"God, no, you have nothing to be sorry for." He grabbed her hand and held it to his lips.
"Take me back," her voice sounded heavily medicated and slurred.
"What do you mean?"
"Take me back to Italy, take me back to our home, to the villa you bought for us."
He kissed every one of her fingers without looking away from her eyes. He would take her anywhere she wanted whenever she wanted to go. "I love you so much."
"Tell me in Italian."
"Ti amo." He smiled through his tears.
"French."
" Je t'aime."
"Show off." She smiled despite the swollen lip and purple face.
"I know all the useful phrases," he whispered, his voice hoarse with emotion.
"Pardon me." An older woman he had noticed waiting with a nurse in the other room stood in the doorway. "May I see my daughter?"
He glanced at Jessica who nodded before he relinquished his hold on her hand. "I didn't realize who you were earlier."
"I am Julie." The woman averted her gaze as she moved around the bed to touch Jessica's hand.
He rubbed his hands over his eyes and stepped backward from the room and collided with Miranda. Turning his back on Jessica, he looked at the shorter woman who stared past him into the room.
"She is okay?" she asked.
He nodded, unsure what to say to console her. "I am sorry to hear of the loss of your brother."
"He killed the people in the other car." No color remained in Miranda's face. "I knew what he was capable of, we all did. The family knew, we covered for him over and over again."
He squeezed her arm and glanced over his shoulder to where Jessica talked with her mother.
"I want to apologize to her," Miranda said, eyes hollow.
"Another time." Protectiveness surged through his veins. No way he would allow anyone with the last name of Jenkins near his fiancé and there was no way he would leave her side any time soon.
* * *
Julie sat next to the bed, her eyes red rimmed from crying. "When your friend Jane came to tell me of the accident, I thought perhaps I was having another hallucination. I couldn't bare the thought of my lovely Jessica leaving me."
"Mom..." Someone had stuffed her head with cotton and needles. The dim light of the room burned her eyes. When she tried to speak, her throat closed in on itself.
"While I waited, I watched your friends worry over you. You have done better than I ever could."
"Don't say that anymore, we talked earlier, stop it."
"I am going willingly to the mental health facility. I won't fight you or the state. I want to get better. I thought about what you said about being a grandmother one day and, when I heard what happened, I thought about how empty my life would be if you all of that were taken from me." Julie patted her hand. "I will probably fuck up."
She winced at the torn lip. "That's the Moriarty way. How is Marc? Is he alive?"
Julie looked uncomfortable in the role of messenger, but she shook her head 'no'. "He died in surgery, I heard."
Frustration, sorrow, guilt, confusion and anger all collided inside of her. Emptiness clawed at her heart.
“I told him there was no hope. He asked me if—" Her voice cracked with the admission.
"Shh..." Julie shook her head and looked over her shoulder toward the door. "You've been through a lot today, don't say anymore."
“I told him there was no hope.” She needed everyone to understand that this wasn't an accident. Marc had wanted to die, had wanted them both to die. But she didn't have the strength to say it all. Maybe it didn’t matter. Not now.
Jacques returned to the room flanked by her friends. When she saw Kevin alive and well, she finally let the tears come. Marc had lied.
Tension reverberated from Jacques as he leaned over her, stroking the side of her face with his fingers like she was a fragile piece of glass that would break with too much pressure. "Is it too much? All of us being here at once? Do you want us to go?"
“I need to tell you.” She needed to share the burden with someone. "The accident is my fault. We were fighting."
“Shh...None of this is your fault.”
“He wasn’t thinking right…it’s all my fault…the accident…my fault that it went this far…” Whatever medication they had given her kicked in and her eyelids felt weighted down. "Promise you'll take me home."
He wiped the tears away from his eyes. Forcing a lopsided grin, he looked at her. “I'm standing here, loving you, wanting to take your pain away and knowing that I can’t. I am sorry I didn't follow you when I promised you I would. You and me, Jess.” He linked his fingers with hers. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
“You deserve much better than me.” His fingertips outlined her brow. “I don’t know what happened in that car, but I know that he meant a great deal to you once.”
Marc's words about her fucking him while Jacques rotted away mocked her. Images of the crash haunted her. They all meshed together as one moment in her mind, all twisted and confused.
"Tell me something good," she whispered, her fingers clinging to Jacques.
"I saved your paintings."
She grinned, only Jacques would consider that something worth doing. "My biggest fan."
He held her hand to his lips, a tear slid from the corner of his eye, and he said, "Always."
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Two
Damn you to hell. My last words to him. She squeezed her eyes closed and fought to control the shaking of her limbs. Why is it so cold in here?
She looked at the glass walls of her office and shrugged away the anxiety. Everyone had been so nice since she'd returned, but she sensed Marc's absence. When she walked to the conference room, she expected to see his cocky smile taunting her. When she met with Sincore, she heard his voice telling her that he could do better.
She rubbed her forehead with her forefinger and struggled to focus on the computer. She had known him for over a decade, how did she not know he what he'd been capable of?
Five weeks had passed since the accident. The funeral had come and gone. And today was her last day as an architect, at least at this firm.
"We're going to miss you," Charlie said. "It's not too late to take a leave of absence instead. I will gladly rip up your resignation."
"Decision made. Off I go." She held the box containing her miniscule amount of personal belongings and walked toward the elevator. Every step felt significant, weighted.
Sela waited outside the office with her car to take her home. "Are you sure you're not going to miss it?"
"Not even a little bit." She dropped her box into the backseat and did not look back toward the glass building. She had a plane to catch and a wedding to plan.
She indulged in memorizing the details of her hometown as Sela drove her toward the brownstone. The swan boats in Boston Common, tourists wandering aimlessly with maps outstretched, joggers dodging pedestrians, and the honking.
She wouldn't miss the honking.
At the apartment, she stepped over Sam's bike that seemed perpetually to be in the way and hesitated at top to look down the street toward McDougals. A woman jogged with a golden retriever at her side. Music bellowed from a car driving past with its windows down. Details, that's what she would remember.
"Are you sure you want to sell it? What if you come back one day?" Sela asked. "It was your grandmother's."
"It's just a building." She shrugged and walked through the main door for the last time. "If we come back one day, we'll find something else."
"But nothing this nice."
She paused on the landing to look at Sela. "I'm letting go of the old so I can build something new. You need to let me do that."
"I'm going to miss you...there's been so much change..." Sela caught her lower lip between her teeth and brushed a tear from her eye. "At least I have a free place to stay in Italy now, that's something."
> "What could be better?" Jessica agreed with a smile, unwilling to be sad anymore.
She continued her ascent of the stairs, unable to get Mark out of her mind. Despite their ending, she missed the man she had thought she'd known and regretted her final words.
"Surprise!" She opened the door to see everyone waiting with champagne and a sign that read 'Bon Voyage!' Sela, Ava, Jane, Alexa, Carter, and Sam. Jacques leaned against the far wall, her luggage at his feet, and a sexy smile on his face.
She hugged everyone on the way toward him while he waited, smiling, knowing she would reach him in time.
"Are you ready for our adventure?" he asked when she finally stood before him.
"More than ready." She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. "Have I told you today how much I love you?"
"Tell me again...in Italian." He linked his hands behind her back and smiled against her lips.
"Ti amo."
"Oh, I'm glad I made it. Traffic in New York was a nightmare." Kevin entered the party with a great deal of bravado, two large duffel bags crisscrossing his body. "Italy here we come!"
"He's coming with us?" she asked.
"I fire him, he quits, yet here he is like a virus. I don't know what to do with him." Jacques pushed away from the wall and gave his friend a glass of champagne.
Jane swept her into an impromptu dance in the middle of the living room. So she danced, arms outstretched, with her friends around her and champagne flowing in the room where she had lived an amazing life and with the man who would be her incredible future.
The End
Epilogue
She wondered if she would ever get used to the light of Florence that bathed everything in gold, but hoped it would always fill her with a sense of awe. She walked barefoot through her garden, carrying a finished canvas inside to protect it from the storm clouds on the horizon.
Jacques climbed down from the roof and she took a moment to admire the muscles of his bare back. Damn, she didn't know if she would ever get used to how gorgeous he was. She had no doubt that he would still take her breath away when he turned eighty.
"What are you smiling about?" he asked when he noticed her standing and staring.
"I'm admiring my handsome husband. I missed you while you were away."
"Did you?" He picked her up and held her high above him.
"The paint is fresh, you're going to smear it."
He kissed her neck as he let her body slide down his until her feet touched the ground. "I missed home. Let's take a ride into town, let me romance my wife."
"I need to clean up—"
"Come the way you are. I like it." He winked and swatted her ass when she walked by. "Hurry or we will be riding in the rain."
"I don't mind a little rain," she said over her shoulder.
She propped the canvas up in their unfinished living room that consisted of only one sofa and a gaping hole in the wall, which she intended to fix. After all, she had been the one to put it there. Having a house as her personal renovation project felt like perpetual bliss.
She ran her fingers over one of the curving windows that looked out on the hillside above Florence and said yet another prayer of gratitude for falling in love with a man who bought a rundown shell of a home based on lighting and gardens.
"Jess, come on! I am starving to death!"
Laughing, she rubbed her hands on a cloth, grabbed her helmet and ran outside to join him.
He leaned on his motorcycle, looking more handsome than he had when they had first met, with his blond hair skimming his shoulders, green eyes forming lines at the corners, and smile full of love meant just for her. He pulled on his ancient leather jacket before reaching out and covering her abdomen with both of his hands.
"I can't believe I'm going to be a father."
She held his face between her hands and said, "Mi piace il modo in cui mi ami."
I love the way you love me.
Jacques kissed her slowly while strapping her helmet beneath her chin. "Forever, bellezza mia."
She took the seat behind him, squeezed her thighs tight around his hips, and lifted her face to the wind. They sped down the winding road with rolling green hills surrounding them and the Duomo peeking above the Florence skyline as the sun set against a backdrop of storm clouds. When the first raindrop hit, she licked it from her lips, held her arms to the sky, and dared Mother Nature to give it her best shot.
The End
Author Bio
Amber Lea Easton is a multi-published fiction and nonfiction author. Smart is sexy, according to Easton, which is why she writes about strong female characters who have their flaws and challenges but ultimately persevere. She currently has six contemporary romance and romantic suspense novels out in the world: Kiss Me Slowly, Riptide, Reckless Endangerment, Anonymity, In Between, and Dancing Barefoot. Her memoir, Free Fall, is dedicated to suicide prevention, awareness, and helping others navigate the dark journey of grief.
In addition, Easton works as an editor, freelance journalist, and professional speaker. She speaks on subjects ranging from writing to widowhood. Some of her videos on romance writing have appeared on the international Writers & Authors television network. Current radio appearances are linked via her author website, http://www.amberleaeaston.com.
Easton currently lives with her two teenagers in the Colorado Rocky Mountains where she gives thanks daily for the gorgeous view outside her window. She finds inspiration from traveling, the people she meets, nature and life’s twists and turns. At the end of the day, as long as she's writing, she considers herself simply to be "a lucky lady liv'n the dream."
Easton also publishes under the name Dakota Skye who has one paranormal erotic romance, Blurred Lines, currently available and another, Deadly Decadence, due out in the fall of 2014
Read DANCING BAREFOOT's prequel, IN BETWEEN, a permanent free read on
Amber Lea Easton's blog here:
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Amber Lea Easton, Dancing Barefoot
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