Crave (His Second Chance with Heiress Bryn Christmas Duet #1) - Z.L. Arkadie Page 0,30
found it odd that a man who used to be so busy wasn’t busy at all. I feared Jasper had done something to ruin his business.
“Sorry,” I whispered, seeing that the caller was Jada, my sister-in-law.
Jamison raised a hand graciously and whispered, “No problem.”
Jada spoke in a rush. She was home for the week and wanted to know if I cared if Jane and Ollie flew from New York to Montecito with Spencer that night, and I would spend the weekend with them all at the estate. There was no way I was going to turn down that deal. I would be able to visit my two nieces and nephew plus see Jada and Spencer at the same time.
As soon as I hung up, I could feel the tension in the air. It was a reminder of the animosity that existed between my family and Jamison’s, and it was going to be a high hurdle to clear. We both chose to leave the obvious unspoken. Since I already knew Alana and Alex were on their way, I turned off my cell phone.
As soon as I put my device in my briefcase, Jamison took my hand and kissed my knuckles. “So, your ex-boyfriend… you don’t talk about him much.”
I groaned, rolling my eyes. Whenever I thought about running into Dale, a knot formed in the pit of my stomach, which shouldn’t have been the case. “I try not to linger in the negative. I mean, I hated him for a long time for being my first bad experience with love.”
Jamison stretched his neck as he rubbed his jaw. I could tell he wanted to know more but was respecting my boundaries.
I sighed, choosing to open myself a little. “I never told anyone this, and it wasn’t in the book but…” I smashed my lips together.
“You don’t have to explain anything to me, babe,” he said.
I inhaled sharply and held my breath. He’d referred to me as “babe.” I meant something to him. I decided to take a chance and trust him. If he deceived me, my heart would shatter into a million pieces. I would be bitter and swear off love forever. But that was if he deceived me.
“I used to…” I sighed. What I was about to say seemed so horrible. “When I was younger, I wanted to be bad. I hated the rules. I hated people who followed the rules. My brother was a chemist, and he made a drug. I tried to manipulate him into making more so I could distribute it. He wouldn’t. So—I used my own chemist. Dale was the middleman.”
Jamison cleared his throat. I could feel him growing tenser by how tight he was gripping my hand. I imagined he knew about the charge leveled against Asher when we were eighteen. Jamison’s father had tried to use it against us. But I was confessing that my brother wasn’t the criminal—I was.
“You know you can hurt me with this information,” I said.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Bryn.” He sighed. “And my father already tried.”
I sniffed. “I know.”
“Why did you tell me that, anyway?”
I took a deep breath. “Because you wanted to know about what drew me to a guy like Dale. At our core, we were similar. We liked being bad and breaking the rules and getting away with it.”
Jamison kept a neutral look on his face. He pointed to Eden’s gate, which was open. “The house is to the right?”
I coughed to clear the frog out of my throat. “Um, yeah.”
I fixed my eyes on Jamison, trying to imagine what he was thinking. He turned into the driveway, and the gate starting closing behind us. Eden was expecting me.
“I have a question.” He glanced at me with a sexy smirk. That was a good sign.
“Yeah?”
“Are you still bad?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Being bad was about the angry, wounded girl sticking it to authority figures for disappointing me. So no, I’m not bad anymore. I guess I’ve grown the hell up.”
He grunted thoughtfully.
I frowned. “Why the grunt?”
Jamison was still smirking. “I can mount an argument against your last claim.”
“Against what part?”
“When you were talking to Jada, you never mentioned you were with me. We both know why. Also, I still believe you flout the rules, because you know the rules don’t make us more mature—they’re made to control individuality.”
I could feel fire in my eyes as my pussy throbbed. “The fact that you know that makes you twice as sexy.”