On My Knees - J. Kenner Page 0,113

starts bouncing, her energy so vibrant I laugh despite myself. “Sylvie! Sylvie! I made toast with Uncle Jackson!”

“Toast? Really?” I manage to keep my voice perky and upbeat despite the fact that fear still clings to me like cobwebs. I give Ronnie a quick, tight hug, but my attention isn’t on her anymore. Instead, I am focused entirely on the man in the doorway.

He stands casually on the threshold, a wooden tray in his hands. His coal-black hair is untidy from sleep, and he sports two days of beard stubble. He wears flannel pajama bottoms and a pale gray T-shirt. By every indication, he is a man who has just awakened. A man with nothing on his mind but the morning and breakfast and the bits of news that fill the headlines of the paper tucked under his arm.

But, dear god, he is so much more. He is power and tenderness, strength and control. He is the man who has colored my days and illuminated my nights.

Jackson Steele. The man I love. The man I once foolishly tried to leave. The man who grabbed hold and pulled me back, then slayed my demons, and in doing so claimed my heart.

But it is those very demons that have brought us to this moment.

Because Robert Cabot Reed was one of those demons. And now Reed is dead.

Just thinking about him makes me tremble, and I hide the reaction by shifting my position on the bed as I watch Jackson stride into the room and then set the tray on the small table tucked in beneath the still-curtained window.

He comes over to sit on the edge of the bed and is immediately assaulted by a three-year-old cyclone demanding to be tickled. He smiles and complies, then looks at me. But the smile doesn’t quite warm his ice blue eyes. Instead, I see sadness. More than that, I see my own fears and worries reflected right back at me.

We arrived in Santa Fe late yesterday afternoon, both of us feeling light and happy and eager. Jackson had intended to spend the weekend with Ronnie and then go to court on Monday in order to set a hearing on his petition to formally claim paternity and establish that he is Ronnie’s legal father. That plan, however, was sideswiped when local detectives met our plane, then informed Jackson that he was wanted back in Beverly Hills for questioning in Reed’s murder.

The afternoon shifted from a happy, laid-back reunion to a frantic flurry of activity, with calls between New Mexico and California, lawyers squabbling, deals churning.

At the end of it all, Jackson was permitted to stay the weekend, on condition that he go straight to the Beverly Hills Police Department Monday morning. In truth, Jackson could have garnered much more time—unless the police wanted to actually arrest him, their leverage was limited—but his attorney wisely advised against it. After all, playing games isn’t the way to win either police cooperation or public opinion. And while we don’t yet know what physical evidence the police have collected, we do know that the cops can point to plenty of motive for Jackson to have killed Reed.

Motive.

The word sounds so clean compared to Reed, who was a dirty, horrible man.

Not only had he abused and tormented me when I was a teen, but he’d recently threatened to release some of the vile photographs that he’d taken of me back then if I didn’t convince Jackson to stop trying to block a movie that Reed was trying to greenlight. A movie that would expose secrets and deceptions—and that would thrust Ronnie, an innocent child, into the middle of a very public, very messy scandal.

Did Jackson want the movie stopped? Hell, yes.

Did he want to protect me from the horror of seeing those pictures flashed across the internet? Damn right.

Did he want to punish Reed for the things he’d done to me so many years ago? Absolutely.

Did Jackson kill Reed?

As for that one—I truly don’t know. For that matter, I don’t care. My only fear is that Jackson will be taken away from me. That if he did kill Reed, the system will make him pay, even for the death of a monster. And that if he didn’t kill Reed, it won’t matter. He will be an innocent man falsely convicted, punished for the potency of his hate rather than the reality of his actions.

I can’t bear the thought of losing him, and yet that fear now colors my world. It is