I don’t see any of Jayce in her. His hair and eyes were dark brown. Trista’s hair is lighter… almost a bronze color. She’s got high cheekbones and a slender nose. Jayce’s face was round with a wide nose. Trista’s eyebrows are perfectly arched while Jayce’s sat rather flat. I remember everything about that douche.
“You don’t look like your brother,” I observe as I lean back in my chair and place my hands on the armrests.
“Different mothers,” is all she says. “But we grew up together.”
“Why did he send you to me?” I ask the question again, expecting a better answer than a favor.
“I’m desperately in need of money,” she explains quickly. “I don’t know what favor he owes you, but he said you had money and you’d help me in exchange for wiping the slate clean between you two.”
I have to struggle not to snort my disbelief. The slate would never be clean between us. I hate that motherfucker so much he could be standing in front of me dying, with a drink of water the only thing to save him, and I’d pour it out on the ground beside him.
“He said he saved your life once,” she says quietly, as if she needs to remind me why she’s sitting here.
It’s true… and I hate the reminder.
That bastard saved my life from certain death, and I owe him big time. While pinned down in a firefight with insurgents from the Nazwad district of the Helmund Province, I took a bullet through my leg that nicked an artery. Jayce had thrown me over his shoulder, ran through a hail of bullets, and got me to a Humvee that held our field medic. The medic was able to hold the bleed and give me a unit of blood until the chopper came in to pick me up and take me to a field hospital. I was dangerously close to dying, but three more units of blood and stitching up my artery brought me back from the brink of death. Had Jayce not gotten me out of there, I wouldn’t have made it to the hospital. I was weak, disoriented, but completely grateful when I told him as he sat beside my bed, “Jayce… buddy… I’m not sure how I can ever repay you, but if you need anything at all, you come to me and it’s yours.”
It’s been almost ten years since then and he’s never asked for that favor, so I just assumed he knew to keep his distance from me. I’m sure he knew I’d probably attack him on sight, not to kill him, but to beat the shit out of him. I’d hurt him badly if he were standing in this office right now. He knows it because I’ve already done it once before, but it wasn’t enough to dull my fury at him.
Given the circumstances, it would probably be totally acceptable if I were to even consider the debt paid already and kick his sister out of my office. It’s true he saved my life, but when I caught him fucking my fiancée about four years later, I didn’t kill him. That fucker was invited by me to join The Jameson Group because I trusted him and he’d saved my life. But whenever I was on a mission and Jayce was off duty, he was apparently banging Michelle stateside. I didn’t kill him, but I should have. I stopped after I broke a few of his ribs and knocked some teeth out. By my reasoning, not killing him means I saved his life. So we should be even, right?
In fact, I should tell her that right now. Inform her to tell her brother to suck my dick—that I wouldn’t help him or her if their lives depended on it.
But I don’t.
Because two things strike me at once.
The first being an attack of conscience. I might be a mean son of a bitch and a ruthless leader when warranted, but I don’t ever renege on a promise. I owe him a favor, so he’ll get it.
Second, it occurs to me I could indeed help Jayce’s sister. She says she needs money and with a loan of funds, a repayment plan is in the cards. Add in the fact she’s fucking gorgeous as hell, and well…
I have an excellent idea on how she could repay me.
A way that would not make Jayce happy at all.
Let’s just call it a little bit of sweet revenge.
CHAPTER 2
Trista
I alternate between tugging the hem of my stretchy skirt down my legs and making sure my face stays angled in such a way that my fall of long bangs keeps my eye covered.
The bruise I’m hiding is hideous looking. I’m very self-conscious about it, and not because Jerico Jameson has to be the best-looking man I’ve ever seen in my life. The pictures I saw when I Googled him do not do him justice. There’s no way I could have imagined his hair was actually so dark it was indeed black, or that his green eyes are so light I’d call them the color of bleached jade, but they’re streaked with slivers of rust, which makes them beyond beautiful. And that face… so perfectly put together that he doesn’t seem real.
But I’m not here for his looks.
I’m here for his money, and Jayce assured me Jerico has what I need.
“What kind of money are we talking about?” Jerico asks as he critically studies me.
“Twenty-five thousand,” I say nervously.
“That’s a lot of cash to ask of someone,” he says pensively. “But I do owe Jayce a favor, and I happen to be wealthy.”
“So you’ll help me?” I ask, hope welling up in my chest. For the first time in days, I’m not burdened down with overwhelming fear.
“Maybe,” he says as he leans forward in his chair, crossing his forearms on the desk. “Why do you need it?”
“Family emergency,” I say quickly… maybe a little too quickly because it sounds like a lie.
Jerico’s eyebrows draw inward as his gaze pierces straight through me. “You owe someone the money.”
My eyes go wide with surprise, and I totally give myself away by stammering, “How could you possibly know that?”
He smiles at me like the cat that just ate the canary, because I just admitted it to him. I didn’t want him to know because the details aren’t his business. I just need the money and an agreement by a decent guy to let me pay it back when I’m able to sell my house. Jayce assured me Jerico was the man.
“That bruise beside your right eye that goes down into your cheekbone…” Jerico says, nodding at me. “You’re not hiding it very well. When a woman is beaten and needs money, my first guess is someone’s trying to let her know time is up and it’s going to hurt if she doesn’t pay. The other choice would have been an abused woman needing money to skip town on whatever douche is beating her, but you carry yourself with a little too much confidence for that.”
Okay, so he has me sort of pegged, but he has no clue how weird this “loan shark” thing really is. He’d never believe the deep hole I’ve dug myself into, nor would he respect the circumstances that brought me here to beg for help.
“What was the original loan amount?” Jerico asks.
“Thirteen thousand dollars,” I tell him.