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He shrugged. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Why in the world not?”
“No woman is going to want me,” he said matter-of-factly. “And honestly, I have no desire to date anyway.”
I looked at him, confused. “Why?”
He was quiet for a moment before he said, “I was engaged once. It didn’t end well.”
Riveted, I watched his eyes grow dark as he added, “We came pretty damn close to getting married. Fortunately, we put off setting a definite date.”
“What happened?”
“My accident happened. Marcus headed a team of guys who formed a private rescue organization. We went in when the government wouldn’t and rescued victims who were kidnapped and imprisoned in foreign countries. Usually political prisoners. We’d been together for years, saved a lot of lives. But our helicopter crashed in the Middle East. A couple of us were pretty badly wounded. It’s been a few years, and I’m still not fully recovered.”
“So you broke it off because of your accident?” Why would he do that when he must have needed support?
“She broke it off. I didn’t get the best of medical care because we weren’t close to a large city right after the accident. By the time I got back to the States, they weren’t sure they could save my leg, and I looked like hell. I still am, and always will be badly scarred. Lisette hated the way I looked, and she didn’t want me with a bum leg that would keep me from doing a lot of things, especially dancing or any other social activity that required some kind of grace.”
“She dumped you because you couldn’t dance?” I asked incredulously.
“I’m pretty sure she didn’t want a guy who was going to be scarred for the rest of his life, either.”
“Oh, my God, are you kidding me?” My shocked question rang out louder than it should have, but I was pretty damn dumbfounded.
“You wanted honesty, Ruby. I’m spilling my guts here,” he informed me drily.
“I’m sorry. I just can’t imagine any woman in her right mind dumping you for such a superficial reason.” Honestly, I was angry. Jett had been saving others when he’d been hurt. “What kind of bitch does something like that?”
His eyes lightened with humor, but he didn’t speak. He shut down the laptop he was holding, and set it aside.
Finally, he said, “I guess the kind of woman I was going to marry would do something like that.”
I put my e-reader on the side table as I asked, “Do you still love her?”
Please say no!
Jett didn’t deserve to be pining over a woman who definitely hadn’t loved him.
“I don’t,” he answered gruffly. “Hell, I don’t even like her anymore. Haven’t seen her since she walked out of my hospital room after reminding me what a mess I was. But that experience pretty much told me that very few women were ever going to be able to overlook the fact that I have…limitations. And some pretty ugly scars.”
He thought he wasn’t attractive anymore? Surely Jett didn’t think that no other woman would want him just because he’d been dissed by a grade-A bitch. “That’s not true,” I said emphatically. “You’re still very attractive.”
“You haven’t seen me naked,” he rumbled.
It wasn’t the first time he’d said that in some kind of joking form, but I wished he’d quit reminding me that I really would like to see his ripped body completely in the raw.
I wanted to tell him that I’d love to see him nude, but I wasn’t brave enough to admit that I couldn’t find a single fault in him. His scars were just a part of him, proof that he was willing to do anything—even risk his own life—to save someone else. If that wasn’t a turn-on for some women, it was their loss.
I thought about what he had told me, and all I did was get more and more pissed off. “She’s not the only type of woman out there, Jett. In fact, I’d say she was an exception.”
“Not in my world,” he snapped.
“Then maybe you need to find a new world,” I suggested.
“I don’t feel like looking for somebody else, Ruby,” he replied. “I’d rather put my effort into my company, and making a full recovery. My knee will never be quite right, but I’m hoping it will get better than what it is now. The surgeries are over, I hope. I had my last one on my knee a few months ago. So it’s all about working on getting it stronger.”