A Harem of One [The Moreland Brothers 3] (Siren Publishing Allure) (20 page)

Two-Way Street

Marques walked out of the door with good intentions of being home by twelve, but he knew when he arrived it would take much longer than expected. Deven had sent an e-mail this morning about checking on the small subdevelopment in Ogden. Deven had pioneered the project a couple of years ago when he saw how inefficient most Americans were with natural resources and decided to meet the gap somewhat. The first houses went up without a hitch, but at the time Deven was living there. The handful of houses was now being doubled with the addition of two side streets, both extending north and south of the cul de sac. But Deven noticed his updates were getting spotty and less informative. As his brother put it, the notes he was getting were equivalent to grunts and were not coming from the foreman he’d originally had pegged from the start for the project. The e-mail address was the same, but it was generic and anyone in the office had access to it. So here he was, bright and early with the cock’s crow in Ogden. He was supposed to see if anything was amiss. That was an understatement. Somehow the usual foreman was terribly ill, and his negligent son was at the helm.

Marq may not be a construction worker, but he knew the difference between pine and teak. He knew the difference between linoleum and marble tile, too. The materials being used were cut rate, and definitely not what was in the blueprints. He spoke with the crew discreetly, not that he had to be a James Bond to get his information. The lazy son a gun was sleeping in the trailer used as makeshift on-site office. Not to mention, where was the money? Charyn was the numbers guy, and it didn’t take long to confirm that they were being bilked. This was not good, and his morning in had turned into a hard day’s work inspecting the newly built portions from the last month. Luckily, there wasn’t too much completed in that time span as the new foreman was prone to burn daylight and took more afternoons off than he worked. The construction crew followed suit, and thus here they stood a scant month later and only a skeleton frame was constructed for a single house. With the amount of crew they had on site, triple that should have been completed. Marq rubbed his temples. It was setting up to be the day from hell. Damn it, he wasn’t even the work-with-his-hands type. That was more up Charyn’s alley. It was times like this that Marq wished he lived in any other era but the electronic one.

By the time Charyn showed up, it was two hours later, and Marques knew his brother did it to spite him. Charyn even admitted as much when he showed up when he said, “Enough to piss you off when people take their sweet-ass time doing things huh?” Marq gritted his teeth. Damn his raggedy-ass brother. The man had been married damn near a year, and he still acted like a dog burying a bone with his wife.

But his brother knew his stuff, and many of the myriad cutbacks were located with a brief inspection of the foundation and skeleton of the single family construction. By the time he finished, it was already one o’clock, and he dismissed the crew and advised them not to return until they were contacted. As Deven would be back in a few days, Marq decided to bring the construction to a halt until his brother returned. This was Deven’s pet project. He would let his brother deal with massive issues that had arisen in the last month. With the debacle of construction concerns handled, Marques clapped Charyn on the back and let him go back to his wife. His brother wasn’t the only one with a hot woman awaiting him. Just a half hour later, Marques found himself at his front door, but he hadn’t walked inside yet. His gut burned, and as a man who listened to his gut, he knew something was wrong. It was the same feeling he’d gotten when his dad died. So he found himself several minutes later afraid to go in his own home. So much so that he had to remind himself that only Jamison awaited him and that she was his. But when he put his hand on the door, it flung open without warning. He smiled, but she didn’t give him a like response.

“Hey, Jamie, baby, sorry it took so long. But there were major problems with the job site, and I was just able to get away.”

“Uh, all right. That’s fine, Marques, I was just leaving.”

“Why? Is everything okay? Are you sick?”

“No, I’m not sick, Marq. Thanks for asking.” But her expression told him it was something more than she let on.

“You can’t lie to me, Jamison. All relationships are built on trust.” He smiled to take the sting from the words.

“Funny that.”

“What?”

“Don’t be the pot calling the kettle black.” He grabbed her by the arm, his grip was firm, and he felt the tension in her muscles as if she were going to indulge in a flight or fight response. But why? What happened in the last hours to make her act this way?

But once he stepped inside his home, he smelled Thierry Mugler’s Angel, and he knew what ate at Jamison. Dakota. It was her signature scent. The perfume was one of her favorites since she smelled it for the first time last year, and it was the only cologne Dakota had worn from that moment forward. The scent wasn’t obnoxious, just distinctive with a tendency to linger long after the wearer walked away. Dakota was an enigma even to those who knew her, and for that reason he knew Jamison had gotten enough information to piss her off, but not to make the picture clear. But even as he thought of what to say, he knew it was nothing compared to the truth. But even the truth eluded him as he looked at the facts and saw them for what they were. Really, what could he say to make any of this right? At that moment, there was no defense of his former lifestyle. Yeah, he was a man whore, but until this moment, the fact never disturbed him. It had never left him sleepless or upset or ashamed, until now.

“Jamison, you don’t understand.”

“You’re right, Marques. I don’t. And I don’t think I ever will.”

Marques felt as though a ton of bricks flattened him in one fell swoop, and every moment he’d been hurt in his life assaulted him at the same time. He knew what she meant, and he had nothing to hold her here. With him. Jamison looked him in the eye, saw through him, and pinned him in place as if he were a specimen. After the visual dissection, Jamison backed away from him as if what she saw wasn’t worth anymore of her time. Marques felt his eyes well up with tears, and as a grown man he’d never cried, not even when he lost his father. He knew that he let the most wonderful woman walk away, and there was no reason for her to come back. The worst part was that the last memory he would get of her was the hurt in her eyes and the sound the door made when it closed.

* * * *

When Jamison walked away, every fiber of her being clamored to turn her car around and go home. Then she sniffled and blinked the river of tears into rusted, salty tracks down her cheeks and damp puddles on her shirt. No, Marq’s shirt, as she amended the errant thought. She had to get out of Wilmington ASAP with motivation. She had two options. Either she could sit and mope until she caught her flight to Juneau, or she could shut down shop and head out tonight. In order to fool Marques into thinking she wasn’t home in case he dropped by while she was in, Jamison parked her car at the McDonald’s nearby and took a taxi to her house. Not that it mattered as she decided to only pack a small bag for her trip. She wasn’t prepared for that type of weather anyway. She may as well have some shopping therapy. That was funny, and Jamison smirked a bit through the cracked salted veneer of dried tears.

She hated shopping. That was why all of her clothes were so bland. It was so much easier to match if everything fell in the same palette. In the summer, she preferred light khakis and, in winter, black wool. To add a bit of variance, she may throw on the occasional white or gray top, but that was it. But for some reason she wanted to wear something with more verve than she’d previously chosen. By the time she returned to pick up her car and made it to the airport, her heart hurt. But there was no way she was going to admit what she felt at the moment, even if it felt suspiciously like—
No, stop yourself right there
.
You’re not going to say those words, even if they’re only in your head.

She took a single carry-on and one checked bag on her flight. The carry-on had a plastic vacuum sealed coat, gloves, and hat for when she arrived. But the rest of her wardrobe would be handled when she got there.

She had gotten used to a capsule wardrobe over the years. Micropacking was an art form that she’d learned to manage well. It was another reason she naturally gravitated toward neutral colors. In her experience, most people, unless gifted with a discerning eye, wouldn’t notice if a garment was reworn or not if it was basic. By that meant no patterns or distinct colors. If she put on a lime green shirt, or a boldly patterned skirt, anyone who saw it would remember it when she wore it again. Thus, her preferred options for garments were simple.

But Marq would scoff at her clothes sometimes, especially before he got to know her. She could tell by the look in his handsome face that he never saw her. His eyes would be in her direction if he addressed her, but they were often focused somewhere around her. Why the hell did she even like him anyway? He was a dick most of the time. But his dick was scrumptious, she amended. And she had never met someone so generous once he got to know her. He took care of her on the yacht, airbrushed her back, fed her, clothed her, made her come until she saw stars. Ugh, she couldn’t let him go, and she wanted to. So badly.

The breakup with Aiden had been ugly, but she wasn’t brokenhearted over his loss. The end of her relationship was terrible, but more so the loss of the habit of being part of a twosome and comfort of having another person to come home to. The bad thing was that Aiden saw her as a convenience, nothing more, while she busted her ass to make their house a home.
Then what does he do?
Stupid jerk fucked another raunchy-ass woman in her bed. She bought the mattress, bedroom furniture, and sheets in pieces here and there as she got the money. The only real luxury Jamison spent her money on was for the room that she laid her down to rest in at night. And that jerk disrespected her enough to sully her sole luxury with another woman. She was better off by herself than with him.

But when she boarded her Delta flight from ILM to Atlanta for her first connection in a string of several, she was determined to let Marq go. Even if she had to burn away a piece of herself in the process. But when the flight took off and she looked down at herself, depressed in a coach class seat as she drank as much of the horrid liquor she could her hands on, she knew that she couldn’t burn a piece of her heart away. It was with Marq, and she wasn’t getting it back.

* * * *

Jamison had picked up some guides on her cell phone e-reader before she boarded her first connection to Alaska, so she knew some of what to expect. But when she stepped off her last flight, she was not only tipsy, but cold as hell. When she left Wilmington, the temperature was cool, maybe the low sixties, but in Juneau it was in the low thirties, and her blood felt thin as hell, even with the North Face down she wore. She ended up at Nugget Mall to make a few clothing purchases there for her wardrobe. But now that she had gotten used to wearing colors again, she had a hard time convincing herself that she was happy in her bland wardrobe. Apparently, she wasn’t as she looked over every garment in the store twice before buying anything. Then the few things she brought were basic, just a handful of T-shirts and several pairs of jeans. As a blogger, she never had to worry about what she wore now, no more business casual or professional garb unless she felt like it. So for now she was content to be just Jamison. Her next move was to grab a quick bite to eat, and she ended up at Peter’s, a Chinese restaurant in the mall. It was okay for Chinese food but not the best she’d ever eaten. Although her feelings about the meal were more or less a by-product of the way she felt. She only ate a third of the food, she wasn’t truly hungry, but she hadn’t supped since…

Jamison cut the thought off of the simple Post-it note she still carried in her wallet with its heavy elegant script. God, life wasn’t fair. If it were, she would stop falling for men that weren’t suitable. Although, she had noticed something during her few hours in Alaska. The male to female ratio was vastly disproportioned. There were at least three men to every woman she saw. Even with her jet-lagged, exhausted frame and bloodshot eyes from too many inflight cocktails, she had gotten quite a few interested looks. But the mental wall she erected must have kept others from approaching her, and she spent the day sightseeing. There were many things to see and do apparently. There were tours she could take of the terrain, adrenaline-laced sports she could participate in, and wildlife refuges she could visit. She had two days before she would begin in earnest with a private showing of the film, and then she would conduct a few interviews with the workers at the rig. A quick glance at her e-mail confirmed the interviews were going to be with geologist first, as the process really started there. Geologists helped to locate mineral and fossil fuel deposits before the major job of drilling began. She was also set to meet the roughnecks who manned the heavy machinery. There were several castes of oil riggers, but it wasn’t clear exactly who did what yet. That was the point of the interviews, to get a concrete idea of how such a massive project worked from start to finish. By the time she was done, she hoped to make consumers reading her blog understand the danger to environment and the workers involved in risky business of oil manufacturing. She had some information that she read, but she wanted to learn from the people that actually performed the work and let their perceptions help to fill in the naturally unknown blanks in the subject matter.