Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 22327 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 112(@200wpm)___ 89(@250wpm)___ 74(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 22327 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 112(@200wpm)___ 89(@250wpm)___ 74(@300wpm)
"I can't lie to him." Any perkiness he had leaves him instantly. I don't know what to do, but I'm running out of time before my husband comes searching for me. Then he’ll know all of this.
"Test him," Joey suggests. "Now that I told you the truth, go watch him and see for yourself. The man barely knows you."
My husband loves me, and even though there’s a pit in my stomach right now, I know it’s all going to be okay.
"All right," I agree.
"Go before he catches you down here and we're both chained up."
I can't fathom Salvador chaining me up down here. He might tie me to the bed, but that would only be for a sexy punishment.
It can’t hurt to try to test him. It’s not like I’ve got anything to lose.
I suppose Joey’s fingers might disagree.
Chapter 12
Salvador
“There you are,” I say to Jema when I find her in the bedroom. She’s stretched out on top of the covers with a book and wrapped in a robe. “Did you have a bath without me?”
“I was tired of waiting.” She smiles at me as I bend down and place a kiss on her lips.
“I’m sorry I’m late. My meeting ran over and then I had to make some calls.” I take a seat on the edge of the bed as my fingers lazily stroke against her bare thigh. “What did you get up to today?”
“Well, I was in the garden for most of the day, but then I had a memory come back.”
The surprise of her statement makes my finger still. It’s only a heartbeat before I recover and go back to tracing the soft skin across her hip.
“That’s great, kitten,” I say, trying to put some enthusiasm into my voice. This was bound to happen at some point, and I’ve been waiting for it. “Tell me everything. What did you remember?”
“I don’t know. I guess it wasn’t a full memory exactly. It was more like an echo of a memory from when I was young. Maybe you could help me remember it. You know how much it hurts my head when I try to chase the thoughts.”
“Of course, what do you want to know?”
“It was something about my childhood. Can you tell me about it? Maybe about my parents and where I grew up?”
“I’m so sorry, Jema,” I say, and I can feel her body tense under my touch. “You grew up in foster care. I tried looking into your parents, but there wasn’t any information on them. You were dropped off at an orphanage when you were a baby, so there wasn’t any history.”
This is mostly true. After interrogating Joey, he gave up everything on Jema. Once he told me she was in the foster system, all it took was bribing the right people to get her file opened. I found out her parents OD’d in a drug house when she was a baby. The fire department found her, and she was turned over to the State. She bounced around in foster care after that, and that’s how she ended up getting mixed up with Joey. Telling Jema her parents don’t exist seems kinder than telling her they didn’t give a fuck about her.
“Oh, that’s good, I guess.” She seems weirdly relieved by this news, and when I look at her, she continues. “I mean, that they aren’t out there missing me.”
“Is there anything else you want to know?” I realize that I’m pushing it by asking her this because I don’t actually want her to remember that she’s not mine. She is now, but I have a feeling she’s not going to be pleased that I’ve tricked her into it.
“How’d we meet?”
“What?” The question takes me by surprise, and I don’t have an answer ready for it. I’m not sure why I didn’t think of it before now, but clearly I should have.
Jema sits up, her eyes watching me closely. “How did we meet? It’s a simple question, right? I mean, from what I see, you work all the time, so it’s not like we could have run into one another if I was, say, working at a diner?”
Her choice of words makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on edge. Does she remember more than she’s letting on? When I cleared out her apartment, I found a uniform for a nearby diner. Could she remember her life before?
“Plus you have all these cooks here, and you never eat out. It’s not like you kidnapped me or anything,” she says with a laugh. “Right?”
There’s a long pause as the silence stretches between us. She blinks once, twice, then her smile begins to falter.
“Kitten,” I say softly as I move closer. “Meeting you was the single greatest moment of my life.” She swallows hard as I reach up and trace a finger along her jaw. I’m not sure if she’s testing me, but either way, I decide to tell her a partial truth. “I was down at the docks inspecting a shipment. You were lost, and we ran into each other.”