30DaystoSyn (47 page)

“I am so sorry,” she said. “I really
thought…”

“I know what you thought and I can’t fault
you for it. Like I said, Jake played you. He knew what buttons to push and he
pushed them. I think he realized what he’d done and that it was going to come
back on him like sheep shit from a catapult and that’s why he’s not answering
his phone. He has to know he’s done for. There’s no coming back from what he
set into motion. Not for him anyway. Synnie will never forgive him. I don’t
think he realized just how much Synnie loves you and that was his first
mistake. His second was thinking he could send you packing and Synnie would
just shrug and accept it.”

“I love him, too, Jonny,” she said as tears
welled in her eyes. “I really do.”

“I want you to listen to me, Lina. Listen
very closely. If you can’t go in there and accept him for who and what he is,
I’ll turn the car around and take you back to your house,” he said solemnly. “I
like you. We all like you—well maybe not Jake—but the rest of us do. But no
matter how much we like you, we won’t let you hurt him again.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” he asked, his eyes steady on
hers. “I want you to be absolutely sure.”

“He may not want me,” she said.

“Oh, I think he does,” Jonny said. He
turned his head toward the house. “But there’s your chance to find out.”

She followed his gaze and felt her heart
begin to race. The Kiwi was standing ten or so feet from the bottom step of the
stairway with his hands shoved into the pockets of a pair of torn and tattered
jeans. He was wearing a sloppy hooded gray sweatshirt that had seen better days
and his head and feet were bare.

“He’s supposed to be sleeping,” Jonny said
and reached for the door handle.

She couldn’t move. Though they were forty
or so feet apart, she knew he was looking directly into her eyes. He was as
still as she was.

“What the fuck are you doing out here and
where the fuck is Spike?” she heard Jonny ask.

She couldn’t hear the Kiwi’s reply but
Jonny threw his hands into the air. He came back to the car, opened the
backdoor and plucked the infamous manila folder from the seat. He gave her a
fleeting look before shutting the door and going back to his friend.

And still, the man she loved more than her
own life stood silently staring back at her.

“What is she doing here?” he asked,
interrupting Jono. The blood was pounding so loudly in his ears he hadn’t heard
a word the man had said.

“Did you hear me?” Jono demanded.

“Apparently not,” he answered and Jono did
a Jono-hands-to-the-gods thing and stomped back to the car. He saw him go to
the back door of the car then frowned when Jono came back with a folder in hand.

Sudden understanding came over him and he
tensed. “Did I forget to sign her fucking check?” he asked.

“You need to talk to her, bro,” Jono said.
He tapped the folder against his leg.

“No,” he said firmly and turned to go back
up the stairs.

“She tore up the check!”

“Not my problem,” he said. He kept walking.
“She’ll not get another.”

“It was all Jake’s doing,” Jono called out
to him.

He stopped then, turned his head a little
but didn’t say anything.

“That’s why no one can get hold of his
arse. He fucked you over big-time, bro.”

He turned all the way around. “What do you
mean?”

Jono held the folder out to him. “He gave
her this the morning you took her to Savannah.”

He looked down at the folder then back at
Jono’s face. “What is it?”

“Just read it, bro. It’ll explain
everything.”

He didn’t want to read anything. He wanted
to go back to his room, curl up in his bed in the fetal position and feel sorry
for himself for the rest of the afternoon and night and into the morning. Come
the sunrise, he’d get up, go to the gym, work himself hard enough to hurt,
shower and then go to work. He would push her—and all the pain she’d caused
him—as far to the back of his mind as he could.

“Read it, Synnie,” Jono insisted.

Angry at his lifelong friend and all too
aware of the woman standing in front of Jono’s car, he took his right hand out
of his pocket and snatched the folder from Jono’s hand. With his lips tight, he
brought his other hand from his pocket and opened the folder.

She watched him closely as he read the mockup
of the ad. His dark head was bent. It seemed to her he took an inordinate
amount of time to read what was in the folder. She thought perhaps he was
either reading it very slowly because of the sedative still in his system or he
was reading it twice.

“Well?” Jono asked him, as impatient as he
was to know the Kiwi’s thoughts.

He slowly lifted his head and looked at her
for a long moment then closed the folder and handed it back to Jono.

“Why did you tear up the check?” he asked.

“I didn’t want it.”

“You said you did.”

“I lied.”

“You took it. Why didn’t you keep it?”

She came a few steps closer. “It felt like
blood money,” she said.

“It was,” he told her. “It was payment for
your virginal blood.”

“Was that all it was to you?” she asked.

“No, Melina,” he said. “I was going to ask
you to marry me. The ring was in my pocket.”

“You didn’t give me any indication that was
the case,” she said.

“You didn’t give me a chance to,” he
replied. “You thought I was a player and never let me prove otherwise. You
always have thought the worst of me, haven’t you?”

“He showed me the file on the other women,”
she said, closing the distance until she was only a yard or so from him. “All
the things he told me you would do that last night, you did. You followed all
of it to the letter. Can’t you see how I would interpret that?”

“You should have believed in me,” he
responded. “You could have asked about the women. I would have told you the
truth.”

“I thought I knew the truth,” she said. “I
believed what he told me. Seeing those other women, seeing their ads, reading
the new one…”

“One that would never have been sent,” he
said. “One I knew nothing about.”

“I didn’t know that,” she told him.

“You should have fucking asked!” he
shouted. “That was my past. You were to be my future!”

She hung her head. “I am sorry, Kiwi,” she
said.

“So am I.”

“Bro, don’t throw away this opportunity to
make things right,” Jono cautioned.

“You stay out of this. It doesn’t concern
you,” he said.

“Synnie…” Jono began.

“Jono, come in the house,” Spike called from
the porch. She was standing at the rail with her hands braced on the marble
balustrade. “Let them sort it.”

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” she said.

“I’m sorry you think so little of me,” he
said.

He turned away from her though his heart
was breaking. He wanted nothing more than to run to her, grab her and kiss the
soft lips that were trembling.

“Tell Jonny I’ll be in the car,” she said.

He acknowledged her words with a nod as he
climb the first set of steps. His eyes were on the fountain and when he heard the
car door open and close, he closed them briefly. It was tearing him apart to
shut her out but at that moment he felt helpless to do anything else. She had
hurt him so deeply he knew he would never recover.

“You are making a big mistake,” Jono said
as he gained the porch.

“My mistake to make,” he said.

“She’s leaving, you know.”

He stopped and turned his head to Jono.
“Leaving?”

“She packed her things up at the apartment
and there were boxes in her house too,” Jono said. “She tore that check up and
she quit her job, bro. Where’s she gonna go? What’s she gonna do?”

“Take her wherever she wants to go. She can
do whatever she wants to,” he said then narrowed his eyes. “And you find me
Jake Tonika. Call Anderson and make fucking sure he’s removed from all the
corporate accounts and all financial privileges are revoked. Call Kit and have
all his security cards cancelled.”

“Will do,” Jono said, “but about Lina…”

“What part of ‘this doesn’t concern you’
did you not understand?” he snapped. “Stay the fuck out of it, Jono!”

“Think about it, bro,” Jono said. “She’s
the woman for you. She loves you. I know you love her too.”

He continued into the house without
replying. Spike was standing in the foyer with a worried expression on her
lovely face. He walked past her and continued through the grand hall to the
master suite, slamming then locking his bedroom door.

She buried her face in her hands and
sobbed. She should never have let herself think he would forgive her for what
she’d done to him on the yacht. In her mind’s eyes she relived the moment her
words had completely devastated him. Knowing that his intention had been to
propose to her only drove the guilt and shame of what she’d done deeper under
her skin.

“
You get on his bad side and you’re
likely there for life
,” Jono had said.

There would be no coming back from what
she’d set into motion. She’d seen deep hurt on his face but she understood he
had washed his hands of her. She’d betrayed him and that he would never
forgive.

When the car door opened she turned her head
to the window, pressed her forehead against it. She didn’t want Jonny to see
her crying. She felt his hand on her thigh—squeezing gently for a moment before
he removed it and started the car.

“Is he all right?” she asked.

“Unh huh.”

“He’ll never forgive me, Jonny,” she said.
“I know that now. I hurt him too badly. I deserve whatever he does to me.”

He didn’t respond as he set the car into
motion. She knew he was as sad about the situation as she was so she left him
to his silence, huddling against the door for the only comfort she could find.

He knew she thought it was Jono in the car
with her and wondered how long it would take her to stop crying and sit up, to
realize it wasn’t Jono at the wheel. A part of him wanted desperately to take
her in his arms to banish her misery but a perverse part was, if not enjoying,
then at least feeling vindicated by her tears.

Instead of heading back to the entrance to
WindLass, he took her down the road behind his house that led to the forest and
wetlands beyond. Though he did not own the land—could not buy it for it was
held by the State of Georgia—he had access to the fire road that ran through
the middle of the property. When he reached the gate that shut that part of the
land off from his, he pushed the button to open it. No doubt she thought it was
the main gate to his house.

“I want him to be happy,” she said.

He turned his head to look at her. She had
pushed away from the window and was rummaging in her purse—no doubt for a
tissue for there were tears streaking down her cheeks and her nose was running.

“He deserves to be happy.”

She found a clump of restaurant napkins and
he smiled. He’d never understood why women insisted on cramming extra napkins
into their purses. Hers were three different colors so he knew they came from
three different fast food places.

“That’s all I’ve ever wanted for him.” She
blew her nose.

He had reached the fire road and the little
turnaround that he’d discovered when his house was being built. It overlooked a
beautiful little marsh where egrets nested and wildflowers grew in profusion in
the spring and summer. Though the shrubs and bushes were denuded of foliage at
this time of the year, there were two egrets wading through the water of the
marsh. He stopped the car and turned off the engine. He twisted around in the
seat and reached out to grip the headrest behind her.

“That’s all he’s ever wanted for you,” he
said quietly.

She jerked and her head came up, whipping
toward him. Her eyes widened.

“You deserve to be happy too, Melina.”

He slipped his hand from the headrest to
cup her neck.

“I want to spend the rest of my life making
you happy if you’ll only give me the chance.”

He caressed her neck.

“I can’t imagine my life without you. I
won’t have a life without you.”

He withdrew his hand then stuck it into the
watch pocket of his jeans and withdrew a ring. Her gaze fell to his hand.

“I wanted to do this right,” he said. “I
was going to wait until the sun rose over the water and then get down on one
knee to ask you to be my wife. It was to be a new beginning for both of us. A
new day, a new life.”

Her eyes left the ring gripped between his
thumb and index fingers and lifted to his.

“But sunset on the marsh is the closest I
could come,” he said. “I’m not going to wait another minute to ask you to spend
the rest of your life with me.” He held out his free hand to her. “Melina
Wynth, would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

Her heart stuttered to a stop. The blood
rushed loudly through her ears. She was staring into his beautiful blue
eyes—eyes filled with vulnerability and wariness, hope, yet fear of
rejection—and felt the soul stir inside her body.

“Yes, Kiwi,” she said, her voice breaking.
“It would be my honor to become your wife.”

“Yes?” he asked, his eyebrows lifting.

She nodded. “Yes.” She leaned over to lay
her palm against his bewhiskered cheek. “Yes, a million times over.”

His slow grin was fifty-thousand watts of
pure pleasure as he reached for her hand. His hand was shaking as he guided the
black-diamond solitaire onto her finger.

“Mine,” he said and brought her hand to his
lips. He kissed the ring. “All mine.”

She smiled and eased her hand from his to
put her arms around his neck.

“We’re going to—”

“Stop talking,” she said as she put her
mouth over his.