Free Jed's Sweet Revenge by Deborah Smith Page B

asked gently.
    “He wouldn’t even see her. I was too little to remember much of what happened, but I’ll never forget sittin’ beside Ma on a bus headed west. I’d never seen her cry before, but on that trip home she cried for hours. That was when I started to hate my grandfather.”
    “But what did it have to do with—”
    “She got pregnant again, and she had problems from the beginnin’—mostly, I figure, because Pa was laid up with a hurt back and she was workin’ two jobs to support us. She called H. Wilkens’s sisters and asked each of them for a loan, but the old biddies told her they wouldn’t meddle in their brother’s feud by takin’ sides with her. Ma had too much pride to ask her father for any money, so she did without. I don’t think Pa ever realized how much she did without.”
    “How did she die?”
    “She got something like blood poisoning.”
    “Toxemia?”
    “Yeah. That’s what they called it. She fainted in the kitchen one night. Pa put her in the truck and I held her head on the way to a hospital, but that place transferred her to the public hospital because she was a charity case. She went into a coma and died in a roomful of other patients, without even a damned privacy curtain around her bed.”
    “Oh, Jedidiah.” Crying silently. Thena hugged her arms across her chest. He was no longer a stranger. He was a deeply hurt man whom she understood very well.
    His voice was rough. “And old H. Wilkens had the gall to raise hell after she died. He tried to have her buried with the rest of the Greggs, in New York, and Pa had to go to court to fight it. Then he tried to get custody of me, for God’s sake. I guess he wanted to hurt us as much as he could.” He paused, and all the energy seemed to desert him. His shoulders slumped. “That’s the kind of man who built SalHaven.”
    “A man who loved his daughter and his grandson and tried to show it in the only ways he knew how.”
    Jed turned around slowly, every movement lethal with tension. He looked at her with disbelief. “I don’t want to hear that kind of … I don’t want to hear it.”
    Thena held out both hands. He had to considerthe possibility that his grandfather was a decent man. “Don’t you see?” she asked. “He probably would have helped your mother if she’d come to him for money. After she died, think of the guilt and regret he must have felt for what he’d done to her! He wanted to make everything up somehow. Bringing her body home and raising her son in luxury must have been his only hopes.”
    “You’re just tryin’ to save this place by talkin’ nonsense.”
    Wounded, Thena brushed the tears off her cheeks and straightened angrily. “The fact that your grandfather left you Sancia Island and millions of dollars ought to prove how desperate he was to make amends.”
    “Maybe he got religion right before he died. Lost of hellions do.”
    “No! I don’t feel that kind of presence here at SalHaven,” she argued. “I’ve heard stories about your grandparents all my life. Your grandfather had too much pride, but he wasn’t a monster. He just didn’t know how to accept a daughter who had an equal amount of pride. It’s sad, Jedidiah. You should feel sorry for him.…”
    Jed uttered several choice swear words in a low, furious voice. Thena froze, staring at him wide-eyed, afraid of the raw anger she’d provoked. He closed in on her like a predator, his movements so quick that she had no chance to run. His hands shot forward and grabbed her by the shoulders, then twisted her around to face the cool, empty majesty of the mansion’s interior.
    “Let me go!” she ordered tautly. He pulled her against his chest so that he could put his mouth close to her ear. Thena struggled against the heat of his breath, the harsh power in his body, the carefully controlled strength in his hands. He spoke fiercely.
    “Look at this place and tell me I should feel sorryfor that bastard,” he demanded. “This