Jasmine

This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to
actual events, locations, organizations, or person, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.

WCP

World Castle
Publishing

Pensacola, Florida

Copyright © Kathi S. Barton 2013

ISBN: 9781938961755

First Edition World Castle
Publishing January 1, 2013

http://www.worldcastlepublishing.com

Licensing Notes

All rights reserved. No part of
this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and
reviews.

Cover: Karen Fuller

Photos: Shutterstock

Editor: Brieanna Robertson

Chapter 1

Jazzie watched as Nathan came
toward her. She’d been sitting in this stupid office chair for more than two
hours waiting for someone to come and relieve her. When she’d volunteered to
help out at the office for Payton she’d thought it would be fun. But it was
really boring.

“I didn’t know you were here,” he
told her as soon as he saw her. “I thought Lilliane would be here today.”

She could swear that he was
looking for a way to escape. It hurt her to know that he avoided her, but she
simply smiled at him and pretended that she didn’t notice. “Nope, just me. At
least for another hour anyway. I have another thing I have to do and told
Payton this morning that I could only spare a few hours today.” He glanced at
the doorway again and she sighed. “Why don’t you do whatever it is you need
then go, Nathan? You obviously don’t want to be here with me.”

He looked at her sharply and she
stood up and walked out the door he’d been staring at. She thought about
telling him to watch the phones, but didn’t think she could speak around the
lump in her throat. She was nearly to her car when she realized that she’d
forgotten her purse. Oh well, there wasn’t anything much in it anyway and there
was no way she was going back to get it.

Jazzie knew she was in love with
Nathan Howard. She’d been nearly there for almost a month, but watching him
with Tonya and Connor, her niece and nephew, at Lilliane and Shamus’ wedding,
she’d taken the tumble. She knew that he thought she was a lazy tease, always
seemingly out of work and having fun, but she actually had a good job that paid
very well. Well, it paid really well now.

She was Jasmine Blackwell, the bestselling
author of the most steamy romance novels ever to hit the market. Or at least
that’s what one critic had said. Others had said similar things, mostly how her
story lines and her characters came alive on the page. She’d cut every one of
them out and put them into a notebook. She still couldn’t believe that people
were actually paying her to read books. She’d always assumed that everyone
could write if they wanted and had been surprised when she’d found out that
they didn’t. Her publisher said some of the mystic surrounding her was that no
one knew anything about her. And there had never been a single picture taken of
her that would lead anyone to believe she was who she was.

She’d been writing stories in her
head since she’d been a kid. Not the sort that she wrote now. Those would have
been too much for a kid to deal with. But stories about a little girl who was
saved from her mean step parents by a nice rich couple and taken away to live
happily ever after.

It wasn’t until she got older that
she realized a few things. There was no such thing as happily ever after, at
least not to her kind, and that no matter how much she wished it, she wasn’t
her sisters and brother.

She loved them dearly. All of
them. Cain, her brother, made her feel like she could do anything she wanted,
but she couldn’t. Not really. There were times when she knew he despaired of
her ever being anything more than a flighty woman without direction, but she’d
proven, maybe not to him but to herself, that she could do one thing and do it
very well. And every time one of her royalty checks came in the mail she knew
there were a few others out there that liked what she did as well. She pulled
up in front of her little house and got out. Her cell phone was ringing when
she got inside.

It was Nathan. She’d given him her
number once so that if he ever needed a friend to talk to he could feel free to
call her. This was the first time he’d ever actually used it. She put it on the
counter and set about pulling out what she needed to make a salad. It wasn’t
until she was finishing up her lunch when she realized he’d left her a message.

She debated on just leaving it
until she was in a better frame of mind. But then she realized that that might
be a long time from now. She dialed her voicemail as she walked to her office
and unlocked the door. By the time she was sitting at her desk, his voice came
across the line.

“I wasn’t trying to get away from
you. What a silly thing to…why did you say that? I have never tried to get
away…Jazzie, I would like for you to call me back. We need to straighten this
out immediately.”

She laughed out loud at his tone. He
sounded like he was upset with her. She was smiling when she brought up the
first of three books she was planning on working on today. There was no way she
was calling him back. She had things to do and they didn’t involve trying to
tangle through the mess that was Nathan Howard.

She was deep into the plot of the
second book when she realized that someone was laying on her doorbell. She
pulled up the monitor on her computer screen and groaned when she saw who it
was. She’d almost take Nathan over her mother right now. Jazzie thought about
ignoring the demand, but realized that even if she wanted to her mother would
wait her out and pounce on her when she had to go outside.

She opened the door, but didn’t
take the chain off. Her mother frowned at her when she didn’t open the door all
the way for her. Jazzie had too much going on right now to fuck with Guinevere
Waite.

“I want you to open this door, young
lady. I would like to have a conversation with you and I am not going to do so
in the doorway.” She actually took a step forward as if Jazzie would comply. “Now,
Jasmine. I’ve been out all day and I want you to make me some dinner and put me
up for the night.”

“No, Mother. I told you at
Lilliane’s wedding that until you make it right by her, you and I are through. I
told you this the day before yesterday and, again, yesterday.” Jazzie started
to push the door closed when her mother pushed back.

“You can’t expect me to like that
gimp, do you? I mean, what if he breeds with her and she has a gimpy baby? Why
how will anyone expect me to love it if—”

“First of all, Shamus was shot. He
was injured in his leg by a madwoman who took him to try and lure Lilliane to
him. Second…you know, I don’t give a shit if you understand the difference
between being born with a defect and having one forced on you. And I’m
certainly not going to explain to you that as her mother, you should love who
she loves regardless of what he looks like.”

“Oh don’t be ridiculous. Who on
earth would expect me to love a deformity like that?” Guinevere stomped her
foot. “Open this door, Jasmine, or so help me, I’ll make you suffer with the
likes you’ve never imagined.”

Fear rippled down Jazzie’s spine. It
was there so quickly and with so much force that she nearly did open the door. But
just as she was pushing the door closed to slide the chain, she stiffened. She
wasn’t a child anymore and she could certainly decide who did or didn’t come
into her house. So instead of pulling the door open and telling her mother to
go away again, she closed the door and turned the lock. She was nearly to her
office again when she heard the doorbell sounding.

She sat down hard. And once there
she had to bend at the waist and put her head between her knees. She kept
telling herself that she wouldn’t throw up, she wouldn’t throw up until the
feeling started to recede. She wasn’t herself completely, but she did feel a
little less sick to her stomach by the time she sat back up. And, thank you
very much, the doorbell was silent.

The memory that had caused her to
fear her mother was right there now. Jazzie had tried her very best to forget
the nights when she’d been a child. Her father was an abusive man, more than abusive;
he’d been damn right sadistic. There were times growing up that Jazzie had
wondered if he’d kill her.

But the night that she had been
held her down while he…he’d raped her had been what had caused her to fear the
dark.

She’d been seventeen. Not a great
age for a kid like her. She wasn’t as pretty as her sisters, especially not as
lovely as the twins, Sin and Lilliane, but she could hold her own in looks. What
had set her apart of the other teenagers was that they all thought her odd. She
supposed she was. She liked to have fun and she didn’t really need a lot of
people around to do so.

Quinn and Cain had already moved
out, Gracie was in her senior year of high school, and she was a sophomore. The
twins, Sin and Lilliane, were still in junior high. She’d been studying for a
test the next morning when her mother had knocked on her door. She’d thought
that weird as she’d never done it before, but didn’t really think anything
about it at the time.

“Hello, Jazzie. Your sisters are
out on the town. You should have gone with them.” Jazzie remembered that her
mother sounded funny, her voice slightly higher pitched. And when she got
closer to the bed where Jazzie was sitting she realized something else. It
wasn’t her mother.

The woman that had entered the
room looked like her mother. The hair was different, the same color she thought,
but styled differently. Where her mother had always worn hers in a tight bun at
the back of her head this woman had hers down and curled. Her father coming
into the room and removing his belt made her shift her attention to him rather
than try and figure out who the woman was.

She tried to think quickly. She’d
didn’t think she’d forgotten to do her chores and she knew that she’d not been
in trouble at school lately. She did cover for Sin once, took back a library
book that was overdue and conned the woman into not charging her any fees, but
she was sure that wasn’t it. She tossed her books to the floor and tried to get
to the closet to lock herself in.

The month before, Cain had installed
the lock. There was a latch at the bottom of the door they all knew about but
had yet to use. She was nearly there when she felt the first lash of his belt
land across her back. She went down quickly.

She could only reason that she’d
hit her head. She didn’t remember being put on the bed. She certainly would
have fought more had she known. She also wouldn’t have let them tie her legs to
the bottom of the bed and gag her. The woman was at her head, her father at the
foot. All her attention was centered on him and not what the woman was saying
to her. Not until she realized that she was telling her father how much he was
going to enjoy this.

“You fuck that pretty pussy and I
swear to you, Roscoe, I’ll give you the blow job of your life. That wife of yours
will never give you anything like I can do with my mouth.”

Jazzie closed her eyes and tried
to will her father to go away, to stop what he was doing. She begged the woman
to shut the hell up and leave her alone. But he didn’t and neither did the
woman. Then when he’d finished…finished hurting her, they’d left her there. Left
her tied to the bed until her mother had come in.

She had blamed Jazzie for it. Guinevere
had slapped her so many times that Jazzie had become dizzy. It wasn’t until her
mother had worn herself out that Guinevere had told her that if she told one
person what had happened, told one single lie about what her father had done,
she’d make her suffer with the likes she’d never imagined.

When her phone rang again, this
time a tone that made her smile, she got up to go to the kitchen. She grabbed
up the phone and was giggling when she said hello to her sister Gracie.

~~~

“I’m sending you something for
your birthday. I designed this creation and as soon as it was done I thought,
this is so Jazzie.” Grace waited for her sister to comment. When she didn’t
right away she got worried. “What’s happened? Did Mother do something to you?
That stupid bitch needs to mind her own fucking business.”

Gracie heard her sister sob. She
wished she could go to her, comfort her in some way, but she knew that she
couldn’t. She couldn’t move back home because of her secret. One that would
make them all hate her forever.