Jewell’s head was spinning as he caressed her knuckles. “I…uh…I don’t know what to think right now.” She tugged on her hand, but he wasn’t letting go.
“You don’t always have to think, Jewell. Not everything has to be black and white, and sometimes it’s simply better to trust your gut. We can’t predict what will happen every minute of every day, but we can learn to roll with the changes.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t trust you or this new you that you’re presenting. Is that honest enough for you?”
“I can see why. Want to know what I did yesterday?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with excitement.
“I’m not sure I want to know,” she replied, but her lips turned up just the slightest. It was hard not to be affected by his good mood.
“I’ll tell you anyway,” he said before pausing. “I bought a house.”
“But you just bought that gigantic yacht! Anyway, you already have a place.”
He decided not to tell her that he now owned two gigantic yachts; the house was a more important topic. “You’re the one who told me there would be a child living with us.”
“You bought a house with Justin and me in mind?” she asked as she was thrown off balance again.
“That’s why I’ve been gone so much these past couple of weeks. I had to find the right place. This thing between us is on a track and there’s no getting off it, so you might as well just accept it. It’s fate.”
“But…I…I’m confused. You run hot and then cold and you make these demands, and then you turn around and ask my opinion. I can’t keep up with you, Blake.”
“I’ve never pretended to perfect, Jewell. And I’ve never wanted to be in a relationship. Not a real one, at least. But we both have problems, and we can help each other with those problems. Will it be perfect? No, it won’t, but who has a perfect life?”
“I’ve seen lots of shining examples of perfect lives,” she told him.
“Blockbuster movies don’t count, Jewell. In real life, people have their imperfections. Just one or two,” he said with a chuckle.
“You’re admitting that you aren’t perfect, Blake?”
“I’m as close to perfection as it gets,” he said, leaning back with a cocky grin.
“Ugh! You have too much self-confidence,” she told him.
“Why shouldn’t I? I know who I am and I know what I want. I always get it.”
“Yeah. Yeah. I get it. You’re the cat’s meow,” she said, trying to keep a straight face, but not succeeding.
“Again, I tell you that not everything is always black and white, Jewell,” he said and she knew there was a story behind these words.
“If you expect me to do something I feel is wrong, then you have to give me a reason to do it, Blake.”
He paused for a long moment before he spoke. “Isn’t getting your brother back reason enough to do something you’re uncomfortable with doing?”
“Yes. Of course Justin is worth anything and everything. But you want me to lock myself to you legally. And still you’re not telling me why.”
“For the business deal,” he said.
“Yes, I can see you need to get married, but what I can’t figure out is why you’ve chosen me.”
“We have a connection. If I’m to give up my prized bachelor status, then I want to do it with someone I can stand to share a house with.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Again, he paused for a long moment, and when he began speaking, Jewell’s jaw dropped and she didn’t think she’d ever be the same again.
Chapter Twenty-One
It was time to tell Jewell about his family. Blake knew that if he didn’t do something drastic, he’d lose her in two weeks’ time.
Though there was nothing she wouldn’t do for her brother, she somehow knew that he wouldn’t actually keep Justin from her if it came down to it. So he needed to give a piece of himself up, or else he was going to find himself without her.
He was thankful to his brother for talking to him, thankful he had actually listened to Tyler. He was so used to getting what he wanted no matter what he had to do to get it, he’d forgotten the basic rule that you get more with honey than with vinegar.
“You know that my family is incredibly messed up, right?”
She looked at him warily. “I know there’s a story to be told,” she said.
“I grew up wealthy. My father was a very rich man, and my mother…well, my mother was a gold-digging bitch.”
Jewell’s eyes popped open wide. “Surely, she couldn’t have been that horrible,” she said.
“What do you think of, Jewell, when you hear the word mother? Whatever adjectives you’ll think of can’t be used to describe that woman. She was vain, egotistical, and out to get whatever she could.” Blake didn’t feel even a glimmer of emotion — unless contempt counted — when he was describing the woman who had birthed him.
“Is that why you’re so cold, Blake?”
“That’s part of it.”
“Byron and I remember it all vividly — all the fights, all the underhanded things our mother did, and the whipped man our father had become. She couldn’t leave him and walk away with the money because she’d signed an unbreakable prenup. Sure, she could have gotten a lot of money for child support, but it wouldn’t have been enough to cover the lifestyle that she’d grown accustomed to, and she didn’t want us. She liked that we had a nanny, that she didn’t have to deal with us. We barely even saw her, let alone communicated with her. Tyler was too young to be affected by her attitude and her actions, but Byron and I remember her very well.”
“Lots of children have less than wonderful parents,” Jewell pointed out. “But they don’t take that as an excuse to treat everyone around them as nothing more than garbage beneath their feet.”
“I agree, but how many children watch their parents die right before their eyes?”
“Wait! What do you mean?”
When Jewell took his hand, he was more than aware of it, even if he didn’t think she realized that she was doing it, that she was trying to comfort him. It was a start, a start that he would take.
“My mother decided she didn’t want to be with my father any longer. And she didn’t want anything to do with my brothers and me. So she hatched a plan to have my father killed. Because her sons were nothing to her, she wasn’t worried about any fallout. If we got hurt or even killed in the shuffle, then so be it.” His voice sounded dead as he told her that.