Page 99 of Wait for Him

"So Frank started digging. Me, Bennet, people around us, whoever he thought he might be able to use. I don't even know how many people he looked into before he landed on me. I'm just the one who came with the bigger file."

My stomach turns.

"There's the basic shit. My dad embezzled school funds to cover gambling debts you wouldn't believe. Prostitutes. Plenty there to ruin him all by itself. But Frank also has proof Dad was drunk behind the wheel when a pretty horrific accident happened a few years ago. A teenager was paralyzed."

Fuck.

Jackson rubs both hands over his face.

"That's the one I can't get around, Rose. I've spent years going back and forth between thinking he deserves whatever happens to him and remembering he's still the man who raised me. Some days I think I should let him rot in prison. Other days I can't make myself be the person who sends him there."

That shuts down every legal argument already trying to form in my head.

Temporarily.

"Anyway, take your pick. It's all real, it's all documented, and Frank has all of it." His jaw tightens. "He keeps it quiet if I marry his daughter, stay married for five years, serve as her conservator, keep her out of the tabloids and out of jail. And my father stays a free man."

Five years.

They've been married for three.

My brain does the math automatically because that's the piece of this entire horror show it has decided requires immediate attention.

Two years.

Stop doing math, Rosalie.

He shakes his head slowly. "I never told a soul. Not because I'm ashamed of it. Well, not just that. It's because I didn't want anyone I care about anywhere near this mess. Especially you. The last thing I wanted was you deciding to fix it and making yourself a target for a man like Frank."

I almost laugh, which would be wildly inappropriate given the circumstances, but the idiot knows me very well.

Damn right, I'd try to fix it.

I'm already halfway through three possible legal strategies and I don't even know what evidence Frank has yet.

Damn it.

Jackson finally looks right at me, and there's nothing guarded left in his face.

"But I can't sit here and let you walk around thinking you're the other woman. That you're wrecking some happy marriage. There is no marriage, Rose. There's a contract with an expiration date and a woman I have never once loved, and there's you, the only person I ever have. I couldn't let you believe otherwise for one more second. Not when this is the first time I feel like you're willing to give us a chance." He takes a breath. "Please tell me there's a chance, Rose."

I stare at him.

Mine.

The word detonates in my head before anything decent or rational can get there first.

Not poor Jackson.

Not I'm going to murder Frank.

Not even how the fuck do I get him out of this?

Just mine.

And that's all it takes. My restraint snaps clean in half, and I launch myself at him.

We crash into each other with enough force to knock the air from both our lungs. I'm off my feet in a split second, legs locking around his waist, his hands gripping my thighs as our mouths collide. Tongues lash, teeth clash, neither of us bothering with anything resembling finesse because this amount of restraint doesn't come apart gracefully.