “Is that what this is all about? What happened to what’s-her-name?”

“Simone,” he said, and his voice was mournful. “I thought she was just a good friend, you know?”

“That you slept with,” Chloe reminded him.

He frowned, obviously not interested in that detail. “So we’ve been seeing each other, and since my Mother loved her, I thought she’d be perfect. I mean, my family was off my back and, well, the wedding had been stressing me out terribly.”

Stressing you out? Chloe thought, bewildered. She’d handled everything, from the planning to running defense against his psychotic mother. Exactly what had he been stressed out about?

“But once the smoke cleared,” he said, “Simone started acting…different. She started expecting things. And then, out of the blue, she tells me that it’s time I asked to marry her. Marry her!” He shook his head. “I had no idea she was thinking in those terms. I mean, she’s…well, fun and a sweet kid. And that was just what I needed.”

Now Chloe felt herself hitting the boiling point. “And what do you need now?” she asked in a cold monotone.

He didn’t even pick up on the cue that she was upset. “I finally told my mother that I was doing things on my own,” he said. “She can pull the family money if she wants, but I’m not going to be bullied anymore. I wasn’t going to marry Simone, and that was that.”

Aha, Chloe thought. So Mommy Dearest wanted someone “worthy”—aka handpicked and pliable—to marry her kid and help keep him in line.

“And I remembered how great you were,” he said, his voice turning low and, she presumed, seductive. “How great we were together. And I realized I’d made the biggest mistake of my life when I sent that messenger to the church. When I didn’t marry you.”

Chloe couldn’t believe it. He was actually saying what she’d once wanted to hear and what she knew in her heart.

“It wasn’t a total loss,” she said, her voice comforting.

“It wasn’t?” His eyes lit hopefully.

“When you walked away,” she said, “you showed me that I’d just dodged the biggest bullet of my life. So I guess from that standpoint, I owe you one.”

He blinked, not comprehending, then shrugged. “I know it’ll take some time, but I want to get us back to where we were.”

He wasn’t listening, she thought. He never listened.

“And you know what? Screw the partners and their snooty judgments,” he said with a devil-may-care wink. “I’ve missed you at the office, too. Just because we’re married doesn’t mean we can’t work together, right?”

“Are you kidding me?”

He smiled. “I never should’ve asked you to quit. It wasn’t fair to you. I know how much you loved your job, how devoted you were to the firm.”

“That was for you, you idiot!” she snapped.

His smile faltered, but he plowed forward. “And I value it.”

“Certainly you do,” she said, picturing throwing her iced tea in his face. She yanked her hand away from his with a vicious tug, stuffing the checks into her purse. “You probably can’t even find your checkbook at this point. You don’t have anybody running interference when the partners come down on you, you don’t have anybody running your life and you’ve got your mom breathing down your neck. If I hadn’t quit, we’d probably be married!”

“You know, I think that’s right,” he mused. “It wasn’t until I had to deal with the office by myself, and my Mother had you all tied up with wedding stuff…”

“I wasn’t saying that like—grrrr!” She rubbed her hands over her face. “I didn’t mean that it was a mistake. I meant you just want me to keep your life tidy. You don’t love me at all!”

“Now, that’s not true,” he reprimanded. “I love you a lot.”

“No, you love what I can do for you,” she said. “You’ve never once put my needs above your own comfort. And I am sick of it!”

She got up and then did what she’d visualized. She poured the iced tea on him.

“Hey!” he yelped, jumping to his feet.

“I am going to deposit these checks right now, and if you try to stop payment, so help me, Gerald,” she said through gritted teeth, “I am going to drive over to your house and kick your ass myself. Do you understand?”

He nodded, looking at her as if she were a wild animal. Which, she supposed, she was.

“I’m through with being taken advantage of,” she announced. “I’m through with rolling over. So go find yourself another girl Friday.”

“Huh?” He looked wounded. Confused. Downright baffled, actually.

“Never mind,” she said. “We’re done, Gerald. Finally. From now on, just leave me alone.”

And with that and her dignity, she turned and strode out of the restaurant, leaving him dripping wet.

“THIS IS A FINE SHIP you’ve got here, son.”

Jack forced a smile. “Thanks. I like it.”

The comment came from his charter passenger, a Roy Vicente, and his new wife Martha. The two of them were in their late sixties if they were a day. Yet they were cooing over each other like a couple of teenagers. Ordinarily, Jack would have found the whole thing kind of cute.

Lately, romance seemed to make his skin crawl. He spent as much time in his cabin or the steering compartment as possible and left the guests to their own devices as much as possible. He’d hired a temporary cook, a guy named Frank, who was quiet and adept and, other than getting seasick his first day, was handy enough.

Jose and Ace didn’t like him, however. Which meant that he’d probably be looking for a new cook pretty soon.

“My wife,” Roy continued with the amusement and pride that only a newlywed could infuse the words with, “has always loved the ocean and boats and stuff. This is a dream come true for her.”

“Our pleasure,” Jack said.

The guy leaned back in a chaise lounge, and Jack wondered if he could just skip out, when Roy continued. “Me,” he said easily, looking like the king of the world, “I hate boats.”

Jack blinked. “Beg pardon?”

“Don’t like boats at all.” Roy laughed. “Can’t stand them. They’re claustrophobic. And everything swaying all the time? I got drunk plenty when I was younger. I don’t need all the effects of being off balance with none of the benefits, you know?”

Jack stared at him, incredulous. “Then…what, she’s making you take this cruise?” He glanced around to see if she were there. She’d seemed like a nice woman, but then, even Mrs. Newcombe had seemed pretty sane when they’d started that cruise.

“No, no. She’s belowdecks, taking a nap,” Roy said with a wave of his hand. “Honestly, this is going a lot better than I thought. And of course she didn’t force me. It was my idea. We got married at the justice of the peace, and I surprised her with it.”

“You surprised her with something you hated?”

“She doesn’t know how much I dislike boats,” he said. “The important thing is I know how much she loves ’em. It’s a gift, you know?”

Jack shrugged. “If you say so.”

Roy looked him over with an eagle eye. “You’ve never been married, have you?”

“Is it that obvious?” Jack didn’t mean for his tone to turn that sarcastic, but…

Well, damn it, since Chloe had left, he’d been bitter, snappy and pretty much a pain to be around. At least that’s what Jose and Ace had told him. To make it worse, he was miserable. And even though he felt it was Chloe’s fault for forcing the issue, it didn’t stop the fact that he missed her terribly. If he had more of Chloe’s spirit, he’d probably have come up with a solution to his problem by now, something neat, an action plan, a checklist of some kind. But he wasn’t Chloe, so he’d wound up drinking when he wasn’t ferrying passengers around. The boat was mostly booked, though, for the next month and a half with high-paying customers, thanks to Chloe.

It was a blessing and a curse.

“You know, I used to be like you,” Roy mused. “This is my second marriage, did I mention that?”