Bittersweet (Redemption Book 3) Read online

  Bittersweet

  a Redemption novel

  Jessica Prince

  Copyright © 2020 by Jessica Prince

  www.authorjessicaprince.com

  Published by Jessica Prince Books LLC

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Discover Other Books by Jessica

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  More from Redemption

  Enjoy an Excerpt from Wildflower

  Discover Other Books by Jessica

  About the Author

  Discover Other Books by Jessica

  REDEMPTION SERIES

  Bad Alibi

  Crazy Beautiful

  Bittersweet

  HOPE VALLEY SERIES:

  Out of My League

  Come Back Home Again

  The Best of Me

  Wrong Side of the Tracks

  Stay With Me

  Out of the Darkness

  The Second Time Around

  Waiting for Forever

  CIVIL CORRUPTION SERIES

  Corrupt

  Defile

  Consume

  Ravage

  THE PICKING UP THE PIECES SERIES:

  Picking up the Pieces

  Rising from the Ashes

  Pushing the Boundaries

  Worth the Wait

  THE COLORS NOVELS:

  Scattered Colors

  Shrinking Violet

  Love Hate Relationship

  Wildflower

  THE LOCKLAINE BOYS (a LOVE HATE RELATIONSHIP spinoff):

  Fire & Ice

  Opposites Attract

  Almost Perfect

  The Locklaine Boys: The Complete Series Boxset

  THE PEMBROOKE SERIES (a WILDFLOWER spinoff):

  Sweet Sunshine

  Coming Full Circle

  A Broken Soul

  Welcome to Pembrooke: The Complete Pembrooke Series

  GIRL TALK SERIES:

  Seducing Lola

  Tempting Sophia

  Enticing Daphne

  Charming Fiona

  STANDALONE TITLES:

  One Knight Stand

  Chance Encounters

  Nightmares from Within

  DEADLY LOVE SERIES:

  Destructive

  Addictive

  Prologue

  Shane

  Sixteen years old

  My jaw dropped, my mouth gaping open in awe as I took in my surroundings. The house was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Pushing open the heavy oak door with all its ornate carvings and stepping across the threshold was like entering a whole new world. It was a world along the periphery, one I’d always known existed, but until that very moment, I’d been standing firmly on the outside, never privy to what lay beyond those tall, menacing iron gates that kept us lowly, blue-collar types out.

  The hardwood floors were so rich and dark they were almost black. The silk wallpaper shimmered in the light from the enormous crystal chandelier that hung above our heads, making the streaks of gold and silver intricately woven into the elaborate patterns dance through the air.

  “Okay, sweetie. Now remember, gentle hands. If we break anything in here Mr. Rose’ll have a conniption.”

  My aunt’s voice penetrated my wonderment and caused a clammy sweat to break out across my palms. Those words served to remind me just how out of place Aunt Caroline and I were. We didn’t belong here. Dogwood Estates was a sprawling master-planned community that sat on lush, green golf courses with its own country club, three community pools, and a miniature waterpark. It was where all the wealthy people in Redemption lived, and the thousands of acres near the edge of town were surrounded on all sides by a tall, imposing fence designed to keep the rest of us out. The only reason we were even here was because my Aunt Caroline worked as a housekeeper, cleaning the houses of these stuck-up snobs.

  I’d agreed to tag along with her today to help lighten her workload, and I’ll admit, there was a bit of excitement on my part when she first asked. Sure, I went to school with a lot of the kids who lived here, but I’d never stepped foot past those gates, and my curiosity had gotten the best of me. However, now that I was here, I was almost too afraid to touch anything for fear of tarnishing all the elegance around me.

  “Earth to Shane. You with me, honey pie?”

  I looked to my aunt and offered a half-hearted grin. “Sorry, Aunt Caro. This place is just . . .”

  “Over the top?” she supplied. “Obnoxious? Hoity-toity?”

  “All of the above.” Even though I whispered, my words still rang out in the cavernous entryway, bouncing off the floor and walls.

  Her chest rose and fell on a heaving sigh as she looked up and around. “Yeah, well, just remember, these folks are no different than the rest of us. Just ’cause they got money, don’t mean they’re any better. They might think their shit smells like roses, but we know the truth.” She looked over at me and winked. “It stinks just as bad as ours.”

  I let out a little girly giggle, shaking off some of my nerves. “Sure does.”

  Her ability to put me at ease was one of the many reasons I adored my aunt. My father had taken off when I was a toddler, not wanting the responsibility of being a dad. Mom had bailed on me and my older half-brother when I was only six, and Aunt Caroline and Uncle Scooter hadn’t blinked at the thought of taking us in. That was ten years ago. My brother, Stone, had been nineteen at the time and had only hung around our small town for another couple years before taking off on his own. I was still close to him—or as close as I could be with the occasional phone call and even less occasional visit during the holidays—but with my mom and dad in the wind and Stone living on the other side of the country, my aunt and uncle were the only constants in my life.

  I couldn’t imagine my life without the two of them in it. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t have done for them. Which was why, when my aunt asked for my help today, saying no or whining about having to spend my Saturday cleaning rich peoples’ houses—especially when it was one of the only Saturdays I had off from my own job—hadn’t even crossed my mind.

  She bumped her shoulder into mine. “All right, darlin’, let’s get this done. You start upstairs and I’ll tackle down here. We’ll meet in the middle.”

  With a quick kiss to my temple, Aunt Caroline headed for the kitchen, and I started up the grand curved staircase to the second floor. She’d given me a list of things that needed to be completed before we could move on to the next house, so I quickly got to work.

  Two hours in, I felt like I’d barely scratched the surface of everything there was to do. Already my back ached, some of my hair had fallen out of the knot on the top of my head
and was matted to the thin film of sweat on my forehead and neck. My shirt was clinging to my chest and the small of my back, and I smelled like lemons and chemicals from polishing all the wood in the upstairs office—and there was a lot of it. An executive desk so damn big and imposing I couldn’t help but think that the man who sat behind it was overcompensating for something, three full walls of floor-to-ceiling bookcases in a deep, rich, cherry, and a wet bar.

  Cleaning every nook and cranny of that room was a pain in the ass, and as I stepped out into the hallway, pulling the door closed behind me, I let out a sigh, thinking that the last room I had left couldn’t possibly be worse than that one. My stomach sank as soon as I twisted the knob on the door across from the upstairs office and pushed it open.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

  The room was a pigsty. Clothes lay scattered everywhere, the dresser drawers hung open, their contents partially spilling out. The whole place stunk like dirty gym socks and . . . something else.

  I stepped farther into the room, ignoring the discarded condom wrappers that littered the floor and nightstand beside the bed, and moved slowly toward the desk that rested against the far wall just below a diamond-paned window. I discovered what the other smell was when I spotted the ashtray with a half-smoked blunt resting lazily against the side.

  It took all of five seconds to form an instant dislike for the kid who stayed in this room. “Rich, spoiled prick,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Didn’t your parents teach you it’s not nice to judge a book by its cover?”

  Sucking in a frightened gasp, I clutched the material of my shirt over my heart and whipped around. At the sight of a boy standing in the doorway—if boy was even the accurate term to describe him—all the air expelled from my lungs and my mouth grew as dry as a grassy field in the middle of a sweltering summer drought.

  He looked to be around eighteen, but he was taller than all the boys I went to school with, standing at least an inch over six feet tall. He was all loose-limbed and casual as he leaned against the door frame, his arms crossed over his chest, hiding the image on his tee, but I was still able to make out the design well enough to know it was a name brand that no one I hung out with could afford. The stance highlighted his swollen biceps and thick forearms. His artfully ripped jeans and expensive-as-hell sneakers probably cost what most people would pay for a month’s rent, and he let off an air of cocky entitlement. He was gorgeous and he knew it.

  His eyes were surrounded by slashes of dark, naturally arched brows and long, thick lashes that made me envious. Those dark depths did a sweep of me from top to toe, the intensity in their depths making me shiver as I stood there, trapped in place by his gaze. I felt exposed, completely bare as he took his time and looked his fill.

  “Sorry. I didn’t know . . . I was just—”

  “Snooping through my shit?” he asked with an arrogant smirk, drawing my attention to his lips. They were full and plump, the bottom one a bit puffier than the top. They looked incredibly soft, like they were just made for kissing.

  My back went straight. “I wasn’t snooping,” I shot back indignantly, squaring my shoulders and lifting my chin while ignoring the way his toothpaste-perfect grin made my heart speed up and my skin prickle. “And didn’t your parents ever teach you not to be a disgusting slob?”

  My response made the corners of his mouth curl up even higher, turning his grin into a full-blown smile that ramped up his hotness even more. It was as if he liked me fighting back.

  “You’re just a ray of sunshine, aren’t you? For your information, my parents didn’t really teach me shit. To them, that’s what boarding schools are for.” The bitterness that coated his words, leaving them sharp-edged and jagged, was a contrast to the indifferent attitude he was trying to exude. “Besides, why would I bother cleaning my own shit when we pay a maid to do it?”

  “First of all, the term is housekeeper, you ass. Second, you aren’t paying for anything, your parents are. And last, just because they can afford to pay someone to come in and clean doesn’t give you the right to be a slob and make that person’s job even harder.”

  My anger didn’t seem to affect him at all. “You mean make your job harder?”

  “I’m not your housekeeper, my aunt is. I’m just helping out because crap like this”—I spread my arms wide to indicate his filthy room—“takes up too much of her time.”

  “You know, sunshine, you aren’t really making the case you think you are.”

  My belly fluttered at the nickname, and I told myself it was an unhappy feeling caused by my instant dislike for this guy. “Don’t call me sunshine, and what’s that supposed to mean?”

  He pushed off the doorframe, standing to his full height and moving into the room. He stopped a couple feet away, but it was close enough for me to smell the faint musk and spice of his cologne. I didn’t want to like that smell but I couldn’t help it.

  “It means I like seeing you in my bedroom, so knowing you’ll have to help your aunt out more if I keep this place a sty isn’t really incentive for me to pick up after myself.”

  That flutter grew more pronounced. Pushing my body’s reaction to the back of my mind, I narrowed my eyelids into slits and crossed my arms over my chest. “So I was right. You really are a rich, spoiled prick.”

  “Never said I wasn’t, sunshine.”

  God, what a jerk. A stupid, sexy jerk.

  Now that he was closer, I was able to see his eyes weren’t a deep brown like I’d initially thought, but a dark grayish-blue, flecked lightly with gold. They looked like thunderclouds during a storm.

  “What’s your name, sunshine?” he asked in a low sultry voice that probably worked on all the other girls he brought up here, but it wasn’t going to work on me.

  “None of your business.”

  That response caught him off guard, and his chin jerked back in bewilderment. Judging by his reaction and the number of condom wrappers scattered about, he wasn’t used to that tone being hurled at him from a girl standing in the middle of his bedroom. I’d thrown him off his game, if only for a short while, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. One point for Shane, I thought smugly.

  “You’re seriously not gonna tell me your name?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t like you,” I answered, my flat voice indicating boredom. “And because we’re never gonna see each other again, so there’s really no point.”

  He took another step, towering over me so I had to tip my head back to maintain contact with those stormy eyes. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that, babe.”

  Before I had a chance to issue a rebuttal, my aunt’s voice called out, carrying up the stairs and into the room. “Shane, sweetie? You just about done up there?”

  Crap. “Yeah, Aunt Caro,” I answered, taking a step back and looking away from the gorgeous boy and his arrogant smirk. “Almost.”

  “All right, honey pie. Get the lead out, yeah? We still got a couple more houses before we can call it a day.”

  “Yes ma’am,” I returned, casting my gaze down to my dingy white tennis shoes that probably cost less than a quarter of what his cost. I sidestepped and started for the door, anxious to escape this room and my body’s unsettling reaction to the boy standing in the middle of it.

  I was almost home free when he spoke again. “It was nice meeting you, Shane.” I didn’t bother looking over my shoulder to see the grin on his face. I could hear it in his voice loud and clear. “I’m Jensen, by the way, and I’ll be seein’ you around. Probably sooner than you think.”

  My lips began to curl up of their own accord, and I had to bite down on them to keep my smile at bay as I walked away from Jensen.

  I couldn’t have possibly known it at the time, but that was the very moment my life changed, shifting from the course it had been on for the past sixteen years and taking me down a totally different path.

  A path I never
would have expected, and one that would end with my heart being stomped to dust.

  Chapter One

  Shane

  When I was younger, I had all these very specific ideas about what my future was going to be like. While most girls grew up wishing for Prince Charming, a white picket fence, and two-point-five kids, my plans went in a different, far less romantic direction.

  But that was what happened when pretty much everyone you ever loved bailed on you. Having my mom, dad, and big brother kick up dust in their hurry to leave was enough to seriously screw with a young, impressionable girl’s head. I had enough abandonment issues to fill the Grand Canyon, and then some. I’d walked around on eggshells for years after Stone left, just waiting for the day when I’d somehow lose Aunt Caro and Uncle Scooter, the only two people I had left.

  Even though that day never came, the damage had already been done, so when other girls my age were honing their flirting skills and shopping for those outfits that would catch the eye of a hot, popular jock, I was concentrating on being as independent as humanly possible. I kept myself closed off from the idea of long, lasting relationships. After all, what was the point of letting people into your heart when they would end up leaving anyway?