Coming Undone (24 page)

“You!” For an instant unbridled hatred twisted her features. Almost immediately, she wrestled her expression back into her oh-so-sad poor-abused-mama look. “You’re that young man she mooned over—the boy who killed his own father!”

“Mama!”

Like Romans uncaring whether the gladiator or the lion won as long as it was a good, bloody fight, the press turned on him, shooting off questions right and left. They quieted, however, when Jared looked at Jodeen with a cool, shuttered gaze and said, “Careful, Mrs. Morgan. I doubt you can afford to be sued for slander.”

“I apologize,” she said hastily. “I meant to say the young man wanted in
questioning
for killing his own father.”

He had to hand it to her, that was pretty slick. She’d managed to cover her ass and still get that killing-your-own-father bit in twice in thirty seconds.

“Someone else was convicted of Jared’s father’s murder, Mama,” P.J. snapped. “As you very well know, since I told you all about it when you finally let me come home.”

“Don’t you take that tone with me, missy!”

P.J.’s jaw went up, but her pointed little chin wobbled for a second before firming up.

Jared’s heart clenched so hard that for a second he thought it was going to seize. Ah, man, she was killing him, sitting there taking it on the chin and refusing to let the world see how much it hurt. He was mad as hell at Jodeen for wounding her this way.

He was even madder at himself for having done the same. That didn’t stop him, however, from taking his wrath out on Jodeen.

“Don’t
you
take that tone with her,” he snapped. “Your daughter’s still recovering from a fundamentalist right-wing whacko who tied her up, struck her, cut her hair and threatened to kill her, which he would have done in a New York minute if he hadn’t been stopped. She’s been traumatized and she’s been hurt, and so far the only thing I’ve heard you ask, Mrs. Morgan, is if I’m after her money.”

“Well, of course I’m worried about her! Haven’t I said so a hundred times?”

“No. You haven’t. You’ve wailed about your ‘baby’ and you’ve claimed that you just had to see her after her ordeal. Yet not once did you ask her how she’s faring.” Taking off the gloves, he demanded in clipped tones, “Isn’t it true that your main concern here is to regain your meal ticket?”

Still playing the room, she fluttered a hand to her breast as she weakly gasped, “That’s a
horrible
thing to say!” But if eyes could morph into knives, hers would have eviscerated him.

“Yep, it’s pretty lousy,” he agreed. “Still, you kind of set yourself up for a few sticks and stones when you embezzled from your own daughter.”

“I never! You better watch yourself, sonny—that suing for slander can go both ways!”

“Except it’s not slander if you’ve got the books to back up the claim. And isn’t it true that you’re jealous of your daughter? That you’ve always
been
jealous because she’s sweet and has talent and is everything you never were?”

“I made her career! If not for me, she’d still be playing bars and honky-tonks. But when she started to get somewhere, what did she do? Dumped me like yesterday’s dirty dishwater for Mister Fancypants there.”

“So your contention is that it had nothing to do with your helping yourself to her earnings.”

“I deserved that money! Anyway, she was starting to make pots, so I don’t see what a dollar or two here and there matt—” She cut herself off, but more flashbulbs flashed and voices erupted and it was too late to take the words back.

P.J. pushed back from the table with a screech of her chair. Ignoring the pandemonium breaking out all around her, she strode from the stage.

Shit.
Shit!
What the hell had he done? He, too, pushed back. “Take over,” he said to Ben, who was all but rubbing his hands together in satisfaction over Jodeen finally having been outed for the crook she was.

Then Jared hotfooted it into the wings after P.J., covering ground as fast as he could without pulling attention to himself by actually running.

“P
EEJ.”

P.J.’s footsteps faltered at the sound of Jared’s voice.

Then she caught herself and picked up her pace once again. Just a few more yards and she’d be at her dressing room where she could close out the world, if only for a little while. “Go away, J.”

“I can’t. I can’t just leave you to deal with this all on your own. I think you’ve had to do way too much of that already.”

She moved even faster, but he closed the gap between them just as she reached the dressing-room door. Before she could open it he was behind her—crowding her backside, caging her between his arms, his hands spread on the wood entry on either side of her head. He bent to bring his lips close to her ear.

“I’m sorry, baby,” he said in a low voice that sent goose bumps shivering down her spine. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you in front of the press. I was just so pissed at Jodeen for all the crap she’s dealt you over the years. I hate that she doesn’t value you, but I should have left it alone instead of pushing her the way I did.”

“That would have been nice,” she whispered to the door. “I could have lived very nicely without the entire world knowing how little my own mother likes me.”

Still, honesty compelled her to admit, “But you know what? Humiliating as it’s going to be reading about it in the papers, I’ve moved beyond my need for Mama’s affection. It hurts and it sucks that she’s such a bitch, but I can survive perfectly well on my own.”

“P.J.—”

She turned to face him, pressing her back against the door to avoid brushing up against his hard body. Looking him in the eye, she said, “I deserve better than to beg for the crumbs of anyone’s affection.”

He stepped back, giving her breathing room. “I was an idiot.”

“Which time, exactly?”

Amusement lit his eyes and tugged up the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, that’s the question, isn’t it?” Stroking his fingers along her cheek with heartbreaking tenderness, he gazed down at her. Then he stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I was an idiot when you told me you loved me and I blew it off. A fool when I decided I knew better than you what you felt. But I was the biggest dumbshit of all when I ran scared from the one thing I want more than anything else in the world.”

Her heart began to pound with…well, not hope. No, sir, she wasn’t doing hope anymore; she’d finally learned her lesson on that score.

All the same, she mentally held her breath even as she scoffed at the notion he could ever be scared. “You’re not afraid of anything.”

“You always did give me way too much credit,” he said softly, easing near again. But his hands remained deep in his pockets. Then his gaze locked with hers and what she saw there sent a jolt clear down to her toes. “But everyone’s afraid of something. And my fear is that I’ll disappoint you. That you’ll see what a flawed man I am and think as little of me as my old man did.” His Adam’s apple took a slow ride up and down his throat. “That you’ll take off—like you did fifteen years ago—and I’ll never hear from you again.”

“That’s not how it was!” she denied instinctively. Then she shook her head. “That is, I guess it was, but not because I wanted it to be!”

This time it was Jared who made a skeptical noise.

“I didn’t! Look, I tried to explain this before, but I only made you angry by bringing up your wealth. But give me a break here, J—I was thirteen years old! When Mama finally let me come back home, I knew darn well it was only because Gert had somehow forced her to. You had come to mean more to me than anyone I’d ever known, but I’d seen the way you lived. So I was already intimidated by your big, fancy mansion and your cook and your maid and…and…the way you’d corrected my grammar! I mean, I know you did that sometimes when we were on the streets but when you did it in your big ol’ hotel of a house, I just felt…I felt so—”

She cleared her throat. “Well, I was primed to believe Mama, is all, when she insisted a rich boy like you wouldn’t want anything to do with trailer trash like me. But I
missed
you, Jared. God, I missed you so much and—”

He hauled her in, wrapping her up in his arms and pressing her head to his chest. “I love you, Peej. Don’t send me away. I don’t think I could stand it.”

“I…You…What?” Like a tender frond of a fern, the hope she’d refused to believe she harbored began unfurling in her heart. Yet she did nothing to break the light grasp of his fingers in her hair, because what if she was somehow hallucinating? He’d been her high mark, the standard she’d judged all men against, for nearly half her life. And if she was merely hearing things, she’d just as soon not know.

“I love you. I think maybe a part of me always has.” Jared pressed his lips against her warm hair at the crown of her head and gathered encouragement from the fact that she didn’t pull away from him. She was actually leaning into him, her arms sliding around his waist to hold him tightly in return. He couldn’t remember another time when he’d felt this right. When he’d felt this…whole.

Because he knew her. And Priscilla Jayne Morgan had a generous heart. She wouldn’t turn him away, even if it was what he deserved for being such a self-protective ass.

He stroked his hand down her newly shortened hair. “When you disappeared from my life, you took an important part of me with you,” he admitted hoarsely. Using his thumb on the point of her chin to tip her face up, he bent his head and kissed her brow. “I lost the part that knew how to give myself to a relationship—and I feel like I’m just now getting it back.”

A sudden thought occurred to him and he grinned down at her. “I don’t have to be a goddamn glacier peak any more.” Like it had worked worth a damn around her anyhow.

“Huh?”

“Never mind, it’s not important. Tell me that you love me.”

“I love you, J.”

“I love you more. That’s what I should have said the last time you told me. I love you more.” He kissed her lips softly, sweetly, and opened the door at her back. Easing them into the room, he kicked the door shut behind them, then turned until her back was pressed against the wood portal.

Worshipping her with his lips, he took the kiss deeper and deeper as he slid her clothes from her body. Then, lifting her against the door, he bent his head to string kisses from her throat to her collarbone to her breast. He’d barely gotten started, however, when she caught a fistful of his hair and tugged.

“I want to feel you inside me,” she said. “Now.”

He was so lost in her that it didn’t even occur to him to fall back on his old habits. Setting her back on her feet, he handed her his wallet with a murmured, “condom,” then pulled off his shirt, toed off his shoes and kicked free of his pants while she fished it out. This wasn’t about getting her off a number of times before he allowed himself to cut loose. It wasn’t about control.

This was about making love to Peej.

Clad only in socks, he picked her up, crossed the room in a few huge strides and bounced her onto the mattress of the daybed in the corner. After dancing on one foot while yanking the sock from his other then repeating the process, he dropped down over her, catching himself on his palms.

For a second he simply stared at her flushed skin. She was still a little beat up, but the look in her eyes made his knees go weak.

“God, I love you,” he said. Then, fitting himself between her thighs, he eased on home.

He meant to love her slow and tender. And he started out doing exactly that. But she was so hot and slick, and she clung to him like a treed cat and whispered hot promises of a future he wanted so bad he could taste it. And he began to thrust more emphatically, to twist against her at the apex of each lunge like a tomcat stropping against the first person to ever offer a friendly hand.

Then before he knew it, he was starting to plead.

“Please, Peej. Come on, baby, you gotta—oh, God,
I’ve
gotta—” His hips began to pick up speed, to slap into her faster and harder, and there didn’t seem to be a damn thing he could do to stop it. “Sweetheart, you gotta come now. I’m begging you, I don’t know how much longer I can hold on. Please, baby, please, baby, I love you soooo—!” Slamming his hips forward one last time, he held himself deep inside of her as the world went up in flames. Red-hot sensation and screaming pleasure colored his universe as he blasted over its edge.

Then miracle of miracles, despite the fact he had the attention span of a gnat while his brains pumped into the reservoir tip of his condom, that slim fraction of his awareness not focused firmly on himself heard P.J. cry out, and he felt her hips rise and her body start clamping down around him. He had just enough resources left to see her through her orgasm and to say, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jesus.” Then he collapsed on her like a horse that’d had its legs shot out from under it.

A while later he raised his head out of the curve of her neck and shoulder, lifted his chest enough to allow her to breathe and gazed down at her. “Sorry,” he muttered. “It was touch and go there for a minute whether I was going to leave you high and dry.”

“I know.” She gave him a big, dazzling smile. “That was our best lovin’ ever.”

“’Scuse me? I forgot damn near everything I ever knew about taking care of a woman’s needs, and you’re telling me you
liked
it? Say you’re kidding.”

“I’ve told you before that I don’t require multiple orgasms before you finally let go of the reins.”

“And I get that, I honestly do. But
one
would probably be nice.”

Reaching up, she gently brushed back a strand of hair that had fallen over his eye. “For the first time I really felt you were here with me one hundred percent.”

“Yeah.” And it had been better than anything he’d ever known. “Yeah, I suppose that’s true.” He grinned at her. “And damn, it was good, too. So I hope you’re ready to take responsibility for your own orgasms, honey, because from here on out it’s all about me.”

She laughed. Then she gave him a poke. “You are so full of it. Not to mention threatening the wrong girl. I could play you smoother than Hank plays the fiddle if I had a mind to.”

He made a rude noise.

“I could. I could make you spend your every waking minute concentrating on nothing but my pleasure.”

“You wish.”

“I’m telling you, piece o’ cake. I’d just say, ‘My
last
lover made sure I had five, six orgasms before he got his—and you can’t even give me one?’ The next thing you know, you’d be working like a Trojan to make me happy.”

He laughed in her face. “I’d get myself off, roll over and go to sleep.”

“You forget, I know you. You’d morph into Mr. Competitive just…like…that!” She snapped her fingers.

“Not anymore. Now I’d just say, ‘That loser? I know guys like that. They’re all style and no substance. And I want to be substance for you.’” His playfulness disappeared. “Did you mean it when you said you want to be with me for the rest of your life? Or was that only heat-of-the-moment, he’s-not-getting-the-job-done but-maybe-if-I-tell-him-something-he-really-wants-to-hear-he’ll-be-motivated type sex talk?”

“Oh, I meant every word. Although I don’t know how we’re going to work out the logistics exactly. I mean, I can always sell the house in Aspen since your work’s in Denver. But I’m going to be on the road a lot and you do have a job and—”

He kissed her into silence. When he lifted his head a few moments later, he said, “You’re not planning on touring three hundred and sixty-five days a year, are you?”

“No, of course not. But some tours can last two, three, even four months.”

“Well, my assignments rarely last longer than a week or two and I can always take time out between jobs to join you on the road. We’ll work it out, Peej. The important thing is that I love you and you love me and we want to be together, to be a family.” He kissed her longer this time and smiled at the dazed pleasure on her face when he finally came up for air.

“And when two people love the hell out of each other the way you and I do?” he said. “Baby, the rest is just details.”