Page 95 of Lead Me On
“When you came to the door today, you were upset. What happened?”
She shook her head. Crossed her arms, then uncrossed them. Her chin rose. “I told Mr. Jennings.”
“Um…” A flush of embarrassment crept up his face, as if Quinn Jennings was her dad and had just walked in on them. “You told him we were sleeping together?”
“No! I told him about my family, about my name.”
“Oh, I get it. But that’s a good thing!” He started to reach for her. “I’m proud of you, babe.”
Jane threw up her hands to hold him off. “It is not a good thing! Dynasty MacKenzie isn’t a secret anymore. You know about her, and so does Mr. Jennings, and now…now Greg knows, too, and he’ll tell people. I have tolivewith her now.”
“Maybe she’s not so bad, Jane.”
Fists tightening as if she might practice her boxing on him, Jane advanced. Chase actually took a step back. “You have no idea how bad she was.”
“Well, I knew—”
“You knew me when I was, what? Thirteen or fourteen? I spent two more years perfecting my bad-girl image. I was completely out of control. I was… I can’t be anything like her. I can’t date a man with tattoos or visit my brother in jail or… Ican’t.Or people will think I haven’t changed.”
“But Jane… Who cares what people think?”
“Icare! You don’t understand.”
“So tell me.”
Her eyes were fever bright, sparkling with pain.
“Tell me what happened.”
“No!” She looked so panicked that Chase no longer cared if she was going to hit him. He grabbed her and folded his arms around her. Her breath blasted against his bare chest as if she’d just run a race. Her knuckles dug into his stomach.
“Jane, you need to talk to someone.”
“I don’t need you to play therapist. I know what happened.” Her breathing slowed, so when she pushed away, he let her go. “My dad, my real dad, wrote to me every week when he was in prison.Everyweek. I had all the fantasies you’d expect about what a great time we’d have when he got out. What a great father he’d be. Heencouragedthose fantasies. Then he was paroled when I was twelve, and I never heard from him again. Ever. He’d moved on. He didn’t need a pen pal anymore because he had a life.”
Chase’s throat tightened with sympathetic pain for her. “Jesus, that’s really awful. You must’ve been—”
“It couldn’t have happened at a worse time, of course. Puberty. I started craving male attention, and I had the body to get it. Men wanted me and I loved it. There you go. Therapy session over!”
His chest burned so hot that he had a momentary fear he was having a heart attack. “You were just a kid.”
“Sure, when I was twelve, I was a kid. But at some point I was old enough to know better. At some point I couldn’t blame my mom or my dad or my past anymore. It was just me drinking and getting high and having sex with men twice my age—”
Oh, God.
“And living with that is hard enough without everybody knowing about it!”
She was pacing again, hands wound together, mouth pressed into a tight line. He remembered how sexual she’d been. A thirteen-year-old seductress on a mission to lose herself…and apparently she’d succeeded.
“What happened when you were sixteen?”
“Ha! I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought I could handle myself.”
It seemed ridiculous, but he was afraid. Afraid for that girl she’d been. Whatever had happened, it had been a long time ago, but the terror of it sent his heart racing. “What happened, Jane?”
Her laugh sounded like a sob. “I thought I was so cool.”
“Jane.”
