Sweat Equity: Stewart Realty, Book Two Read online

  “Forget it. I’m sure it’s—” She slumped. Her earlier resolution, to let her anger at Jack go, to accept what was no doubt a perfectly decent explanation about his using the suitcase during an earlier trip, one he took before committing to her, faded. She had to believe that. It was that or drive herself completely insane thinking up all of the other reasons for him to have the stupid things.

  They still used them, of course, at least, most of the time anyway. She couldn’t take the pill thanks to her high blood pressure so it was their only option. Had he taken that suitcase on their New Year’s trip? She couldn’t even remember now.

  It was all so exhausting.

  “Don’t make me say it, Sara.”

  “Say what?” She pushed her half-eaten food away and propped her chin on her hands. Rob made his way down to them, leaned over the bar and brushed her cheek with a light kiss.

  Blake ignored him. “That the guy is exactly like our father.”

  She closed her eyes. That concept had swirled in her head for weeks. Since the utterly dreadful dinner she’d endured, when her high-powered fiancé had finally met her aging alpha-male father, it had become a clanging gong of fear.

  “Blake,” Rob’s voice stayed soft but Sara heard the firm command of it. “I don’t think…”

  Blake’s face reddened, and he startled her with his vehement response to his lover. “You don’t know. That’s the problem. She’s my sister. I don’t care how long you’ve known the guy. He is not your family. You don’t owe him anything.”

  Sara put her hand on Blake’s leg, alarmed at the waves of unhappiness rolling off him toward the man she knew he loved. He glared at it, so she took it back. “Stay the fuck out of it,” he ground out, making Rob raise an eyebrow, then walk away without a word.

  “Jesus, honey. That was a little harsh.” She stammered. She’d never seen them like this before. “What is going on with…?”

  “You stay the fuck out of that, too.” He kept his gaze trained down at the bar, then looked up at her, the bright green of his eyes shimmering with emotion. “I mean it.”

  She nodded, unable to form words in the face of her calm, stable brother’s outburst. “Damn, we suck at this, don’t we?” She picked up her beer.

  “At what?” Blake slammed his and signaled for another. She sighed and leaned into his shoulder, comforted once again by his presence. He put an arm back around her. “Whatever. You do this at your peril.” He picked up her left hand, and touched the huge diamond Jack had given her. “Seriously. You should know better. Don’t let him get away with that bullshit now or you are in for the same life our mother lived.”

  Sara sat up and stared at him, relieved but furious that he’d put into words what had spun through her brain for weeks. Unable to muster indignation in the face of his obvious agony over his own relationship issues, she nodded, finished her beer and stood. “I gotta go.”

  “Tell him, Sara. Tonight. Make him answer to you, and don’t take a bullshit story.”

  “Fine. But you listen to me a minute.” He shrugged but she pulled his face around to hers, pinching his cheeks just as he always did to get her attention. “You fuck it up with that man?” She pointed to the kitchen. “And I never listen to a word you say ever again. Go back there and make nice. I mean it. At least one of us deserves to be happy.”

  Her brother’s derisive snort before he sucked back half a beer did not make her feel any better at all as she made her way out the door, to her car, and toward the confrontation that had been way too long coming.

  Chapter Three

  “It’s over.”

  She slipped off the heavy platinum and diamond ring. Funny, the things a woman got used to. She’d never worn rings, but had immediately become accustomed to its weight on her finger. Her eyes stayed dry, even as her heart slowly broke into a million tiny pieces.

  Jack stared at her as if she’d just asked him to eat his own gonads. He had been in the process of piling his wallet, Rolex, and Mont Blanc in their usual, tidy spot on the hall table.

  She’d been waiting nearly two hours, pacing his tastefully decorated Art Deco style home from one end to the other, musing over the fact they’d christened nearly every single room in the place with various stages of sex. He loved foreplay on the massive leather sofa in front of the television. She liked it in the kitchen and in the spare bedroom they’d come to call their playroom.

  Flushing, she recalled a particularly intense session spent in his office, as she distracted him from his new construction project’s spreadsheets. Sara sighed, her chest tight with anticipated loss. It wasn’t healthy. Not anymore. Not if he wouldn’t actually communicate with her beyond work or sex.

  Especially not now that she’d found the evidence of the essential truth about him. He would never change. He was her father. And she had zero interest in living the life her mother had. Successful at work, yet seemingly unable to break from a poisonous relationship in spite of it all.

  No, thank you.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” He ran a hand through his hair. His face was drawn and almost gaunt. His eyes glinted with something approaching anger. “I went out to dinner last month, didn’t I? Behaved myself? Let your asshole father make digs all night long about ‘salesmen’? Christ.”

  He sank into a chair across from her, elbows on his knees. Sara swallowed hard again. Edible-looking in her favorite suit, he remained an impossibility for her. He would never bring her happiness.

  Still, she had to clamp down on her sudden desire to say “Psyche!” and launch herself at him, then let him fuck her silly, again. Her hands shook. She clasped them tighter in her lap, her left ring finger bare and cold. The large ring glinted on the table between them.

  “I know. And thanks. I just don’t think it’s going to work. I don’t think—” The tears she’d held back spilled down her cheeks. Reaching into her pocket, she clutched the packet of condoms she’d discovered in his suitcase. The one he’d just brought back last weekend.

  She tossed the packets of Trojans onto the table beside her discarded engagement ring. He stared at them, then up at her, confusion in his eyes. “What the fuck? Where did those come from?”

  He kept a supply in his bedside table. They’d dipped into them enough in the past months, until the moment they’d stopped using them in St. Bart’s. Sara closed her eyes, mentally counting the days since her last period before giving up. It no longer mattered anyway.

  “In your suitcase. You know, the one you just brought home. The one you asked me to look through for your driver’s license?” It took all she had to keep her teeth from chattering.

  This was a mistake. She was overreacting. Again. She should listen to him. Accept what he was telling her.

  But something in her was throwing up shields left and right and something else told her to keep it up, to escape from this farce of a relationship before she got really hurt.

  His frown deepened. Then his eyes lit up. “Oh, babe. Those are from—oh shit, I didn’t... Wow. This looks bad, doesn’t it?” He stood and walked to her, his presence sucking her in, making her want to forgive.

  “Yeah, kinda.” She rose to her feet and kept distance between them. He tried to get closer. Sara held a hand up. “Stop. Don’t. I can’t.” She turned away from him, furious at her lame, girlie need to cry.

  “Sara, I swear to you, those aren’t from Vegas. Shit.” He walked over to the liquor cabinet and splashed bourbon into a glass, picked it up and stared at it a few seconds then put it back down. “I don’t know how long ago I used that suitcase. It’s been over a year, I swear. You know me. I wouldn’t have gone without… not back then.” He sat back down. “Maybe you’re right.”

  She whirled on him. More than anything in the universe, she did not want to be “right.” The part of her not sounding alarm bells had counted on him to convince her otherwise, needed him to talk her down off the emotional ledge as only he could. A band tightened around her chest, making it
frighteningly difficult to breathe.

  She gulped in air, watched him put his head in his hands. When he looked up at her, she recognized the expression. The arrogant, fuck-the-world look she’d first been privy to was fixed firmly on his handsome face. The Jack he’d revealed to her in the past months was gone.

  Sara had no faith in her knees to hold her. She gripped the back of a tall leather chair. This was her fault. All her fault. She had to fix it. She opened her mouth but Jack’s voice overrode her.

  “I’m no good for you. Your brother, and no doubt your father, are absolutely correct. I’m a shit. I can’t do this. I thought I wanted it, but—” He picked up the glass and downed the bourbon in one gulp, then poured another, keeping his back to her. She took a tentative step toward him, her hand out to touch his shoulder, when he turned. The look of extreme asshole had been replaced with sheer agony. But his body language spoke volumes.

  It was over. And it was all her fault. Her inability to trust his words, his explanations, his perfectly logical excuse for the presence of the condoms. But she’d set this in motion now and, apparently, had given him the excuse he’d been seeking to end it.

  A sob tore from her throat as she stumbled her way to the large front door.

  He didn’t try to stop her, didn’t even call out. She stomped down the steps from the bungalow’s large porch, ignored the swing they’d sat in just a week before, drinking wine, actually discussing the wedding without him getting antsy and pissy. That might as well have been a million years ago.

  The stone that replaced Sara’s heart sank further as she slid into her BMW, turned the key and pulled out his driveway for the last time.

  The late summer heat baked the interior, so she rolled down all the windows, needing the fresh air, seeking a reason to breathe. She’d watched him with her father, had seen him full on and had no choice. Her own mother had put up with a man just like Jack her entire married life. It had been brutal on everyone in the house. And Sara had gone and fallen for—shit, she’d nearly married—a man just like Dr. Matthew Thornton.

  She shuddered, not knowing if it was from fear or the anticipation of long nights of second-guessing she had ahead. Or from the anticipated agony at the thought of never seeing him again, never feeling his lips on hers, his hands on her skin, his voice in her ear, other than in anger or frustration.

  She touched the phone button on her steering wheel. “Call Blake.”

  “What’s up?”

  She couldn’t speak. Why had she called him, anyway? So he could gloat?

  “Are you okay? What did he…?”

  “I gave him the ring back.”

  A solid minute of silence filled the car. Sara pulled into the parking lot of her condo community and put her forehead against the steering wheel.

  “I’m so sorry, Sara.” Blake’s soft voice made her want to strangle somebody, throw something that would shatter and do a ton of damage. “Do you want to come over?”

  “No. I just thought you might like to know.”

  “Oh hell. I never thought—”

  “Bullshit, Blake. You practically shoved me into this breakup. You know what, though? It’s fine. You’re right. It won’t work. You knew it. Now I know it and I did what I had to do. But don’t think I like it, because I fucking do not. I don’t like it at all. I miss him already and it damned well sucks.”

  She jabbed the “end” button. Tears burned hot trails down her face as she launched herself out of the car and toward the door, seeing nothing and knowing even less, other than she’d just either thrown away the best thing to ever happen to her or narrowly escaped a life she’d sworn she’d never live.

  Jack watched his now ex-fiancée screech out onto the quiet street, sipped his bourbon and relished its slow lubrication of the horror at what had just happened. He sank back into the chair and glared at the fucked up still life of the condom and ring together on the table.

  “Happiness Thwarted” he could call it, or even better, “In Which Jack Is a Dumb Ass And Loses Everything He Ever Wanted Because He Had a Weak Moment and Didn’t Tell Her Not to Go.”

  The purple foil packets were stacked next to the nearly ten-thousand-dollar hunk of metal and compressed coal he’d put so much faith in just a few months ago. “Goddamnit.” He swept the whole mess onto the floor. His usual method of instant spin, how to fix anything, abandoned him. He had nothing, remained a hollow shell, scraped clean, raw and pulsing like a six-foot four-inch exposed nerve ending.

  The fucking condoms.

  He’d left them there from over a year ago. From when he’d taken that crazy-ass blonde bitch of a client away for a weekend. The weekend she tried to convince him to marry her. But he’d already met Sara by then. So, he had fucked the woman six ways to Sunday then dropped her at her house, his mind and heart elsewhere.

  The bitter irony of the situation did not escape him. Vegas had been fun, sure. He’d flirted like crazy and let some ladies buy him drinks but he went to bed alone, every single night, without a single qualm or regret. He hadn’t talked to Sara that week, but he’d been busy, serving on countless panels and attending dozens of stupid glad-handing receptions. When he wasn’t doing that he’d been playing Texas Hold ’em and losing his ass, but even that didn’t bother him.

  He’d had his mind firmly fixed on the future. With Sara. He’d even entertained a pretty out-there fantasy of her beautiful body, swollen and full with their child.

  “Oh fuck.” His face and eyes burned. His throat closed up. The room spun. He had to get her back.

  How? Was he even worthy? You knew she’d freak if he spent those days in Vegas incommunicado. And yet you didn’t communicate. What was that about, you idiot, if not some kind of subconscious way of controlling how you feel about her?

  No, he wasn’t worthy. But he didn’t care.

  Jack stood, retrieved the expensive ring from the floor and set it on the front hall table with his other stuff. His heart clenched at the sight of it. Anger followed close on the heels of despair. The house echoed with silence. He knew what he needed. Picking up his smart phone he quick dialed his oldest friend, Suzanne.

  “Hey, Jack, what’s up?”

  “I need to talk.”

  “Where are you?” The noise of her beer bar receded, so he assumed she must have walked into the brewery.

  “Home. But I’m coming over. You gonna be there?”

  “Well, I wasn’t, but I’ll stick around.” Silence spun out between them before she spoke again. “You fucked it up, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “Oh hell, Jack.” The ensuing silence deafened him. He trusted Suzanne more than he trusted just about anyone, except her business partner, who was currently on the West Coast at some beer conference. “C’mon over, you fucking idiot. I’ll buy you a beer.” Jack slumped against the wall, relieved to have somewhere to go, sick to his stomach and emptier than he’d ever felt in his entire life.

  Chapter Four

  The sunlight pierced the blinds and stabbed Jack right between the eyes. He groaned and rolled over, right onto the floor. He tried a little Downward Facing Dog, getting his bearings, realizing it was not his expensive, imported carpet beneath his hands and knees.

  What the hell?

  “Jack?” a female voice called from the kitchen. He scrambled to his feet, looked down at his rumpled jeans and plain white t-shirt, and took a deep breath. He touched his denim-clad cock—morning hard, like a rock, and ready for action. He gulped.

  Shit. Did I? Please God, no.

  He dropped onto the couch in relief when Suzanne emerged, two steaming hot mugs of coffee in hand. Dressed in boxers and a t-shirt, she curled her small frame onto the chair nearest him and handed over the cup. “So, you ready to talk now? Last night was more about showing off, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I don’t want to know.” Jack’s head pounded in time with his heart.

  She chuckled into her cup, her deep red hair scraped back into a pony
tail, her face bright and clean, and refreshingly familiar. “No. You’re right. You don’t. I’m not a hundred percent sure but would guess there are Insta photos of you that look fairly incriminating.”

  He groaned. “Fuck. Me.”

  Suzanne set her cup down and smiled at him. “No thanks. Been there. Done that. Didn’t work for us, remember?”

  He grinned at her and let the caffeine work its usual magic. One of those women most comfortable in the company of men, Suzanne always had a way of setting him straight. Time spent with her in college convinced him that she had to be one of the more amazing women on the planet.

  One weekend in college on a ski trip, they’d been on a poor man’s junket, sharing a room between four of them. After far too many schnapps shots and a bit of pot, she’d ended up passed out next to him. When he woke, his cock hard in ways only a young man’s could be, she’d grasped it, rolled on top of him and fucked his brains out while their friends stayed passed out on the other side of the room. They’d had sex once more, in his apartment, not long after that, but it went no further and she had remained his close friend.

  Jack ran a hand down his face.

  “Yo. Earth to Gordon. Where the hell did you go?” She snapped her fingers in front of his face.

  “Just strolling down memory lane.” He raised his eyebrows at her. She raised her middle finger in return, making him laugh, which made him wince in pain.

  “That’s a big time dead end street. I’m more interested in how you’re gonna fix.”

  He rose and took her cup, made his way into the kitchen, and poured them more coffee. “She’s just so, I don’t know, stubborn, amazing, frustrating, perfect. You know?” She glared at him. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m no better.”

  “Look, Jack, you’re a smart guy, used to challenges, but Sara isn’t a walk in the park. I would know. I, um, got to know her brother pretty well.” Jack grinned when his friend’s creamy porcelain skin flushed bright red. He put a hand under her chin.