“It was an accident, Jett.”

“No, it wasn’t.” His voice was angry. “See, there’s always a huge risk. I knew it when I made that suggestion. I knew that it could kill him—or me. Yet I made that mistake and it defined me. It changed everything.”

I kissed his hands softly. Inside I was shaken by his confession—not so much about what had happened, but by what he thought of himself. “Jett, your mistakes do not define you. You’re far more than the sum of a few bad decisions in life.”

He laughed darkly. I could see he didn’t believe me.

“If I hadn’t raced that day, he’d still be alive. My mistake cost his life,” Jett whispered. “And when I found out that Brian knew about Joe’s problems all along, that it was he who took the money and returned it to the sharks to prevent the place from being raided, I left the gang. If he had told me, I’d never have suggested the race and Joe wouldn’t be dead. So no, I can’t trust Brian. Joe had been more than a friend to me. He was like a brother.”

There was a long silence. The muscles in his jaws began to work, but his eyes were glued to my hands, touching me without actually touching my skin. The air felt prickly and dark between us. I didn’t know where to start or how to help him, even though to me Jett wasn’t guilty. But how could I convince the man I loved that it was an accident—that he didn’t do it on purpose—when he was the only person who could convince himself?

“If Brian knew about Joe’s problems all along, maybe the sharks threatened him and he returned the money to keep you all safe,” I suggested. “Have you ever asked him?”

“No. I left.” He shrugged, his face a hard mask of denial. “But you don’t understand, Brooke. The race was my idea. It was my fucking idea, not Brian’s.”

“Do you really think Joe didn’t know what he was getting himself into?” I whispered. “He knew the risks, and he wanted out. Even if he hadn’t died that day, he’d have owed a lot of people a lot of money. Dangerous people who would’ve come after him for taking that money. It wouldn’t have ended well.”

It was a twisted kind of logic, but it was the brutal truth. And Jett knew it, whether he wanted to admit it or not.

“We don’t know that,” Jett said, choosing to stay in denial. “For all we know it could have ended differently, if only he’d gotten the chance to turn his life around.”

Jett was right. He didn’t know if Joe wouldn’t have been okay—like I didn’t know if my sister would have stopped seeing Danny if I hadn’t let her leave the house that fateful night. But when I trusted Jett with my secret, he helped me cope with the guilt that had been torturing me for years. I felt connected to Jett because I thought he understood my pain. My confession was my key to feeling free and safe around him and within the confines of my mind. Now that I knew about his past, I longed to help him build that same connection to me.

I moistened my lips, considering my words carefully.

“Right after I told you about my sister, you said to me that no one can help a person if they don’t want to be helped. Remember?” I paused. When he nodded, I continued. “I know this hurts, but your past isn’t so different from mine, Jett. You couldn’t have helped Joe because he had made up his mind. For what it’s worth, you gave it your best shot, given the knowledge and life experience you had at that time. Deep in your heart you cared for Joe. You suggested a car race because, like Kenny said, it was what you knew and did best. Not because you wanted to hurt your friend, but because you wanted to help him. I’m sure Joe knew that. He would’ve forgiven you. The fact that he saved your life shows that he cared for you, too.”

Jett looked up into my worried face. His expression softened, and the warmth in his eyes returned.

“Has what I told you today changed your mind about me in any way?” he asked at last. He sounded nervous. It took every ounce of my willpower not to shake some sense into him.

“You have no idea, do you?” I asked in disbelief.

He shook his head. When he remained silent, I realized that he had been serious. I got up from the floor to sit on his lap, my legs going around his waist so I could face him.

“Jett, I love you for who you are. And that includes your dark side as well. One wrong choice doesn’t make you a failure. It doesn’t mean you’re doomed to fail again,” I whispered. “And to be honest, I don’t care what you did or didn’t do. It’s in the past. And you can’t change it. But I know this. You’re a good person. You’re a good friend.”

The corner of his lips twitched in a half-smile, and one of his gorgeous dimples appeared. I stared at the perfection of it. It was one of the many reasons I’d fallen in love with him. There was something genuine about Jett. He really cared about the people he welcomed into his heart.

“All my life I’ve never felt this close to anybody,” he whispered. “If shit didn’t happen, I’d never know how to treasure my blessings.” His thumb trailed the contours of my lips slowly. “You’re my blessing, Brooke. I don’t want to keep dreaming or take risks because, for the first time, reality is better than anything I could ever envision.”

I smiled. “Is that the reason you didn’t want to race today? Because you thought tragedy could strike again?”

Jett nodded. “I couldn’t afford another mistake. Losing Joe was hard, but losing you would have killed me. It was another reason why I didn’t want to beat Doug in an open race. I knew he’d try to block us or move in for a PIT maneuver.”

I frowned, and he continued to explain, “Fishtailing. Anyway, I would’ve done the same to him. He was never particularly good at keeping hold of the wheel.” Jett sighed and rolled a strand of my hair around his finger, curling it and letting it loose, the way he always did when he was about to say something that bothered him. “You know, Brooke, when I met you I experienced happiness for the first time in my life. Brian thought I’d be too scared to race, but he got it all wrong. I didn’t want to—not because I’m scared, but because I don’t want to risk what I have with you. I want to see our baby grow up. You both mean the world to me.”

There were so many feelings inside me that I feared there might not be enough space to fit them all in. I drew a long breath and let it out slowly as realization kicked in. Jett and I were in his old room, and he had just declared how much I meant to him. My heart threatened to burst with emotion. Or maybe it was the result of his smile penetrating even the deepest layers of my soul, warming my body like no one could.

“I want you to be mine forever,” Jett whispered. “To ensure it, I’ll always make you happier than any other man could. I want to be the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”

“You already are.” My fingers brushed over the stubble covering his strong chin. So hard and yet so soft—just like the man hiding behind the most beautiful face I had ever seen. His eyes locked on my mouth, and slowly his lips met mine. A moment later our tongues tangled in an erotic dance, and his hand squeezed beneath my shirt to explore all that would be his forever.

Chapter 27

“JETT, WE KNOW where your father is.” Kenny stood in the door of the community kitchen, his laptop tucked under his arm. I motioned for him to come in and he sat down at the kitchen table where Jett and I were having afternoon coffee and snacks. In the last few days my appetite had quadrupled, and as much as I wanted to blame it on the baby, I couldn’t rule out Jett’s sexual appetite as being the culprit.

“We hacked into his accounts,” Kenny said, opening his laptop. “As luck would have it, we also found a couple of things that will interest you.”

“Like?” Jett sounded as interested as a student after a long Friday afternoon class. Bored, he barely regarded the laptop’s screen as he took a swig of his latte and cracked the shell of a peanut, handing it to me, then opened one for himself and popped it into his mouth. I suppressed the need to giggle. Ever since we arrived here five days ago, he had made himself comfortable in an odd way I hadn’t seen on him before. His shirt was open and his hair a sexy tangled mess—as if he couldn’t stop boasting that his sex life was great, which was the truth. But did he have to be so obvious? We had been making love almost nonstop, his sexual thirst increasing by the day, just like my appetite.

“We checked his phone logs and found that he called Brooke’s number when she was in Italy.” Kenny looked at me. “You remember a call from abroad?”

I froze at his question as the memory came flooding back: the hot summer day when my phone rang while I was pretending to Sylvie I wasn’t seeing Jett. I had been so engrossed with the estate that I forgot all about the mysterious caller.

“I do,” I said slowly, my glance sweeping from Kenny to Jett. “Remember when I asked you if you had called me?” I raised my brows to jog his memory. “I wasn’t sure, because the person hung up.”

The confusion on Jett’s face cleared as he remembered. “Are you sure it was my father?”

“Damn right I am.” Kenny frowned at Jett popping another peanut into his mouth. “The day before he died—” Kenny made quotation marks “—he tried to reach her on her landline. Sounds like he was trying to talk to her in private, but that’s not what I wanted to show you. Look.” He pointed at the screen. “When I searched through his phone records, I discovered that besides Brooke, he had called two other people on that same day.” Kenny turned his laptop around to show us.

Now my interest was piqued.

Leaning forward, I tried to decipher the numbers, but all I saw was a bunch of html code and yet more code. No names. I had no idea how Kenny could read any of it, but I guessed with him being a hacker he knew how to get details and see connections.

“Yeah? Well, he’s a company owner. You’d expect he talked to more than two people,” Jett said and gave his usual what do I care about this shit? shrug before his hand poked the bowl of peanuts in front of him. Kenny’s brow furrowed as Jett took another peanut and cracked it open, the sound so loud it made me chuckle.

“Are you planning on eating the whole bowl, man?” Kenny asked Jett, his voice dripping with irritation. “I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you both.”

“This better be good.” Jett let out an exasperated sigh and pushed the bowl aside.

“It is. Trust me.” Kenny pointed to the screen. “He phoned a hotel service and an attorney. The attorney happens to have the same name as the person your father transferred money to.”

“Could be attorney fees,” Jett said.

Kenny shook his head. “Not fees. The full fifty mill, dude, in small transactions. Your father transferred the money through the attorney’s account into an unidentified recipient’s account. Do you know who the recipient is?”

Jett and I exchanged interested glances. Finally Jett said, “No idea. You?”