“A word, Jack. Five minutes of your time,” Miles requested.
“Jack,” Joy urged softly, he knew his mother wanted him to concede and Jack’s mouth went tight.
“In the study,” Jack clipped.
Miles nodded and moved toward the study.
Jack let go of Belle but Belle didn’t let go of Jack so he looked down at her.
“Are you going to be okay?” she whispered her sweet question and the even sweeter way she uttered it cut through him sharply but pleasantly.
He nodded.
Then he bent his head to brush his lips against hers, gently disentangled himself from her arms and followed his brother to the study.
Once there, he closed the door behind him and walked into the room.
Miles was at the window staring out to sea.
Jack moved to the side of his desk, stopped and crossed his arms on his chest.
“Miles, say what you have to say and then I want you gone,” Jack demanded and his brother turned to him.
Then he unrolled the magazine, opened it and held it out to Jack.
Jack took it and saw it was a celebrity rag. The pages Miles showed him were a spread of “the history” of Jack, Belle and Miles.
The title of the article pronounced, To the Victor Go the Spoils.
Jack’s mouth tightened with irritation at the title and he flipped to the next page, then the next. The article was six pages long but barely had any text.
However, there were a goodly number of photos.
All the ones of Miles had been chosen to make him look the fool. Shots captured when he’d looked angry or impatient, either emotion contorting his face in an unpleasant manner. They’d also managed to get a photo of him, what Jack guessed was several days ago, his face battered, his eye blackened.
On the other hand, the photos of Jack and Belle were chosen for different reasons.
There were pictures of Belle before she met Jack, head bowed, looking stylish and regal, ignoring the cameras.
There were pictures of Jack, head up, strides wide, also ignoring the cameras.
There were also pictures of Belle and Jack recently, kissing in his car, walking close together, clearly an item. They looked close, they looked smitten and it appeared they were lovers even before that was again true.
Jack looked from the magazine to Miles and asked shortly, “Your point?”
“I can’t bear it any longer, Jack. I look like a f**king fool.”
Jack thought, rather unkindly and not for the first time, that his brother was, indeed, a fool. He’d had Belle for a month and he hadn’t done everything in his power to keep her. Instead, he’d mistreated her, actively and with mal-intent.
Jack didn’t share this, instead he repeated, “Again, your point?”
“I’m asking you to do something,” Miles told him.
Jack leaned a hip on his desk, threw the magazine on it and put his hand to it, saying, “I have no control over the media, Miles.”
“No, I know you don’t, but…” he stopped, looked away then went on in a voice where Jack knew what he said next cost him. “This can’t go on with you and me. It hurts Mum and if Belle is going to be in your life for any amount of time, which it appears she is –”
“She is,” Jack cut in firmly and watched Miles’s body jerk.
Then his face grew hard and he said, “You’re my f**king brother.”
Jack’s patience slipped a sizeable notch. “You didn’t think of that when you were insulting the mother of my f**king child direct to her face.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Miles gritted through his teeth.
“I’m not the one you need to apologise to,” Jack returned.
“Like you’ll let me speak to Belle,” Miles snapped.
“No, I won’t,” Jack agreed remembering his brother’s taunting vows, during and after their fight, to make Jack pay. Vows that stated he’d do it through Belle.
Miles straightened and Jack watched him clench his teeth before he remarked, “It took a lot for me to come here.”
“Explain why I should care about that,” Jack suggested.
“What I’m saying is, I’ve made the first step. You should meet me halfway.”
“As I recall, you used the woman who would become important to me as a prize in a competition.” When Miles opened his mouth, Jack kept going, “I don’t give a f**k if you were dating her at the time. You had to know Belle. You’d been dating her for a f**king month. Therefore you had to know she wasn’t the type of person to jump into someone’s bed if that someone didn’t matter to her. And matter to her a great, f**king deal.”
Jack watched Miles’s mouth clamp shut, Jack knew he scored his point and he continued.
“Then you told her I wanted a crack at her, knowing Belle had made her choice and what that might mean to her and knowing how she would react to something like that. You didn’t take your loss like a man. You did what you did out of spite.”
Miles’s brows snapped together in confusion, “I didn’t tell her that. Where she heard that, I’ve no idea.”
Jack studied his brother and saw, to his surprise, he wasn’t lying.
Still, he carried on, “Regardless, when I caught you with her, you were physically abusing her. Then, months later, when you knew she was pregnant and I’d moved her into my home, which is something which should have given you a clue as to what she meant to me, another clue was the fact you walked in on us kissing, you didn’t duck out quietly. Instead you abused her verbally.” Jack watched his brother’s face go tight and he went on, “Therefore, Miles, I don’t think I need to meet you halfway.”
“We should have talked about this four months ago when it happened,” Miles told him, “I was angry. You must understand I was angry.”
“Anger doesn’t excuse physically abusing a woman. Nor verbally doing it,” Jack retorted.
“She f**ked my brother while she was dating me!” Miles clipped.
“No, I f**ked her. There’s a subtle difference Miles. You know me. You knew her. You had to know the way it happened. You can’t think I believe for one second you didn’t. You took your anger at me out on Belle. As a result, I nearly lost her and I’m finding it hard to forgive you for that.”
“And you can’t believe for one second that, if the same thing happened to you, and a woman you cared about spent the night with me, that you wouldn’t be livid,” Miles shot back and Jack’s patience slipped another considerable notch at his brother’s very selective memory.