Between The Lines

“You have nothing to offer any of them,” his father continued. The utter contempt in his voice was clear. “You’ve disappointed me time and again, Theodore, but I thought that you at least had the morals to stay away from those girls. Shame on you.”

It shouldn’t have hurt, but it did. Theo took a hefty swallow of his drink, focusing on the fire that it left as it traveled down to his gut. Taking a moment to study his father—the man he’d come from—he wondered how a person could seem to detest someone who had come from them so very much.

Ha. Why was he even questioning that? He knew exactly what his father saw—he saw his lost wife. Theo had inherited his golden skin, his exotic features, his glossy black hair, even the charm that he used regularly, from his mother.

Theo knew that, if given a choice, his father would rather have his mother here in his place.

“Did you hear what I said, boy?” Theodore Sr. set his glass down on the polished countertop with a sharp crack. The hand not holding Theo’s own glass fisted in the thick velvet of his robe, kneading at it like a stress ball.

“Jo and I have been dating for over a year.” Theo tried to rein in his temper. “It’s not like I plan on sleeping with her and leaving the next day.”

“You shouldn’t be sleeping with her at all,” his father snorted with derision, shaking his head. “What if you got her pregnant? You really think you could make a go of it? You’d run right out the door, and then where would she be?”

Theo expected nothing less from his dad, but hearing the harsh words was still a lash from a whip. He knew he’d do no such thing, but hearing out loud what his own flesh and blood really thought of him reminded him of the worst hangover he’d ever had. Try as he might, he just couldn’t ever outrun the nagging pain.

“Have a nice night, Dad.” Draining the last of his scotch in one giant swallow, he left the kitchen through the servants’ door, preferring the longer route back to his room to going anywhere near his father.

The conversation they’d just had was nothing new. Often he was able to completely deflect the criticism, keeping the barbs from landing and piercing his skin.

Tonight, though? Some of those words had landed.

He loved Jo more than anything. But what if his father was right?

CHAPTER THREE (#ue768aac4-502c-574b-bf01-60c690405ef4)

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAR JOOOO, happy birthday to you.”

“Cake! Gimme.” Standing up in her seat, Jo reached for the tower of cupcakes that Mamesie had so painstakingly arranged on the antique silver platter. Grabbing the one with the most frosting, she sank her teeth into the decadent chocolate cake, shuddering with pleasure when the sweetness of the icing hit her tongue.

“I’m hurt.” Warm breath misted over her ear, and she made a sound low in her throat. “I thought I was the only one who could pull that sound out of you. Yet here you are, cheating on me with a cupcake.”

“Sorry, babe.” Turning in his arms, she tuned out the chatter of her mother and three sisters as she focused in on Theo. Thinking about what they’d done last night had a fizzy feeling bubbling up inside her, making her feel like she’d drunk a giant glass of champagne too fast. “The cupcake offers instant gratification. Unlike someone I can think of, who made me wait an entire year.”

“It was worth waiting for, though, wasn’t it?” His voice was a low rumble against her ear. And even though she was still sore, she felt molten heat gather between her thighs. “At least, you seemed to think so this morning when you were moaning my name.”

She uttered another small moan at that. Putting space between them before she shoved the cupcakes off the table and pulled him down for another round, she tucked another bite of cupcake in her mouth as a distraction.

“I know you’re trying to change the topic, but I don’t think it’s working the way you hoped.” Jo sucked in a sharp breath as Theo’s stare tracked the way her tongue was licking sprinkles off the top of the cupcake. “I can think of a lot of places that would look awfully pretty with a bit of white icing on them.”

“Stop it!” Elbowing him, Jo took another deliberate step away, conscious of the fact that her family was right there. But when she looked around, Mamesie had gone into the kitchen for plates, and her sisters Beth and Amy were fully occupied by their own pieces of cake, still being young enough to have their attention fully commanded by the promise of sugar.

Her older sister, Meg, though, cast her a wink before handing her a napkin. Even if she hadn’t heard what was said, it was obvious that she knew that something had changed with her little sister. In response, Jo felt her cheeks heat.

“I need to use the bathroom.” Giving Theo’s hand a little squeeze, she swallowed the last bite of her cupcake and excused herself. She headed upstairs to the bathroom she shared with Amy rather than the small powder room on the main floor.

She splashed icy-cold water on her face, which felt good but did nothing to fade the flush on her cheeks. How was it possible that she wanted Theo again already? Did that wanting ever stop?

Wanting to give her telltale blush time to fade before she returned downstairs—Mamesie was no idiot, but Jo still wasn’t keen on the idea of flaunting her newfound sexuality in front of her mother—Jo wandered down the hall to her bedroom. Her laptop sat open on the slab of plywood and two sawhorses she used as a desk, flashing a retro screen saver of different shapes made of neon lines, undulating around the screen. Yellow legal pads clumped in haphazard piles around the computer, most covered in her messy scrawl.

The keyboard beckoned. She still had a thousand words to go on her latest story. It was just a little article for the local paper, something she submitted every couple of weeks, but for every article that they published, she received a check for a hundred dollars. It wasn’t much, but she loved the process of sealing that check in the crisp white envelope, of feeding it into the bank machine to deposit it into her account.

Mamesie had raised her, Meg, Beth and Amy by herself, and while they certainly no longer had access to some of the finer things that they’d had when her dad had been alive, she knew that Mamesie would never accept money from her girls—not unless the situation were truly dire. So Jo tucked away what she could. She didn’t dare to dream too big, but maybe one day she could take some journalism courses. Learn a way to apply her writing to a career, when she’d saved enough.

She reread what she’d written earlier while she waited for her body to calm the hell down. Pulling out the creaky desk chair that she was pretty sure bore a permanent imprint of her butt, she rolled up to her laptop and started clicking through.

“What are you doing up here?” She had no idea how long it had been when Theo spoke from the doorway, scaring the shit out of her. She jolted, her elbow sliding over the keys of her keyboard. Swearing, she hurriedly pressed the back arrows to restore her work.

“I came up to cool off a bit after you got me all hot and bothered,” she replied, her gaze veering back to her screen. She was almost at the end. She was pretty sure she only needed a couple more sentences, and they were right there, fresh in her head...

“It’s your birthday party.” Theo frowned at her computer as he entered her room, closing the door behind him with the heel of his shoe—his fancy, hand-tooled, Italian leather shoe. Jo didn’t pay any attention to fashion, none at all, but her sister Meg did, and she was forever sighing over the gorgeous things that the Lawrences had.

Things the Lawrences had. Things the Marchandes did not. Neither family talked about it, but the difference in their positions in life was always there, the elephant in any room in which members of both families had gathered.

At least, it was always there for Jo. It hadn’t been, not always—back when her dad had been alive, they’d enjoyed a lot of the same privileges that the Lawrences had. She knew that Theo and his dad couldn’t have cared less that there was now a class difference between their families, but it also meant that when it came to certain things, like money, Theo especially just didn’t understand.

“Are you working?” Hastily Jo tried to close out of her document, but when she looked up and saw the puzzled expression on his face, she knew that he’d seen. “Why are you hiding up here working when everyone is downstairs waiting for you?”

“I told you. I came up here to cool off a bit.” She could hear the defensiveness in her voice and pulled in a deep breath. “I read a few lines of my article and got sucked in.”

“Well, come back down.” He reached for her hand. “It’s present time. Amy’s about to pee herself, she’s so excited.”

Jo started to rise, but something about the way he was being so insistent had her hackles rising. Lowering herself back to her chair, she crossed her arms over her chest, the movement stiff. “Tell them I’ll be down in ten minutes. I just have a few more lines to finish.”

“Forget the lines, babe.” Theo’s smile was charming, deadly when he aimed it at you, but Jo had known him long enough that she could steel herself against it—well, sometimes. “It’s your birthday. Finish them another time.”

“I can’t.” Her eyes narrowed—why was he pushing? “My deadline is tonight. I should have handed the piece in already.”

“Does it really matter?” Clearly confused, Theo waved a sure hand through the air—the lord in his manor. “Blow off the deadline. I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“The big deal is that they’re counting on me to hand the piece in. If I don’t, they have to scramble to find something else for that spot.” Jo’s voice was incredulous—why was this so hard for Theo to understand? “And also, if I don’t hand the article in, I don’t get paid.”

“They pay you peanuts. What’s the point?” Theo reached for her hands again, and this time instead of just avoiding him, she swatted them away. Rising from her chair, she stood to face him, clenched fists growing sweaty at her sides.

“A hundred dollars is not peanuts.” Her voice was shaking. Damn it, Theo knew—he knew—that this job was important to her. “I’m saving it for school, and you know it.”

“Well, a hundred dollars isn’t anything to me.” He shrugged dismissively, and Jo felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. “Just...please. Just forget about the article. I’ll give you the hundred dollars, okay? Just please come back downstairs so that I can give you your birthday present.”

For a long moment she was speechless. She actually kind of felt like throwing up.

She and Theo had their differences, but she loved him. She’d given him her body. Her heart.

And here he was pushing her to forget something that meant the world to her, just so he could get his way right now.

“You think I’m going to take money from you?” Horrified, Jo rubbed her hands over the hips of her jeans, trying to ease the clamminess. “After what we just did last night, how do you think that makes me feel?”

Understanding dawned on his face—at least, the tiniest inkling of it. “No, no. Jo, Jojo, that’s not what the money is for. Please—”

“No, of course it’s not.” Damn it, she was shouting. This was nothing new for her, not with her temper, but she couldn’t ever remember feeling exactly like this, sickness mixed in with the growing rage. “The money is so that I will ignore what I have repeatedly told you that I want right now, on my own damn birthday, and so that I will go do what you want. Lord Lawrence gets his way yet again.”