Jasmine (2 page)

“She’s not the only one. I was…why
do you think Nathan hates me? I’ve never done anything wrong to him.” A short
bark of laughter had Gracie smile. “Okay, maybe I have given him one or two
reasons to be upset with me. But the guy is too stiff for words.”

“And you’re in love with him.” Jazzie
started to stutter, but Gracie cut her off. “You can try and deny it all you
want, but I saw the way you looked at him. Like he was a pound of dark
chocolate and you were PMSing.”

“He doesn’t like me,” Jazzie said
softly. “He avoids me and, just this morning, he accidentally came into the
office where I was and he practically trembled in fear I’d do something to
him.”

“Have you told him how you feel?” As
soon as she laughed again, this one bitter and hard, Gracie knew that she
hadn’t. “You should just tell him. Or jump his bones. I’m pretty sure that’ll
make him notice you.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he’ll run for the
hills too. I can’t do that to Alyssa. She and her brother are making great
headway into becoming family again. No, I’m thinking I’m going to just stop
going by the office and hide out at my house.”

After telling her sister when
she’d be shipping out her package they hung up. Gracie wondered long after
she’d gone home if her sister would be able to keep away from Nathan Howard. He
seemed to be a man who didn’t think he was good enough for anyone, much less
her flighty sister.

Chapter 2

Nathan waited for over two hours
for Miss Waite to call him back. While he’d been waiting he’d made a list of
things to say to her. He was working on the third page when his sister walked
in. She seemed to be a little upset. He waited until she made sure her water
bottle was safe before he spoke.

“I had a tiff with your
sister-in-law. She seems to be under the misimpression that I avoid her.” Alyssa,
apparently satisfied with her bottle, opened it and took a long drink. “I don’t
want her to think such things.”

“Jazzie, I’m guessing? You do
avoid her.” She smiled at him before she continued. “She can be a bit much at
first, but she sort of grows on you. Would you like me to say something to her?
I know that she teases you badly sometimes. But she means well.”

He thought about it for all of two
seconds. “No, I should. I was making a list. I want us to have a clear picture
of where our boundaries are so that we can work together. She makes
me…uncomfortable sometimes.” It was more than that and he knew it. She made him
aware of himself. Not just as a person, but as a man. He’d never had that
reaction to another person before, at least not that he knew of. Most of his
life had been spent in a blur of drugs and alcohol. Mostly the drugs part, he
supposed.

He’d taken his first drink at
eight. He and his brother had been wandering around a party that his parents
had been giving, bored out of their minds. Robert, his then six-year-old
brother, had taken the first drink out of the wine bottle left on the table. He’d
told Nathan that he had to get his own. He’d opted for a bottle of scotch.

They had both gotten sick. Very
sick, as a matter of fact. Their mother, Shannon Howard, had told them that she
hoped they’d learned a lesson and left it at that, but their father, Nathan the
third, had taken a different approach. He’d beaten both their asses.

At the time, Nathan had hated the
man. He’d had no right to judge them on taking a little drink and had said as
much to his uncle Samuel about it. Samuel had agreed and, whenever there was
another party or a group of them together, he made sure that his favorite
nephews had their own little stash of liquor and that no one found out about
it. It was his road to destruction.

By the time he was thirteen he was
a drunk. And when alcohol didn’t work as well to make him feel good he started
on drugs. By the time he’d found out he wasn’t Nathan’s son and that his uncle
was his actual father the man who could have saved him from himself was dead. Nathan,
the man who had beaten his bottom on more occasions than not, died and left him
to his sister. He was lucky that she was just like her dad.

Alyssa brought him back to the
present with a short laugh. “She’ll love that. I’ve never met anyone more
afraid of lists than she is. I wonder at times how she gets what she needs at
the grocery when she goes. I love her to death, but she is the most
scatterbrained woman I’ve ever meet.”

Nathan didn’t know why, but he had
a feeling that Miss Waite was a lot smarter than anyone was giving her credit
for. He didn’t say that to his sister, but he thought Jasmine might need to be
watched a bit closer. He only nodded and added one more thing to his list.

“I was wondering if I could talk
to you about the project we discussed the other day? I was wondering if you’ve
given it any more thought.” He wanted to take on the library project with all
his heart, but he didn’t want to fail his sister. “I have some more numbers for
you, if that helps.”

“I looked over what you gave me
the other week. I think it’s a great idea. But I only have one issue.” He felt
his heart thud. Here it came; she was going to tell him that she’d decided on
someone else to head the project. “You’ll have to have a staff and an office. I
hate that I don’t have the room for you on this floor. Do you think you could
see your way to have your office up here and the staff on the lower floor? At
least until your building is completed?”

He was so ready to tell her that
he’d help whoever she’d picked out to head it that it took him several moments
to realize what she’d said. He could only stare at her as she waited for his
answer. He asked her to repeat it.

“I want you to stay on the top
floor with me. I love having you close at hand and Connor knows that all he
needs to do is toddle down to find you. I think he’ll miss you being where he
can find you too. Especially if you take your drawer of little cars from him.”

“You’re letting me do it?” His
voice squeaked with pleasure. “I don’t know what…thank you, Alyssa. I won’t let
you down. My office? You want…” Nathan took a deep breath before continuing. “Your
dad used to have them in is drawers, you know. The cars. He would give me one
every time I came into his office when I…before I…before I screwed up.”

“I know. I found them in his desk
after…when I was cleaning things up. And you didn’t screw up, Nathan. You were
misled and, because of that, you got sidetracked. You’re not going back there
again so we move on and up, right?” She stood up and went toward the door as
she continued. “Connor might not have known
our
dad, Nathan, and he was
our dad, but he has you to teach him things that I can’t. You’re his biggest
hero right now and I love you for it.”

After she left he reached for his
phone. He was going to try and reach Jasmine again, but his office phone rang
before he could pull hers up on his cell. He frowned when he saw the number.
What could she want?

“Mrs. Waite, what can I do for
you? If you’re looking for Cain or Alyssa, they are both—”

“What on earth would I want that
woman to talk to me for? She would simply hang up on me anyway. No, dear boy,
I’ve called to speak to you.” Guinevere Waite was not a nice person and Nathan
hated to think what she’d want from him. “I was wondering if you could help me
find some drugs. I need something to help me—”

“I don’t know anything about drugs,
Mrs. Waite. I’ve…you’ll have to see your doctor if there is a problem that you
feel is only solved with a pill.” He was trembling with the need to slam the
phone down on her. “I’ve been clean for a long while now, as you know.”

“Yes, yes, I’m aware of the little
party that your…
sister
”—she made it sound like a dirty word—“gave you
when you hit your one year mark. Total waste of time and money, if you ask me. You
type of people always go back on the sauce. It’s only a matter of time before
you do. No, I need you to find me something to help me relax. I’m sure you have
contacts still. A man like you will need to keep in touch with the lowlifes
just to keep your finger in the pot.”

Nathan wanted to think she was
kidding him. But he knew better. She’d been anything but civil to him and his
sister since he’d met her last year. She was never anything but a bitch and
right now, he wasn’t in the mood to fuck with her.

“How you live with yourself daily
is beyond me. You are the most horrid woman I’ve ever met.” He stood up as he
felt himself getting more and more pissed. “I will only say this the one time. I
do not know any ‘lowlifes,’ as you put it. Maybe you should look at the people
you hang out with before you go pointing your finger at others.” He slammed the
phone down so hard he felt it vibrate up his arm.

It took him ten minutes to calm
himself down and another five before he thought he could drive. He grabbed up
his coat and decided he needed a break. Alyssa had a gym put in the offices
last year when they’d moved to this newer building and he decided that he could
use a good two or three hours down there before he went home. Nathan thought
maybe he should invest in one for his house too.

~~~

Drew watched Nathan move from one
piece of equipment to the other. The man was going to have a heart attack
before the end of the day if he kept this pace up. He’d already done forty
minutes on the treadmill and another on the stair machine. If he did that long
on the bike, Drew decided that he was going to put the guy up for the next
Olympics. He moved over to the bike next to him and handed him a bottle of cool
water.

“Drink it slow or you’ll get
cramps.” Nathan nodded but didn’t speak. “You want to talk about it?” A grunt
was all he got. “Or I could just wait until they rush you to the hospital for
heart failure and have the doctor give you something that’ll make you talk.”

“I don’t do drugs anymore,” Nathan
snarled at him. “And I don’t know any fucking lowlifes that I can get any from
either. I’m clean, damn it.”

Drew nearly laughed, but from the
look the other man was giving him he decided he might live longer if he didn’t.
Instead, he just kept up his own pace with the bike until Nathan started to
slow. Before Drew could ask if he wanted to talk about it Nathan stopped
moving.

“She said she wanted something to
help her relax. I’d like to give her something to relax. A bullet between the
eyes comes to mind.” Drew didn’t say anything as Nathan continued. “She said
that the party my sister gave me for my one-year was a waste of money and time.
Do you know how much that meant to me to have her do that? Plenty, I can tell
you. Then that bitch…how the fuck did she have such wonderful kids and be such
a…such a cancer on the earth?”

Nodding his understanding and
knowing who Nathan was talking about made Drew wonder the same thing. “Guinevere
is something else, you got that right. I take it she’s the reason for the hyped
up exercise program you’re killing yourself over.”

“She called right before I left my
office. She said that I would be back on the sauce again soon enough.” Nathan
took another swig of water. “I don’t know anyone who could stand to be around
her all the time. How do you do it?’

Drew laughed. “I don’t. I only talk
to her when I need to and have my secretary answer the phone so that I don’t
have to. I told you to hire one last month. See what I meant by having a built-in
call screen?’

“I’m going to do it first thing in
the morning,” Nathan mumbled. “I’ll have to hurry or I’ll be wearing out the
equipment down here.”

Both men went to the shower, cleaned
up, and changed. Drew was glad that his boss and sister-in-law had decided that
having private showers instead of open ones when he stepped in the bath and saw
Allen Davidson there. The man would come down for about ten minutes and work
out then hang around the shower room until someone came in he could invite to
dinner. Plus, the man had to weigh all of four hundred pounds, not a sight that
Drew wanted to see naked. He was dressed and waiting for Nathan twenty minutes
later after assuring Allen that he and Nathan had a business dinner they had to
go to.

The two men did end up at The
Court of Small Clams together. And business was the furthest thing from either
of their minds. Drew suggested they call the other men, Shamus and Payton, who
asked if they could bring along Cain to round out the night. They were just
getting their salads set before them when Drew mentioned Guinevere.

“She actually called you to ask
for…I don’t know why I’m surprised. Not about her calling you, because I can’t
tell you enough how sorry I am she did that, but trying to get something
illegal. I refused to give her anything stronger when she came by my office
last week,” Cain said as he took a pull on his beer. “She said she was having
problems sleeping in that ‘horrid house’ I’d put her in. Do you know how much I
could get for that house on the open market right now?”

Drew answered for him. “One point
three million. I know, I had to have it appraised for you last year. I’m sorry
to say this, Cain, because I know she’s your mom, but she’s nuts. And Nathan
came down to the gym while I was there to burn off some of her nastiness.”

It was well after midnight when
the men went their separate ways. Drew could tell that Nathan had something on
his mind. The man had checked his cell phone several times before they’d left. He
wondered if it was a girl and decided that he hoped so. Nathan was too nice of
a guy not to have a bevy of women hanging around. Drew crawled into bed with
his wife and thought this was the way to be, happily married, with children
sleeping just down the hall from them.

Chapter 3

“This is going to be huge, you
know that don’t you? My goodness, Jazzie, where do you come up with these story
lines? If this series sells anything like the last one did you’re going to be
big.”