Wife Me Bad Boy (39 page)

Everything around us was beautiful in the morning sunlight. The town was so pretty. They called it the Hills because it was perched high above the valley. It was the ideal place to start a new life. It was the kind of place I’d always pictured myself living. It was the kind of place where I could raise my child.

We got to the drug store and there was only one thing I needed—a pregnancy test.

“Do you think it’s too early for me to take it?” I said to Lacey when we were back in the car.

“Probably,” she said. “What does the package say?”

I couldn’t read the fine print on the side of the package. I was crying again.

Chapter 21

Faith

I’
D NEVER HAVE THOUGHT I’D
be the one to say this, but no matter what happens to you, one thing is always certain.

Life goes on
.

Especially when you’re singlehandedly raising a little boy.

With the help of Lacey and the Brothers, I got set up in a nice house up in the Hills, overlooking the valley. It was the kind of place I’d dreamed of as a little girl. It was a beautiful stone house on one of the older streets in Rio Secco’s expensive downtown. It had originally been built by a Spanish ship captain for his wife, and the colonial influence gave it such charm.

I felt it was an appropriate house for me because of what had happened to the Spanish sailor. After building the house, he’d brought his wife to California from the colonial capital in Mexico. From what I could find out at the records office, they’d had a happy life there together. At least for a time. They planted the trees that now shaded the mosaic swimming pool. They brought the red, clay tiles up from the coast that were now scattered in the driveway. And they’d had a son. A year after their son’s birth, the sailor was lost at sea and the wife raised the baby alone in the house.

Despite the tragedy, I took it as a good omen for what I was doing.

The years passed faster than I’d ever imagined possible. Before I knew it, I was in the hospital, giving birth. The pregnancy went smoothly. Lacey stayed with me during the labor. Grant, Forrester and Grady crowded into the delivery room as soon as the baby was born.

They were his uncles. All three were named godfathers. Lacey was my emergency contact. We lied and said she was my sister so she could stay with me throughout the procedure. At the christening, Grady told me to call the baby Sam, after Jackson’s father, and I did.

At first, when I’d finally come to terms with Jackson’s death, when I’d at last realized he was never coming back, I was grief-stricken. However, two months after Wolf’s death, a third Lobo was found dead in his bed. His throat was slit in the night and none of the guards heard a thing. That gave me my first glimpse of hope.

Maybe Jackson wasn’t dead
.

Maybe he was finishing the job he’d started, and would come back to me when he was done.

On the day of Sam’s birth, I received a letter. It was only a few words.

*

I’
M KEEPING MY PROMISE TO YOU.
When I’m done, I’ll come back to you.

*

I
KEPT IT TO MYSELF,
but a few months later another Lobo turned up dead and I knew Jackson was keeping his promise. It was going to take him longer than he’d thought, but he was alive, and that’s all that mattered.

But the passing time was so difficult.

I was always painfully aware of his absence. My baby’s father was missing. He missed the first birthday, and the second, and the third. Every year I counted on my fingers the number of Lobos left alive, but it was always too many.

Every day that passed was only half the life it was supposed to be. Half the happiness.

I had Sam, but the other half, Jackson, wasn’t there.

And as the years stretched on, I eventually stopped counting the days till Jackson came back. I settled into my life, cherished the beautiful gift Jackson had given me, and put all my efforts into raising my son, giving him the best childhood possible, and making myself the best person I could.

I went back to school and learned all about wine. I learned how the grapes were grown, how the wine was made, and how the world’s best restaurants selected the wines to accompany the food they served. I started my own business as a wine buyer, discovering the best local vintages from the farms in the valley and bringing them to the finest restaurants in San Francisco and along the coast, where they could be discovered and enjoyed by the whole world.

On the night of the tenth anniversary of my meeting Jackson, I decided I’d waited long enough. I had no idea how may Lobos were still alive. So much time had passed that I no longer feared them coming to look for me. They must have known someone was hunting them down and killing them one by one, but they didn’t know who it was or why he was doing what he was doing.

They’d forgotten Wolf, and the night Jackson had started his blood feud, and so would I.

On that tenth anniversary, I got Lacey to babysit Sam, and I went back to the Motel on the highway near Reno. I borrowed Grant’s bike for the ride, and I rode out in the white dress I’d been wearing the night Jackson found me. I still had it.

On the way to the motel, it started raining and I couldn’t believe it. It never rained in those parts. The rain soaked me to the skin, and by the time I got to the motel my makeup was running down my face, just the way it had that night ten years before.

I walked into the bar and my eyes went immediately to the spot where Jackson had been sitting the first time I entered. The spot was vacant now, and it pained my heart to see it. Even though I hadn’t expected Jackson to be there, even though all logic told me there was no way on earth he’d be there, I somehow had held out a hope that he might be sitting there, waiting for me, like he had last time.

But of course he wasn’t.

One thing was the same though, the bartender.

“Bartender,” I said, “a beer.”

The bartender’s eyes widened when he saw me. “Miss, are you all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You look—”

“What?” I said, my eye steady.

He shrugged, and got me a beer. When he came back with it he said, “Miss, this is going to sound very strange, but something about you makes me feel like I’m looking at a ghost.”

I smiled at him. “I get that feeling all the time,” I said. “Every time I look in the mirror.”

“You’ve been here before, haven’t you?”

I looked him in the eye. “In another lifetime.”

He left me to serve another customer, shaking his head as he left. I finished my beer and when I was done, I asked him if he rented the rooms. He said he did and I asked if room three was available. It was and I took it.

I held my breath as I entered the room. It was as if I was walking back into a night from my own past, ten years earlier. Everything that had happened between me and Jackson was as fresh in my mind as if it had just happened the day before. We’d had such a short time together that I could account for literally every second of it.

Our first meeting in the bar in Reno, when I’d been a bitch.

Our second meeting at the bar at the motel. The sex we’d had in the very motel room I was now in, probably the very bed I was lying on.

The bike ride in the desert.

The painful conversation in the diner.

And then the sex in the desert safe house. Oh my God, that sex. I could remember every single sensation, every emotion, every taste, every spasm of ecstasy.

I lay back on the bed and put my hand inside my dress and touched myself.

The night in the safe house had burned me to the very core of my being. Even ten years later, the thought of it made my pussy wet. I let my finger slide over my clit as I thought about the orgasm Jackson had had inside me. He’d insisted on going skin to skin. No condom. He wanted his semen inside me. He knew it would lead to a son. And he was right.

My finger slid back and forth over my clit.

I thought about Jackson’s cock in my mouth. He’d slid it right to the very back of my throat. When he came, the throbbing terrified me. I thought he was going to explode. He’d poured so much semen into my throat I was afraid I’d choke, but I didn’t. I loved it. I’ll admit it. The sticky, metallic, hot mess he poured into my mouth was a gift. I swallowed every drop of it, and what I wouldn’t give to have the chance to do it again.

My finger slid inside my pussy and I began slipping it back and forth.

Then, to really make sure he owned me completely, to make sure that even if he disappeared from the face of the earth, which he did, I’d never forget him, he took me in the most shocking way of all. His plan had worked. It worked too well. I’d never be able to get past him. I still couldn’t imagine another man touching me.

I let my thumb touch my anus.

He’d put himself in there. It had shocked me, terrified me, and it had overcome me so utterly that I’d never be able to be anyone’s woman but his.

I pictured his face in my mind. I pictured the firm muscles of his chest, his powerful arms, his rock hard torso, his monstrous penis.

As my finger slid back and forth, in and out of my pussy, my thumb pressed against the tight muscle of my anus.

I cried out his name as I came.

“Jackson.”

“Jackson.”

“Jackson.”

Chapter 22

Jackson

T
WELVE YEARS IS A LONG TIME TO BE A GHOST.

And it made it’s mark on me. I am not the man I was twelve years ago. I’m not the man who left Faith.

A million times I wanted to go back, but I couldn’t. Not until it was safe. One wrong move, one fuck up, and I would be putting her life in danger—and the boy’s. That was a risk I couldn’t take.

That meant taking out all twelve Lobos, one at a time.

Twelve years.

I’d never intended it to take so long, but once I started, there was no way to back out. If they got even a hint of what was going on, if they suspected for a second that the killings had anything to do with Faith, they’d track her down and kill her.

I knew how it had to be. I couldn’t come back, I couldn’t contact her, I couldn’t even contact the Brotherhood, until I’d fulfilled my part of the bargain.

And so, I spent twelve years killing twelve men.

I didn’t leave a single thing to chance. I didn’t go within a million miles of home until every last one of them was dead. Some of them were easy to get, some of them were difficult. But I got them all.

It cost me.

It cost me dearly.

It cost me the better part of my son’s childhood.

But it was finally time to return.

I was on a greyhound bus from Galveston to Los Angeles. I couldn’t believe I was actually on my way back after all this time. How would she react? Would she even want to see me?

I was numb, a shadow of the man I’d been. Killing takes its toll, it gets under your skin. There comes a point when you’re not even sure there’s anything left of the man you were. I’d been shot, stabbed, scarred, tortured. I was hardly recognizable. But I was finally done. All twelve Lobos were dead.

It was time for me to return to my woman and my son.

Galveston to LA is a long ride covering the length of the Mexican border. I was following the trail of the old pony express, which might be interesting to a historian, but to me, nothing was interesting except getting home to Faith.

I’m not the man you remember. I’m not the man who rode out from the safe house. That man was killed a thousand times over. Every time I killed another Lobo, another part of me died.

I wondered if Faith would recognize me. I was twenty-six when she knew me. Now at thirty-eight I was a hardened veteran, battered and bruised. Faith would be thirty-two. She’d been twenty when I knew her. Everything that happened between us was a lifetime ago. Maybe I was fooling myself, thinking I could go back after so long.

The Jackal, a Mexican drug runner with a scar across his face four inches long, was my last target. He was the last Lobo I had to kill, the final member of Wolf’s inner circle who’d ever known anything about Faith. Now he was dead, and there was no one left to threaten the people I loved.

I’d spent twelve years trying to forget the feeling I got from Faith, trying to get the pain of her memory out of my mind, but I could never do it.

Being without Faith, knowing she was out there and that I couldn’t go back to her, it was a constant torture. I tried to dampen that pain in any way I could. Violence, alcohol, adrenaline, I tried everything.

The only thing I didn’t try was sex.

I was tempted. Sure I was. Many times. I even made a habit of going to strip clubs and watching the girls dance. But I never fucked them. I didn’t fuck a single woman. Not in all that time. I didn’t even let them touch me. From the moment I laid a finger on Faith, I hadn’t been with another woman.

What kept me going was the memory of Faith. I thought about her constantly. I fantasized about her. Sometimes I’d flirt with other women, but only because they reminded me of Faith. I used them to trigger my own memories, to bring to life the images I held in my mind of Faith. But I never crossed the line. Not once. I remained loyal. And that was the only thing that gave me the courage to go back and find her now.

Maybe she’d hate me, maybe she’d spit in my face when she saw me, but at least I knew I’d been true to her. I’d done what needed to be done, I’d kept my promise, and now I was back to take what was mine.

Some men live for glory. Others live for gold.

Me? I lived for the memory of Faith Shepherd. The images I’d formed in my mind of her during those few days we spent together were my obsession. They were my drug, my passion, and god knows, they would be the death of me.

I found a seat near the back of the bus. I had it to myself, but across the aisle was a woman in a provocative black dress. If I had to guess, I’d say she was a hooker. She was alone, sitting quietly, her nose buried in a book. My habit was to find something that reminded me of Faith, some hint of the woman I’d lost, in every woman I came across.