Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

Jack barely had time to shower before he ran right back out the door, grabbing two travel mugs of coffee from the pot he’d started as soon as he got home. He couldn’t afford to get sleepy on the road.

He had a little over two hours to think about his night with Maisie, wondering if she’d read the note yet, hoping she’d text him some smartass reply.

You want more of this? It’s gonna cost you. Or something equally sassy, to which he’d say, I’m open to negotiations.

But his phone stubbornly refused to beep, and he belatedly realized he hadn’t put his number on the note.

What a moron. Maybe she’d find a way to reach out to him anyway. Come by his house. Get his number from Adalia.

But right now he needed to focus on Iris.

He hadn’t been thrilled by his mother’s announcement that she was giving him a sibling, but to be fair, he’d been an eleven-year-old boy, more interested in his new PS2 gaming console than in babies. Besides, his mother barely seemed to notice him. How would she handle a baby? And did the new addition mean he’d get even less attention from her? Even then, he’d known the cold, hard truth. She’d never wanted him for anything other than for the large child support check Prescott Buchanan sent her every month.

One afternoon, his grandmother had sat him down at her worn kitchen table with a batch of snickerdoodles—his favorite—giving him her We’re about to have a serious conversation look.

“Jacques,” she said slowly, pronouncing his name with her heavy French accent. “For the longest time, it’s only been you and your mother.”

“No, Mémère. It’s been mostly you and me. Mom is too busy with her job and her love life to be bothered.”

Which was a fair assessment. His mother couldn’t seem to live without a man, and following her affair with Jack’s biological father, she’d gotten a taste for men with money. And men with money didn’t want a kid underfoot. As she got older, she didn’t want a kid underfoot either, for fear it would reveal her real age. Rich men wanted hot younger women, and while Genevieve was still a beautiful woman, she was already fearful of losing her youth. So Jack lived with his grandmother most of the time, and he preferred it that way.

“Yes,” she said slowly with a distant look in her eyes. “It has always been you and me, and you’re the best gift your mother has ever given me. But soon, it won’t just be the two of us. There will be three. And the new baby will be tossed into your mother’s craziness. It will be up to you to make sure he or she feels loved.”

He made a face. “I’m not taking care of a stupid baby.”

She smiled knowingly. “You were once a stupid baby, and I took care of you.”

He sighed. “Okay. I’ll help take care of the baby.”

Even if that was the last thing he wanted. He was biding his time until he turned eighteen and could escape. An infant brother or sister would only tie him down.

Reaching over the small kitchen table nestled into a bowed window, she patted his hand, her eyes brimming with tears. “You’re a good boy, Jacques. Don’t let anyone ever tell you any different.”

He wished she’d remind his mother of that.

She took a breath, hesitating, then said, “I won’t always be here to protect you and your new brother or sister, so I need you to make me a promise.”

“What?” he exclaimed, dropping his half-eaten cookie onto the old china plate. She’d always used her china, saying beautiful things were meant to be used, not put on a shelf and admired. “Don’t talk like that. You’re going to be a very old woman.”

She smiled softly, as though she was keeping a secret. “That is my wish as well, but promise me anyway.”

His mother took promises lightly, but his grandmother had taught him that a man’s ability to keep his word was one of the most important reflections of his character. For him, making a promise, especially to her, was akin to signing an oath in blood. Normally, he wouldn’t agree to a blind promise—she’d taught him that as well—but this was Mémère. He’d literally give her anything she asked for. “Anything.”

A soft smile lifted her lips. “When I am no longer around—hopefully, years from now—I need you to protect this baby. Just like I’ve protected you.”

He stared at her in surprise, realizing what she had said was true. She had spent the entirety of his life protecting him, but he’d just seen it as loving him.

“I won’t need to take care of the baby since you’re going to live to be one hundred and two,” he insisted, “but I’ll help you. I promise.”

Her gray eyes turned serious. “Not just help me, Jacques. If I am gone, I need your assurance that you’ll protect him or her. Your mother’s ten times worse now than when she had you. This child needs us.”

He swallowed, realizing this was a grave matter. “I promise.”

She sat back in her chair, relief flooding her face. “Thank you, Jacques. You are a good boy. I hope I can see you become a good man.”

But she hadn’t. She’d died the next year, when Iris was just three months old. Later, he found out Mémère had been diagnosed with inoperable cancer right around the time she’d sat him down for their chat. She had been living on borrowed time.

And that was how Jack had become responsible for his sister’s well-being.

Iris’s father was married, and he’d been about as eager to have a child with Genevieve as Jack’s father had been, so he’d paid a small fortune to get her to sign a nondisclosure agreement. Which meant they’d lived fairly well when Iris was little. Not that Genevieve had changed overnight and become a good mother. Thank God she’d hired a nanny for Iris, someone who’d provided her with a bit of the stability that Jack’s grandmother had afforded him. But the well had gone dry after Iris turned four, and the nanny had left. Jack had found himself essentially raising his sister by the time he was fifteen.

His mother had kicked him out the day after his high school graduation, telling him he needed to learn to make his own way in the world like her, which he’d found hilarious since she’d seemed to make her way mostly off the income he and his sister provided. He’d always wondered where the money had gone. His mother must have gotten thousands of dollars in child support a month, and she was a real estate agent who only worked with high-powered clients. Now he suspected she’d run through it all on alcohol and drugs and maybe gambling to self-medicate the bipolar diagnosis she refused to acknowledge.

It didn’t take a genius to realize his eviction had coincided with his father’s last child support check. He’d wanted to tell her off, to confront her with the cold, hard truth of who she was, but he knew she’d cut him out of her life, which meant she’d cut him out of Iris’s life, which was unacceptable.

So he’d bitten his tongue and suffered her highs and lows, all so he could be there for his sister.

They’d continued to be close, very close. He kept her for occasional overnight visits, but most of the work he did was at night. Although he’d chosen his reading list from the syllabuses of his friends’ classes, he hadn’t gone to college. Instead, he’d worked his way up from busboy to waiter. Bartender to bar manager. It had paid off, and he was finally making decent money, a year out from Iris’s high school graduation—which would free both of them—when he got the call from an attorney in Asheville telling him his paternal grandfather had mentioned him in his will.

And then his whole world had changed.

Part of him still wondered if he shouldn’t have been so insistent about keeping the brewery, but it had felt like his chance to finally make something of himself. To live a life that was no longer dependent on his mother’s whims. To be his own man. Iris was leaving anyway, and after she left for college, he didn’t want to find himself in an empty existence that had suddenly lost its center. Then Iris had called during his and Georgie’s disastrous walk-through of the brewery, less than an hour after they’d signed the papers to keep it. Genevieve had gone off the deep end and hit Iris and then smashed up the house. Jack had caught the first flight out of Asheville and rushed home to get his mother admitted to a psychiatric unit.

He’d spent the whole summer in Chicago, taking care of Iris, filing an emergency petition to get custody. His sister had been one hundred percent on board with the decision…until she found out Jack planned to take her to Asheville.

He’d considered backing out of the brewery, but he could hear his grandmother’s voice in his head. A man’s word is the measure of his character.

But which promise held priority? His promise to help run Buchanan Brewery or his promise to protect his sister? Surely the latter promise was more important—Georgie certainly didn’t need him—and yet he couldn’t find it in himself to step away. It wasn’t just about the opportunity that had fallen into his lap—part of it had been his need to know them, the half-sisters and brother he’d never met.

His mother had been released from the hospital, now on medication to control her mood swings, and Iris had insisted that she wanted to finish out her senior year at home and look after her.

“We can’t both abandon her,” she’d said in a snide tone, a dig at his intended move to Asheville.

“You can come with me, Iris,” he’d insisted. “The judge said you can decide who you want to live with.”

“I know who I want to live with,” she said sullenly. “And I know where I don’t want to live.”

So he’d reluctantly moved to Asheville, waiting until the very last possible moment, praying Iris would change her mind.

Then earlier this week, Iris had called crying, begging him to come home. Their mother had gone off her meds and was acting out worse than before, bringing men to their house and partying and drinking. One of the guys had made advances on Iris after she came home from a half-day at school.

Beyond furious, Jack had insisted on flying home to Chicago to press charges. Iris had already gotten out of the house, thank God, and was staying with a friend, but she’d refused to press charges, saying the guy had only tried to kiss her.

“I don’t want to live with her anymore, Jack. You win. I’ll move to Asheville. How soon can I come?”

He hadn’t wanted to win. He’d only wanted to protect her, which was what he’d always wanted. His greatest hope was that she’d love Asheville as much as he already did.

He’d talked to her friend Janie’s parents, whom he’d gotten to know well over the years, and they’d agreed to bring Iris to Genevieve’s house to pack the rest of her things. Then he’d arranged for an eight a.m. flight out of Chicago to Charlotte.

He pulled into the airport parking lot, his stomach a ball of nerves when he saw that her plane had been scheduled to land five minutes ago. They’d probably arrive at the luggage carousel at the same time, but he’d planned on meeting her at the security exit.

He was late because he’d stayed with Maisie, which filled him with guilt, and then even more guilt because he wasn’t sorry. Even if he never got another day or night with Maisie, he couldn’t regret their night together. Which only proved it had been something special.

But when he walked through the door, he saw Iris was standing next to the carousel, surrounded by three large bags and a couple of small carry-ons. She looked lost and bewildered, and his heart wrenched.

He never should have left her with their mother.

“Iris,” he called out, and her face swung toward him, her dark brown eyes brimming with unshed tears.

Her face crumpled when she saw him, and she burst into sobs.

He ran to her, gathering her in his arms and holding her close as she wet his shirt with her tears. She sobbed and sobbed as he stroked her long dark hair. “You’re safe. I’m here. Nothing’s ever going to happen to you again.”

“Where were you?” she asked, her voice muffled. “I thought you weren’t coming.”

He tilted her head back and cupped her cheek. “I will always come, Iris. Always. ”

She hugged him tighter, as though hanging on for dear life, and he wondered once again if he’d screwed up by coming to Asheville, because he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’d screwed up by leaving her.

He wouldn’t let her down again.