Present Day
Jace Bennett
THE NAME ON the sample invitation made me wince.
It read,
Mr. Malcolm Jackson Bennett III and Flirt Enterprises would like to cordially invite you to the Greater Area Chicago Outreach Fundraiser on December 18th—
I closed my eyes and didn’t finish reading the rest. Being born with a name like Malcolm Jackson Bennett III certainly had its share of ups and downs.
As one of the foremost families to invest in the oil industry in the early 20th century, power and money had accompanied the family name ever since.
It was both a gift and a curse.
The whole living up to the name thing was probably the most difficult.
My grandfather, Malcolm Jackson Bennett I, was a poor boy from the south side who worked hard and invested his money in something he had no idea would make him millions.
After making all that money, my grandfather had wisely diverted his funds into the banking industry. And up until four years after the death of my father, our family had maintained the prestigious control of B&B Bank.
Malcolm Jackson Bennett II was the son of Malcolm Jackson Bennett I and Adeline Colchester, a pedigreed woman who was raised in high-society. They were both in their early thirties when they married, and my father was their only child.
As the prodigal son, my father was sent to the finest schools and reared to become one of the most influential men of Chicago. That plan went awry though when he met my mother, Jane Wilmington, and fell in love.
Love shouldn’t have been a problem, except my mother wasn’t from an affluent family or raised in the manner in which my father was, and because of this my grandmother resented her from day one, hence the resentment of me I always assumed.
Having grown up in the very place my grandfather had, on the south side, my grandmother deemed my mother unsuitable wife material for a man of my father’s stature. My mother was a schoolteacher and met my father at a fundraiser to raise money to rebuild the playgrounds in south Chicago. Where she was from should have been irrelevant. She had a big heart and the kindest soul.
Not that Adeline Colchester Bennett cared about those kinds of things. No, she cared about connections and affluence. Rearing and money. And because my mother had none of the things she valued, my grandmother refused to accept her as a part of the family, even after my father married my mother. And there was no forcing her to. Not even my grandfather had that power.
Shortly after my parents wed, they had me, and soon after that my grandfather died from a sudden heart attack.
At the age of thirty-one, my father took the helm of the family business. He was a great businessman and while he managed to keep afloat what my grandfather had built, my mother had started to champion a number of causes, including Chicago’s largest outreach program for children in need of assistance.
Ten years later, my parents were killed at one of those outreach fundraisers. They’d decided to walk a bit before catching a cab and were robbed at gunpoint. Both were shot. At first, the police thought it was a robbery, but later they discovered the shooter was a disgruntled former employee. My grandmother refused to accept that her son had died as a result of the family business. She continued to believe a robbery gone wrong was the underlying cause. But I knew my parents would never have put their lives in danger over material things.
Their brutal killings only flamed my grandmother’s hatred of my mother because she blamed my mother for my father being on the streets of the south side. It didn’t matter that my father supported the outreach program, nor did it matter that he loved helping others. In fact, my grandmother turned her back on those works, including the outreach program. Regardless of my protests, she promptly removed our family name and support from all of the charities my parents had been working with.
At ten it wasn’t like I had a say in the matter, and besides, without my parents I was a lost boy. Nothing seemed to matter to me. I became wild and uncaring. As the years went on, I rebelled against my grandmother at every turn.
If the death of first her husband, and then her son, had been hard on her, giving up control of what my grandfather had spent his life building had been even harder on my grandmother. She didn’t have a choice. The state of the bank was spiraling quickly. Sadly, even under new ownership, B&B went bankrupt.
It was in those dark days, when I was around fourteen, after all of my badgering she agreed I could go by the nickname my mother had called me—Jace.
I liked it because it was anonymous. I wasn’t easily identified. I didn’t have a reputation to live up to that I knew I never could. My grandmother liked it because every time she yelled it, it didn’t remind her of her dead husband or her dead son.
There was no doubt I was a handful. But for a seventy-something year old woman I proved more trouble than she could manage.
The demise of B&B had hurt her financially, and she spent a lot of time avoiding her situation.
With so much time on her hands, she rejoined the ranks of the social circles of Chicago. One night she took me to a party at the mayor’s house, and when he caught me banging his daughter, he just about threw my grandmother and me out on our asses.
That was when dear old granny decided to ship me off to boarding school in New Hampshire. I was fifteen. And I hated it.
When I was expelled in my senior year for numerous instances of sexual misconduct, the final straw being allowing the school president’s daughter to blow me in the library stacks, my grandmother reluctantly brought me back to Chicago to finish high school.
After I graduated though, she promptly cut me off. She’d had enough of my wayward ways. Sure, she’d agreed to pay for a basic college education and give me a meager monthly stipend, but I was stripped of my car and credit cards. My trust wouldn’t kick in until I was twenty-four, so I was basically penniless.
By then my grandmother was almost eighty-years old, but you would have never known it. She was sharp as a tack and insisted everything she was doing was for my own good. She wanted me to learn that money didn’t buy self-respect.
She wasn’t wrong.
She also didn’t have much money left.
The amount she did have wasn’t going to bail her out. I was never going to be the man she wanted me to be.
She wasn’t wrong on that count either.
In spite of her methods which only proved to push me further down the rabbit role, by the time I turned twenty-four, I had somehow gotten my shit together. My path wasn’t something she approved of, but by then she no longer had anything to say about it.
That never stopped her from trying to mold me into what she wanted me to be. That had continued until her dying day, which happened to be the night I told her I was going to ask Tricia to marry me. She wanted me to marry within my station, as she called it. That sickened me. She’d never approved of anyone I had been with, and I accepted she was more than likely incapable of doing so.
The woman who tried to teach me money would never buy self-respect didn’t seem to truly believe that herself.
Tricia was from Lansing, Michigan, and my grandmother called her a small-town girl with a bleeding heart.
The small-town girl part was rather funny, as Tricia had grown up in the capital of Michigan. Her father was a professor of political science at Michigan State and her mother stayed at home. Tricia did, however, have a voice, and she was an advocate for many causes. In truth, I imagined she was a lot like my mother in that respect, and I think that was what scared my grandmother. I told her how I felt that night. Told her she no longer controlled me. And told her if she couldn’t accept Tricia, she was out of my life.
That very same night, my grandmother passed away in her sleep. The medical examiner found she had died of natural causes, and yet I couldn’t help but feel it was because of me. That I’d gone too far. That I should have been gentler with her. My words kinder. Then again, I always regretted my harsh words. Always. I could just never stop them from escaping my mouth.
The will she left had no provisions, like I had to marry an heiress or the President’s daughter. Everything she had left was left in full to me, her beloved grandson, as it read. I don’t think I ever knew how much I loved her until she was gone, and that was something I hated—for both her and for me.
The light knock on the door had me blinking out of the past and wondering who the hell was stopping by at nine o’clock on a Thursday night.
There was an ache in my chest as I quickly tacked the invitation that was still in my hand on the bulletin board in the kitchen. Mrs. Sherman insisted we use it to keep track of all of the household events. Once I was done, I strode past the dining room to the foyer.
A peak out the window told me a white Infinity SUV was parked in my driveway. I had no fucking clue who it was. If it was someone selling something this late, I was going to go all postal on them.
As soon as I swung the door open wide, I felt the earth shift under my bare feet. “Hannah,” I murmured in shock.
“Jace,” she said sternly. My name seemed to come out as a cautious whisper, almost as if she couldn’t believe she was standing where she was.
“What are you doing here?” I asked with a hardened expression I could feel form on my face before I could stop it.
“I was hoping to talk to you.”
The events that followed happened so fast that I hadn’t even had time to consider my actions. She stepped forward, but then again I think I might have moved aside, and then she had her hand on the doorknob.
Unlike the night before, I had a much clearer view of her. As close as she was, I took her in in a way I hadn’t been able to do the last time I saw her.
Blonde strands, perfectly smooth, and shinier than I remembered, were clipped into a messy bun. It was upswept in a way that reminded me of how she had worn it sometimes in college, and just like then it seemed to be begging for me to set it free.
Christ. I had to get a grip.
Yet, as she closed the door, I raked my eyes over her. Her body hadn’t changed. She was still slight with narrow hips and small breasts, which filled out her tight tank top nonetheless. Tall, she was taller than I remembered, but still small. Dainty. Not fragile though. She was never fragile.
When she turned to fully face me, I sucked in a breath. Her eyes. Christ, her eyes. They were the exact same as last night, and got to me in the same way they had then. Sad. Tired. Exhausted.
She cleared her throat. “I came to discuss something with you.”
Still in my white shirt and dress slacks from the day at the office, I shoved my hands in my pockets. “Go on.”
Her eyes bounced around. “Jonah admitted to teasing your daughter about her hair last night when I asked him, and after we discussed the hurtfulness of his words, he promised to apologize to Scarlett.”
My stance was uncomfortable and I shifted from foot to foot, puffing my chest out in satisfaction. “Good then, I assume everything is settled. You could have just sent me an email though, you didn’t have to come over here.”
“Everything is not settled,” she snapped, and she was barely able to suppress her snarl of rage.
“Cool your jets.”
Her nostrils flared. “I assume your daughter didn’t tell you about her day.”
Hostility building, I narrowed my gaze. “As a matter of fact, she did.” What I left out was that she must not have told me everything.
“And you were okay with what she said to Jonah in response?”
Intense didn’t even come close to describing her at that moment. She looked like a total badass with that snarl on her lips and her hands on her hips. “Sure,” I responded but as soon as I did I wished I hadn’t. Probably would have been best to know the full story first.
Her eyes blazed with fury, and she opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it.
Alarm skated up my spine and circled my neck in a chokehold. Trying to backpedal, I was just about to ask what Scarlett had said when she opened the door to leave and glared at me with those blue eyes that suddenly appeared icy.
“I’m surprised you’re okay with the knowledge that the apple might not be falling far from the tree,” she blasted, and then forcefully closed my own door in my face.
What the fuck?
That was a shitty thing to say! I considered going after her and telling her so, but I thought knowing what was said before I did so might serve me better.
Climbing the stairs, I checked on my princess, and then went and climbed in my bed.
Alone.
The hours passed so God damn slowly as I counted them down to wake up time. Dreaming of Hannah and the way we used to be nearly caused me to get up and drink a pot of coffee to stop the onslaught of memories.
Somewhere between the hours of two and three, I finally stopped counting. The dreams however didn’t cease. The way her mouth used to close around my cock, the way her fingernails raked down my back, the way she called out my name when I pounded into her. The face she made when she came. They kept rotating through my mind.
It pissed me off.
Attuned to the pitter-patter of little feet, I sat up as soon as I heard them. It wasn’t quite five, so my alarm hadn’t gone off.
“Daddy,” she called in a wobbly voice.
Concerned, I hopped off the bed and leapt for her. “What is it, princess?” I asked, taking her in my arms and lifting her.
She pressed her little head into the crook of my neck and started to cry.
I sat on the bed and held her before gently pulling her back to look into her eyes. “Did you have a bad dream?”
Scarlett shook her head and her curls tickled my nose. “I don’t want to go to school today.”
Scooting backward, I kept her in my arms and leaned against the headboard. “Why? Did something happen yesterday?”
The nod she gave me was slight.
“Did you forget to tell me about it at dinner?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t forget to tell you, Daddy. I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d be mad.”
This was the conversation I’d been waiting to have, and now I dreaded it. I lifted her and sat her on the bed so she could look at me. “I will never be mad as long as you tell me the truth. I might be upset, but I could never be mad at you.”
Those green eyes gleamed with tears as she took a big breath. “Remember that new boy I told you about? The one who said that mean thing about my hair?”
I nodded. “I do.”
“Yesterday at recess he told me he was sorry.”
I lifted her fallen chin. “That’s good, isn’t it? Did you say thank you?”
She shook her head imperceptibly. “When Jonah said he was sorry, I told him not to worry about it because he couldn’t help it if his blonde hair made him dumb. And then he told me I was going to be in big trouble and I started to cry.”
There was no way I could stop my reaction. My eyes widened in shock and I gasped. My innocent, precious little girl called someone dumb?
And not just someone.
Never in a million years would I have believed it. She wasn’t like me. Uncaring. Fuck, the apple comment, that’s what it was about. “Scarlett, where the he—” I stopped myself from saying hell, and circled back with a bit of a lighter tone. “Scarlett,” I said again, “where did you ever hear something like that?”
The serious expression she wore worried me. “Daddy, everyone knows blondes are dumb.”
Fighting my shock, I shook my head. “No, Scarlett, that is not true.”
She pursed her lips. “Well, Max told me it was. He has blonde hair and is older than me. If anyone knows, he does. Right?”
Max was Fiona and Ethan’s son, and he wasn’t even six months older than Scarlett, although he was in the first grade. “No, he doesn’t. What you said was a really mean thing. Sure, sometimes people do say that, but they don’t really mean it. They’re repeating an old saying.” Shit, this was hard to explain.
Those pursed lips twisted in confusion. “So it isn’t true?”
It was hard not to laugh. She was so damn cute, but this required a stern and direct approach, and I had to man up and do it. “No, Scarlett, it isn’t. Hair color has nothing to do with how smart a person is.”
She just stared at me.
“And besides, I think you know better than to call anyone dumb, don’t you?”
I prayed like hell she did, and felt a rush of pride when she nodded. “That’s why I don’t want to go to school today. When I do, I’m going to be in bigggggg trouble.”
The grin I gave her I couldn’t help. I tapped her nose. “You are not going to be in any trouble as long as you understand what you said was wrong. Do you understand me?”
A tear dripped down her rosy cheek. “Yes, Daddy, I do.”
With my thumb, I wiped it away. “Then all you have to do is apologize at school today to Jonah. And never say anything like that again. Got it?”
“Got it, Daddy,” she said, flinging her little arms around my neck.
Holding her tight, I laid us both down and then kissed her forehead. “Come on, let’s go back to sleep for an hour and then how about I take you to school today and help you apologize to Jonah?”
Her little palm caressed my cheek. “Daddy, really?”
I nodded. “Really.”
She closed her eyes, and with a smile on her face that I could have eaten up, she fell fast asleep.
Me, on the other hand, I stared wide-eyed at the ceiling and tried to figure out how the hell I was going to go through the school year knowing Hannah was both so close . . . and so far away.