Read Online A Pair of Jacks (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) by Blaze Ballantine - Free Book Online

on her face. Reno got a really bad feeling. When his parents thought he was asleep, they’d talked about things they didn’t want him to hear. He remembered his dad talking about going to people’s houses to tell them someone had died. Reno wondered who had died that his grandma knew.
    After Christmas, he went to live with his aunt and uncle, Sallie and Walter Eagleman, because his grandma said at her age she couldn’t raise him. Grandma explained that Aunt Sallie and his mom were sisters. She promised him Aunt Sallie would care for him like his mom, too.
    Despite the love he found in the Eagleman home, Reno talked a lot about the baby brother that had been killed in the car wreck that also took both of his parents’ lives. If he couldn’t have his mom and dad back, he still wanted a brother.
    Reno smiled to himself remembering that’s what he’d asked for the next Christmas. He remembered the shocked look on Sallie and Walter’s faces, and the whispered conversations he’d overheard when they thought he wasn’t paying attention, but it wasn’t long before seven-year-old Jack came home to live with them and be his older brother.
    Jack took the job of being an older brother way too seriously. And that was the problem. Reno owed Jack a lot, even more than Sallie and Walter knew. He fixed just about every mess Reno got into as a kid, and Reno managed to get into several. Jack took the fall when Reno stole a car in their high school days. He sat silently, taking all the blame while Walter berated him for doing such a stupid thing. The car belonged to a friend of Walter’s and that was the only reason it didn’t go on Jack’s record. The man refused to press charges when he found out about Jack’s involvement.
    Now, Reno thought his brother wanted this woman and he should just step out of the way and let things progress in their normal fashion, except he couldn’t. Something in Marie’s striking cinnamon colored eyes held him captive. She wasn’t like the other women he had toyed with. If he had to put his finger on the difference, he couldn’t have explained what it was. But he’d find out. Given time, he’d know exactly what made Marie Maxwell so special.
     
    * * * *
     
    Jack flung the sheet away from his naked body, letting the cool breeze from the open window drift over his heated flesh. He remembered the feel of Marie under his body, her tiny frame passionately giving him back as good as he gave. He knew this tryst could be nothing more than a temporary arrangement and he would get his heart broken. It happened once before, years ago, and he vowed it would never happen twice. But once again, he found himself in an impossible situation, and despite what his head told him, his heart followed its own path. He knew there would be no hope for a long-term commitment. Not in their line of work. Commitment created its own dangerous vulnerability. Something neither he nor Marie could afford in their high-risk careers.
    Jack closed himself down, stopping the pain before it started, shutting off his feelings like he had learned to do when he was a kid. He remembered the hell his life had been before Walter Eagleman stopped beside the road that day and put him in his battered old Ford truck, eventually taking him home to Sallie.
    It had been a cold February day. A thick snow lay on the ground and Jack’s mother put him outside because she was turning tricks to get enough money for groceries and drugs.
    Pregnant at sixteen, kicked out of the house and with nowhere to go, she picked up work in a local strip club. The owner kept her hidden from the law until the baby came, but as soon as she could service the customers, he pimped her out for a neat little profit, letting her keep Jack upstairs in a crib so she’d remain pliable to his demands. When she asked to become a dancer instead of a whore, he got her hooked on the pills. It went downhill from that point on.
    Outside, seven-year-old Jack tried to peek through