“Hopefully nothing,” he said, quickly shaking his hand and then brushing past him.
Relief flooded him when Luke shrugged him off and walked the other way which allowed Tag to take a seat at the bar and order a Jack and coke. “Go light on the coke,” Tag told Kane.
“Rough day?” Kane asked as he grabbed the bottle from behind him.
Kane’s comment conjured up an image of when McKenna had been wrapped around him like a damn blanket just a few short hours ago. Rough. Literally. And damn he wanted more of her right now.
Tag didn’t answer Kane, he just nodded his head. The last thing he wanted to do was talk. He preferred to sit right there, drown his thoughts in whiskey and the unruly chaos happening around him. Unfortunately, the crowd seemed a little subdued tonight and Tag found himself glancing around to see what was different.
Nothing really. Not as far as he could see anyway. The club was packed like usual with people laughing, talking and having a good time while some were dancing. Even the tables were all full. Not much different than any other night he supposed.
That’s when he saw her.
Just when he was turning back around in his seat, Tag’s eyes landed on McKenna, sitting across the bar from him.
With Travis Walker.
A wave of jealousy so powerful swept through him, Tag wasn’t sure how he hadn’t fallen off the fucking barstool. The professional in him wouldn’t allow himself to stalk across the room and take her by the arm, pulling her away from that damn cowboy.
The alpha in him told the professional to go fuck himself.
Tag emerged from his seat, downing the last of his whiskey before slamming the glass back on the bar top. He could hear his heart pounding in his ears; feel his hands balled into fists at his side as he moved around to the opposite end where the two of them were talking.
“Murphy,” Travis greeted, eyeing him suspiciously when he approached.
“Walker.”
McKenna didn’t even spare him a glance, but that didn’t stop Tag from interrupting.
“Didn’t know you were in town,” he told the man sitting beside McKenna, drinking a beer and watching him closely.
“Didn’t know I had to get permission,” Travis smirked.
Why was it that he suddenly felt like a foolish teenager trying to prove his own worth? He was reduced to childish machismo standing here, practically facing off with Travis Walker when it was apparent the two of them were only talking. Hell, they weren’t even sitting that close to one another, but Tag still didn’t like it. At all.
There were two words that came to mind, but no matter how hard he tried, Tag couldn’t seem to spit them out. Instead, he allowed his arm to gently brush McKenna’s, wondering if there was a chance in hell that she felt exactly how sorry he was.
Chapter Thirty Five
*** ~~ *** ~~ *** ~~ ***
McKenna made it into the office a little after seven the following morning. That was later than usual, but she hadn’t been able to fall asleep until close to three, and she felt like death warmed over. She was sure she looked like it too.
Her office didn’t look much better.
By the time she arrived, Whisper was already there, along with two security guards that Alex McDermott had placed on twenty four hour watch.
“Hey,” Whisper greeted when McKenna walked through the main doors.
The place looked a million times better than it had even the night before when she stopped by after Tag left her house. Seeing everything she worked so hard to build in such disarray had caused her to go to the club for a drink where she ran into Travis Walker.
They shared a beer, but it didn’t take long for her to remember he wasn’t much of a conversationalist, or maybe he just didn’t find her interesting. Either way, after Tag had come and gone, she called it a night. Only that wasn’t when her night ended.
Unfortunately, she spent the better part of it replaying every scene from every time she had been near Tag for the last couple of months only to make herself hurt that much more.
“Did you call the insurance company?” Whisper was standing in front of her now as she stared at the mess around them.
“Not yet,” she told her. “That’s the first thing I’m doing this morning though.”
That was the plan anyway. Just as soon as she docked her computer and figured out whether there was anything pressing to take care of. She wasn’t sure how anything would take more priority over getting everything in the office replaced, or having the walls repaired, but for some reason McKenna had a hard time dealing with it all right then.
When she made it to her office door, she slowly pushed it open, remembering what she had seen the night before.
And there it was.
In brilliant red paint sprayed across the wall was the word “whore” in bold, capital letters. If she had any doubt who had done this, she definitely didn’t now. Surprisingly, there hadn’t been a single printed article the day before about Club Destiny or the McCoy’s by any newspaper or online blog that she knew of, so at least something good came out of it all.
“Are you ok?” Whisper’s voice startled her, and McKenna spun around to see her friend standing in the doorway.
“I will be,” McKenna said, hoping Whisper assumed she was talking about the mess that Crawford had made. What she was really referring to was the devastation that had currently taken up residence in her heart.
That thought immediately invoked memories from the night before when Tag stood beside her chair, his eyes boring holes into her skin as he spoke to Travis. She never said a word, and she never looked at him. Mostly because if she had, she would’ve broken down in tears and she was tired of crying. In fact, she was pretty sure her tear ducts had dried up.
“Have you talked to him?” Whisper asked in an unusually soothing voice.
“Who?”
That prompted Whisper to put her hands on her hips and stare back at her like she had lost her mind. “Ok, woman. I’ll let you play this game for a few more minutes, but that’s all you get. Ten minutes tops. Then I’m coming back in here and there better be a damn smile on your face, or I’m going to put one there myself.”
Whisper’s outrage actually made McKenna smile. She couldn’t help it. Her friend had the ability to make her laugh even when she didn’t want to. She was such a drama queen.
“See, I knew it wouldn’t take ten minutes,” Whisper retorted before turning and walking back down the hall to her office near the front.
McKenna was tempted to call Whisper back in because the moment she was out of sight, her smile disappeared. As much as she wanted to wish away all of the hurt, the anger, the confusion that riddled her body, she was unable to do it because thoughts of Tag were constantly running through her mind.
The night before she had come up with a million ideas on how she could’ve handled the entire situation differently, but she always came back to the same thing. She should’ve never laid eyes on him because that was when it all started.
From the moment she saw him for the very first time, McKenna had been fixated on him. Something in the confident way that he moved, the assured way he spoke, and the sensual way he made her feel with just the slow, gentle caress of his eyes over her skin made her want him. And now that she had, she wasn’t sure how she was going to go on without him.
If she had to compare what she felt for Tag to any man she had ever known, there was absolutely nothing that came close. It hadn’t mattered how much she warned herself ahead of time, McKenna’s heart had been his from that very first kiss when he stole her breath with the gentle press of his lips. And each and every subsequent time he touched her from that moment on, he had taken another piece of her soul without her permission.
She might very well be able to live with it if she didn’t feel cheated. As if she never had a chance in the first place. But that was how Tag made her feel. He’d closed himself off, and although she knew without a doubt that he wanted her, he was refusing
to give himself to her.
For whatever reason, the stubborn man would close himself off from her indefinitely.
Shaking her head to try and get rid of the depressing and unchangeable truth, McKenna pulled her laptop from her bag and docked it on her desk. As she waited for it to boot and her monitor to come to life, she willed her hands to stop shaking.
Ever since he walked out of her house, an unshakeable chill had taken up residence in her soul, and no matter what she did, she couldn’t get warm.
As soon as her computer was up and running, she immediately opened her email, hoping to lose herself in work for a few hours. She glimpsed through the headings of the emails filling up her inbox, trying to decipher which might be more important when she came across one titled YOU THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN ME. All caps definitely attracted her attention and McKenna clicked on it to open the email fully.
The image on the screen shocked her to the point she swore her heart stopped beating.
~*~:*~
“Murphy,” Tag answered when the unfamiliar number registered on the screen.
“Mr. Murphy, this is Whisper,” the soft voice said, confusing him.
Whisper?
“Is something wrong?” he asked, immediately getting to his feet.
He began pacing the floor of his office as his heart raced like he had just run a marathon.
“I think you need to come over here,” she said, sounding as though she were trying to keep her voice low.
“Where?” he asked as he headed to the hook on the wall to retrieve his coat. He knew there was only one reason Whisper would be calling him, and he didn’t care where she told him to go, he would be there within minutes.
“Sensations office.”
Tag locked up the door as he exited before heading down the main corridor that would lead him outside. He had come to his official law office because that was the one and only place that it seemed didn’t remind him of McKenna. Even his own house reminded him of her, and she had never been there.
“What’s wrong?” he questioned, but didn’t stop as he hurried to his car, tossing his jacket on the passenger seat and folding himself inside before starting it.
“I was going through the emails, and...”
When Whisper didn’t continue, Tag squeezed the phone, impatiently wanting to rip the answer from her, but knowing he needed to relax. Shit, he didn’t even know what the problem was.
“I’m the only other person who sees the general email, other than McKenna, but there are pictures...”
Fuck.
Tag drove, doing his best to abide by the traffic laws as much as possible, but not really seeing much of anything around him.
“I’m less than five minutes away,” he told Whisper, before disconnecting and dropping his phone into the center console.
Tag didn’t even need to ask what pictures they were because he had a pretty good idea. By now, there was no chance that McKenna hadn’t seen them, and surprisingly he was more worried about how she would react to them than how anyone else would.
Almost exactly five minutes later, Tag was strolling through the main door of Sensations, Inc. and he didn’t stop to greet Whisper when she headed his way. His feet wouldn’t allow him to stop, so he headed right for McKenna’s office, tapped on the door once before opening it.
All concern for the pictures immediately dissolved as a blind, maddening rage ignited from within when he saw the word written in bold red ink behind where McKenna sat. That son of a bitch!
Pulling out his phone, Tag pulled up Cole’s contact card and hit the button. “I want someone over to McKenna’s office to paint. Today,” he told his step-brother harshly. “I don’t give a fuck how much it costs, or who you find, just get them over here now.”
Tag disconnected the call as soon as Cole agreed. He knew he wouldn’t need to explain because Cole had already been to McKenna’s office, and he wasn’t sure why anyone else hadn’t done the same thing. She should not be subjected to that filth.
“Tag,” McKenna was standing at her desk, staring at him like he was breathing fire, and he wondered if he possibly was. He was so angry, his head was beginning to throb.
“I want to see the email,” he told her when he managed enough self-control not to bark the demand at her. To his surprise, she simply stepped back from her desk, holding her hand out as though telling him to have at it.
Tag moved around behind the screen and peered down at the image staring back at him. Oh, fuck. He scrolled through the email, looking at image after image of the very first day Samantha and Sierra went to the club’s monthly get together. Someone had probably filmed the entire thing because there was image after graphic image that included every single one of them in various positions, doing things to one another that never should have made it to a camera lens.
Glancing up at McKenna, Tag suddenly didn’t know what to say. She looked physically ill, and he could only imagine. When he took a step toward her, she took two steps back.
“McKenna.” Tag had no idea what to say, but he knew he needed to say something.
Anything that would take the look of complete and total rejection off of her beautiful face.
“Don’t,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around herself. “I don’t want to hear a word. Those were taken before I even knew you, and I don’t need any explanations. They pretty well speak for themselves.”
Tag wished like hell he could’ve prevented her from seeing him so intimate with Sam, but this was outside of his control.
As a matter of fact, all of this was outside of his control. He couldn’t stop Stephen Crawford from wanting whatever he thought he deserved; he couldn’t stop Susan Toulmin from wearing her emotions on her sleeve and expressing them in a very peculiar way; he couldn’t stop Logan and Luke from trying to protect the women they love, and more importantly, Tag couldn’t stop himself from falling in love with McKenna Thorne.
All of those things had already taken place, and no amount of denial or rejection was going to change the way people chose to react, but there was one thing he might have a chance at.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, feeling every emotional wall he’d ever erected crumbling down around him as he stood staring at the best thing that had happened to him. “No, wait,” Tag told McKenna when she started to talk over him, “just listen to what I have to say.
“I’m sorry you had to see the pictures,” he began, noticing how she glared back at him, “I’m sorry that you were somehow dragged into this mess, but above all, I’m sorry that I don’t know how to express what I feel for you.
“This has never happened to me before. I didn’t want it to happen to me, yet here I find myself ready to go to my knees and beg for forgiveness because you are exactly what I didn’t want.
“You’re the woman that I want to put first above everyone else, the woman I want to have beside me through times like this when it seems as though nothing is going the way that it should, the one I could see myself going batshit crazy over, and the only woman who has ever had me considering the possibility that there is more... more for me.”
Tag held his breath, knowing that he sucked at apologies, but he had laid his heart on the line with that one.
McKenna was still standing just out of reach, but he was scared to move closer, suddenly terrified that she was going to send him on his way. That was likely what he deserved, but he wasn’t sure he’d survive it if she decided he wasn’t what she wanted.
Chapter Thirty Six
*** ~~ *** ~~ *** ~~ ***
McKenna heard every single word that passed Tag’s lips. In fact, her heart had woken up somewhere after “go to my knees” and didn’t stop listening until he was finished. Now, as she searched for the words, all of the things she wanted to say to him died somewhere between her brain and her lips.
For days, she had mentally prepared speech after speech, outlining every single emotion line by line, hoping she would have the chance to tell him exactly how sh
e felt. She’d also wanted to tell him exactly how he made her feel, including the heart wrenching pain he inflicted without a second thought.
Except, seeing him there, even more vulnerable than she had ever seen him, McKenna knew he had had a second thought. Or maybe even more.
“I... I don’t know what to say,” she said, that anxious, desperate ache once again starting deep in the center of her chest.
“You don’t have to say anything, McKenna. Just believe me.” His voice, gruff and uneven, was woven with uncertainty.
“I believe you,” she told him. She hadn’t expected those words to come out, but as soon as she said them, it wasn’t like she wanted to take them back.
Tag’s eyebrows rose as he considered her, but when he didn’t move closer, she closed the gap between them, throwing her arms around his neck and pulling him down to her.
“Wait.” Tag’s urgent plea had her pulling back slightly. “About the pictures...”
McKenna needed to tell him the truth, to let him know how sick those pictures made her, but that was because she couldn’t bear to think of him with another woman. Not in the past, not in the present and definitely not in the future. No other woman except her. “Have you been with another woman since you were with me?”
“Never.”
“Do you plan to be with another woman after me?” she asked, trying to force the grin that she could feel tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“I don’t want there to be an after,” Tag whispered, his mouth hovering just above hers.
“Then we can work it out.” McKenna pulled his head back down to hers, and this time she didn’t let him go.
She couldn’t help herself as she tried to climb his body, sucking his tongue into her mouth, holding the back of his head to her as though he would escape given half a chance. Then, when he started to pull back, gripping her hips and still holding her close, McKenna opened her eyes and peered deep into those seductive eyes.
Infatuation - A Club Destiny Novel Page 24