Wicked Ties(139)

man. Rare, but the wrong type of rare. Sorry. I need a cup of coffee. Want one?”

Jack shook his head.

Shit, he couldn’t even help Morgan in this. He hated feeling so damn helpless. “I’m A

positive.”

As Deke left the room, Brandon shucked his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeve. “I’m

AB positive. I just told them I’ll give. They’re coming to get me in a few minutes.”

A huge stroke of luck that Brandon had Morgan’s rare blood type. Jack choked on a

million replies that sprang to his tongue. He settled on the only one that would do for

now. “Thank you.”

“I care about Morgan, too. It’s nothing.”

It was everything to Jack. Brandon donating meant Jack had a shot at a future, even if

Morgan never spoke to him again. Just knowing she was alive and well would sustain

him.

In fact, Morgan’s injury had made him realize a thing or two. Namely, that this

vendetta he’d carried had both nearly made him and nearly destroyed him. It had to end.

It was time to ensure this sort of shit never happened again. Time give Brandon back his

life.

And to free himself.

Stumbling to his feet, Jack reached his inside coat pocket and withdrew a video tape.

In an old package with a tattered white cardboard cover, it hung heavy in his hand.

“Here.” He held it out to Brandon.

“What is this?” Brandon raised puzzled blue eyes to him.

“You know damn well what it is. I had this one in my office, which is right around the

corner. I’ve got the spare in a safe deposit box. I’ll get it back to you next week. It’s time I gave them to you.”

Recognition dawned across Brandon’s face. “The video with Kayla? No more

threatening to blackmail me if I run for office?”

“No more,” Jack answered tightly, then turned to sit.

“Seriously?” Brandon grabbed the arm of Jack’s coat. “Why? Why now?”

Jack faced his nemesis, his old friend, again. “Falling for Morgan proved to me real

quick that self-control is just a highminded ideal. You loved Kayla, and when my pride

wouldn’t let her go, despite her asking for a divorce, you claimed her the only way you

could. In your shoes…I might have done the same.” “I loved her. She broke my fucking

heart.” Brandon’s monotone reply revealed that he’d never recovered from Kayla. For the

first time in his life, Jack could understand that hitby-a-Mack-truck feeling.

“I’m going to lose Morgan over this revenge,” Jack muttered, raking tense hands

through his hair, “Over something I should have let go of years ago. And if she rides off

into the sunset to marry you, I don’t want her to have any other reason to hate me. Just…

take care of her.”

Brandon rubbed at an apparent pain between his eyebrows and smiled with bitter

irony. “I will, but I’m not going to marry her. Jack, she’s not my fiancée, and I’ve never

touched her in my life. She’s my half-sister.”

If Brandon had said he was really a two-headed rhino in disguise, Jack couldn’t have

been any more stunned. “Sister?” With a tight nod, Brandon began, “This can’t leave the

room. You’ve always been a man of your word…even when I haven’t been.”

“Your secret is safe.”

“Thanks.” Brandon sighed, stood and paced. “My father impregnated her mother

when she worked for him as a barely-legal intern. He paid her handsomely to go away

and never mention his name to anyone, not even to Morgan.

“About three years ago, when my father first started talking about a bid for the White

House, he hired a consultant, who told him to dig out every skeleton in his closet and

bury it even deeper. My father came clean to me about Morgan. I looked her up on his

orders, with the intent to pay her off. But I liked her too much to give up being her

brother. We kept in touch, saw each other. I was there when she taped her first show.”

A smile lifted the corners of Brandon’s mouth for a moment, before he turned

pensive again. “When this business with the stalker started, I tried to help her. But

protecting her from Houston became impossible, and when the asshole masturbated on

her bed, I told her to come stay with me. We floated the story that she was my fiancée as

a cover, since I couldn’t tell anyone the truth.”

And Jack had believed the lie, believed Morgan was his fiancée, then pursued her all

the way to submission because of it.

Life was going to hurt like hell without her, but he couldn’t be sorry he’d had her for

a brief time. She clearly wasn’t going to marry Brandon…but he also doubted she’d