Wife for Hire

Chapter 17

(Karmen) 
    “Mmm.” I turned onto my side and snuggled closer to my pillow. Jason’s bed had been comfortable last night when I went to bed, but this morning, it wasn’t so comfortable. The only thing that was, was the pillow all though it wasn’t as soft and fluffy as I remembered it being last night. I moved the pillow around some trying to get comfortable again and sighed in relief, finally. I laid there for a minute enjoying my newfound comfort when something didn’t sound right. Bump bump. I snuggled deeper into my pillow. Surely, my pillow didn’t have a heartbeat. I listened again and there it was again, bump bump. What kind of high tech pillows did Jason have? Had they always done this? Had I just not been paying very much attention? 
    “You seem very comfortable.” My eyes snapped open and I looked up. Jason was smirking at me, why was he smirking at me? Because I was laying on his chest. I scrambled to get away from him, but he wrapped his arms around me. 
    “You know, I remember a couple of months ago when you first got here, you practically said you would rather sleep on the bathroom floor than with me. What changed?” I tried to keep my face from burning, but I knew I was failing terribly. 
    “I-I’m sorry. I don’t know how I got down here.” I said trying to move away from him, but failing miserably. He chuckled and moved a piece of hair behind my hair. 
    “It's okay, you just wanted to get closer to me. I understand.” 
    “No way, I must have rolled off of the bed in my sleep last night.” He raised an eyebrow. 
    “I’m serious! I really must have!” That eyebrow was still raised, but this time he added a smirk. I swear I wanted to smack that smirk off of his face. 
    “Then why are you still laying her with me then?” 
I was about to open my mouth to say something when Jason’s door swung open. We both looked up to find Derek rushing into Jason’s room. He stopped when he saw us on the floor entangled in all of the blankets and pillows. 
“What the hell is going on?” He practically yelled. I went to scramble away from Jason, but he held firm. 
“Nothing much, what’s going on with you?” Jason responded. Derek was doing that smile again, the one that should usually feel very welcoming and inviting, but actually felt scary and deadly. I looked between the two of them and then nudged Jason again, he looked down at me a playful smile on his lips now. I tried to fight the urge to return it, but I couldn’t. With his bed head and goofy smile, it was all just too contagious. Derek cleared his throat behind us and I came back to my senses. This time Jason did let me go. I stood to greet Derek and found him looking between me and Jason. Jason finally stood glancing at me with a wink before walking over to me and wrapping an arm around my waist. What was with this random show of affection? And why was Derek so angry? 
“If you would stop goofing off for about ten seconds, I could explain to you why I’m here.” Derek said, I pushed Jason’s arm from around my waist and walked over to Derek. He glanced at me and then nodded for us to follow him. I looked back at Jason who shrugged and just followed. We made it downstairs and stood in front of the tv that Derek had turned on. We were watching one of those gossip stations about celebrities. There was a lady and a man on screen talking about some famous couple that had partied a bit too hard. 
“Up next,” the guy started. “Is there possible trouble in paradise?” On the screen a picture of me and Jason’s face popped up on the screen from our wedding day. Jason and I looked at each other confused. 
“Derek, what is this about? It’s just one of those dumb tv shows, they put all kinds of random stuff on the air all the time.” I looked back at the screen, they had cut to commercial, but there was a video of a puppy playing with a ball. I practically melted. 
“Karmen?” Derek said waving a hand in front of my face, I shook myself out of the daze and looked at both of them to see that they had amused looks on their faces. 
“Sorry, dog.” They nodded and continued talking arguing about what could possibly be on the show. I looked back at the tv screen and Pennywise's face popped up. I jumped and hid behind Jason. He glanced over at the screen and wrapped an arm around me as he continued arguing with Derek. Everytime I tried to look up at the screen Jason would cover my eyes. At this point, I knew that the preview was over, I just didn’t understand why he continued to cover my face.
“Shut up, it’s back on!” They both turned to look at the tv, but Jason’s hand was still covering my eyes. I went to pull at his hand, but he held firm. 
“Jason, I can’t see!” He removed his hands from my eyes and smiled apologetically. I looked to the screen to see what they were seeing. The two hosts were still talking. 
“Welcome back! Before we cut to commercial we were talking about the Aldriges’!” The guy host nodded. 
“You’re right Allison, apparently an insider from their circle admitted that Karmen, Jason’s new wife might be seeing someone on the side.” There was a reaction from the crowd. Jason’s eyes widened and I shook my head, I wasn’t seeing anybody. 
“An anonymous person sent these pictures to us. It’s a picture of Jason’s wife walking into a strip club, followed by a guy, and then leaving, followed by the same guy. They couldn’t give us many details other than she was seen with him a couple of days before, in a club. And get this folks, they were in the same club her husband was in at the time. Talk about bold!” I felt like I was going to throw up. That was Markus, they had caught me and Markus on camera. I knew I wasn’t doing anything with him, but Markus was a loan shark/drug dealer. He didn’t need to be seen on tv like that,even if his face was blurred, I could be in a lot of trouble. 
“Derek, turn the tv off.” Derek scrambled for the tv remote and switched off the tv. They both looked at me as I sank down on the sofa. How had they gotten those pictures? Who had been following me? This was before Jason and I were really close and we had had that big disagreement that morning right? Or was that the same morning that I went to see Maxine and Joe? I couldn’t think straight. 
“Did you have someone following me?” Derek and Jason had been in a deep conversation when Jason stopped to look at me. 
“Is that the kind of person you think I am, Karmen?” I looked him over and a part of me knew that it hadn’t been him. He didn’t seem like the type, but when I met Markus, he didn’t know much about me and probably didn’t even care about me like that. He probably had them following me to get some dirt on me, make sure he could blackmail me into doing his bidding on top of the contract.
“I don’t know Jason, are you that kind of person? Is the way you’ve been acting the past couple of days an act? You found out about my mom and all of a sudden you have to pretend to be nice to me?” He scoffed and ran a hand through his hair. 
“Pretend to be nice to you?” He moved closer to me. “Karmen, I don’t have it in me to pretend with you. At the time I could care less what you did, as long as you weren’t out there giving me a bad name.” It was my turn to scoff. Giving him a bad name? Ha! 
“Last time I checked, you had already done that for yourself!” I turned to leave, but he grabbed my arm. 
“You know what Karmen, you can think what you want all you want, but i’m not that kind of person. Yeah I was a jerk to you when you first got here, but that was because! Because...uh, yeah.” I crossed my arms and raised an eyebrow at him. 
“Because of what Jason?” He wouldn’t look me in the eye and turned away from me. I moved in front of him so he couldn’t avoid eye contact. 
“Because what, Jason?” He sighed and ran his hands through his hair again. 
“Because I was trying not to care about you.” I don’t know why this surprised me, but it did. I just figured I was a means to an end for him, an employee. 
“And now?” I said. I don’t know why I asked, I was honestly scared to know the answer. I didn’t want to hear that my prediction was correct, he pitied me and my mom. I didn’t want to hear that in reality he was being nice to me because of whatever she said. I just wanted to believe that the friendship we had been building these past couple of weeks was because he wanted to, not out of necessity. 
“And now, I-” I held up a hand and shook my head. I couldn’t hear it. I didn’t want to hear. 
“Don’t worry about it Jason.” I turned to leave, but he grabbed me again, this time pulling me so close to him I could feel his heartbeat against his chest. I looked into his eyes that held the same fear and confusion that mine did and felt myself calm down. He hadn’t sent the pictures. 
“Karmen, I tried the whole not caring thing and somehow you keep managing to get past the wall that I put up. You make it impossible not to care about you.” I felt the relief cool its way through my chest and sighed. I was scared that I was going to be right and that he didn’t really care. He pushed some hair behind my ear and I found myself smiling at him. 
“Besides, I need someone to taste test my new creations.” At this I practically moaned. He laughed and shook his head. 
“Why do you keep making food a sexual experience?” He said, I looked at him like he was stupid. 
“Because it is!” He burst out laughing at how serious I was and I swatted at his arm. He rubbed where I had hit him, but I rolled my eyes a small smile coming to my face. Derek cleared his throat and I jumped, I had forgotten that he was there. 
“Sorry to interrupt the love fest and what not, but we still need to figure out who sent the pictures?” I looked to Jason and any humor that had been seen in his face before was suddenly gone. 
“I know exactly who sent them and who had you followed. Don’t worry about anything Karmen, me and Derek will handle this.” Derek looked at Jason as if he was crazy, I looked back to Jason and saw the anger in his eyes, but he was sure of it. He wanted to handle whoever it was that had done this.