Secret Love - Brenda Jackson [76]
Caroline had left their parents’ home in a small Ohio town and had come to California to live with him after graduating from high school. There had been this sweet small-town innocence about her. And as hard as he had tried, he could not protect her from the men who had been determined to take advantage of it. Maybe if he had tried harder, Caroline would still be alive today with the acting career she had always wanted. Instead his sister had fallen in love and married some wealthy guy who appeared to be treating her like a queen, but in reality, behind close doors he was physically abusing her.
Ammons took another swig out of the bottle. By the time he became aware of what his sister was going through, it was too late. The man killed Caroline senselessly one night in a bout of jealous rage.
Remembering what had happened to Caroline, he had left the news conference that day determined to protect the seventeen-year-old Diamond from marrying a man who would claim to love her and would only hurt her. It was apparent to him that her father had no intention of offering her any such protection. The only thing Jack Swain wanted was to advance his daughter’s acting career.
Now eighteen years later, he was still obsessed with protecting Diamond. It had been hard over the years to treat her with indifference at press conferences. He couldn’t pamper her in front of the other reporters without running the risk of their getting suspicious of his role in her life. So as not to give anything away, he’d had to use his hard-nosed line of questioning with her just like he did with all the other celebrities he interviewed.
He took another drink, thinking that she didn’t need to be married. She could do just fine without a husband. All a man would eventually do was hurt her, and he wouldn’t let that happen. He was determined to do for her what he didn’t do for Caroline.
It had angered him when she had married that race-car driver, Samuel Tate. Twice he had managed to sabotage Tate’s car before a race, and twice Tate had miraculously walked away unharmed. He was about to make his third attempt when Diamond had released a statement to the press, announcing her pending divorce from Tate. It was lucky for the man that she had done that.
He hadn’t felt threatened by her alleged involvement with Sterling Hamilton. Since not all love affairs ended in marriage, Hamilton had been spared his anger. One could walk away from an affair—but when you were married to someone, you were doomed for life to take all kinds of abuse.
Now Diamond had gone and hitched herself to a rancher. That would never do since she was even thinking of leaving California to live permanently on the man’s ranch in Texas. No telling what the man would do to her on that isolated stretch of land out there in the middle of nowhere. She would not have anyone around to protect her.
He couldn’t let what happened to Caroline happen to her. He had to do something to protect Diamond. He would stop at nothing to keep her safe from overbearing and abusive men.
From both press conferences, he could tell that she actually thought Jacob Madaris was the love of her life. Unfortunately, Caroline had thought the same thing of Spencer Campbell.
He would give Madaris another warning. If that didn’t work, he would put into action a plan to rid Diamond of him forever.
Chapter 19
W hen Jake awoke the next morning, he was surprised to find Diamond was already up and moving about. Lifting himself up on one elbow, he watched her move around the room, getting dressed.
“Good morning. Going someplace?”
Diamond looked up from slipping into her shoes and smiled. “Jacob, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean