Michaels, Skye - Kelly's Challenge [Le Club 2] (Siren Publishing Classic) (11 page)

“Justin seems really committed to bringing more polo to Ocala and to fielding a local team,” Kelly replied.

“With his martial arts background, everything’s a campaign. He plots and plans strategy for every game, studies the opposition’s weaknesses, and is always a step ahead of the competition. It won’t always mean a win, of course,” Steve said.

Kelly smiled. It gave her a warm feeling to know Justin was so well thought of and that his friends were loyal to a fault. She realized how important Justin’s friends were to him, and she appreciated his dedication. She found him bold, competitive, and powerful. Her fascination with him had turned to rampant admiration.

Justin was about to rejoin Kelly when he was approached by a young man in jeans and a tee shirt. They spoke for a moment, and he passed a sheaf of papers to Justin. As the young man turned and walked away, Justin opened the envelope, scanned the page, and slowly began to turn a furious shade of red.

Kelly only heard the ominous words “you have been served” and realized that something important had happened. She watched as Justin strode off with the service-of-process papers in his hand.

Chapter Sixteen

Justin located Jason and Trent and asked them to meet with him in the tack room of the barn where they could be assured of privacy. When they arrived, Justin wordlessly handed Jason the package of papers. Jason, in full attorney mode as soon as he saw the legal papers, quickly scanned them and said, “What the fuck is this, Justin? Are they fucking kidding? I thought Jester was your horse. Where do Alexa’s parents come off trying to take him away from you?”

“I bought him, paid two hundred fifty thousand dollars for him, and he was worth every penny. He was already schooling
Grand Prix
-level work at home and showing
Prix St. George
. He was a ‘made’ horse. However, in order for Alexa to show him as an amateur owner her name had to be on his papers,” he explained. Justin paced back and forth across the small tack room and furiously kicked a tack trunk.

“What else can you tell me?” Jason asked, hoping to calm Justin down and focus his anger in a positive direction. Jason reached into the small refrigerator for bottles of water and passed them around.

“I also bought the sports car she totaled. Her father, one of the lesser known televangelists, felt it was all my fault that she was leading a wild life, living ‘in sin’ with me at the Plantation, and he held me responsible for her death, even though I wasn’t even in the state when the accident happened. The truth was, yes, I bought the horse and the car. I also introduced her to BDSM, so that’s on me. However, the running away from reality, the wildly extreme behavior, and the death wish—that was all at Daddy’s door.”

Jason and Trent were shocked. These facts had not been mentioned previously and put a whole different complexion on Justin’s relationship with Alexa and the guilt he felt at her death. They had known she was troubled, but not the extent of the problem.

Justin continued furiously, “It’s true that some preachers’ kids go a little wild sometimes, but that wasn’t the case here. Alexa told me that he had abused her from the time she could remember until she was about fourteen. By then, I guess she was too old to be interesting to him. It just made me sick to my stomach when she told me about it. The bastard had the audacity to judge our sexual behavior—sexual behavior between consenting adults—when there was nothing ‘safe, sane, or consensual’ about his behavior with a helpless child. She went to live with her grandmother at age fourteen, then on to college at Tulane, and she never went home again. She was basically estranged from her family. I think she spoke to her mother from time to time on the phone, but her mother had turned a blind eye to the abuse, if she in fact knew about it. She had done nothing to protect Alexa, preferring the course of least resistance or maybe ignorant bliss. She’s a mousy little thing. She doesn’t have much to say for herself. I am sure this is all Pastor Davis’s doing. I guess he sees it as a way to hurt me and make a little cash in the bargain.”

Jason thought about the logistics of fighting this suit and said, “I’ll get my investigator working on this immediately. Don’t respond in any way or talk to them or their attorney until I get a handle on this. If we can locate any evidence of the abuse, we would be in a much stronger position to negotiate,” Steele said. “I’m sure he wouldn’t want that information made public. Your life is an open book, is it not?”

“I don’t broadcast my sexual preferences, but it’s not a state secret. Thanks, Jason. I appreciate the help. Send me a retainer agreement, and I’ll get you a cost retainer immediately. We have twenty days to answer?” Justin asked.

“That’s right. But believe me, I’ll paper that bastard with so many requests for production and to show cause that he’ll think he’s in snow country, not central Florida.”

“Just to be clear, Hell will freeze over before that bastard takes my horse. If I have to ship him to Europe or South America, I will do it in a heartbeat. I can FedEx him or send him on Americargo. His passport and health papers are up to date, and I can have him out of the country before they know what hit them. I have a farm in France and another in Brazil. Either way, he’s not going back to them.” Justin fumed.

Alexa was an adult when he met her, but the baggage she carried from her childhood was just as heavy, if not more so, than the baggage he himself carried. Justin’s unconventional childhood, his mother’s death when he was only eight, and the emotional estrangement from his father contributed to the weight of his personal baggage, but it was nothing compared to the abuse Alexa had suffered. He and Alexa had been two damaged individuals who had formed most of a whole. At least he had Jamie and Max and other assorted relatives to take up the slack. He had never been truly alone as she had been, and he had never actually been sexually abused. It had always hurt him that he had been unable to make it better for her, but her scars were just too deep.

Chapter Seventeen

When the second match and postgame festivities were concluded, Justin drove Kelly back to the club. As soon as they were in the suite, she said, “All right, what’s the matter? You haven’t said two words since we left the field.”

He turned away from her and stalked into the bedroom, threw a suitcase on the bed, and started to pack. “I have to go back to the Plantation. Something has come up that needs my immediate attention,” he said evasively.

“What do you mean ‘something has come up’? Who was that young guy you were talking to after the first game?”

“All right, I wasn’t going to burden you with this, but Alexa’s parents have filed a lawsuit demanding I return Jester to them. I’m sure it’s just a ploy to get money, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some dressage queen has made them an offer for him. He was doing really well at the show before Alexa died. I need to go back home to look though her things that are stored at the Plantation. We had been living together for several years, and her personal belongings are stored there. Jason is going to need some ammunition to quash this suit before it gets rolling.”

Kelly just looked at him inquiringly and waited patiently for him to continue.

He sighed. Apparently she wasn’t going to be brushed off without a full explanation. “I don’t normally talk about this, but since I have already told Jason the details, I’ll tell you that Alexa was abused by her father from an early age until she was fourteen.” He explained Alexa’s background to Kelly, sparing none of the sordid details.

“Justin, that’s just terrible. But I sense something else is going on here,” she said.

He turned back to his packing and did not look her in the eye as he said, “Kelly, I have to be honest here. This has brought up a lot of unresolved feelings, and I don’t know if I can be fair to you right now and give you my undivided attention. I think it would be better if we cooled things off for a while,” he said. He had thought his grieving for Alexa was done, but apparently, he wasn’t through yet. He realized that he still had some strong feelings for Alexa although he had thought their bitter fighting in the months before her death had killed those feelings. He had hoped that this new and very promising relationship with Kelly would help the process along, but he was coming to think it would not be fair to burden her with his problems.

* * * *

Kelly’s face paled. “Of course, Justin. I understand,” she said turning away quickly. Her heart was breaking, but he didn’t see the look on her face as she picked up her bag and said, “I’ll be leaving so you can finish packing. My car is here, so no need to drive me home. Good luck, and be well.” At least her voice had not cracked even though her eyes were brimming with tears.

As Kelly pulled out of the Le Club grounds, she was not sure she would be able to see to drive. Thank goodness Kermit knew the way home! She did not know if she would ever get over this or get over the man she had just walked away from without a fight. There were just some things, or some ghosts, you couldn’t fight.
Thank God the relationship did not get any further along.
But she knew she was lying to herself.
It has gone pretty damn far, at least for me
. How had she fallen in love with him so quickly? But it hadn’t really been that quickly, she realized. She had been in love with him for weeks.

Chapter Eighteen

Justin flew his small Citation jet from Ocala’s municipal airport to New Orleans the same night. He was a fully qualified pilot and only had to file his standard flight plan. It was a very uneventful flight given the late hour, and he had lots of time to think, unfortunately. He had come to the conclusion that he had no business involving a sweet, relatively inexperienced girl like Kelly in the Lifestyle, not to mention the baggage he carried from his childhood and Alexa’s death. He was thoroughly disgusted with himself when he arrived at the Plantation in the early morning hours. He went directly to bed and slept for eight hours of blessed forgetfulness.

When he awoke at noon, he was still groggy with fatigue. Max had stayed at the farm to keep an eye on things there and to be on hand in the event Jester had to be moved quickly. After making a cup of coffee and some toast, he went to the storage room in the attic where Alexa’s belongings had been stored carefully by Max after the accident.
Jeez, there must be fifty boxes.
He
started to carefully sift through each and every one of them.

It was an emotional experience going through box after box and reliving his time with Alexa. Some of the memories were sweet, others were bitter. As the hours wore on, he was slowly able to see Alexa for what and who she actually was and to let go of some of the more nostalgic notions that had taken root in his memory since the accident. He relived some of the sweet moments, a great many of the really sexy moments, and the hurtful ones as well. They had fought bitterly before she left for the horse show and had not parted on anything resembling good terms. He had tried his best to make Alexa see she needed help, and that her dependence on BDSM was unhealthy. It had gone beyond fun or sex to an obsession with pain. She felt unworthy of love and evidently craved pain to feel alive and loved. If only she had realized he loved her in spite of her problems and that they could both work out their problems together. They had never gotten the chance as the accident ended any possibility of healing. But he realized you can’t make someone else get help. They have to be ready to get it for themselves. This was just like any drug or alcohol addiction, and Alexa just wasn’t ready. By the time she hit rock bottom, she was dead. It was a tragedy, no doubt about it.

But what about himself? Justin wondered.
Am I ready to shed the Lifestyle and live a vanilla life? Even for Kelly?
He had come to realize over the hours closed in the musty attic that he did indeed love Kelly, but was it enough? He knew he still had a lot of thinking to do. After spending most of the day in the dusty attic surrounded by over two hundred years of family antiques and discards, and the fifty boxes representing Alexa’s life, he needed a break. He grabbed a jacket and walked around the plantation house and grounds, down the long, oak-lined driveway, finally finding himself in the old slave quarters.

His father’s playroom was locked, but he knew the combination by heart. He and Jamie had never used these rooms, finding them extremely distasteful. He and Alexa had usually gone to Le Club Beaudelair in the French Quarter when they were in the mood for something more exotic. Now, he entered the playroom and looked around. He really should dismantle the whole thing, he thought. There were certainly no good memories or vibes here. He was pretty sure the only one who had enjoyed this space was his father. He doubted his father’s playmates were as enthusiastic as he was, and certainly the slaves that had lived in this space hadn’t enjoyed it much either. The old journals he had discovered in the library years ago left no doubt of that. He was tempted to have the whole building torn down but knew there would be repercussions due the historic nature of the site.
Well, that decision can wait
, he supposed.
The old bastard would turn over in his grave if he knew I was going to tear the place down. That might be the best reason to do it and damn the consequences. What the hell is a fine when all that old pain can be bulldozed into dust?