as well,” he recalled.
“Two, in my lower spine. They repaired those.” She laughed softly. “Of course, I have issues in my back, too.” She shook her head. “All my own fault, I guess. I should have known that Bailey was too good to be true. But I was so stupid about men.”
“You didn’t go out with anyone while you were in college?” he asked idly as he poured the warming coffee into two mugs.
“I was married,” she said with a quizzical glance.
He turned, grimacing. “Sorry. Wasn’t thinking.”
She smiled. “It’s okay. My reputation follows me around. It was really a stupid idea, but I was so desperate to keep men at bay when I came back here. I didn’t go out with anybody except girlfriends when I was at MIT. They thought I was nuts.” She drank coffee and sighed. “I guess I’m out of touch with the modern world. I was sheltered all my life, then I married a man who sheltered me just as much. Then there was Bailey.” She made a face.
“We all make mistakes,” he pointed out.
“Some of us make more than others,” she returned. “I was afraid I’d meet somebody else and go nuts over him and end up like I’d already done, twice. I have no sense about men, apparently.” She didn’t add the journalist she’d avoided, because he’d attracted her, too, before he died overseas. He might have been a good choice, but she didn’t trust her own judgment anymore.
“You have to take into account that you were naive,” he said. “Being street-smart takes time and hard experiences.”
She cocked her head and studied him with vivid dark blue eyes. “Are you street-smart?”
“About women? Yes.” He sighed. “I got rich all too quickly. When my mother died,” he said, “I was left with a fortune.”
“It didn’t go to your father...?” She stopped dead, grinding her teeth. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.”
But he wasn’t offended. He looked at his coffee cup. “He was in prison by then.”
She hadn’t moved. She just sat there, staring at him.
“He was like your ex-husband, only he didn’t get out for good behavior. He took a shiv and tried to kill a fellow inmate. He died instead.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said gently.
He sipped coffee, burning his lip to stop the pain of memory. “We didn’t mourn him. My mother had a little over two years of peace and serenity before she died, at least. Her father had died soon after she married my father. It wasn’t until my father was arrested and convicted that her mother died, leaving her the only heir to the family fortune. So she became an heiress. Up until then, we were poor. Grandmother would have helped, but my father refused any offer of it. He hated my mother’s wealth. The money was on her side of the family, not his, obviously. When she died, I inherited the works.” He smiled sadly. “I’d rather have had her.”
She drew in a long breath. “I loved my mother like that,” she replied. “But my father was just as special to me.” She smiled. “I loved him very much.” She sipped coffee and stared at him. She wanted to ask why his father had gone to jail, but she didn’t want to pry.
Nevertheless, he saw the question in her eyes. The pain he felt pulled his face taut, kindled anger in his eyes. “My father was beating one of our horses with a hammer,” he said through tight lips. “I had an older brother, Dan. I’d tried to stop my father and been knocked down for my pains. Dan was furious. He loved me, but he also loved the horse our father was trying to kill. Dan went after Dad and got hit in the head with the hammer. He died on the spot.”
“Oh, Jake,” she said, wincing. “I’m so sorry!”
“So we had two family traumas at once. I had to testify. Not that I minded,” he added curtly. “It was an absolute pleasure when the prosecuting attorney brought out the many 911 calls my mother had made to the local police because of my father’s brutality to both her and her sons. But I lost my brother. That was the purest hell I ever knew, until my mother died not quite three years later.”
She didn’t say anything. She just looked at him, with soft, sad eyes.
“You’d know how that feels,” he added, forcing a smile. “You’ve lost both your parents, as well.”
She nodded.
“So I got rich overnight