Chapter
Two
Brenda hoped that this was all just a bad dream and that she'd wake up any minute and would not really have embarrassed herself by fainting in front of everyone - but no such luck. Before she knew it, Faith was sliding an arm around her waist and asking anxiously, "Are you all right Brenda? You had me scared there for a minute. What happened?"
"I'm fine. I haven't been eating well over the last few days," Brenda croaked, lying through her teeth and trying to work up the courage to risk another glance at the new owner of the hotel, who looked remarkably like Jax. But it couldn't be him. It was JJ's question this morning that had brought Jax to mind, and she was merely hallucinating, she decided, as she straightened her shoulders and forced herself to once again face the new owner of Miner's Point Hotel and her new boss.
But, heaven help her, that man was still Jasper Jacks. At first she thought she had seen concern in his eyes, and then a little flame seemed to leap in the blue depths of his eyes, as if he were experiencing the same intense shock as she was. But when he spoke, it was coolly, without a trace of concern in his voice.
"It's Miss Monroe, I believe, isn't it? Miss Veronica Monroe?"
"This is Brenda Barrett," her boss, Mr. Grover, corrected. "Brenda's been with us since the hotel reopened four years ago. She's one of our best employees." He cleared his throat and then went on, "Brenda, this is the new owner of the hotel, Mr. ..."
"She knows my name," Jax said smoothly, his eyes never once leaving hers. "At one time I thought we were quite well-acquainted… or so I thought."
Brenda wanted to respond, but she was at a loss as to what to say. Fortunately, Mr. Grover executed a swift about-face and ushered Jax into his office, leaving her flustered, speechless, and terrified as to what to do next.
This was the worst possible thing that could happen! After that fateful cruise, she had put both Jasper Jacks and Veronica Monroe behind her and had never expected to hear either name again. She'd worked so hard to put Jax out of her mind, and she thought she'd succeeded. But now he was back in her life again, and just one look from those crystal blue eyes of his had brought everything that had happened between them back in a flash…
She'd fallen in love with him on that short cruise, and for a while she had dared to hope that he had felt the same. He'd pressed a telephone number into her hand when they'd parted in Puerto Rico, but fate had been against her. She had taken ill on the flight back to New York, and before she'd even stepped off the plane, she'd been shaking with chills. She'd ended up in the hospital for ten, miserable days, then her brother, Jared, had taken her to his New York home to recover for a couple of weeks after that.
She hadn't been able to call Jax from Jared's house because her brother was hot-tempered, and if he'd found out about her shipboard affair with Jax, there was no telling what he might have done to Jax. So she'd played it safe, waiting until she returned to her home in Port Charles to call Jax -only to discover that she'd misplaced his number.
In a panic, she'd taken apart everything that she'd taken on the cruise with her. She finally found the number in the lining of a jacket, where it had apparently worked its way through a small hole in the seam. By then six weeks had passed, and when she called his number, instead of reaching Jax, an answering machine picked up every time she called. It took nearly three weeks of persistent calling before she reached a real, live person, and when she did, what they told her broke her heart.
And before she'd even recovered from that blow, she'd received yet another
- she'd discovered that she was pregnant…
All of those memories came flooding back to her, overwhelming her sensibilities for the moment. Her head was swimming, and she needed time to think about what was happening and what this all meant to her life now…
But her fellow employees at Miner's Point clustered around her, their questions flying fast and furious: "You know the new boss? Why didn't you tell us, Brenda? What's he like? How did you meet him? What's he *really* like?"
Question after question came sailing at her, but she couldn't answer any of them. And she wouldn't have answered any of them, even if she could…
*********************
Port Charles - now Jasper Jacks knew why the name of this little, historic town had struck such a responsive chord in him the first time his father had mentioned it.
Sitting behind the antique desk in his new office, which sat just off the hotel lobby, he picked up a paperweight and numbly turned it over and over in his hands. The paperweight was a nugget of Port Charles gold encased in crystal, the hotel manager, Clarence Grover, had explained. The nugget had been found during renovations of the Miner's Point Hotel.
Gritting his teeth, Jax replaced the paperweight on the shiny desktop. She was out there, just beyond that wall with the old photograph of an old miner and his donkey. After all these years...
He'd met Veronica Monroe -- correction, Brenda Barrett - six years before on a cruise from Acapulco to the Caribbean, by way of the Panama Canal. He was twenty-five-years- old at the time, and at a personal crossroads. He'd been looking for anonymity and space to decide what he wanted out of life: marriage to the girl-next-door and the comfortable -if somewhat limiting - life as a hotel magnate's son and heir; or a clean break, in search of adventure and high romance - romance, in the sense of heroic and adventurous deeds, not a passionate tryst.
He felt as if time was running out back then. His marriage to Miranda Jamieson, a childhood friend, was merely weeks away. The San Francisco church was booked and the reception planned. His parents were delighted, and her parents were ecstatic. The bride-to-be was sailing serenely through the plans and the parties, while the bridegroom-to-be was slipping closer and closer to the point of outright rebellion.
Ironically, it had been Miranda's idea for him to get away…
"Anywhere," she said, patting his hand with perfectly manicured nails. "A spa, a dude ranch, a beach - whatever appeals to you, darling. I'm afraid if you don't get out of this three-ring circus soon, you won't be fit to marry." She kissed him lightly on the cheek, before turning back to her list and samples. "I'd like to talk more, but the wedding consultant is waiting," she'd said as she'd disappeared out the door.
At first the idea seemed ridiculous - just walk away with so much left to be done? But then his best man wrapped his Porsche around a tree and ended up in the hospital, unable to take advantage of a reservation for a luxury cruise on The Immortal. When Jax visited him in the hospital, the pitiful man was so encased in bandages that he looked more like an Egyptian mummy than a man, and when he'd entrusted Jax with his ticket for the cruise, Jax couldn't turn him down.
Perhaps this was fate at work, he'd decided. Solitude, ocean breezes, and the music of steel bands might be just what he needed at this point. He knew Miranda would hate his going; after all, he might have fun on the cruise, and she'd go to any length to prevent that.
Only she hadn't. In fact, with her usual absent enthusiasm, she'd suggested that this might be just the thing he needed to get him out of his funk. She felt that he should go and have a good time, and that nonchalant attitude seemed to rub him the wrong way. So he'd decided that if this was all she had to say on the subject, he was out of there.
He was in a foul mood when he boarded the cruise ship, and he made a point of distancing himself from the usual crowd of pleasure-seekers, purposely making his way to the bayside of the cruise ship, a decidedly non-glamorous deck area that was lined with lifeboats. He had only been aboard for ten minutes when he spotted the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen, standing alone along the railing, near the lifeboats.
She was dark and exotic looking, with the most glorious head of hair. He usually didn't notice a woman's hair, but hers was beautiful: long, straight, and shiny, and as black as night. From his angle, slightly behind and to one side of her, he couldn't see her face, but he was instantly aware of everything else about her, as a light breeze stirred that glorious mass of shiny, black hair, and she wrapped an arm around her head to brush the errant strands back. It was then that he began to notice even more about her: her graceful arms; the gentle rise of her breast; the slenderness of her waist and her curvaceous hips; the sleekness of her tanned legs, with their firm thighs and toned calves, that curved down into slim, well-formed ankles.
At that point, he'd found himself hopelessly drawn to her, and he'd said something inane - he didn't remember exactly what. She'd turned toward him, a questioning look on her face, and her incredible beauty almost took his breath away. Her eyes were hazel brown and slightly almond-shaped, set in a face distinguished by sculpted cheekbones and a mouth as full and luscious as ripe, summer strawberries.
Later, as he looked back on that moment, he realized that he'd fallen in love with her before she'd even spoken a word. At the time, he'd called it infatuation and rationalized that a simple, harmless flirtation was all they could ever have. But from the moment he saw her, he knew fate had brought them together - she was his destiny.
