The Marriage Agreement. Renee Ryan

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       Chapter Two

      Jonathon stood near the door, feet spread, hands clasped behind his back. He’d held the position for some time now, waiting for his half brother to stop pacing and state his business.

      At seven years his senior, and their father’s sole legitimate heir, Josh had been given all the advantages of a privileged birthright, including an education from the finest schools in the country. Yet the man had nothing to show for his life, other than a string of gambling debts and a miserable marriage.

      Always the outward picture of propriety, Josh wore one of his hand-tailored suits. The tall, leanly muscled build, the dark, windswept hair and classically handsome features fooled many.

      But Jonathon knew the truth. The outer trappings did not match the inner man.

      Like recognizes like, he thought, a harsh reminder of the things he’d done to drag himself out of poverty. Though his choices had been about survival, at least at first, he would still have much to answer for when he faced the Lord. Sobering thought.

      His brother finally paused, turned and studied him intently. Jonathon matched the rude regard with unflinching patience, a strategy he often adopted to ferret out a business opponent’s underlying agenda.

      Far stronger men than his brother had buckled under the calculated silence. Josh proved no more immune to the tactic than others before him.

      “I need money,” he blurted out.

      With slow, deliberate movements, Jonathon unclasped his hands and balanced evenly on both feet. The irony of the situation was almost laughable.

      I need money. Those were the exact same words Jonathon had uttered to his father twenty years ago in a final, desperate attempt to save his dying mother’s life.

      Resentment flared.

      Jonathon struggled to contain the emotion, reminding himself he was no longer that helpless boy facing an uncertain future. He had power and wealth now.

      He answered to no one but God.

      “How much did you lose at the faro tables this time?”

      Josh’s mouth went flat. “I don’t need the money for a gambling debt, I need it for—”

      He broke off midsentence. His gaze darted around the room, landing nowhere in particular. “Do you mind if I sit?”

      Not wanting to extend this conversation longer than necessary, Jonathon frowned at the request.

      Without waiting for a response, Josh sat.

      After settling in one of the wingback chairs facing away from the door, he rubbed an unsteady hand across his face. “Lily is with child.”

      Every muscle in Jonathon’s back coiled and tightened. “Your wife’s name is Amanda.”

      The other man sighed heavily. “Lily is my mistress.”

      Jonathon went very still. The son had followed in the father’s footsteps. Inevitable, he supposed.

       And he walked in all the sins of his father, which he had done before him...

      Throat tight, Jonathon tried to empty his mind, but a distant memory shimmered to life. His mother, sitting in a tattered dress falling apart at the seams, tears running down her cheeks as she anxiously waited for the tall, distinguished man to return as he’d promised.

      Even in her darkest days, when money had been scarce and she’d been forced to turn to prostitution to feed them both, Amelia Hawkins had continued hoping her lover would finally leave his wife.

      That day had never come.

      Jonathon had been too young back then, barely five, to remember much about the man whose visits had stopped so abruptly and left his mother in permanent despair. Only later, when he’d been sixteen, had he discovered that the venerable Judge Joshua Greene had been his mother’s paramour. And Jonathon’s father.

      Josh’s voice cut into his thoughts. “I need money to set Lily up in a small house of her own. I’ll repay you, of course, when I’m able.”

      A spurt of anger ignited in Jonathon’s chest. He moved to a spot behind his desk. Rather than sit, he remained standing, mostly to prove to himself he was still in control of his emotions. “Why come to me? Why not go to your father?”

      Josh shook his head. “I can’t. He warned me Lily would try to trap me with a child.”

      Trap him with a child? Jonathon had the presence of mind to pull out his chair before his legs collapsed beneath him. As if in a dream, he was transported back in time, to the terrifying nights he’d been banished to the alleyway behind the brothel.

      Blinking rapidly, he heard his brother speaking, explaining his desire to keep his secret from his family. A part of Jonathon listened, taking it all in. The other part was unable to forget that he and this man shared the same blood. They came from the same, contemptible father.

      He surfaced at the word mistake. “What did you say?”

      “Father will never forgive me for making the same mistake he did.”

      Mistake. Jonathon had been Joshua Greene’s greatest mistake. That’s what the good, upstanding judge had told him on their first meeting.

      “I’m not like Father. I won’t turn my back on Lily. I won’t let her fall into...” Josh glanced down. “You know.”

      “Do I?”

      His brother’s head snapped back up. “I should have known you wouldn’t make this easy for me.”

      “And yet you came to me, anyway.”

      “All right, I’ll say it.” He rolled his shoulders as if trying to dislodge a heavy weight. “I don’t want Lily to become a prostitute like...like your...mother.”

      Jonathon barely contained his rage. “And you think that makes you a good man?”

      “It makes me better than our father.”

      Jonathon cleared his expression of all emotion. Inside, he burned. He briefly glanced at the small picture on his desk of his mother as a young woman. He knew a moment of pain, and the hollow feeling of remembered sorrow he’d tucked inside a dark corner of his soul.

      Amelia Hawkins hadn’t turned to prostitution lightly. She’d held out as long as she could, but had finally admitted defeat and taken a position in Mattie Silks’s brothel. Jonathon had been seven at the time. The infamous madam had only agreed to take him in, as well, with the understanding that the customers must never find out about his existence.

      Whenever his mother “entertained” he’d been locked outside, no matter the weather, left to run the streets. Out of necessity, he’d learned to take care of himself. He’d become СКАЧАТЬ