“Right,” I say. “Good point.”
“I do have those on occasion,” Savage says. “Never when alcohol is involved, which is why I don’t drink on the job.”
I don’t laugh. I’m too used to Savage’s sniping and too freaked out to be entertained. “Whoever this is knows the castle. They’d have to be smart enough to know how to avoid the cameras. What if they went through Jax’s tower?”
“That door is bolted from the inside,” Jax says, rejecting that idea. “So even if someone had the door code, they couldn’t get in. That didn’t happen.”
“Unless they unbolted it from the inside,” I argue.
“Nope,” Savage says. “That means getting past the security panel at the front door. That didn’t happen either. We’d know. And for the record, every question from this point forward is answered with ‘What the fuck is going on?’ until I know what the fuck is going on.”
“Why would the security systems work and not the rest of the power?” I challenge. “That makes no sense.”
“Aside from those battery-operated cameras I mentioned before tonight,” Savage replies, “the power outage isn’t related to the actual tower. It’s the east side of the castle. Another reason I know the tower door wasn’t breached. Now,” he pauses for effect, “what the fuck is going on?” He looks between us. “One of you? Both of you?”
I hug myself, rubbing my arms. “I need to talk to Jax. Alone. This is between me and Jax.”
Savage scowls. “What do I look like? Someone else’s chopped beef sandwich you don’t want? I’m here. I’m involved. I’m the one protecting you.”
“It’s between me and Jax,” I snap. “Until it’s not.”
His gaze shifts between us, and the fact that Jax is stiff and silent, must convince Savage that we’re fighting, because he says, “All right. All right. I get it. You two have a thing to deal with, but consider me the best couples counselor on planet Earth. Whatever the problem is between you two, get naked. Later. Get naked later because it solves everything except for me not knowing what the fuck is going on while trying to protect you both.”
“Someone left a note for Emma,” Jax says. “She tore it up and threw it in the water while the person in the red coat watched.” His hand settles at my waist. “The rest, Emma’s about to tell me. When we’re alone, at the beach house.”
“No,” I say, grabbing Jax’s arm and turning to face him. “We need to stay here and talk. Because we need to talk to her. Don’t you want to talk to her?”
His jaw clenches. “It’s not her.” His voice is low, taut.
“It’s the person who left me that note,” I say softly. “That’s what matters.”
“I have a man coming to escort you both to the beach house,” Savage announces.
“I’m not leaving until we find her,” I say, twisting around to face him again. “I need to stay here and help find the person who left me that note. Maybe I’ll see something that won’t mean anything to your men.” I try to walk around him.
Jax catches my arm, pulling me in profile to him and Savage. “They’ll find her,” he says softly.
“He’s right,” Savage agrees. “When I find him or her, you’ll know. And I say him or her because you’ve told me nothing to convince me this is a woman. In fact, I know about as much as a guy trying to guess the gender of a baby in a woman’s belly that he didn’t put there. That’s right. It’s a 50/50 shot for me. Do you not see what a problem this is, Emma?”
He’s right. I’m not giving him enough to go on here, but Jax isn’t speaking up either. He doesn’t want me to bring up his mother, and I think I should. But I don’t. I need to talk to Jax right here and now. “Step away and let us talk, Savage.”
Footsteps sound, and my gaze jerks to the tall, sandy brown-haired man stepping to Savage’s side. “This is Smith,” Savage says, without looking at him. “He’s not a pussy. That’s a good thing when protecting you, in case you didn’t know.”
Jax turns me to face him, his hands coming down on my arms. “Let them do their jobs. Let’s go home where we can talk.”
Home.
That word again.
That place we might have shared, that I was really considering sharing with this man, but this secret all but ensures I will not. “The reality here is that the person who left me that DNA test and the note expects a response. They want something. Justice? Revenge? I don’t know that answer, I can’t know that answer, but all options feel dangerous.” I need to tell him about the DNA test and it hits me that his reaction might not be good. I owe him privacy when I do this and I need that to be now. And suddenly it feels smart to get us out of the line of fire until we decide if we’re targets.
If he’s a target.
“Yes,” I say. “Let’s go now.”
CHAPTER THREE
Emma
By the time Jax laces the fingers of one of my hands with his and we start walking, Smith is by my other side. The idea that a big man with a gun is escorting us to the beach house shouldn’t comfort me, considering it means that we need someone with a gun to escort us to the beach house. It is, however, better to need a big man with a gun and have a big man with a gun than the opposite.
“You sure you don’t have anything to tell me, little girl?” Savage calls after me.
“Not unless you have a big boy I can talk to,” I call over my shoulder, because hey, I might be under duress, but I have a brother. I know how to give what I get.
“That would, by an astonishingly high margin of votes, be considered me,” Smith murmurs.
I’m not sure that’s a joke, and he doesn’t laugh. Neither do I. I’m focused on one person, and that person is Jax. I have to tell him everything, and I have to do it knowing that everything might be too much for us to survive. That’s my fear—that this is it for us. The truth is that I haven’t even fully had time to digest any of this, and Lord help me, where are my shoes? I left them behind with Savage. Because it’s not enough to have a big man with a gun next to us. I am now making the other big man with a gun, the one with an attitude, retrieve my high heels. But really, truly, at this point, I couldn’t care less if my shoes become the center of a sandcastle for one of the guests.
I just need to think.
Hunter was my half-brother. It can’t be true, and yet, I saw the proof.
Jax folds our arms at the elbows and pulls me closer, holding onto me a bit too tightly, like he’s afraid I’m about to be yanked right out of the sand from beside him. But I don’t mind. I want him to keep holding on tightly. I don’t want him to let me go, but the sense of us losing each other is in the air.
Forever it seems, the three of us walk. There is just me and Jax and a stranger named Smith, the sounds of the ocean crashing against the shoreline is fitting for the way my world feels as if it’s crashing around me. Jax’s world is about to crash down around him, while he’s still bleeding for his brother. My brother, I remind myself. My God. Hunter might have been my brother, too, and I struggle to remember meeting him. I struggle to remember a man who may well have been blood and brother to me. How did I not feel a bond with him? How did I not recognize any similarities?
Finally, we’re at the house, nerves burning up my belly, the motion detectors illuminating the porch. Smith motions for us to wait, talking into the mic at his ear. “We have eyes on you out here. I’ll go in first and ensure we’re clear inside.”
Jax gives a quick incline of his chin, and we watch Smith disappear into the living room. “Jax,” I say, and he pulls me around in front of him.
“Not until we’re alone.” He cups my face. “Okay?”
It’s then that I realize he’s all but vibrating edginess. The idea of seeing his mother again didn’t just gut him. Jax is no fool. He knows whatever this is, whatever I have to tell him, is related to Hunter. I nod and catch his hand. “This could be Brody fucking with me again, Jax. You know that, right?”
“In other words, my brother accused me of killing m
y other brother?” he challenges.
The door opens behind us as Smith calls out, “All clear.”
I twist around to look at him and he motions to the seat in the corner. “I’ll be around if you need me. Or, if you need a big boy to talk to.”
“Funny,” I say. “Really, actually it is. I’m laughing on the inside. I’ll laugh tomorrow. I hope. If this is over. Thanks for the future laugh.” I’m rambling. I never ramble, and Jax responds by kissing my hand and murmuring, “Let’s go inside, baby.”
I nod. “Yes. Let’s go inside.” Only my feet don’t want to move.
Jax’s hand comes down on my lower back, urging me forward, and somehow, my feet magically shuffle forward. My toes are numb. My arms are numb. My heart is not. Jax opens the door for me, and I step inside the lovely house that represents a future with this man, the place his father brought his boys when their mother left. The ghosts of the castle. Those words pop in my head, and oh God. Was he saying—did he tell me that she was—
The door shuts, and Jax locks it.
He turns to face me, and I face him, that ghost comment he’d made popping into my head. “Is your mother dead, Jax?”
CHAPTER FOUR
Jax
Is my mother dead?
“To me,” I answer. “You know that, Emma. She left. I wouldn’t know if it were her wedding day or her funeral.”
“You said that I was seeing castle ghosts. I thought—”
“And you were right,” I say. “She’s dead to me, Emma.”
“That wasn’t a random statement. It didn’t feel random.”
Suffocating in this topic, I yank at my tie and pull it loose. “There’s always been talk of a ghost in the castle. A woman in red. That’s why my mother wore that damn red dress and red in general. She wanted us to focus on what was real. You’d think that made her a good mother, but ironically, she made the red dress all about the past and a damn ghost of a woman.” I shrug out of my jacket and toss it on the couch. “I need a drink.” I walk into the kitchen and round the corner to a small bar area where I unscrew the lid on a ridiculously expensive bottle of whiskey that my father left me. I’d been saving it for a special occasion. This isn’t it, but it’s an occasion all right.
Emma appears beside me. I fill a glass and down the wickedly smooth whiskey. Papa North knew how to make it right. I refill the glass and offer it to Emma. “It’s thirty-thousand-dollar whiskey. A gift from my father. His own special batch, an aged limited edition.”
“Jax, if that wasn’t your mother—”
“It wasn’t my mother.” A tight knot forms in my chest. I down the whiskey I’d offered her, the burn washing right past it, but it’s still fucking there. I refill yet another glass, but this time, I press it into her hand. “Drink.”
“Then it was someone who knew about the red dress, someone who knew I’d think it was your mother.”
“This is a very special bottle. It’s a very special bottle that I swore I’d share with no one, but I am with you. Drink.”
Her eyes go wide, and she sips the whiskey. “Oh my,” she says. “That is—it’s good.”
“Yeah. It’s good.”
“Jax—”
“Brody. Jill. Half the staff. They all know about the red dress and the ghost.”
“There’s more to this, Jax. I was told two people had a motivation to kill your brother. I don’t even want to say the name but you aren’t asking either. Why?”
“Brody,” I say. “Which is ridiculous. I’d have to die for him to inherit.” I sip the whiskey and set the glass on the bar counter. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Jax, please listen.”
I step into her, tangling my fingers in her hair. She smells sweet, like vanilla and honeysuckle. I love the fuck out of how she smells. “They’re trying to scare you away. Are you going to let them win?”
“Maybe it’s you someone is trying to scare,” she warns, grabbing my shirt. “Or maybe they want to hurt you, Jax.”
There’s a dark pulse of emotion inside me that needs to go away. “Then I guess you’d better hold on tight,” I say, and my mouth closes over hers, my tongue licking against her tongue, heat, anger, an old bleeding wound, all colliding in this moment.
She shoves on my chest. “Jax.”
“Clearly, you need another drink.”
“You need to listen.”
“You need to drink.”
“I don’t drink well, remember?” she challenges. “The way you don’t listen well, apparently. What are you doing right now? Why are you putting this wall up?”
“You can drink,” I say. “I’ll take care of you. You have me now.”
“I don’t need to be taken care of.”
“Too bad, I’m going to do it anyway.” I down the whiskey and set the glass aside. “I’m going to take care of you.” My mouth lowers a breath from hers. “And I’m going to enjoy every fucking minute of it.”
“Then I’ll take care of you, too,” she whispers. “That means you listen to me now.”
“After,” I say, and I claim her mouth again, my tongue caressing deep, my hand sliding up her back and molding her to me. She resists, stiff in my arms for a moment, before she moans, sinking into the moment, into me. Submission. That’s what I want. It’s what I fucking need right now. Her. Not this bullshit family drama that just won’t go the hell away. I need to bury it, deep and far, where it’s already been buried, and I’m doing that now, with her, inside her.
I catch her dress and drag it up her hips, cupping her all but naked, perfectly round backside and giving it a squeeze. She moans again, and I nip her bottom lip. “That’s the kind of drunk I want.”
“Jax,” she whispers, and before she can push me to talk again, I turn her to the bar.
She catches her weight on her hands, and I unzip her dress, my hand sliding to her belly and lower, under the thin slice of lace there. My lips are at her ear as I stroke her clit. “This is what I want,” I say. “You, Emma.” I squeeze her breast, and when she pants and catches my hand, I turn her to face me, shackling her legs with mine.
I have her dress down, and my mouth is on her mouth, before she can object, and the minute her tongue touches mine, I know she’s all in. I know she’s given up the fight. She’s kissing me now, and when my fingers drag down her bra and pinch her nipple, she’s panting into my mouth. The minute she’s unleashed, I’m fucking unleashed, when I am never unleashed. That’s not who I am. That’s not how I operate, but Emma—Emma is every answer to every question I’ve ever needed answered. Why did my mother leave? Who fucking cares? I’m about to be inside Emma. Why did my brother jump? Did my brother jump? I don’t have to think about it right now. I’m about to be inside Emma. Who taunted her and tried to scare her tonight? I need to calm down before I find out and hurt someone. I’m going to do that inside Emma.
In about sixty seconds, my fly is down, her panties are shoved aside, her leg is at my hip, and my cock is inside her. The rest of the world is gone. I lift her all the way off the ground, intending to set her on the counter, but it never happens. I hold onto her, dragging her down against me, and her fingers are in my hair, twisting and tugging.
“God, Jax,” she whispers, curling into me, her face buried in my neck, her body trembling in my arms, against me.
It undoes me. She undoes me. I’m on the edge of sanity, barely holding onto control. Her sex clenches around my cock and drags me over the edge. I lean against the wall, drive into her, and all but fucking black out with the quaking of my goddamn body. I come back to the world with Emma whispering, “We didn’t even get undressed.”
“No,” I say. “No, we didn’t, but we needed that. At least I did.” And in that statement is the storm of shit that drove me to drinking and fucking to keep from punching someone. “Hold on. I’ll take you to the bathroom.”
She wraps her arms around my neck, and I push off the wall, walking us through the house to the spare bathroom. Once we’re ther
e, I set her on the counter, grab her a towel and fix my pants. By the time I’m put back together, and I’ve turned on the light, she’s tossed the towel into a hamper.
She grabs my shirt. “I need you to listen to me. There was more than a note left for me.” She swallows hard. “I don’t even want to tell you. Now that it’s time to tell you, I wish I could just pretend I didn’t know.” She presses her hands to her face, and I catch her wrists and ease them between us.
“Someone is just trying to fuck with us, Emma.”
“No. I shouldn’t have thrown it away. It was a stupidly rash move, meant to protect you and Chance.”
“Chance?”
“Two people with motives to kill Hunter, who now I believe was murdered. Those two people are you and Chance.”
“Because I’d inherit.”
“Yes, but so might have Chance.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Emma?”
“There was a DNA test included with the note, Jax. Hunter was my father’s son. He was—he was my half-brother, too.”
Those words rip through me. “Too? No.” I release her and step back. “He wasn’t my half-brother, Emma. He wasn’t your brother at all. The test was a fake.” I turn and leave the room.
CHAPTER FIVE
Emma
What just happened?
Is he leaving?
I tug my dress back in place and hurry out of the bathroom. “Jax?!” I call out, rushing down the hallway and entering the living room to find him pacing in front of the fireplace, his phone to his ear. “Just see what you can do,” he says, before he disconnects and shoves his cell back into his pocket, his jaw hard, his expression tight, a raw, rough edge about him, that I’ve never seen. He doesn’t look for me, and the idea that this is his rejection cuts. He walks to the chair framing the couch, where he sits down, tilting his chin downward, fingers spiking into his hair, a man tormented, a man lost in that torment.
I don’t care if he’s rejecting me, even blaming me in some way for all of this. I close the space between us and sit down on the end of the coffee table just in front of him. I know he knows I’m here, but he doesn’t look at me.
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