Page 88 of Burn for You (Slow Burn 1)
At three o’clock, the sleek black sedan with the obnoxious hood ornament pulled up in front of the curb. Rayford got out, smiling his carefree smile. “Miss Bianca,” he said, loping up my front steps. He picked up my small suitcase. “You ready to visit Kentucky?”
I smiled so hard my cheeks hurt. “Ready as I’ll ever be!”
He sent me a sympathetic look, opened the back door for me and helped me get settled, then went to the trunk to put my bag in.
Jackson was sitting on the seat beside me, wearing jeans and his old, scabby leather jacket, the one he’d been wearing the night we met. His greeting was curt. “We have to stop by my attorney’s office on the way to the airport.”
“Good morning to you, too.”
He blew out a hard breath through his nose. The entire car vibrated with his tension. I didn’t dare say anything else.
In a few minutes we arrived at a nondescript office building. When we went inside, a tall man in a suit was waiting for us with a folder of documents.
“Mr. Boudreaux,” he said, enthusiastically pumping Jackson’s hand and bowing so low he almost bent in half.
The man—whom Jackson did not introduce—sh
owed us into an opulent office. We all sat around his desk. He opened the folder, flipped through a few pages of the stapled documents, turned the pages around to me, and pointed to a line at the bottom.
“Sign here, please.”
From the top drawer of his desk he produced a stamp and a ledger book.
“What’s this?” I asked Jackson, perplexed.
“The trust has to be notarized,” he answered, as if it were obvious.
“Oh.” I flipped to the front of the document and scanned the pages until I found the words one million dollars. Satisfied, I signed my name with a flourish on the line where the man in the blue suit had indicated. Then he presented me with his ledger book, which I also had to sign and affix my thumbprint to with ink that wiped off my skin without a trace.
Blue Suit Man stamped underneath where I had signed, closed his ledger, and put the stamp and ledger back in the desk drawer. He slid the documents into the folder.
Then he said something about a tax ID number and a certified copy for the bank and my attorney, and we were done.
Jackson ushered me out to the car with his hand under my elbow like he was leading an invalid. Once we were settled back in our seats, he seemed a bit less tense and even offered me a small smile.
He said, “You look beautiful.”
I said, “I’m terrified.”
“Of what?”
“What if your parents hate me?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Of course I’m worried about it!”
He ground his molars together. “No matter what happens, you’re going to be fine,” he said ominously, then closed his eyes and went to sleep.
He spent the rest of the ride to the airport sleeping, while I stared at his profile and wondered how many more layers I’d have to peel back before I uncovered the true heart of the walking contradiction that was Jackson Walker Boudreaux.
TWENTY-FIVE
BIANCA
At the airport we drove directly out to the jet waiting on the tarmac. While Rayford unloaded the luggage, we went through “security,” which consisted of a cheerful woman in a sweater vest and a badge glancing at our IDs. We were seated on the plane in less time than it usually takes to find parking for a commercial flight.
This being rich business was certainly convenient.
