5

Chapter 84 Out

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Ava had a new plan; renovate the hell out of Jax's house, change her mind, renovate some more and around the time they were married three years, the house would be ready for Jax to move in alone. She had no plans to move out of her father's home. She knew enough to know that she had it good; her laundry was done, her room cleaned and her meals prepared.

Now if her father would give her a housekeeper and a cook, she might be OK with living in a lesser house than the mansions she was used to. She'd never even cleaned her room despite the best efforts of a couple of her nannies. She liked things slightly messy; it made her feel like she was living in a home and not a magazine.

Even if she could talk her father into giving them a housekeeper and a chef, she doubted Jax would be OK with it. He was the macho unenlightened type. He would expect his wife to do all the house work, laundry and cooking for him.

She'd watched some old reruns of Bewitched on TV and it made her blood boil. Samantha was a witch. She meets an unattractive guy named Darrin with greasy dark hair who is OK with her being a witch as long as she doesn't use her powers. He prefers that she scrubs his toilets with her hands and not use magic. What a pig! He doesn't want her to be who she truly is and wants her to be his housekeeper, chef and laundry service. It was beyond Ava's comprehension that anyone thought this was OK. She watched a couple of episodes and gave up. It was more horror show than comedy.

She was sure that if Darrin were the one who had to cook, clean and do laundry, he'd jump at the chance to use magic to handle the chores. Samantha was just as bad though. She wanted to do things the mortal way like there is something fulfilling about scrubbing toilets and cleaning. Just thinking about that show started to make her mad all over again.

When they returned to Charming, Ava had decided she was going to quit having sex with Jax. She didn't have any reason; she just thought it sounded like a good idea. And then she had an even better idea—use sex to manipulate Jax. Men were such idiots and it was easy to use sex against them. She allowed Jax to think that he was seducing him with all his toxic maleness, muscles and sex appeal. And she did enjoy sex with Jax more than she ever had before even adding sex toys into the equation.

She was just building up his sexual attachment to her so she could use it later to get him to do what she wanted. It was the special power women had over men. She'd never bothered using it before because she never bothered to stay with a guy long enough.

Jax got up early and managed to talk to TB for a few minutes. He'd been giving more thought to Ava's idea that he train to be an attorney and he wanted to talk to TB about it. TB said that he could meet with him tomorrow in his office at 10. He'd been wanting to talk to him too.

Jax took Ava to George's, the best of the local diners. He ordered a Monte Cristo sandwich that came with fries. Ava got a pastrami sandwich with onion rings. They shared the onion rings and fries.

"I've got a meeting with your father tomorrow. I want to talk about studying law. He'll probably laugh me out of his office, but I'm going to give it a try."

"He won't laugh at you. He'll help you. You don't have to become a full lawyer. You could become a paralegal or some kind of legal assistant. Maybe you could even start out by helping him find another case of wrongful conviction. Was there anyone you met that you thought might have been innocent and set up by police?"

"There were a couple of guys that might have been innocent. I can contact them and look into their stories a little. It would feel good to help someone get out of prison."

"You just have to make sure that the person is innocent."

"Everyone in prison always says their innocent, but you just get this gut feeling when someone is telling the truth."

"You could be really helpful to my father," Ava said.

"Don't you have any interest in learning about law?"

"I've learned my whole life. I don't need to know anymore than I already do."

Jax could barely control his excitement at getting to see his house again. He still remembered the first time he'd set foot in the place marveling that he was now the owner of a whole house, yard, a stove, a dishwasher and everything else. He'd never had so much and it was up to him how to make his home.

He'd only had six months in the house when he'd been arrested. He hadn't even had time to do much more than paint the outside of the house that crisp clean white. He still had to paint the trim that cherry red he'd gotten from the hardware store. He was even going to paint the door red.

Jax drove around with Ava for a few minutes before turning down the street prepared to see the house he'd left. He pulled up into the driveway and Ava slowly got off the bike.

His house was still white but the lawn looked like it hadn't been mowed in months. The bushes and flowers Gemma had planted were all gone replaced by weeds.

Ava looked at the house unable to hide the shock she felt.

"I thought you said it was gated?"

"Two gates," Jax said pointing to either side of the house. "There's a fence in the backyard."

"I meant gated like The Castle."

"I'm a mechanic. Mechanics don't live in gated castles, Ava."

Ava studied the house. It was a neat tidy looking house or it could have been with another coat of paint and the trim needed painting.

"Gemma will have a fit if she has seen what happened to all her hard work on the yard. She's a great gardener."

Ava had doubts that Gemma was great at anything besides trying to make her miserable and Ava was never going to give Gemma the satisfaction of succeeding at that.

"Let's look around inside. It needs some work. I never got a chance to paint it and fix it up like I wanted."

"Does it have a pool?"

"No." Jax walked to the door and unlocked it, a smile on his face. Ava trailed behind him, noticeably less enthusiastic.

The house was a wreck. The flooring had been stripped out and there was rotting marijuana leaves all over the floor. The stench was overwhelming. Ava held her breath.

The kitchen had roaches massing on the counters and crawling on the cabinets and mice scampered merrily around the floor.

Ava was out the door before Jax could say another word to her.