This is a continuing adaptation of Judith McNaught's Remember When

Feels Like Home

Chapter 9

And if you knew how I wanted someone to come along
And change my life the way you've done

"Jax!" Brenda yelled as she heard the loud crash coming from the woods in front of her.  Without thinking about his warning to stay put, she put her heel into the horse she rode and went to find him.  "Jax!  Are you okay?" she called again when she hadn't heard an answer from him.

She turned the corner ahead of her and found Jax's horse standing in the center of the trail, with no Jax atop him.  Quickly, she jumped to the ground from her horse and tied the two horses to a nearby tree.  "Where'd he go, Domino?" she breathed as if Jax's horse could answer her.  "Jax!" she shouted again, raising her voice to find him.  She started to walk through the surrounding woods, careful to keep sight of the trail.

Jax lay silently on the ground where he had fallen from Domino's back.  From somewhere or another, a deer had crossed into the horse's path, startling him and making him rear back slightly.  Jax hadn't been fully prepared and now lay on the ground behind a couple of bushes, just off the trail where he'd been thrown.  The jolt of hitting the ground had stolen his breath and made it impossible for him to call back to Brenda when he heard her shouting for him.  Slowly, he tried to move and pull himself into a sitting position.

"Jax?" Brenda called once more, her voice taking on a frantic quality.   She was beginning to really worry that he wasn't answering her.  She crossed sides of the trail and nearly cried in relief when she saw him finally trying to sit up a few yards away from her.  He'd been hidden from the trail by the bushes lining the path and she hadn't been able to see him.  "Jax!" she exclaimed and ran to where he was half-lying, half-sitting on the ground.  "Are you all right?  What happened?"

He allowed Brenda to help into a sitting position and he leaned forward over his knees, bracing his elbows on them.  He still fought to catch his breath, but he managed to say, "I'm fine, Brenda."  He coughed a few times and groaned softly as he felt where there were bruises beginning to form on his back and legs.

"You scared me half to death!  What happened?" she repeated, concerned, but grateful he was okay.  He'd truly scared her into thinking he had disappeared.

"It was just a deer," he wheezed as he continued to cough.  Finally, able to catch his breath, he took a few deep breaths and smiled slightly.  "A deer crossed the trail in front of the horse and threw me."

"And you're okay?" she asked again.

He nodded and moved to stand up, wincing as he stood upright and felt his joints crack.  "I'm fine."  She didn't look like she fully believed him.  He smiled reassuringly and said, "Really, Brenda, don't worry.  It's just a couple bruises."  He brushed the leaves and dirt from the ground off his legs as he bent over once at the waist.  Standing upright again, he put his arm around her shoulder and led her back to where she had tethered the horses to the tree.

"Do you want to go back, Jax?  Because we can, I'll understand."  She still sounded scared.

"No, really, I'm fine.  You know what they say about falling off a horse," he replied as he untied the horses and led his out onto the path again.  He swung easily up into the saddle and smiled down at her, masking the slight pain he felt when his bruises came in contact with something solid again.  "You just have to get right back on."

Brenda shook her head at him, slightly amused and slightly amazed by his actions.  She mounted her horse and they started on their path again toward the picnic lunch they'd been heading for when they'd gotten waylaid.

Less than half an hour later, they came upon the clearing where Jax had arranged for their lunch to be setup, picnic style.  A large blanket lay on the ground, anchored at the edges by the things they would need for their meal.  A picnic basket was at the top edge, shut tight, and various other things lay on the ground with it.  Jax allowed Brenda to get down from her horse first and watched as she tied him to a tree at the edge of the clearing.  As she walked toward the blanket, he eased himself gently off his own horse and tied him to the tree alongside hers.  He walked gingerly over to where she was standing at the edge of the layout.

"Who set this up, Jax?" Brenda asked, smiling at his foresight.

"The stable hand you met when we got here.  I had asked him before to do it figuring we'd be hungry by the time we got out here.  Was I right?"

"Very much so!" she exclaimed, laughing and sitting on the ground in the center of the blanket.  Before he even sat down, she was digging into the basket to see what goodies lay below the lid.

While she was distracted, Jax sat down carefully beside her, stretching his long legs out in front of him and wincing once as he did so.  "What do you think?" he asked as he watched her taking everything out of the basket.

She grinned at him and handed him his plate.  "I think it's great.  Everything is perfect, Jax."  She started to open the containers of food with chicken, potato salad, and other items and began to dish it out onto their plates.  When they had enough food on the plates, she reached in and opened the chilled bottle of champagne and handed it to him.

Jax opened the bottle slowly to pour them a drink to go with their meal.  Brenda settled in across the blanket from him and they began to eat.  They ate in silence for a few minutes before he said, "You look serious.  What are you thinking about?"

Brenda looked down and realized she'd been sitting with her fork in her lap for a few minutes while she was thinking.  She met his eyes and smiled, slightly embarrassed to be caught so distracted.  "Nothing really," she replied.

"Brenda," he drawled her name out slightly in a teasing tone.  "Come on, tell me."

She put her plate down on the blanket beside her and watched him for several long seconds before she replied.  "All right.  It's just that I was thinking that I don't know you very well."

"Sure you do," he started to reply.  They'd talked about it before and he still didn't understand why she insisted on bringing it up.

"No, Jax, really, if you think about it, I don't.  We have been married for exactly one week in a few hours and I don't know anything about who you are today.  Yes, I knew you ten years ago.  But you know as well as I do that we are not the same people we were then.  I mean, I was thinking about it this week.  In one week's time, you know what I do for a living, you've met my staff, you've met all of my family, and you've even seen my house.  That's a whole heck of a lot more than I know about you.  I don't know what you do for a career, I don't even have a clue.  So that means I haven't met your staff members like you have mine.  I've met your mom and dad for all of one day and only for a few hours, but I know you have a brother out there somewhere that you mention from time to time.  I don't even know where you live, let alone what it looks like."  She took a deep breath after her monologue and picked up her plate again, more to play with something in her hands than to eat the food on it.

He hadn't been expecting all of that to come out when he'd asked and he was slightly taken aback by it.  He'd had no idea she felt that way, but then again, when would he have known that?  She was right, now that he was thinking about it.  He knew her a lot better than she knew him.  Not to mention the fact that he seemed to trust his instincts about who she was a little more than she did about him.  And he also realized it made him a lot more comfortable with their relationship than she was.

Jax put his lunch plate on the blanket as she had done and looked directly at her, meeting her eyes.  What he saw was slightly surprising.  There a hint of doubt, mixed with a little fear in her eyes and he wondered if she regretted having just said what she had.  He was glad she had.  Now it gave him the chance to make it up to her and let her get to know him as he was her.

"You really want to know all of that?" he asked, just to be sure.

Brenda nodded solemnly.  "I really do.  I feel like I should at least know my own husband, don't you?  At least as well as he knows me."  She smiled slightly at the end of her comment.

Jax grinned in response and leaned back on his elbows, leaving his plate on the blanket beside him.  "I'll start with the easy question.  I am what other people call a corporate raider.  That means I buy and sell companies for profit.  Basically, if a company needs financing, I buy it, give it what it needs to make it profitable again, and sell it for more than I paid for it."

"Aren't raiders also known for breaking up companies and making people lose their jobs?"

"Yes, I suppose 'raiders' are somewhat known for that these days.  But I try not to do that when I buy a company.  I don't usually break up a company unless it's absolutely necessary and there has only been one company I've had to break up where people have lost jobs in the process.  It does happen, but I try not to do it."

Somehow she had known that would be his answer.  He didn't seem like the vindictive business type.  So far, of what she knew of him, he seemed very fair-minded and always wanted to make sure everyone won in the end of a deal.  It was like their marriage and the fact that they were both benefiting from it.  She nodded at him to go on.

Jax smiled as he watched her processing and analyzing what he was saying.  He knew she was drawing inferences and conclusions from what he told her.  He continued, "As for meeting my staff, you'd have to fly pretty much all over the world to meet all of them.  I don't own just one office building like you do, Brenda.  J&J Jacks of Alaska has seven offices in six countries."  He tried to sound modest as he continued, knowing he was surprising her with the vastness of his business when she'd had no idea what he even did for a living.  "Last time I knew the number, the total number of people working for me was somewhere around two thousand.  Since then, I know I've had some new employees come and old ones go.  I don't know the exact number now.  However, if you'd like to meet them all, I'm sure I could arrange it sometime."  He grinned as he teased her a little bit.

Brenda blushed and smiled at him, shaking her head in amusement and amazement.  She'd had no idea when she married him that he was doing as well as he was.  She had known him when he was still working for Stefan Cassidine and barely had a dollar to his name to spend.  She knew he was successful now, but what he was telling her was that he was a billionaire, and not just rich, as she had originally thought.  It was what she had always hoped would happen for him, but never paid attention to see if he accomplished it.

He took a breath to start on the more complicated issue she had raised to him, his family.  He didn't want to tell her too much, because to do so would be to tell her everything he had never told her before.  She thought he had trusted her with a lot of information, but she had no idea how deep his secrets could run.  "You have met my parents and, like you said, I do have a brother.  I don't talk about Jerry a lot because he and I have never gotten along very well.  Jerry is ten years older than me.  He's married and has two kids.  But to tell you the truth and to give you some idea, I don't even know how old his kids are.  I think I've met them once in their lives and even then it was only for a few minutes."  He paused at the look of surprise and almost sympathy she had on her face.  "My family is not like yours, Brenda.  We are not close, we do not live in the same city together.  As soon as he was old enough, my brother moved out of the house and never returned.  You remember how well I told you I got along with my parents ten years ago.  Since then, not very much has changed."

"But why?"  She truly didn't understand how a family could be so far apart as Jax was telling her his was.  She could tell as soon as she'd asked that she wasn't going to get a complete answer from him.

Jax looked down at his hands and shifted slightly on the ground.  "There were things that happened a long time ago that you might say changed our family forever.  There was a lot of blame pushed around and I don't think we ever recovered from it.  My mother blamed my father, he blamed my brother, Jerry blamed me, and it was a never ending cycle.  The year after it happened, I moved to Port Charles and met you.  Ever since then, nothing's been the same."

"But you get along with your parents now, right?  They did come to visit, after all."

"Yes, they did come to visit.  But your definition of visiting and theirs are two completely different things," he explained.  "You thought they were here because they had heard I got married and they wanted to meet my wife and possibly to check up on me to make sure I wasn't violating our deal."

"That wasn't why they were here then?"

Jax shook his head.  "No, not really.  Yes, they wanted to meet you and yes, they wanted to check up on our deal.  But the biggest part of their visit was to see how I measured up."

"What does that mean?"  Brenda didn't like the sound of what he was saying, but she was getting a pretty good idea of where it was going.

He'd known if he started this conversation, there would be no turning it around and stopping it.  He had to finish it now and Brenda did deserve to know what she had gotten into when she married him.  That included his family.  "Mum and Dad have never liked Jerry's wife.  They think she married him for his money and has been milking him for all he's worth.  I've checked into it and they're basically right.  My brother isn't worth half of what he was when he married her eight years ago.  But he's supposedly in love with her and he refuses to divorce her, no matter what they tell him she's doing.  In return for their meddling, he's trying to get stock in my company.  The company that, until a eight days ago, belonged partly to my father as well.  Now, Jerry knows he can't get it and he wants nothing more to do with my parents and me, especially."

"I don't get what that has to do with me."

"My parents want to know if you plan on doing the same thing to me as Jerry's wife is doing to him.  I guarantee you that they are doing a full background check on you as we speak.  Anything and everything in your past, they will give to me and hope it turns me against you so that I want to divorce you.  The only reason for that is because I didn't take you home and introduce you to them, like a good son, before I married you.  Because we got married so quickly, they are assuming that I don't know what I got myself into."

Brenda had noticed the hard edge that had been growing in Jax's voice as he spoke.  She could practically see the anger coming from him.  His eyes had grown dark and icy and his face had a shadow across it that looked a lot like a scowl.  "If that were all true," she began and stopped almost immediately when Jax's head snapped up at her.

"IF it were true?!" he exclaimed.

"Hear me out, Jax," she said quietly.  "When your parents were here this week, I talked to your mom.  She knows what you're doing, what we're doing, that is.  She called me on it.  She knows we only got married because of your deal with your father."

"She does?"

Brenda nodded.  "She does.  And she understands.  She said she didn't like it anymore than you did that John did that to you by making you sign that contract."  She held up a hand to stop him from saying what she knew he was about to say.  "She didn't stop him because she didn't know about it.  She told me that on the phone this week.  Your father told her about it only after you'd agreed to it and signed the papers.  She was angry with him, too, and that's why she forced him to bring her with him when they came out here."  She smiled in an effort to get Jax to calm down a little bit.  "Don't you see, Jax?  Your mother supports you on this.  She's taken your side in all of it.  So, she's not running the background check.  IF anyone is, it has to be only your father's doing.  Your mother wants him to stop all of this nonsense."

Jax sat silent for a few minutes, thinking about what Brenda had said.  While it surprised him, he was glad to hear it.  Over the last years, it had seemed like his mother did nothing but side blindly with his father, no matter what the issue was.  It was most of what tore them all apart. 

"But, Jax, there's just one thing I have to ask you about," Brenda said softly.

He directed his attention back at her then.  "What is it?"

"If your father does this background check on me, won't that mean he'll find out about Scott and everything that happened?  He'll know that our marriage wasn't just a sudden decision in a two month relationship or whatever it was we even told him.  He'll find out that I got dumped by Scott three days before we got married.  That means he'll have to know we didn't get married out of love for each other and this is a farce."

Realization had dawned on him before she had even finished her comment.  A long string of expletives ran through his mind as he thought about what she was saying and knew she was right.  "Let me worry about that," he said, already trying to think of what he would do, but he'd had a few ideas.  Unfortunately, nothing that could be taken care of until at least the next day, if not the following Monday.

Brenda readily agreed to let him take care of it.  After a few more minutes had passed and she had picked up her plate again to eat, she watched him carefully.  She could see he was still thinking about what he was going to be doing about their situation.  "You know, Jax," she said lightly to get his attention.

"What?" he asked automatically, his tone distracted.

"You only answered three of my questions."

He turned his attention fully back to her and looked confused.  "I did?  What did I forget?"

"I still don't know where you live.  I assume near one of your seven offices, but I don't know which one."

He smiled and nodded slightly.  "You're not far off actually.  But I have a residence near all of my offices."

"That doesn't answer my question," she said, mockingly reprimanding him.

"Primarily, I divide my time between my two offices in the States.  I have one here in New York, in Manhattan.  I live in an apartment building when I have to be there.  I also have one in California, Los Angeles.  When I'm there, I have a beach house in Malibu."

She had a feeling that his 'house' was nothing short of a magnificent mansion in a huge compound, but she didn't ask him.  Instead, she nodded and said, "So where are you now?"

"Right now?" he teased.  He laughed when she pretended to glare at him.  "In New York.  I have to be here for another two months or so and then I'll return to LA."

Brenda was surprised at the feeling of disappointment that washed over her briefly when Jax said he would be leaving in two months.  She found herself wondering where that would leave her when he did.

Jax noticed her quietness at his answer and looked at her with concern.  “What’s wrong, Brenda?” he asked softly.  She lifted her eyes to his and he was as surprised as she had been to see the puzzling look in her eyes.

She blushed and averted her gaze, smiling as if to laugh it all off.  “It’s nothing, really, Jax.”

“You can tell me,” he prodded gently.

“I was just trying to figure out what I’m going to do when you’re not around.”

“The same thing you did before we got married,” he answered quickly as if he’d been thinking about it all along.  “You’ll run your magazine, see your family, go out with friends.  We’ll still keep up the appearance of the marriage, you know that.”

“Yeah, I know,” she replied softly.

Jax looked away then and stared off into the distance, keeping his eyes on the trees so she couldn’t see them.  He didn’t want her to see how much it was killing him to say what he was saying to her.  He didn’t want her to see how much it hurt to tell her to go back to her life as if she’d never met him when he wasn’t there.  He wanted to be on her mind constantly, like she was on his.  He wanted her to miss him when he was gone as much as he missed her.  But he didn’t dare say a word about it to her.

“Jax?” Brenda said after nearly fifteen minutes of silence had gone by between them.

“Hmm?” he asked as he turned his head back to her.

“Are you ready to go?”

He looked at his watch and at the lateness of the day that was beginning to show around them in the longer shadows.  “Yeah, sure,” he replied quickly.  “Let’s go.”

She stood and gathered their picnic things while he slowly pulled himself to his feet, trying not to groan at the pulling of his sore muscles.  They mounted their horses again and rode back towards the ranch in virtual silence, talking only when necessary.  Each was lost in their own thoughts about the other.

After they had taken their horses back into the barn at the ranch and paid the stable hand, giving him a substantial tip for the picnic, Jax and Brenda headed towards his Jeep again.  When they were a few feet away, Jax handed his keys to Brenda.

“You want me to drive?” she asked, curiously.

He nodded.  “I think it would be best right now,” he said simply, not offering any other explanations.  The truth was he was almost having too much trouble walking, let alone driving.  He knew he wouldn’t be able to concentrate as he knew he’d have to and he didn’t want to get them into an accident on the way home.

She accepted his answer and got into the driver’s seat silently.  She adjusted the seat while he climbed into the car slowly.  As she watched him, she noticed now that he was having difficulty moving, but she knew he’d never admit it out loud.  And she knew he wasn’t hurt seriously, only bruised and sore.  She knew, too, that his own ego was a little too bruised for him to say anything more than he already had.

Jax sat back in his seat in the car on the way back to the hotel.  He laid his head against the headrest and closed his eyes, effectively preventing any conversation with Brenda.  It wasn’t just the pain from falling off the horse that was distracting him.  There was also a slight ache in his chest that he was desperately trying to avoid thinking about, knowing that if he did, he wouldn’t be able to control his emotions much longer.

Brenda pulled into the parking area of the hotel and they got out of the car.  Jax walked behind her as they went into the building and to the elevators.  When the doors opened on the penthouse floor, she used the keys she still had in her hands to open the door.  He walked past her into the room and immediately headed for the stairs.

Just as he was about to go up the steps, Jax turned to Brenda and said, “I’m sorry about how this day turned out, Brenda.”

She noticed the apologetic tone in his voice and smiled slightly.  “It’s okay.  I had a great time today, Jax.  If you had told me what we were going to do today this morning, I never would have believed it and I probably wouldn’t have gone.  So I want to thank you for surprising me.”  She crossed the room to his side.  When she was next to him, she stood on her toes and kissed him gently on the cheek.  “Thanks for reminding how much fun it can be to ride a horse, Jax,” she said softly.

He smiled in response.  “Anytime, Brenda.  All you have to do is ask.”  With that, he turned and went up the stairs to his bedroom.

A few minutes later, Brenda heard the water turn on his shower and she went to do some of the work she’d brought home with her the day before that she’d fallen asleep before she’d finished.  She never noticed when the water turned off and Jax didn’t come back into the living room.

Three hours later, Jax awoke from where he lay in the middle of his bed.  He hadn’t even realized he’d fallen asleep.  He looked quickly at the clock and stood up just as quickly when he saw that it was after six o’clock.  The last thing he remembered doing was laying down for a quick moment after he finished getting dressed and thinking that he would go back out to the living room in a few minutes.

Walking into the living room, he found Brenda hard at work editing an article for the magazine.  She had her jean-clad legs crossed beneath her as she wrote on a clipboard in her lap.  Her head was bent over her work and she never heard him enter the room.  He smiled, went over to the bar and poured himself a drink, and then sat down on the couch across the table from her.  He didn’t want to interrupt her work, but he couldn’t prevent his joints from cracking as he sat down and he winced again.

Brenda looked up from the article when she heard Jax in the room with her.  She smiled and said, “Hey, feel better?”

He took a sip of his drink, nodding.  “A little bit.  Have you been working this whole time?”  If she had, he wouldn’t feel so bad about leaving her alone all that time.

“Yeah.  Why?  What time is it?”  Her eyes grew wide when she glanced down at her watch and saw how late it was.  “Oh my gosh, I never realized it was this late!”

“Well, are you hungry?”  At her nod, he said, “Do you want to go anywhere for dinner or do you just want to order room service and stay in?”

“Staying here is just fine with me,” she replied easily.  “We can just order some dinner and watch a movie, if you want.”  She noticed the look of relief on his face when he realized she didn’t want to go anywhere anymore than he did.

“Sounds good.”  He got up and went over to the desk to order their dinner while she went into the other room to pick out a movie to watch.

As they waited for the food to come, she went back to work on editing the article, promising it was the last bit of work she would do that night.  He went into the other room to watch the news on television.  The doorbell to the suite rang and Jax got up quickly to answer it before Brenda could be interrupted again. 

He left the room just before hearing the reporter on the screen say, “In the business world today, investigations have been started into the recent takeover of Jacobson Electronics.  Sources tell us that the large conglomerate that bought the company may have some explaining to do in the coming weeks.  We’ll have more on that later for you.”

~~~~~~~~~~

The credits began to roll on the television screen as Brenda discreetly wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.  She was grateful for the room being dark so that Jax couldn’t see her.  She sat in the big, overstuffed leather chair next to the couch he was stretched out on.  Jax reached over for the remote control that was on the table next to the couch and pressed stop, then rewind on the VCR.  They left the lights off in the room so that the only glow was coming from the television screen where the nightly news was muted on screen.

He looked over at her and smiled.  He’d heard her sniffling a few times at the end of the movie.  “I take it you liked the movie, then?” he asked, a slight note of teasing in his voice.

Brenda laughed.  “It seems so dumb to cry over a movie like that, but I can’t help it sometimes.  What can I say?  I’m a sucker for romance.”  She got up and went over to the side of the room to turn on the lights.

Jax squinted against the sudden light.  He remained where he was on the couch since he didn’t want to move any further than he had to.  He moved his head to see the clock on the wall and decided it was time, for him at least, to go to bed.  Just as he was beginning to swing his legs over the edge of the couch to get up, the muscles in his left calf constricted, making him cry out in pain.

“Jax!  Are you okay?” Brenda exclaimed as she returned to his side to see what had happened.

One of his hands clutched at the edge of the couch while the other was balled into a tight fist against his leg.  He sat up and bent over his leg, unclenching his hand to try to rub the muscle into relaxing.  It wasn’t working.  Gently, Brenda pushed his hand away and put both of her hands on his calf muscle.  She began to massage it gently with her fingertips.

Slowly, Jax’s breathing returned to normal as he finally felt his muscle relax beneath her fingers.  He stretched his leg out fully and took a deep breath when he finally felt it disappear.

“Better?” she asked as she moved back down towards his head to talk to him.  She was kneeling on the floor next to the couch.

He propped himself up on his elbow and nodded.  “Much, thank you.”  He smiled ruefully.  “You know, I swear there is no pain greater than that.”

“Probably not,” she laughed lightly.

Jax raised his right hand up to brush a strand of hair out Brenda’s eyes.  His hand lingered for a moment around her ear as he tucked it gently behind.  “Thank you for helping me,” he said seriously.  His hand drifted slowly down to rest on her shoulder.

“Anytime.  All you have to do is ask.”  Her voice was a little breathless as she spoke and she knew it was shaky, too.  Being this close to him, with his hand on her shoulder, made the butterflies in her stomach begin to fly.

Ever so slowly, Jax’s hand moved again to the back of her neck, bringing her head towards his as he did so.  He saw her close her eyes and he did the same.  Gently, his lips closed over hers in a tender kiss.  Their lips moved together in a slow, sensual rhythm. Brenda’s hands moved to embrace him.  One hand was behind his neck, threading into the hair at the base while the other rested on the forearm that supported him.  The kiss seemed to go on for minutes on end.  Somehow, neither wanted it to end, but slowly, Jax finally pulled away.  For the longest time, the only sound in the room was the sound of their quickened breathing.

It was all Brenda could do to pull her eyes from the heated blue depths of his.  “Well, good night, Jax,” she said softly, so softly, he could barely hear her.  She raised up off her knees and stood, all the while, she gazed down at him.  With one last look, she turned to leave the room.

“Good night,” he replied quietly after she’d already left.  He dropped back down onto the pillows of the couch, burying his face in his hands and groaning softly.  He wondered just how bad of an idea that had really been.

 

Chapter 10

 

Song excerpt: Feels Like Home by Chantal Kreviazuk and can be found on the Dawson’s Creek Soundtrack.

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