Skintight (25 page)

Treena didn't even pretend patience for Julie-Ann's woes. “What did the self-absorbed twit think, that she'd be the youngest dancer in the troupe forever?”

“I doubt she's ever thought about it, period. Julie-baby hasn't had her teeth kicked down her throat as often as the rest of us have yet, and self-absorbed is the word for her. But I think she caught a glimpse of her future seeing Red Unitard dance circles around everyone. And let me tell you, toots, it shook her right down to the ground, because you can be sure Vernetta-Grace is going to hire the girl if there's an opening, and just knowing that is giving J-A a taste of what it feels like to have someone breathing down your neck.” Carly smiled with sheer pleasure. “You gotta love karma.”

She went on to critique other performances, but Treena quit listening. Dancers began filtering into the room in twos and threes, laughing and talking and making plans to blow off some steam now that the audition was behind them, and the cheerful din unleashed all the wretchedness she'd been holding back. She tried desperately not to give in to it but knew she wouldn't be able to stave off the misery for long. Hell, she'd deem it a success story if she could simply keep from falling apart until she got home.

Not wanting to be pulled into any of the conversations going on around her, she finished changing, then shoved her damp dance togs into her bag and leaned over to interrupt Carly, who was happily dissecting the audition with Eve. “I'll wait for you outside the showroom.”

Telling the other dancer to hang on a sec, Carly dug in her bag until she came up with her key ring. She handed it to Treena. “Take the car. I'm going to stick around and grab a drink with Eve and Michelle.”

Eve leaned around Carly. “You oughtta come, too, hon.”

“I don't feel too good, Eve. I think I'm gonna just head for home.”

A stricken look flashed across Carly's face and she shook her head. “I'm sorry, Treen,” she said under her breath. “I forgot everything else for a minute in the euphoria of having the tryouts finally over for another year. I'll drive you home.” She reached to take back the keys.

Treena whipped them out of reach. Oh, God, she didn't want that. She'd actually felt a moment's relief knowing she'd soon be alone. She didn't want to see anybody, have to talk to anybody. “Don't be silly,” she said and hoped she didn't sound as desperate to escape as she felt. Grabbing her dance bag, she rose to her feet. “Go and have a good time—I'll be fine. I'll see you all later,” she said to the room in general, then left before anyone could stop her.

She didn't draw a steady breath until she hit the darkened auditorium and felt she could safely quit worrying about breaking down in front of everyone she knew. They were her friends and would be staunchly on her side, but she'd never been comfortable with flopping her emotions down for wholesale consumption. No comfort awaited her in the usual slice-and-dice the troupe indulged in when a man broke the heart of one of their own.

She was almost home free, however, and her heartbeat finally started to settle down as she pushed through
the showroom doors. She might make it back to her nest without a meltdown after all.

“Treena.”

Ice slithered down her spine, and she jerked.
Nooooooo!
Dammit, she wasn't ready for this! But there was no mistaking that voice and blast Jax's black soul, the last man she wanted to see was here whether she was prepared to deal with him or not.

Jax knew even as he straightened that this wasn't going to be easy. His emotions had been all over the map since the moment she'd shoved him out her apartment door and slammed it shut behind him.

When he'd first walked away he'd simply felt defeated and ashamed. But as he'd driven back to the Avventurato defensiveness had begun to kick in. Hey, he'd
planned
to tell her the truth, hadn't he? That ought to count for something. And she didn't know what the hell she was talking about when it came to his father. By the time he'd stalked bare-chested and barefoot through the hotel to reach his room he'd been determined to turn the goddamn baseball over to Kirov, win the final game tonight and get the hell out of Vegas.

Instead, he'd removed the baseball from its Plexiglas holder, locked it in his room safe and gone down to the casino to play some cards. When things went to hell, he'd always found that gambling took his mind off his troubles.

Not today, though. He lost hand after hand, but that wasn't the worst of it. The worst was how damn alone he felt in the crowd. It shouldn't have bothered him, for it was certainly nothing new. Yet, in the short time he'd known Treena he'd grown accustomed to feeling like he belonged to someone. He discovered he cared a lot.

Desperate to know how Treena's audition was going, he couldn't concentrate worth shit on the cards and finally cashed in his few remaining chips and headed back up to the room. He knew what he had to do.

So here he was, with a gift bag in one hand and his other hand stuffed in his pocket, and Treena was blowing right past him as if he were invisible. He made a move to block her.

She jerked violently out of his path. “I don't want to talk to you.”

Careful not to crowd too closely, he turned and walked alongside her. “Please. I'll only take a minute of your time.”

She ignored him, but he matched his stride to hers until finally she stopped and turned to face him, her normally warm eyes ice-cold and the hands that had patted and stroked him fisted so tightly on the strap of her dance bag that her knuckles were white. “What do you want, Jackson?”

“I'd like for you not to call me that,” he said, but immediately shook his head. “But that's not why I'm here. How did your audition go?” Her pretty eyes had a bruised look around them that made his gut churn.

She looked at him as if he were a bug that needed squashing and said frigidly, “I'm probably still employed.”

“Good. That's good.” They'd always talked so easily and it killed him that every word between them now was stilted and strained. He cleared his throat. “When will you know for sure?”

“Thursday night. Now, if that's all…?”

He supposed he had hoped somewhere deep inside of him that if he could just see her, could just talk to her
one more time, she'd somehow find it in her heart to forgive him. It didn't take a keen eye to see that was a futile wish. So he stuffed down all his raw emotions and thrust the gift bag out at her. “Here. I want you to have this. Sell the damn thing when you're ready and buy your studio.” He could at least give her that much.

She took the bag because he'd shoved it into her hands but didn't bother looking inside. Instead, she searched his face. “You're giving me your grandfather's baseball?”

“Yes.”

“Why? I thought the guy you lost it to was threatening to break all your fingers if he doesn't get it tonight?”

He hitched a shoulder. “That's my problem.” Then the myriad ways in which he'd screwed up with her rose like a tsunami in his soul and he added flatly, “Let him. It's probably no more than I deserve.” An abrupt, humorless laugh exploded from his throat. “I thought I was so fucking smart. I was going to be James-frigging-Bond and seduce my way into the showgirl's house, steal Grandpa's ball and disappear with the breeze. I'm good at statistics and probabilities, you know—a regular wizard at figuring the odds. But I made a major miscalculation this time. I didn't take into consideration the impact you would have on me.”

All of the emotion he'd tried so hard to suppress exploded and, heart pounding against the wall of his chest, he speared his fingers through his hair and stared down at her.

“I sure as hell didn't count on you,” he said hoarsely. “I wasn't prepared for those honest eyes or that great big heart of yours. I didn't know there was anyone in
this world who could make me feel as if I'd known her all my life, that a place existed where I'd feel as if I belonged, the way I felt in your home.” He reached out, wanting to trace her face with his fingertips, but he didn't think he could bear it if she jerked away from his touch, so he dropped his hand before it made contact.

“I sure wasn't prepared to fall in love,” he whispered, and his voice was a raw rasp in his throat. “But I did, Treena. I love you more than my mother, more than my country, more than the air that I breathe. And God, I am so sorry I hurt you, but by the time I realized what I was feeling I'd dug a hole for myself so deep I couldn't figure out how to climb out of it. So you take that.” He nodded at the bag dangling limply from her fingers. “You take it,” he repeated fiercely, “and get yourself that studio. And I'll get the hell out of your life before I do any more damage.”

He wanted to kiss her but knew better than to try. Wanted to touch her, but felt he'd forsaken the right. So he forced himself to turn and walk away and to not look back.

It was the hardest thing he'd ever done.

J
AX PROWLED HIS
hotel room like a caged cat, telling himself even as he did that he needed to knock it off. The clock was ticking down toward the final round of the tournament and he had to empty his mind, start getting into his game head. But his emotions roiled and writhed, which made trying to stay still a joke. And even if he could manage to sit for more than a minute at a time without twitching right out of his skin, his mind refused to obey. Images of Treena and snatches of the two exchanges he'd had with her today replayed through his mind. He couldn't make them stop.

His old man had been honest and good, according to her. He wasn't.

Big Jim'd had integrity. He didn't.

She'd loved Big Jim and had been starting to love him, too, until he'd gone and screwed things up.

He hadn't known it was possible to hurt this way and his instinct was to place the blame squarely on his father, to say that this, too, was Big Jim's fault. Except every time he started to do just that, he heard Treena's voice in his head telling him to grow up.

It made him realize that he'd never looked at his convoluted relationship with his dad through the eyes of an
adult. But maybe what Treena had said had a grain of truth to it—maybe Big Jim hadn't known what to do with him any more than he'd known what to do with Big Jim.

He was still a lousy father.
Jax stopped at the expanse of drapery that framed the wide window and watched storm clouds race across the sky. Then, rubbing the back of his neck, it occurred to him that although his father had dragged him from pillar to post for a couple of years, he'd kept him with him. From that standpoint, he had to admit Big Jim had rearranged his own way of life quite a bit to see that Jax still had one parent left in his. That was worth something. Jax wondered what he would do, given the same situation.

A better job than the old man did,
he thought with automatic defensiveness. Turning away from the window, he resumed pacing.
A
hell
of a better job.

All the same…taking a deep breath he crossed the room, yanked down the smaller of his two suitcases and retrieved the letter that had trailed him all over Europe before finally catching up with him in Geneva. He took the single sheet of paper from the envelope, then dialed the phone number on the letterhead. After a few minutes' conversation with the law office that had handled his father's estate, he cut the connection and dialed the number they'd given him for Big Jim's oncologist. Expecting to be added to a callback list, he was surprised when the receptionist put him straight through to the doctor instead. As they discussed Big Jim's case, he restlessly paced the length of the telephone cord in every direction that he could make it stretch.

When that call ended, he replaced the receiver very carefully in its cradle and blew out a breath. All right then.

Treena was right.

Big Jim had been diagnosed with prostate cancer shortly before Jax graduated from MIT. Maybe his father
would
have been at the ceremony if he hadn't been recuperating from surgery at the time.

He doubted it, though. It was just as likely the old man wouldn't have shown up regardless.

“Shit!” Snatching up his keys, Jax headed for the door. He needed to take a drive, clear his head, because this was getting him nowhere. One day soon he'd sit down and figure out how to give up his grudge against Big Jim. His continued resentment was pretty damn futile with his father dead and buried. Not to mention that—as Treena certainly made clear—nobody liked a whiner.

Treena.
Fresh pain hit him hard, and he slammed out of the hotel room as if he could somehow outrun it.

His feelings for his old man would just have to go unresolved a while longer. Because compared to the loss of Treena, those tangled emotions were chump change.

And he had no patience for them today.

 

T
HAT LOW-DOWN
, dirty gutter rat!
Treena glared at the baseball sitting in its Plexiglas container on the coffee table in front of her. Heels up on the couch, she wrapped her arms around her shins and hugged herself into the tightest ball possible while eyeing the collectible as if it were an anaconda poised to constrict the life out of her.

Jackson Gallagher McCall had betrayed her in the worst way a man could betray a woman. He'd taken her trust, her love—pieces of her heart and soul she didn't
give lightly, that she had, in fact, given to no man before him—and he'd crushed them beneath his sneakers like so many discarded cigarette butts. The very
least
she deserved in return was to loathe him without reservation.

But had he been content to leave her with even that tiny scrap of comfort? Oh, no. He'd had to go give her the damn ball back. To put his own hide in danger.

He'd had to go and say that he loved her. And to say it eloquently, blast him.

Then walk away.

She felt like breaking his hands herself. How dare he make a selfless gesture while she was still so furious? How dare he sweet-talk her into almost understanding why he messed up so badly? She really needed to hang onto her righteous indignation.

She needed Jax back in her life.

That really pissed her off. She refused to be jelly-spined and helpless. She didn't need a man to complete her life!

I love you.
Jax's voice, raw with emotion, whispered through her mind.
I love you more than my mother, more than—

His words had played through her mind more than once in the past hour and she latched on to them now. She'd be willing to bet most men didn't compare the way they loved their mothers with the passion they felt for a lover. Ignoring the core declaration itself, still too upset to deal with the way it sent blood rushing hot through her veins, the way it threatened to dissolve her determination to keep him out of her life, she rested her chin in the notch between her knees and chewed on the mother angle instead.

The implausibility of her thoughts caused her arms to loosen their grip around her legs and her chin to lift from its resting place. Her feet slid across the couch and she lowered them to the floor, slowly straightening her back.

Maybe his mother was his only frame of reference when it came to love.

Nearly everyone else she knew had been in and out of love at least once during the time she'd known them—and usually more often than that. But it was possible that Jax had never known true love with another woman.

She may never have experienced a man/woman-type love, but she had bonded to Carly like a soul sister and she loved Ellen and Mack as if they were her own parents. And before the three of them had become part of her life she'd had the love of her family and a few select others. Jax must have friends somewhere, as well, even if he'd never talked to her about them. He must have people who kept him grounded simply by their affection for him.

And yet some of the things he'd said to her outside the showroom this afternoon seemed to indicate otherwise. He'd disavowed the existence of a place where he could feel as if he belonged, had claimed he hadn't known there was anyone in the world capable of making him feel as if he'd known them all his life.

Those assertions had held such power and conviction that she'd hugged them to her bruised heart like a consoling hot water bottle. Since they concerned the way Jax felt about
her,
however, she hadn't stopped to consider what they might say about the larger picture.

Maybe he
didn't
have anyone.

During her brief marriage to Big Jim, she'd bitten her tongue as often as she could manage when she'd seen the defeated look on his face after one of his rare telephone conversations with his son. But the few times she'd snarled over what an ingrate Jackson was, Big Jim had always insisted that he was getting no more than he deserved. “I'm simply reaping what I've sown, sweetheart,” he used to say.

She'd found that hard to believe, but she'd concede that perhaps Jax had a tiny basis for his bitterness. She would defend Big Jim to the death, but one thing she couldn't deny was that he had cared way more than he should have about what his buddies thought. And if that had meant pushing a grieving boy in directions he wasn't suited to go then maybe Jax had a point.

The disloyalty of that thought, like a jolt of electricity, catapulted her to her feet. Fuming, she bent down to snatch up the gift bag she'd tossed aside earlier.

She stuffed the Plexiglas-encased ball back into its nest of colored tissue at the bottom of the bag, then disguised it with the additional sheets she'd pulled out of the package earlier.

I love you.

Her shoulders went so hard and tight at his words whispering through her mind that her neck threatened to spasm. She had to start remembering his actions spoke louder than his words.

I love you more than—

Swearing, she snatched up the bag and stomped over to the coat closet. Yanking open the door, she tossed the gift sack into a pile several feet away, then slammed it shut again.

Merely getting it out of her sight wasn't sufficient, however, and she headed for the foyer. She was so damn confused she didn't have the first idea what she wanted. Her nerve endings felt too close to the surface, and even though just a short while ago she could hardly get away from everyone fast enough, now the walls seemed to be closing in on her and she was less than thrilled with her own company. She felt an overwhelming need to get the hell out of here. To go somewhere she could breathe.

She only made it as far as the front door, however, before she stopped with one hand on the knob to look back at the closet.

Damn.
She didn't feel right about leaving the ball behind.

“Oh, for God's sake,” she said aloud. “You've got real problems—the last thing you need to focus on is the absurd.” She'd been perfectly happy storing the ball in the closet since putting it away following Big Jim's death. Even learning the collectible could command a considerable sum of money hadn't given her the urge to find it a safer berth.

Now, though, she knew its existence could mean the difference between Jax being physically injured or not. Not that she'd decided to give the ball back so he could dodge that particular bullet. There was a part of her that wanted to ride her wave of anger—not to mention the greedy little gremlin inside that insisted she had earned this ball. She'd paid dearly enough for it. Still, she understood the consequences he now faced.

Even if she did decide to give the ball to him, she had no intention of seeing Jax tonight. So what difference did
it make whether she left the damn thing in the closet or not?

Yet no matter how hard she tried to rationalize it, she felt an almost superstitious urge to take the baseball with her. She went back to collect it, then stormed over to the front door and yanked it open.

Mack and Ellen stood on the other side.

Both women yelped at the shock of unexpectedly coming face-to-face with the other, and Treena slapped her free hand to her chest. The plate in Ellen's hand dipped, and only Mack's quick, steadying grip around her fingers saved the cookies it held from sliding to the floor.

“Holy sh—” Biting off the expletive, Treena blew out her breath. “You startled me.”

“Tell me about it,” Ellen agreed, reaching out to pat Mack's wrist as his hand slipped away from hers. “I think I just sprouted a few new gray hairs.” Then she laughed and fixed her sparkling hazel eyes on Treena as she deftly straightened the jumbled cookies. “Sorry, darling. We thought we heard movement in here and since we're dying to learn how the audition went, we came over to investigate.”

We.
Looking at them, Treena saw that Mack's non-cookie-rescuing hand rested lightly on Ellen's hip. She noted, too, that the petite librarian leaned just the slightest bit against the stocky man at her back.

Her happiness for the couple was genuine if a bit envious. It was nice to see love working out for someone.

“Were you on your way out?” Mack asked. “That's a relief, because to tell you the truth, hon, I got a little worried when we heard a door slam in here. I figured if everything had gone well you and Carly would be out
celebrating 'til the cows came home.” A groove furrowed between his eyebrows as he leveled his dark-eyed gaze on her. “It did go well, I hope.”

And because she loved him for worrying about her and Carly every bit as much as he would his own daughters, she smiled. It was the first time she'd felt her lips curve up since she'd opened Jax's wallet that morning.

“We won't know for certain until Thursday night, of course—but both Carly and I think it went very well. And I am on my way out. Some of the dancers are having drinks at the casino to celebrate.” She felt no compulsion to add that she hadn't made up her mind yet whether she'd actually join her friends or not.

“We won't keep you, then. We just wanted to hear how you did and to give you these.” Ellen handed her the plate of cookies and stood on tiptoe to kiss her cheek. “Congratulations! We knew you'd pass.”

“Damn straight,” Mack added.

“Aw, you guys. Thank you. You both mean so much to me.” And damn it, their kindness brought tears to her eyes. That's
just
what she needed to round out her day—to break down in front of them.

“I'm surprised Jax isn't here,” Mack said. “You tell him yet?”

The tears dried up quickly and she silently blessed him for invoking the Antichrist's name. “He was actually the first one I told,” she answered honestly. “He was waiting for me outside the showroom.” She'd have to tell Ellen and Mack the truth about Jax soon, she knew. But not today.

She simply could not face it today.

After talking with the older couple a moment longer,
she watched them disappear into Ellen's apartment. Then, suppressing a pang of the poor-pitiful mess brought on by their obvious happiness when she felt so wretched, she set out for her car.