What a Bachelor Needs (Bachelor Auction Book 4)(10)

“Claire goes to childcare just before ten and then at three in the afternoon I pick her up, run my errands for the day and take her to my mother’s. I go back to work; mom keeps her occupied, feeds her, and puts her to bed. I pick her up again when my shift ends. It’s our routine and Claire’s used to it. She’s a good girl.” And Mardie really needed to get rid of her defensive edge when explaining her life choices. “I’ll give you a set of house keys for when I’m not here. You’ll need them to lock up when you leave.”

“You’re very trusting.”

“Look around,” she said dryly. “What are you going to steal? Besides, I know I can trust you.” Nervousness hit again with a vengeance and left her tentative when it came to broaching a subject that she, for one, would rather ignore. But there were things to be said that had to be said. Choices that had to be explained so that Jett didn’t inadvertently shatter the illusion she’d built with such care. “I know firsthand that you’re not the type to do harm. Far from it.”

“You remember that night.” He said it reluctantly, as if he didn’t like the memory any more than she did.

“You’re hard to forget.”

“Was Boyd the one that hit you?” he asked abruptly. “Was it him in the alley?”

She could have said no. God knew, she’d hidden Boyd’s trespasses from everyone else. She’d never told her parents about her nightmare of a marriage, she’d never told her friends. Only James Prescott Senior, Boyd’s father, had ever heard her say that Boyd was a wife-beater and he hadn’t been sympathetic. He’d warned Mardie, if she knew what was good for her, to never speak of it again.

And now here was Jett, wanting answers she didn’t want to give.

“I filed for a divorce the day after you found me,” she offered instead. “I’ve never confirmed who it was and I never will. People can speculate all they want.”

“You let him get away with it.” There was a darkness to Jett’s voice. Condemnation of her choices.

“I got him gone,” she countered hotly. “I did what I had to do to get him out of my life.”

“Is Claire his?”

“Claire’s mine. It’s my name on her birth certificate, no one else’s. Boyd has no access to her whatsoever; no legal obligations towards her at all. He was gone before she was born.”

Jett didn’t say a word.

“I was up against a family full of lawyers, three generations of them, and one circuit judge. They’d have made Boyd look like a saint, painted me as a mentally unstable whore, and taken Claire away from me, if I hadn’t given them another way to handle things – one that kept their precious family name intact. Yes, they bought my silence, but I got Claire, a quiet, fist-free divorce, and no Boyd in my life from that day forward. Boyd’s family handled Boyd and I, for one, was grateful. But if you want to see things differently, then yes, I let him get away with it. I let them play me. I made my choice. I’m sorry if my actions offend your sense of justice.”

She was babbling again. Or spewing out vitriol. Possibly both.

“No, I—” Jett still filled every inch of the room with the sheer force of his personality, but he didn’t look quite so carefree and happy anymore. His eyes were so dark as to be almost black, and he looked almost…worn. “I don’t have any right to judge you or anyone else involved,” he said carefully. “I let you walk out of that hospital and I never said a word. I didn’t do a damn thing about the situation as I saw it. It’s not as if I ever made anyone accountable either.”

“You did what I asked you to do.”

“You call that a defense?”

“I call it exactly the right move at that point in time,” Mardie countered. “There was no win for either of us had you tried to intervene. You’d have given the Prescotts another weapon to use against me, that’s all. They’d have bargained your reputation against theirs and I’d have stayed right where I was.”

“I’d have protected you. My brothers, my family. We all would have.”

“It wasn’t your fight.”

And still the man looked black-eyed and mutinous.

“I don’t know how you remember that night and I’m not sure I ever want to know.” Her voice had a wobble in it now, but she blundered on doggedly. “You saw me at my lowest. I was a mess. But you stopped and held me up and told me I was worth something and I clung to those words. I’m still holding to them. You have no idea how much they meant.” She took a deep breath. “So here we are. Me, with a grumpy old house in dire need of attention. You, with questions that I’ve never answered honestly before. Questions that I will never answer honestly again. Because as long as I keep my end of the bargain, the Prescotts keep theirs and stay the hell away from me.”

He held her gaze in silence and then ran a hand across his face as if to clear away the unpleasantness she’d piled on him. “I could use that coffee right about now,” he muttered.

“You want it laced with Kentucky?”

“Don’t tempt me.”

She made the coffee strong, and slid it across the counter towards him, a spoon and a sachet of sugar right behind it. “You want to keep talking about it?”