Slowly she stepped toward him and saw the ring in his trembling hand. A perfect princess cut diamond in a platinum band that was interwoven with tiny amethysts, her favorite gem and his birthstone. “You bought this in Italy while we were broken up?”
Tears still streaming down his face he nodded. “Although I didn’t consider us broken up. To me, you were always mine.”
“Jared…”
He clasped her hand and slid the ring onto her finger. “I’ve dreamed of putting this on your finger. When I found you again I struggled every day not to rush you. To not beg you to marry me.”
“Will you really take my name?”
He grinned, scrubbing at his damp face with the back of his hand. “Yes, dolcezza. I will proudly become a Moreitti.”
With a cry she threw her arms around his neck, sobs raking her body. “I love you.”
His arms tightened around her. “And I love you, cara. Always.”
epilogue
The church was packed with family and friends.
There was a crowd outside the church, all of them paparazzi. Since the announcement of their wedding the tabloids had been following Jared’s almost every move. After the way he had been portrayed the broken hearted ex-fiancé after Monica Andrews had married his brother, everyone wanted to see him get his happy ever after.
But that wasn’t the only reason for the overflowing crowd of paparazzi outside. Most of it was so that they could get a shot or ten of the rock stars who were in attendance. Axton Cage was the maid of honor’s date. The drummer of OtherWorld had also tagged along, as well as the frontrunner of Demon’s Wings who had brought a date. Alexis didn’t know what to think with those three rockers seated in the pews. But it was pretty exciting to have them there nonetheless.
Standing in her dress in the back of the church, waiting for the music to begin so that she could meet her destiny, she couldn’t help but feel nervous. She had a surprise for Jared, and feared that she would end up falling on her face. But she tried to keep calm and not think about it for the moment.
Carina stood behind her, adjusting her veil, while Melissa fixed a few of the flowers that had gotten squished in her bouquet on the limo ride over. Gabriella stood at the door, watching through the crack, giving commentary every so often on what certain family members were doing. Like the way Nonno kept giving Axton angry glares, or the way Vince’s mother was arguing with someone from the groom’s side.
“Well this should be interesting.” Gabriella murmured as she opened the door a little further to get a better look.
Alexis frowned. “What?”
“Nica and Ember are talking like they are old friends. God, I hate them both!”
She sighed. “Gabs, I got over Nica.” She’d had a long talk with the other woman just a few days before. It had been hard, but for the most part Alexis had forgiven Nica. “You don’t have a reason to hate her anymore … Wait, what? Who’s Ember?”
Gabriella shut the door and turned to face her. “She’s here with Nik Armstrong, the Demon’s Wings guy. She’s like their little pet or something. I hate her, she hates me. It’s a hate, hate thing.” She shrugged. “Axton has a thing for her, and she has a thing for Nik. So I let her think that … Well I told her that I hooked up with the rocker.”
Carina narrowed her eyes on her niece. “Why would you do that?”
“To make the bitch miserable.”
“Gabriella!” Carina glared. “Number one, this is a church. Watch your language, girl. And two, that was a horrible thing to do to that girl.”
“Whatever. She’ll get over it.”
Alexis sighed, shaking her head at her cousin. “I think you should tell her the truth. It could only cause more trouble down the road.”
Before Gabriella could reply, the organ started and Max and Vince appeared from out of nowhere. “Here we go ladies.” Vince grinned as he stepped forward to offer an arm to Melissa and Carina.
The doors opened and he escorted them down the aisle. The butterflies were starting to swarm in her stomach, but she gathered her courage. She was not going to fall on her face!
Gabriella gave her a hug then turned to make her way down the aisle as well.
Max offered his arm and she took it, giving him a watery smile. “Ready?”
He shook his head. “Not even close. No father is ever ready to give his baby girl away.” He cleared his throat, his eyes growing bright. “But I will anyway. Because I know that he makes you happy.”
Alexis nodded. “He does, Daddy. He’s everything to me.”
Using a crutch in her right hand and holding on to her father with her left, they stepped forward as the music changed to the wedding march, and began the slow walk down the aisle. She tried not to look at the front of the church, where Jared stood with his brother as his best man. She was scared that if she looked at him she wouldn’t be able to do what she had planned.
Everyone was murmuring at how beautiful she looked. She offered family members smiles as she passed. When she passed Axton Cage he bobbed his brows up and down suggestively and gave her a wink. She gave him a grin and turned her head to finally take in her groom.
Jared looked amazing in his tux. But the expression on his face, in those eyes that she loved so much, took her breath away. There were tears glazing his eyes, and a big happy grin on his handsome face. He mouthed the words ‘I love you’ and she felt her own eyes tear up.
Closer and closer they walked. Her fingers were trembling and she was scared to death. But when she was ten feet from Jared she stopped. Her father frowned down at her. “Okay?” he murmured low enough so that only she could hear.
She gave him a beaming smile and nodded. “Thank you for walking me down the aisle, Daddy. But … I need to take this step alone.”
His eyes grew huge. “Lex…?” A tear leaked from his eye but he nodded and stepped away.
Swallowing hard, Alexis looked back at Jared. Something that looked like fear darkened those eyes of his and she realized that he thought she was having second thoughts. Taking a deep breath, she let go of her crutch…
She took one slow step, alone with no help from a crutch or a spotter or any other outside help. Jared’s eyes widened in shocked delight and the entire church seemed to gasp as one. Chin trembling, she took another step. Another. She was shaky at first, but by the time she reaching him she was confident she wasn’t going to fall.
He took the last step forward that separated them and swung her into his arms. His face buried in her neck and she felt his tears on her skin. “I love you, Lexis.”
Reese
All rights reserved © Anna Henson 2012/Terri Anne Browning 2017
This is a work of fiction. Any characters, names, places, or incidents are used solely as a fictitious nature based on the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to or mention of persons, place, organizations, or other incidents are completely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any other means without permission from the Publisher.
Table of Contents
Reese: Prologue
Reese: One
Reese: Two
Reese: Three
Reese: Four
Reese: Five
Reese: Six
Reese: Seven
Reese: Eight
Reese: Nine
Reese: Ten
Reese: Eleven
Reese: Twelve
Reese: Thirteen
Reese: Fourteen
prologue
The night air was cold. I shivered and wrapped my parka around me tighter, hoping to find some relief from the chill of the winter night as well as the numbing cold that had invaded my body more than a week ago. My eyes felt dry and gritty. I had cried so much, I was sure my tear ducts were permanently damaged.
Good, because I never wanted to cry again—I’d never cry again if I could help it.
I pushed those thoughts down and quickly pulled up the walls I had begun to place arou
nd my heart six months ago. Ever since my mother had married The Pervert, and I had started sleeping with my bedroom door locked. I had sensed something about the guy the minute she had introduced me to him the night before the wedding. The way the creep had looked at me when everyone else wasn’t watching. The way his hand had brushed my thigh under the table at dinner…
Nausea churned in my stomach, and I had to swallow the bile that rose in the back of my throat.
When my mother and The Pervert had returned from their honeymoon, I had still been home from boarding school for summer vacation. My mother, forever in her own little world that revolved around her, herself, and no one else, had brushed me off as only wanting attention when I had voiced my discomfort about my new stepfather. My grandfather, my late father’s father, had been too busy to even take my calls when I had tried to reach him. His secretary had taken a message, like always, and said she would have him call me when he got a spare minute.
That minute had never come about, and as the days had turned into weeks, I had grown more scared of my stepfather, more terrified that I would be woken in the middle of the night with him in my bed, touching me as he had come to do every chance he got during my waking hours. I had looked forward to returning to boarding school and the safety of the dorm thousands of miles away. But then my mother had said I was staying home for my junior year, going to a local prep school instead. Something my stepfather had insisted on.
I had been desperate. I wanted away from it all.
By mere chance, I had found something that had repelled my stepfather around Halloween. He was terrified of the Goth kids. I had found salvation in the dark side, painting my face white with lots of black makeup and clothes. Skeleton jewelry. Biker boots. I had begun to sleep a little easier at night.
Until a week ago.
I had stupidly left my door unlocked. Crazy because I had three locks on the door, but for some reason, it had completely slipped my mind as I had fallen into a deep sleep after a difficult evening of studying for a chemistry final before the beginning of the winter holidays. Around three in the morning, I had felt a draft as my covers had been lifted. The Pervert had climbed into bed with me without so much as his boxers on and started touching me.
My worst nightmares come to life!
I had screamed and screamed and screamed until my throat was raw from the torture of it. The housekeeper had come running from the other end of the house, while my mother had remained comatose from a night of drinking and her latest vice—cocaine. The housekeeper, a woman who had been around since I was a toddler, had been fired the next day. My one savior in the madness that was my life, and she had been sent packing for daring to interfere when she had discovered The Pervert in my room, unclothed.
I had decided then and there to run away. I had no other choice. If I stayed, there would be no one to help me the next time The Pervert tried something—and there would most definitely be a next time. No one else was going to step in and help me. Not my mother. Not my grandfather who was far too busy with making money to care. Not even the teacher whom I had dared to confide in but had been convinced that I was only making up stories. So I had to help myself.
I made a plan. Each day for three days, I used my personal bank card for my own private account my grandfather put a monthly allowance into and took as much as I could out of the ATMs near school. I had a little hidden away at home as well, and by the third day, I had a good bit of cash. The fourth day, which was also the last day of school before the break, I let our driver take me to school as usual and then waited until he was gone before I had turned in the opposite direction.
I had no friends; no one wanted to hang out with the “Goth Freak” I had turned myself into as a survival mechanism, but which I had grown to like. I hadn’t stood out much as a student, even though I had been top of my class back at my old school. So no one was going to miss me until the end of the school day when the driver returned to pick me up.
I grabbed a cab and went straight to the bus station. I picked a destination at random and hopped on board to Mobile, Alabama using one of the fake IDs I’d bought from one of the older kids at school, a kid who excelled in art and computer graphics. He made a fortune off of making IDs for the entire student body, despite the fact that his father was rumored to have a net worth in the hundreds of millions.
The ID said that I was Regina Williams and that I was eighteen. With my above-average height and the new lines on my face from the stress I had been under recently, I looked older than my sixteen years. From Mobile, I had caught another bus to Dallas, Texas under the name of Rachel Cook, who was the ripe old age of twenty, which was cutting it close on the believable age scale, but not by much. I had one more fake ID, and I used it to grab a cheap seat on a plane heading to Indiana.
I’d been in Indiana for more than two days now, and I was sorely missing the milder temperatures of Texas. December was not a good month to find myself homeless with only a few changes of clothes. Luckily, I had packed my parka and a hoodie, but neither was much defense against the cold winter nights.
The night before, I had slept in a run-down motel that looked as if it was more for hourly rentals than for nightly. The noises on either side of my room had suggested my observation was correct. I spent the night on top of the blankets, with the heat cranked all the way up and the little TV blaring in an attempt to drown out the noises coming from the rooms beside mine.
As soon as the sun had come up, I grabbed my backpack and started walking. I wanted to save my money as much as possible, and even the Whore House Motel had been more than I really had to spare right now. So tonight, I was sleeping in a church. There was no heat, and even the sign out front had said that Sunday services were canceled until their system could be repaired. I hadn’t realized it would be this cold when I had decided to bunk down here, but now that I was here, I didn’t want to leave. It had to be colder outside than in, and I wasn’t likely to find a better form of shelter tonight anyway.
Tomorrow, I would find my way to a warmer state. Florida, California, maybe even Texas again. Whatever was the cheapest. I couldn’t care less as long as it had a warmer climate. I could maybe spare a hundred dollars if I found a job using one of my fake IDs soon. Another bus ride with heat sounded so wonderful right then that I leaned my head back against the pew and drifted off into a light, though nightmare-filled sleep.
one
Five years later…
I pulled a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the top shelf and lined up four shots. The four men, all in their mid-twenties and dressed like punk rockers, gave me a respectful nod as they downed the amber liquid and then dropped the small glasses back onto the bar top. I poured four more before I moved on to the next customer. It was Friday night, and the place was full. That was good news for me because I paid my rent on my weekend tips. It was bad news for whoever had to clean up the mess…
Oh yeah, that was me!
“What can I get you?” I asked the biker. His name was Bubba, and he was a regular. He tipped decently, but he could be a handful when he had one too many. But I wasn’t scared of the three-hundred-plus pounds and his bad temper. I had a few tricks for dealing with rowdy customers, and no one liked it when I had to use them. Bubba knew what would happen if I had to resort to my bag of tricks, and he still carried a few bruises from the weekend before when I had shown him exactly who was boss inside the bar.
Inside of Safe Haven, I was cop, judge, and executioner. Regulars knew that, but sometimes the liquor made them forget. I simply showed them the error of their ways, and they didn’t forget again—at least for a while.
“Beer.” His voice was rough from years of smoking, but he had respect in his tone and in his bloodshot amber eyes. There were no hard feelings for the beating I had given him. “And two shots of tequila, Goth Girl.”
A small smile twitched at the edges of my lips, the closest I ever came to full-on smiling most days. “Top shelf?” I asked just to make sure.
“’Course top shelf.”
I popped the top on his beer and lined up two shot glasses before pouring out the tequila that had just as much bite to it as it did bark. I waited long enough for him to down the first, saw that even he had a hard time taking the bite of the Tarantula, and I moved on to the next paying customer. Bubba had a running account, and I had already added his drinks to the tally.
Half an hour later, I was mixing margaritas for two college girls out on the town eager for something from the dark side. They looked like trust-fund babies, with their wide-eyed gazes at all the bikers, emos, and Goths. They wore expensive clothes, their hair was almost beauty-pageant worthy, and their heels gave them at least three extra inches in height. I rolled my eyes as they gave my makeup a disdainful look and accidentally on purpose spilled a little on one of their tight tube tops. “Hey!” the Barbie wannabe squealed.
I gave her a hard look. “Swallow your drinks, and then get going. You don’t want to mess with the things that lurk in the corners here, pretty girls.”
They didn’t heed my warning, of course, and I hadn’t expected them to. Not really. Which was why when two monstrous bikers who were new to the bar tried to take the college girls for a ride, I was a little slower in reacting, wanting to teach them a lesson—or three. I watched as the girl I had spilled margarita on tried to pull out of the burlier biker’s hold, and the other girl looked sick as she was being pulled toward the exit.
I shot the bouncers in the back a look that said I had it handled and jumped over the bar, cutting the four off at the front door. As I met the gazes of the girls, I knew they were regretting not taking my earlier warning seriously. But they looked just as skeptical of my ability to handle the situation as the two bikers.