Ridge Creek Reunited (Ridge Creek Duology) (14 page)

Cheezels

Arianna…

Sitting in Jake’s gleaming white kitchen with a large cup of coffee in my hands I soon hear the familiar sound of Pierre racing across polished floorboards. Hitting a corner near the kitchen, he skids sideways in excitement as he races to find me. All chunky legs, big feet and rolls of fat; he’s no advertisement for style and grace as he enters the room.

He is however, pure joy.

Smiling at him as he flies across the room towards me, I gently place my cup on the bench and swivel my stool to watch him bouncing around at my feet, desperate for attention. I’m about to lean down and give him some loving when Jake rounds the corner carrying two bottles of beer. One is already open and they are both frosty cold, fresh from the cooler in his shed.

Getting a full view of his face under bright kitchen lighting I frown. Although his face is nowhere as bad as Anton’s, I can see he took a few hard ones. His split lip looks angry and sore.

Anton was obviously no push over which I find reassuring. I’d hate to think that a man employed by Stephen Bradford to watch over me could be taken down easily in a fistfight.

Deciding to appease Pierre with a wiggling toe, I shove my foot in his face before I move my attention straight to Jake. “Do tell me what sort of agreement one makes with a man after breaking his nose and taking a few good hooks to one’s own face.”

“The sort of agreement where we swap numbers,” Jake shrugs as he continues to move into the room and towards a stool next to me. “And the sort of agreement that when I’m with you, he gets to take a break.”

Pierre suddenly noticing Jake’s bare feet, averts his attack away from my foot onto Jake toes. Jake stops to look down at his foot that is now under siege and grimaces. Thinking quickly, Jake changes direction and heads for a basket of toys in the corner of the kitchen. With a quick kick from one of his besieged feet, he tips the basket over and toys spill out across the floor. Pierre, immediately in puppy heaven, redirects his attention away from Jake to focus on the abundance of toys now at his disposal. With Pierre happily distracted, Jake moves back towards me and the kitchen bench.

“I see. So that explains how you know I took a detour on the way?” I ask realizing that Anton and Jake are now communicating by
phone.

Jake nods as he places his unopened beer on the bench next to my coffee. As he does, he moves in close. Close enough that I can smell his fresh, clean scent and be distracted by it. Looking like he is about to sit on a stool next to me he appears to change his mind. Instead of taking a seat, he shoves it out of the way and leans his butt against the bench next to me. He then leans down and swivels my chair back to face the bench. This done he reduces the gap between us even further so that his legs touch the side of my knees. He
’s essentially as close as possible to me as he can get without actually sitting on me or on my stool.

Enjoying his closeness for a beat or two, I relax and grab for my coffee. Taking a sip and putting it down, I tip my head to find Jake staring at me intently. His face is unreadable. His green eyes are dark and glassy, his pupils dilated. It occurs to me that his pupils should constrict under the bright lighting of the kitchen. I’m considering mentioning this when he starts talking. “I don’t love her
, anymore.”

Sucking a long breath through my nose I close my eyes for a beat or two as I ready myself for whatever it is that Jake is about to tell me. I guess his opening line isn’t so bad. Although the hesitation before the
anymore
wasn’t awe inspiring. I guess I should also be thankful he’s not going to draw this out. He’s headed straight for the heart of the matter and appears to already realize that this is the topic that bothers me the most.

Opening my eyes again, I find him still staring at me. It would be creepy if he wasn’t so damned gorgeous and he didn’t look so laid-back. He seems mellow, relaxed. I strongly suspect he’s been smoking pot which would explain his pupils and his relaxed state. In fact, right now, I sort of wish I had some pot to smoke too. Perhaps it would help me keep my mouth shut and listen to whatever it is he is about to tell me without analyzing it word for word.

Taking another swig of his beer, he keeps his eyes locked on my face. I feel like he’s waiting for me to say something but since I have no idea where this conversation is going, I decide to forfeit the opportunity. Instead I nod my encouragement for him to continue.

He does. “We met through her father, a cancer specialist at the hospital that treated my father many years ago.”

Instantly forgetting about Victoria I hone straight in on the fact that Jake is now talking about his father. Someone he hasn’t mentioned to me before. “Your father had cancer?”

“Leukemia,” he confirms. “Nasty fucker that it was. Sucked the life out of him. Slowly and methodically. Which is how I met
Victoria’s father. He was the specialist who treated Dad through to the end. He was also the man that convinced me to grow pot in Ma’s garden shed to help Dad with his pain and nausea.”

Well there’s an unusual reason for starting a pot business.

“A
doctor
told you to grow pot for your father?” I blurt out slightly shocked. “Is that even ethical?”

Ignoring my outburst, Jake nods and continues soberly. “Jim’s not your average doctor Arianna. He’s a man who deals with the hopeless, the ones who have run out of options. He’s the man that delivers the same news, over and again to men, women and children. He’s the one with the fucked up job of telling them that all else has failed and he is there to help them die as well as they possibly can. Jim does this every damned
working day of his entire fucking life. He’s the man who understands more than anyone else I know that modern medicine doesn’t always work the way we want it to.”

“But he’s a doctor. Couldn’t he lose his license if anyone found he was suggesting his patients smoke pot?”

“Absolutely. Which is why he doesn’t recommend it
direct
anymore. Australia still treats all cannabis users as criminals, no matter what the level of usage and their reasons for using. This however doesn’t mean pot does not continue to have a role in medicine. It means its role is clandestine. Which is where we come in. Jim refers patients to certain Naturopaths for pain and nausea management and we make sure those Naturopaths have access to large quantities of high quality pot at very affordable prices. It’s a whole industry of its own outside the normal unlawful goings on of pot growing. It’s the reason Zane and I continue to carry the risk. We
believe
in what we’re doing. We saw how much cannabis helped our father during his last months and we also realized early on that the people who needed it most, couldn’t afford it. Cannabis isn’t cheap. To pay street prices for the amounts you need to treat therapeutically would send the average family broke.”

“Holy shit,” I mumble as I redirect my gaze to my coffee cup. My drug dealer boyfriend has just told me he’s trying to save the world. One cannabis plant at a time. “Why do you sell to the street suppliers as well then, why don’t you just sell to the naturopaths?”

“Because to be able to afford to sell it to the naturopaths for next to nothing, we need to make a killing on the street sales. And no matter which way you look at it, the whole business involves risk. Huge risk. Every day my brothers and I risk going to jail for the rest of our lives for supporting a cause we believe in. The only way to offset that risk is to have the finances to cover our asses if shit goes bad. We need cash and lots of it so that if we suddenly need to disappear, we can. We also need to uphold a certain image and be prepared to do whatever is necessary to protect what’s ours. There are wolves out there who want our business for the turnover. They don’t understand we have a world of people relying on us to help them through the worst times of their lives. We need them to know we’re not afraid to do what is necessary to protect our business. Both the good and bad sides of it.”

“Holy shit…” I murmur lifting my now near cold coffee to my lips for another sip. When Jake said we needed to talk, he meant we
needed to talk.

Jake watches me sipping at my coffee and finishes the beer in his hand. Pushing off from the bench, he walks to the recycle bin at the end of the bench and drops the empty bottle in. I watch him with interest and once again wonder at his tidy habits when he’s not at the shop. He grins at me cheekily, I can tell he knows what I’m thinking but I refuse to ask.

Lifting his eyebrow just enough to make his eyebrow ring bob, I see him urging me to ask. My mind screams at me to just do it, but I decide to veto.

For now anyway.

Instead I say one word, “Victoria.”

“Victoria,” Jake nods as he moves back close to me and reaches for his second beer. Twisting the top off, he places it carefully on the bench. I can see his mind is working overtime to find the right angle to continue with his conversation.

“You don’t love her, anymore,” I urge.

“I don’t love her
anymore,” he agrees as he pushes his hip back against the bench and settles in again.

“So you did love her then?” I ask starting to wonder if I’m going to have suck every word out of him.

“I did. Or I think I did. I don’t know really. She was Jim’s daughter. She was just –
there.
All the time. Like a shadow in my peripheral vision. She was there through Dad’s death and she was there whenever I went to see Jim over the years following Dad’s death as we set up the business. She was beautiful, she was in to me and it just seemed natural to hook up with her whenever we got together. It’s just a shame it took me so long to realize she was enjoying me for the bad boy arm candy more than anything else. It took me too long to realize she also wanted her bad boy cleaned up and driving a car. She had no intention of ever sitting on the back of my motorbike. She also wanted me separated from my brothers which she should have realized early on was destined to failure.”

Reaching out, Jake slides the bar stool he discarded earlier back to the bench. Lowerin
g himself slowly onto it, he takes another swig of his beer. I realize the beer is stinging his lip by the way his tongue quickly darts out to clean the angry looking split after each mouthful. Putting the half empty bottle back on the bench he continues.

“She was also stupid enough to make the mistake of convincing me to marry her because she was pregnant. Marriage was never on my radar. The only reason I did it was because I thought I had a baby on the way. Shortly after the wedding I found out she was lying. Something I should have been quicker to clue in on because knowing the woman for what she is, she would never plan to get pregnant, ever. The thought of weight gain and loose skin do not sit well with her.”

Self-centred, much.

“Does she know about the pot growing?” I ask as I try to understand why Victoria is still with Jake if he’s clearly no longer into her and not up for playing the role she had planned for him. And if she’s already the daughter of a wealthy doctor, why would she care about money? Why not just sign Jake’s divorce papers and have done with it?

“I’m not sure. I’ve never spoken to her about it direct. This said, Jim and I both believe she has her suspicions. Jim also believes that she won’t settle a divorce while she thinks I’m hiding something. We’ve both tried to convince her to cut me loose and get on with her life. She won’t. Which is annoying because she’s a risk. Not only to me, but also to her father. Having to continually tread lightly around her grates on me.

“Have you ever thought about telling her?”

“Never,” Jake growls firmly as he tips his head to stare at me. “She’s untrustworthy. She’s self-obsessed and the only thing she would see would be the dollar signs. With Victoria, life is all about her and what she can get out of it. She’s never done a hard day in her life and she most certainly doesn’t understand the real meaning of suffering. She lacks feeling
and strength. She is weak minded and petty. How Jim managed to father such a woman I don’t know. How I managed to marry such a woman, I don’t know.”

Watching Jake’s eyes flash angrily I can see no love lost. “So you really don’t like her then?”

“I despise the woman. She’s everything that’s wrong about the female world and I wish she would just go away. When shit like last night happens, I continue to have to deal with it. She’s my wife and still my responsibility. She knows that and that’s why she continues to come up with new and fucked up ways to get my attention. She still thinks that I am going to roll over and come back to her. She’s a fuckin’ idiot.”

So maybe there is seriously no love lost there.

Reaching for his beer, Jake sighs. “So there you have it.”

Mimicking his movement I reach for my coffee cup. Putting it to my lips I confirm my suspicions. It’s cold.

Grimacing I put it back on the bench and push it away. Jake watches my actions and automatically slides his beer in front of me. With a shrug, I pick it up and take a mouthful. I don’t like beer but when you get to share it with someone like Jake, you just do.

Letting out my own deep sigh I turn in my seat
to bump my knees against his. The small amount of physical contact making me feel brave enough to say what I need to say. “Please don’t ever drive off with another woman and not come back. That shit stung.”