Jessie Belle: The Women of Merryton - Book One Read online

  Jessie Belle

  The Women of Merryton – Book One

  By Jennifer Peel

  © 2015 by Jennifer Peel. All Rights reserved.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader or share it through the Kindle lending feature. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy through Amazon Kindle. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  To Berta, thank you for being one of my biggest fans even before I had fans.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  “Come in,” I called toward my closed office door, trying not to sigh. Somebody always needed something.

  The door slowly opened and a head popped in. “Jessica.”

  I sat up a little straighter. I wasn’t expecting to see my husband, of all people. That probably doesn’t sound right and it wasn’t, but unfortunately that’s where we were in our relationship. I did end up sighing, not because he was there, but because I was surprised about it.

  “Am I interrupting anything?” he asked nervously.

  I closed my laptop with my new menu designs and gave him my full attention. “Is everything okay?”

  He walked in carrying a beautiful vase filled with perfectly shaped, pink roses. He didn’t answer until he was perched on the edge of my desk facing me with the vase of flowers stretched out towards me. “These are for you.”

  I cautiously reached out and took them, but set them on my desk immediately. I barely even smelled how fragrant the suspicious flowers were. “What’s wrong?”

  He cocked his handsome head at me. For a moment I ached for him and my stomach even fluttered. After more than thirteen years together he could still get to me. He edged closer and reached for my hand. I knew something was definitely off. He hadn’t shown me this much affection in weeks, maybe even months.

  “Why does something have to be wrong for me to visit my wife and bring her flowers?”

  I looked up into those gray eyes. No matter the state of our marriage I could still read them and there was trouble in them. I pulled my hand away. “You just haven’t in a very long time and …”

  He reached for my hand again. I looked down at our hands that I used to think were made to match. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should be better at that.”

  “So why are you here?” I choked out. I don’t know why I felt like crying.

  He played with my wedding ring by twisting it. “Jess …”

  I knew it wasn’t good. He rarely called me Jess anymore. While everyone called me Jessie, he always called me Jessica. Jess was only used in moments of either great shows of love, or when the news wouldn’t be to my liking. I knew it wasn’t the first. Our relationship had been too strained lately. I braced myself. Unfortunately, it was not near enough for the bombshell that he would drop on me and our already tattered marriage.

  He edged closer and pulled me up out of my chair and held me. I stood there stiffly for a moment. I had missed him, which was silly considering we shared a home - or I should say house - together. It had been anything but homey recently. We were more like two ships passing in the night, or even worse, indifferent roommates. I sank into him even though I knew something was off. He drew me closer and rubbed my back.

  I breathed him in slowly. He smelled like cedar. He must have been working on building a deck. Now that we were into April, the temperature was getting warmer and his construction company would be busy with outdoor projects.

  “Blake, what’s wrong?”

  He reached up and stroked my hair that Cheyenne had talked me into cutting. I loved my friend and hair stylist, but she was bossy and had been ever since junior high school. But in the end she was right. The chin-length cut, styled with beach waves and caramel highlights against my dark brown hair, was the best cut I had ever had. It had given me a much-needed self-confidence boost.

  I felt him soaking me in as he continued to touch my hair. “I had a phone call today from Sabrina Olson.”

  I pulled back and looked into my husband’s more than worried eyes. “Why would my old roommate call you?” I hadn’t thought about her in ages. We had only lived together for six months while I completed my internship as a pastry chef at the Montagne Resort, which was modeled after a French chateau above Salt Lake City. I had just received my bachelor’s degree in culinary management and my parents suggested I do an internship before I came to work for my mom at Jessie Belle’s Café. Oddly enough, I was running a business named after myself. Those six months at the resort were some of the best times of my life. It’s where I met the man that nervously held me in his arms. “Blake?”

  We were eye level with him perched on my desk and me standing. He leaned in and rested his forehead against mine. I had missed him doing that. “Jess, I don’t know how to say this to you.”

  I suddenly felt ill. I wasn’t sure why. Blake didn’t even like Sabrina and we hadn’t seen her in years. I didn’t particularly care for her, either. She had also been interning at Montagne as a pastry chef, but she was careless and sloppy. Her habits spilled over into the small cottage we shared on the resort property. She had no respect for my personal things and used them at her leisure without ever asking and she was always bringing around her less than ideal boyfriend, Hal. I had been surprised a place like Montagne would place her for an internship, but she was beautiful and she could charm her way into or out of anything. But not with Blake. He had no patience with her and I frequently lamented to him about having to live with her.

  He reached up with both hands and placed them around my face. They felt warm, but slightly rough and calloused. It was a side effect of his job. I never minded, though. “Jessica, remember when we broke up?”

  How could I forget? It was almost thirteen and a half years ago and I could still feel the sting of it. I knew I should be long over it, but unfortunately it had hung over our marriage. That was my fault, not his. Whenever something went wrong in our marriage I always fell back on that moment, the moment he didn’t want me. It was a crutch I knew I needed to throw away, but like all bad habits, it was hard to give up. Even now I could recite with perfect memory, “Jessica, now that you’re going home, I think we should end what we had, here and now.” Had? I questioned. Just the day before and the many days before that he had been professing how much he loved me. We had been discussing how we would see each other when I went back to Merryton in my home state of Colorado while he finished construction project at Montagne. I thought we had it all worked out, and then suddenly he was done.

  “I remember the night you broke up with me,” I said in return.

&nb
sp; He pulled back, but still held my face in his strong hands. There was no we in that equation and he knew it. He knew he had broken my heart that night. “I wish I hadn’t,” he said quietly. “There is also something else I regret, and I probably should have told you before now.”

  I didn’t like where this was going. I pulled away, but he reached out for me again. “Please, I need you.” He sounded scared.

  In all of our time together this was only the third time I had ever seen him scared. The first time was when he followed me to Colorado a month after he broke things off with me and begged for me to forgive him. The second time was last year when—I couldn’t think about it, at least not now, which was weird, since it was all I thought about anymore.

  I let myself fall against him again and he held me more firmly than before. “Jess,” he whispered in my ear.

  “Blake?”

  “Sabrina is sick. Quite sick, in fact. She has stage four melanoma.”

  “Oh. That’s terrible, but I don’t understand why she would call and tell you that. How did she even know how to contact you?”

  “She found my company’s website.” We had his and her companies.

  “Okay? But why?”

  “She has a daughter …”

  “And?”

  “I’m just going to say it, but I need you to listen to me.”

  I stiffened and he held on for dear life. I could feel him take in a large breath and let it out. I could even feel his heart pounding.

  “There’s a possibility she may be mine.”

  I pushed away from him as hard as I could. So hard I almost fell, and he reached out to steady me.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “Jessica.” His eyes pleaded with me.

  I couldn’t breathe. This had to be some sick joke. I knew it wasn’t, because out of all the things in the world, Blake would never joke about this, not under the circumstances. Not after everything I had lost—we had lost. I sat down in my chair and I noticed I was shaking.

  “Please listen to me,” I heard my husband beg.

  I rested my hands on my legs, looked down, and focused on my breathing. I felt like passing out.

  “It’s not what you think.”

  I couldn’t look up. “How could it be anything but?”

  He knelt in front of me and tipped my chin up. “Jessica,” he spoke slowly, “I would never be unfaithful to you.”

  My tears spilled over and dripped down on his hand.

  “You believe that, right?”

  “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  He looked about as defeated as I had ever seen him. “It was a one night stand, not even that, and you and I weren’t together when it happened,” he said almost angrily.

  I wasn’t following and my eyes must have said so.

  “After I broke up with you and you left, I swung by your place to pick up the box you said you left me. Sabrina was there and one thing led to another. It was stupid, I know, and I regretted it immediately, but that night made me realize I never wanted to be with anyone but you for the rest of my life.”

  It was only getting worse for me. “So you’re saying you only came back to me because you slept with another woman?”

  He rubbed his face with his hands. He was irritated now. “No, Jessica. How could you think that?”

  I stood up, maneuvered around him, and grabbed my bag. I couldn’t take any more.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To my mom’s and dad’s.”

  He tried to hide his look of displeasure. “Please come home with me. We need to talk.”

  “What else is there to say? You have a child that isn’t mine and you slept with my flighty roommate whom you claimed you couldn’t stand. How many other kids do you have running around? Is this why you don’t want to adopt?” I practically yelled.

  His eyes seared into mine, but he didn’t say a word. He took one look at me and turned and walked out the door, slamming it along the way.

  I took one look at the beautiful flowers on my desk and threw them in the trash. Then I did the one thing I promised I would never do: I ran home.

  Chapter Two

  The screen door to the patio screeched in the stillness as I made my way into my parents’ home. The closed-in patio that my husband had built was tidy, but lifeless. I was surprised. It was such a beautiful day I thought for sure one or both of my parents would be out enjoying the warm early evening hours. I was relieved in a way. I had hoped to avoid my dad for the time being. He already didn’t like his only son-in-law, and this wasn’t going to sit well with him. My mom, on the other hand, seemed to get him and she quietly loved him.

  “Mom,” I called as I walked in the back door to the kitchen. No answer. “Mom,” I cried out almost desperately, like I was a child instead of thirty-six years old. I walked through the kitchen and made my way to the living room. There I saw something I never wanted to see and it reminded me why I should have called or at least knocked. The trail of clothing leading up the stairs conjured disturbing images in my mind. I knew my parents were crazy about each other, but I didn’t need the visual reminder. I decided even in my desperate state I should leave. I had made it to the front door when I heard my mom say, “Honey, what are you doing here?”

  I was afraid to turn around, so I stared at the lovely door made of wood and stained glass. “Nothing, Mom. I’ll call you later.”

  “Are you crying?”

  “No,” I cried.

  “Jessie Belle, what’s wrong?”

  I could hear her hastily picking up the strewn about clothing and tossing them into the laundry room. I figured it was safe for me to turn around. Surely my mom would be fully clothed, right? I slowly turned to find my mom in a dressing gown, her gray hair a mess. She started to give me a slow, knowing grin, but my tears begged for a hug so that’s what she did instead.

  She pulled me to her and wrapped me in her skinny little arms and I sobbed like a baby. I never outgrew her, so my head rested on her shoulder.

  She patted my back. “I know it’s the sixteenth—it’s been nine months since the baby passed. I should have checked on you.”

  “Mom, it’s not that.” Even though I had thought about it - during lunch I had already been to his grave, but I did that most every day. I knew it was probably unhealthy, but it was a reminder that he existed, if only for a brief moment.

  She pulled me to the couch and I rested my head in her lap as if I were still a little girl.

  “Honey, tell The Mother what’s wrong.”

  I just about smiled through my sobbing. She always referred to herself in third person like she was this magnanimous being. I suppose she was, at least in my world.

  I almost asked if my father was home, but I knew the answer to that already. I was still trying not to think about it.

  She stroked my hair and hummed some silly tune. She was patient and didn’t push me. She knew me well and knew it wouldn’t do any good. Unfortunately, my dad joined us before I could compose myself and speak properly. I loved my dad. He was the best father around, but he was blinded when it came to Blake. Blake was never good enough for me and could never do anything right in my father’s sight. I had to hand it to Blake, he tried—or at least he used to. You can only try so much before it gets really old and tiresome.

  I don’t know why I felt like I needed to protect Blake from my dad at that moment, since I could honestly say I felt hatred toward him. Maybe it was a good sign. The past nine months, all I had felt was indifference about practically everything. I almost felt relieved I could feel emotion, especially toward my husband.

  My overprotective father knelt in front of us in a panic and began to look me over like he was giving me a physical. Old habits die hard for retired doctors, especially my dad, who hadn’t been fully ready to retire. But my mom had been ready, and that was enough for him. They made marriage and love look so easy.

  “Davis, leave her alone,” my mom scolded him.
/>   My dad’s strong hand rested on my forehead like he was checking for a fever. “What’s wrong my Belle?”

  I looked into my dad’s kind brown eyes through my blurry tear-filled ones. I swallowed hard through my shuddering. “Blake’s a … fa … father.”

  My dad didn’t even wait for an explanation. He jumped up like a bomb had gone off and let out a string of vile words.

  “Watch your mouth, Davis Ryan,” my mother warned.

  He softened as he looked toward my mother and me on the couch, but he wasn’t done. “He’s cheated on our daughter, Gloria, and you expect me to be calm?”

  I slowly sat up and wiped my cheeks. “He didn’t cheat on me.” At least not technically, even if it felt like it. How do you sleep with someone when you claim to be in love with someone else? Not only that, it was out of character for Blake. He wasn’t impulsive. He never did things on a whim.

  My dad sat on the other side of me. Each of my parents took one of my hands.

  “Tell us what happened, honey,” my mom said as she eyed my dad to keep him quiet.

  I breathed in deeply and let it out slowly. I only shuddered and sniffled some. I managed to tell them all I knew, which wasn’t a lot.

  My parents had all sorts of questions, like how old was she and what was her name and what did she look like. I had no idea except for the age part. I assumed she was twelve and would be thirteen later in the year. I knew a thing or two about calculating due dates. I’d had more due dates than I liked to think about. They were each empty dread-filled days, and reminders of unfulfilled dreams.

  My mom squeezed my hand tight, “Well honey, you better go home and work it out with your hubby.”

  I knew she would say that. The day I got married she told me not to run home when problems arose. She said the only way to fix them was to stay home and work them out with Blake. Her mother had told her the same thing on her wedding day and she said it was the best advice she’d ever received. The day I got married, I never imagined a reason I would ever need to come home, but it didn’t take me long to figure out why my mom gave me that particular piece of advice.