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But Swiff took his silence in a different way, saying briskly, “Good. I’ll make the arrangements for your return and tell the writers they can bring Austin back. And I’d better call the publicists, they’ll need to get started. Welcome back, Jackson.”
Jackson opened his mouth to correct Swiff’s misapprehension; he wasn’t going anywhere. He knew what he’d be bringing on. There was no way the businessman could understand walking away from a gold mine likeStonewall. He’d erupt. And it just might cost Jackson everything. Lawyers that dealt in this kind of thing didn’t come cheap.
He might well end up having to ask Richard Baylor for a real job here. And belatedly, it hit him that that would put him and Nic in an entirely different kind of situation. The pressure built in him. He knew what the easiest thing for him to do would be. He also knew he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t—
An explosive crack of thunder rattled the windows and made his ears ring.
The storm was here. In more ways than one.
He turned back to the autocratic money man and unleashed his own thunder.
Chapter Thirty
Nic saw thefancy car leave just after the storm really hit. She half expected to see Jackson in the passenger seat, headed back to his real life. Back to the spotlight, and the fawning adoration of millions. Why wouldn’t he? Why would she ever think the simple life they led here would hold him?
Why would she think she could hold him?
She felt a tightening in her gut and a stinging in her eyes as she tried to fight off assuming the worst. She’d done that in the beginning, and he’d proven her wrong in so many ways, yet here she was, wondering if he was on the phone right now, making travel arrangements.
She felt a bit wobbly all of a sudden and walked away from her front window to sink down onto the couch that faced the fireplace. She’d built the fire now, in case the power went out and she needed it for heat, as her father had taught her. As he’d taught her so many other things. Too bad he’d never taught her to deal with a different kind of man than he himself was.
She tried to picture her life going back to the way it was before, but she had trouble even remembering her day-to-day life before that afternoon when, walking down Main Street, she’d first seen him. Even now, she felt an echo of embarrassment at how she’d misjudged him.
Or had she? Had he been just waiting for this, for them to come looking for him? Was he using his absence as a ploy to maybe get more money out of them? Was it all a plan to keep himself in the entertainment headlines, so his return to the show had even more impact? Was that the reason for the whole thing?
The questions hammered her, countered only by the string of images she summoned up, images of Jackson with Jeremy, the son he so obviously adored. If she had to believe that was a lie, too, that it had all been an act... She could believe he’d been acting with her, but if his feelings for that boy were faked, then she was too stupid and blind to be allowed out of the house.
She listened to the rumble of thunder, close enough now to rattle her windows. It matched her mood at the moment. She sat there, watching the fire, listening to the storm, her emotions taking over and making her think that no matter how destructive each force of nature could be, fire and storm, neither could match the way she was feeling right now.
She was almost grateful for the storm, because it kept her from charging up the hill now that the fancy car had left. She wanted to ask what had happened between the two men, and at the same time, desperately didn’t want to ask, because she was fearful of the answer.
She didn’t want to believe it, but the moment she’d learned that they—that big, amorphous, Hollywood they—had come for him, she’d been hit with the reality of his life, his career. And the feeling she’d never quite been able to fully quash, that this was temporary, just a break, and now that Jeremy was doing better, he’d be back to the bright lights and the fame and fortune, had risen up to swamp her. She’d been afraid of that from the beginning.
It took her a moment to realize the sound she’d heard was not another crack of thunder but a sharp rap on her front door. She knew it wasn’t Mom or Dad, because they would have stayed out of the rain and used the adjoining inside door. Her gut knotted, ending her wondering, because she was suddenly certain who was there. And she thought she knew why.
Jackson, come to tell her he was leaving. Going back to his gilded life in L.A.
She yanked the door open, and there he was. Proving her right, her gut yelled.
“Nice of you to at least say goodbye,” she ground out to the shadowy figure that made her start to reach for the switch for the porch light.
“Say—What?”
“Enjoy life back in Hollywood.”
“I’m not—” She saw him give a shake of his head, then, vehemently, he growled out, “There’s no time for this.”
It couldn’t have stung more if he’d slapped her. “Fine. Consider me notified.”
She had moved to close the door when he said, “Nicole.”
Her full name, not Nic. And something in the way he sounded then made her go for that light switch.
She had never seen the Jackson who seemed to materialize in that flood of light. He wasn’t just soaking wet, and panting as if he’d run all the way down here, he looked... his eyes looked...
Terrified. It was the only word she could come up with that fit. Yes, this was a pretty major storm, but they had thunder and lightning in L.A., didn’t they? Surely that didn’t have him this rattled?
“Jackson?” she whispered.
