Chapter Ten
Ty
I’m in my office, going through the house rules with a new girl I’ve hired, when my office manager, Bella, texts me. She has a tiny office next to this, and screens the video entry phone system.
Jasmine O’Brien’s here to see you. You in?
I grin, stupidly pleased that Jas has dropped by.
Sure. Be right there
I glance up at the girl, who’s still looking vaguely confused by my number one rule. No fucking the staff. Sometimes chicks interview to work here because they think it means they get me as a side perk, but I don’t need that shit. The Hammer is the one place I can hang out, surrounded by sexy girls, and not have to live up to my rep as a rabid man-whore.
“Okay, that’s it. Any questions, ask Bella.” I stand up, ending the interview, and she follows me into the foyer just as the front door clicks open and Jas walks in.
Instead of returning my smile, she glances at the girl, and without any warning, the blonde grabs my arm, presses herself against me, and breathes in my ear. “Catch you later, Ty.”
Jas doesn’t say anything, and it’s none of her business anyway, but fuck that. If this silly bitch can’t follow one simple rule, she’s going to be more trouble than she’s worth. I peel her off me. “Nah, you won’t. You’re fired. Get out of here.”
I ignore the shock on her face and stroll over to Jas, who hasn’t moved from the door. “Hey, babe.” I kiss her, aware Bella and the blonde are watching, and that’s fine by me. “You need something?”
“Just a quick word.” Her voice is like ice. Is she pissed because of the blonde? It’s crazy, but I like that thought.
We go into my office, and I kick the door shut. Before I can grab her hand and pull her close, she folds her arms. Fuck, has she been crying? Who’s messed with her? All my old protective instincts break free of their cage and roar to the surface. No one upsets my girl. “You all right, Jas?”
“I’m fine.” She gives a frosty smile and then tugs something from her purse. “This arrived after you left.”
I frown at the slip of paper she waves in my face. I didn’t expect her to be full of gratitude for sending her the check, but I don’t get the hostility. “Yeah? What about it?”
She shoves it back in her purse. “Why didn’t you tell me my mother worked for you?”
What the hell? “I thought you knew.”
“No.” She folds her arms again. “Why would I?”
Because we met right outside the Hammer on Friday. Guess I got that one wrong. “Okay. So, she worked here. What’s the problem?”
“Why?” The word bursts from her, as though she can’t stop herself and I stare at her blankly. Why’s she so upset? “How could you, Ty? Have you really forgotten so much?”
If anyone other than Jas hurled this shit at me, I’d cut them down right now. “She needed a job. I couldn’t tell her to fuck off, could I?”
“Yes, you could.”
Now she’s starting to piss me off. “She’d lost her last job. And since her only kid had fucked off to Florida, where else could she turn before they tossed her out on the street?”
The blood drains from Jas’s face, and I feel a total asshole for throwing that at her. I know Jas would’ve helped her mom if she’d had any idea how desperate Kelly was.
“That…” Jas clears her throat and blinks a few times, like she’s trying not to cry, which really screws me up. Try and do a good deed and it comes back to bite me on the ass. “I didn’t know. We didn’t…she never told me.” She sucks in a ragged breath. “I know it’s what she did. It’s just…the thought of her doing it here, in your club. I’m just…” She turns away and hunches her shoulders, and I suddenly get it.
“Wait. Fuck, she wasn’t a stripper. I hired her as a cleaner.”
She doesn’t answer right away, but her shoulders slowly slump, and it takes more willpower than I like to admit to not wrap her in my arms.
No, I haven’t forgotten anything. Jas hated what Kelly did. Not the stripping so much, but the rest of it.
Hell, I tried to protect her from the worst of it, but somehow she always knew when her mom had been the entertainment at some big party the Bastards threw. As a prospect, I always found it awkward and uncomfortable, and could never watch when Kelly was in the spotlight. If ever things got down and dirty, I walked, even when the older brothers mocked me for it. She was my Jas’s mom, and I couldn’t stomach it, and I could hardly imagine how much it tore Jas up inside.
Finally, she faces me. “A cleaner.”
“I wouldn’t have hired her to do the dancing.” Kelly might’ve still looked good for an older chick, but the girls who work on the floor are all in their early twenties. Probably best if I don’t tell Jas that.
“Right.” She takes a deep breath. “So, she wasn’t doing any extracurricular activities for you, either?”
Is she accusing me of taking advantage of her own mother? “Extracurricular activities? I’m not a fucking pimp. My girls are dancers, not hookers.”
“Oh.” She doesn’t sound sorry. “No special perks for your VIPs?”
“Yeah, I have private booths where clients pay extra for a lap dance, and if they grab the girl they’re out on their ass.”
“That’s not the way Jett operated.”
“Newsflash, babe. I’m not my father.”
She doesn’t back down. Instead she stares me out, and there’s no trace of the vulnerability that tore me apart just moments ago.
“So, is the Hammer part of his operations? Or all yours?”
I’m not sure I like her tone, but I guess a part of me wants her to know this is all mine. “Nothing to do with Jett. Got this place up and running a couple of years ago.”
“And it’s all legit?”
I shrug. “You know how it is.”
“Yes.” She leans back against my desk, her hands gripping the edge. “I do know how it is.”
My patience snaps. “Don’t hold back, Jas. If there’s something you want to say, just fucking say it.”
“Okay.” There’s a strange, cool note in her voice that for some reason scrapes along my nerves. “Would you show me the employment contracts you have with your dancers?”
The fuck? “What?”
“How do you handle allegations of sexual harassment? You say clients are supposed to keep their hands off the girls, but what happens in practice?”
“In practice?” I close the distance between us until I’m looming over her. She doesn’t even blink. “I’ll tell you what happens. They touch my girls and they’re lucky if they can still use their legs to crawl out of the place.”
“Viking Bastards included?”
“Too damn right.” Not that they would, since that’d be disrespecting me, and I shouldn’t have to tell her that.
She gives a wintry smile. “I guess the same rules don’t apply to you.”
“I make the rules. So yeah, they do apply to me.” What the hell’s wrong with her? It’s like she wants to fight, like she’s still all worked up over her mom, except she’s not crying or getting hysterical. She’s so calm it doesn’t make any sense.
“Are you telling me you don’t make passes at the women who work here?”
“Why? Jealous?” It’s crazy. I want her to be jealous, even though she has no reason to be. She never had any reason to be.
She’s screwing with my mind again…
“What about the blond woman just now? The one you fired after leaving your office?”
She’s rattled all right, even if she’s doing a good job of hiding it. “I don’t hire chicks who throw themselves at me. Sexual harassment,” I emphasize the words, even though inside I’m rolling my eyes at what I’m about to say, “works both ways. Think about that.”
She’s silent for a moment, obviously thinking it over. Then she lowers her head, breaking eye contact. “I apologize.”
I didn’t expect that, and she says it so formally that, despite how pissed off she’s made me, I have the insane urge to laugh. “Apology accepted.” I can’t help myself, and tip her face up with my finger. “Stuff goes on here, Jas. I don’t need to tell you that. But there’s no whoring, okay?”
“Okay. But you can’t blame me for assuming it. Jett’s escort business was always a good earner.”
It still is. “The Hammer turns over a good profit. I don’t need that kind of sideline.”
She sighs, and tension seeps from her. “Thanks for looking out for my mom. It’s not like you needed to.”
“I only gave her a job.” And finally, I can admit why I did. She might not have been a great mom, but she was the only one Jas had. I couldn’t turn my back on her.
“Well, it’s more than a lot of guys would’ve done, after the way we split up.”
I wind a length of her hair around my finger, and she rests her head against my shoulder. There’s no need to say anything else about how or why we split. It’s over. But for the first time, unease thuds through me at the way I treated her that last day.
Forget it. I don’t owe her anything, and she sure doesn’t expect it.
Except now that I’ve acknowledged what a prick I was to her, I can’t shift the conviction that if I’d handled it better, she would never have gotten on that plane.
It’s taken you ten years to question that?
No. It’s taken ten years for me to admit I might’ve been—I was—in the wrong.
It’s not a great feeling.
“I always thought you’d come back.” Fuck, did I say that out loud?
She doesn’t pull back, but her ragged sigh burns through me like acid. “No.”
That’s all she says, but the pain in that one word is like a blade through my chest.
“I didn’t mean it.” The confession rips me open, and for a second I close my eyes. You get on that fucking plane and don’t even think about coming back. “I just didn’t want you to go.”
“I know.” Her whisper is muffled against my shoulder, and I wrap my arm around her, not even caring that I’ve just admitted to making the biggest damn mistake of my life. “It wasn’t you, Ty. I just had to get away from everyone here.”
A crazy part of me wants to demand why she didn’t trust me enough to do right by her. I was only a prospect, but she knew it was only a matter of time until I became a full member of the Bastards, and everything changes then. I’d have earned the respect and loyalty of all the brothers, and none of them would’ve disrespected her, no matter how they used her mom.
Too late now.
The words linger in my mind like an unanswered question instead of a stone-cold fact.
What the hell am I thinking?
“What d’you do in Florida?” There’s no ulterior motive. I just want to know. Nothing wrong with that.
“I’m a civil rights attorney.”
An attorney? For a second I think she’s messing with me, because seriously. My little Jas is an attorney?
I pull back, and she gives a faint smile. “Not what you expected?”
“No.” I don’t know what I expected, but it sure wasn’t this. “Since when did you want to be an attorney?” She always made good grades at school, but she never really talked about a future career.
“It was Marina who first suggested it. I thought she was joking, but she was deadly serious.”
I’m silent as this new info sinks into my brain. “And you enjoy it?” All I can think about is courtroom fights. Jas hated conflict of any kind. Why would she pick a job that forced her into constant confrontations?
“I do. Obviously, I had a lot of crap to work through before I was ready to make that decision, but the therapy helped a lot.”
Therapy? I’ve no idea what to say to that. Although, after we lost the kid and Jas left, I kicked the shit out of anyone who looked at me wrong. Took almost a year before my head cleared. Guess that was a kind of therapy, too.
“You must be doing all right for yourself.”
She loops her arms around my waist. “Not as well as you might think. I work in a non-profit, specializing in cases of sexual assault, domestic violence, and discrimination against women and minorities. Keeps me busy.”
“I’ll bet.” Pride washes through me at how much she’s achieved. Would she have done so well if she’d stayed in L.A.? That’s enough to cast a shadow over it all. “Is that part of the reason why you left? Because your dad could offer you more than if you’d stayed with your mom?” And if so, why didn’t she tell me that? I knew her old man had always said she could go live with him at any time, but she’d never seemed at all keen to take him up on the offer.
And then, without warning, she did.
She frowns as though she has no idea why I’d think that. “No. That had nothing to do with it. I couldn’t stay here after what happened. I was so young, Ty. I just needed to get away.”
Unease snakes through me, although I don’t know why. She’s talking about the baby. Obviously. Except I get this unsettling vibe that she’s not.
“After what happened?”
She stares at me as if I’m speaking Greek. “What?”
“You’re talking about losing the baby, right?” Why am I pushing this? Of course, she is.
Isn’t she?
There’s a pause, as though she’s thinking about her answer. But what’s there to think about? “Yes” is all she needs to say.
What else could she say?
Finally, she gives me a small smile that for some reason doesn’t reassure me at all. “Of course.”
I pull her closer. There’s a sick sensation in the pit of my stomach, and I don’t want to discuss this, but I need to know. “Did anything happen you’re not telling me about?” What do I even mean by that? All I know is something’s not right. “Did your mom find out you were pregnant and give you a hard time?” My real question thuds between us. Is that why you lost the baby? Is that even possible?
“No.” She hesitates like she’s debating again whether to say anything more. “I wondered for a long time if the reason I miscarried was because of something that happened, but…no.”
Because of something that happened? I’m about to call her on that when she goes onto her toes and brushes a kiss across my lips. “Do you really want me to show you the stats on the possible causes for spontaneous miscarriage?”
Fuck, no. I hold her tight, as though that’s going to help, and she holds me right back. There’s no need to go over old history. Not when she’s here now.
Don’t fucking go there.
Too late. I already have.