The Will (Magdalene #1)(44)
Author: Kristen Ashley

There was a pause before she whispered, “This is very true.”

“I know it is.”

She kept whispering when she said, “I’m sorry she was that way with you, Jake.”

So f**king sweet.

“I was too at the time, honey,” he replied. “But the way she turned her back on me, but mostly on Ethan when she got her new man and set up her new life, not upset I’m shot of her.”

She held his eyes a long moment before she asked, “So is this when Gran offered you money to buy The Circus?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Place was a shithole. And Dave, the guy who owned it, was a dick. Paid the girls nothin’, sayin’ they made their money on tips. Had two bouncers on each night. Just two. For a club like that, that’s inviting trouble. Had girls behind the bar who couldn’t do shit should somethin’ go down. He still made money. A load of it. And when he was looking to get out, I knew, if I could buy it, I could turn it around, make a shitload more.”

“Therefore you told Gran this and she believed in your vision.”

Jake smiled again. “Yeah. She believed in my vision, Slick. Told me, I leverage the gym, she’d give me the rest of the money and, I could make a go of The Circus, pay her back along the way. Obviously I said no.”

She straightened and leaned toward him, sounding surprised when she asked, “You said no?”

“I said no,” he confirmed. “Taking pity money from an eighty-six year old lady?” He shook his head.

“But you eventually took the money,” she noted.

Jake nodded.

“I took the money. I said no about a hundred times first. The good part about this was, she was interested in me, she liked me, I liked her, and she kept at me. In this time, she met the kids, got involved in our lives, we liked her there, we kept her and she kept us. Eventually, she wore me down. I took the money, got a loan on the gym seein’ as I owned the building outright. I closed The Circus down for two months, me and some buddies fixed it up, reopened, paid Lydie back within a year. Paid off the loan on the gym within three. Got myself a four-bedroom house where my kids all have their own rooms. Life changed. Quit sucking. Got good. And Lydie was the catalyst for all that.”

“And that’s how you met,” she said softly.

“That’s how we met,” he replied just as softly.

She was still talking soft when she said, “I’m glad she was there for you, Jake.”

“I am too, honey.”

He watched her turn her head to the view before she said to it, “I just don’t understand how she could be so involved in your life, your children’s lives, and she never introduced any of you to me.”

This was the sticky part.

And it was a f**ked up move, he knew it, but she was suffering so Jake waded into the mire.

He would deal with the blowback when, but hopefully only if it happened.

“Babe, she was all about you when you’d come to visit,” Jake told her and she looked back to him.

“Pardon?”

“She talked about you all the time. Thought the world of you. And when you’d come for a visit, she’d get real excited. She couldn’t wait. Not hard to see she missed you when you were gone and she missed you bad. So, my guess, when she had you, she didn’t want to share you.”

“We went to parties and I saw her other friends all the time,” she returned.

“Yeah, but I’m not exactly in her age group and my family isn’t exactly in her social set. We’re not invited to play bridge and we don’t go to church socials.”

“This is true,” she murmured.

“And I know from what she told me after you were gone that she did not live her life on the go, socializing rabidly like she always did until she couldn’t do it anymore. When you were here, she took a break. She gave her time to you and sucked all of yours in that she could get.”

This brought on silence until she broke it, saying quietly, “We consumed each other.”

“Come again?” he asked.

She looked again to the window. “When we were together, we consumed each other. I thought it was just me missing Gran. When I was with her, I took every moment I could get with her and in this house. Committing it to memory. I did that even before…” She trailed off then began again. “I did it even when I was a little girl. I loved being with her and I loved being with her in this house.”

“So maybe that’s why we didn’t meet.”

She looked back at him. “You and your children are not bridge cronies, Jake, but you meant the world to her too. I know this to be true. She has your picture on her nightstand.”

Jake had no reply to that.

Strike that.

He had one. He just couldn’t give it to her.

Not now.

“I could see, in the beginning maybe. But seven years?” she asked.

He bent a knee, leaned deep and stretched a hand out, catching hers. “I have no answers for you, baby,” he told her gently, none of these words sitting well because they meant he’d lied to her gently. “And, it sucks but she’s gone. This is clearly f**kin’ with your head but you gotta let it go because with her gone, you’re never gonna get those answers. Just settle in that it was whatever it was and she made it so we have each other now.”

“We have each other now,” she whispered.

“Yeah.”

Her hand turned in his so she could curl her fingers around and she held tight.

And when she did, she held his eyes and kept whispering. “I’m glad, Jake.”

He held her back just as tight. “Me too, honey.”

She gave him a small smile.

And on that, Jake decided it was time to go. Her in this mood made him want to find creative ways to guide her out of it and he knew which way that creativity would go.

He was not Boston Stone.

In the beginning, the minute he saw her in her big black hat and big black shades at the funeral, he’d felt the urge, definitely. A woman like that, few men wouldn’t.

Then again, he’d felt the urge long before that seeing her pictures, reading her letters, listening to Lydie talk about her.

He didn’t know about the will at the funeral but he knew where Lydie was leaning, what she wanted. She never said it flat out but that didn’t mean she didn’t make the message abundantly clear and she did this repeatedly.

But Jake didn’t figure Josie would want anything to do with a guy like him.