Confirm her safety. Those words slice my heart all over again.
***
Emma…
The castle trails are well covered with trees, bushes, flowers, and various sculptures. They’re also not as easy to navigate as they’d first seemed. Time ticks by with my attempts to get back to where I started, but my fears over someone else being here in the gardens with me fades slowly into the chilly wind. I’m letting the idea of murder gain traction and that traction is affecting my state of mind. Of course, I’m not alone. The property is swimming with staff and cameras. I’m probably being watched by a security person as I walk. I’m about ready to start calling for one of those staff members to guide me when I spy a row of flowers that looks familiar. I’m almost back to Jax’s tower. Eager to just make it so, I all but run forward and cut right, gasping when I run smack into a hard body. Sucking in air, my gaze lifts, and I find myself looking into a man’s weathered and aged face, while ice-blue piercing eyes stare down at me. He’s also gripping my wrists.
“It’s you,” he says, accusation in his tone.
“Me?”
“You,” he says. “I can’t believe it’s you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Emma…
He can’t believe it’s me.
The man with the brutally cold blue eyes is still holding onto my wrists, but I don’t pull away. I need to know what he means. I have to know. “What does that mean, you can’t believe it’s me? What does that mean? Who do you think I am?”
“I know who you are,” he says, and I swear the ice in his eyes is downright brittle with those words.
“Emma!”
At the sound of Savage’s voice, the man’s grip on my wrists loosens and then falls away. “What do you mean?” I demand, but it’s too late for answers. Without a word, he walks in the opposite direction and disappears down the stairs. I blink, and he’s gone, leaving me wondering if he was really here. Savage steps to my side, and I shiver, hugging myself, haunted by the man and his words. You. I can’t believe it’s you.
“Why do you look like you just saw a ghost?” Savage demands.
Jax’s voice lifts in the air. “Savage!”
“I found her!” Savage calls out over his shoulder, but his eyes are homed in on me. “Emma, answer me,” he orders.
“Emma!” Jax shouts, and by the time I’ve rotated toward his voice, he’s in front of me, and I’m being pulled into his arms. “Thank God,” he breathes out, cupping my face. “You scared the shit out of me all over again,” he declares, and this panic in him freaks me out.
“Who was that man?” I ask urgently, grabbing the lapels of Jax’s suit jacket. “Who was he?”
“What man?” Jax and Savage ask at the same moment.
“What man?” I ask incredulously as I twist in Jax’s arms to look at them both. “Didn’t you see the man? Isn’t that why you’re freaked out?”
“What man?” they both demand again.
My stomach knots with the certainty more is going on than I know right now. “Piercing blue eyes,” I say. “Fifties maybe, I think. He was here and—”
“Where did he go?” Savage demands, stepping to our side.
“He’s the groundskeeper, Savage,” Jax replies, flicking him a look and facing me, his hands settling on my shoulders. “His name is Echo Woods. He’s been here since I was a young boy. He’s a good man.”
My brow furrows. What would the groundskeeper know about me or my family? “No. No, that makes no sense. We can’t be talking about the same person.”
“No one but Echo has those eyes,” Jax says. “Did he say something to you?”
“She doesn’t seem like she thinks he’s a good man,” Savage interjects. “And I’ve known a lot of really shitty men who pretended to be Mary fucking Poppins. What the hell happened, Emma?”
I rotate to face both men, once again, and I don’t miss the way they angle toward me, the way they stay so close that I can’t breathe. “Why are you both suffocating me? Why were you running around looking for me?”
“You damn near got pushed off the castle ledge last night,” Savage snaps. “Then you disappeared with the patio doors open.”
“I took a walk, which shouldn’t be a crime. And I shut those doors. Why is this such an issue?” I frown. “I shut the doors.”
“Uh huh,” Savage says. “Well, the doors were open, and I, for one, wanted to make sure I wasn’t scraping you off the rocks.”
“Holy fuck, Savage,” Jax curses. “Do you have any version of a filter?”
I think of the panic in Jax when he found me just now. I think of the panic in him last night when he remembered his brother holding me over the ledge. “I told you I was going to explore,” I say, turning to him and sliding my arms under his jacket. “I didn’t mean to scare you. The doors must not have latched right. The wind must have blown them open.”
“I should have told you to stay put,” he says, stroking my hair. “At least until we know who left you that little gift this morning.”
“The envelope?” I release him, and I’m back to looking between both men, looking for answers in their faces that they aren’t offering in their words. “What was inside it that has you both this on edge?”
“What about what just happened with Echo has you this uptight?” Savage counters.
“You’re avoiding an answer,” I charge, motioning between them. “You two were freaking out before you even knew about Echo. Like I’m in danger.”
Jax pulls me close. “Echo’s a good man but loyal to the family. What did he say to you?”
Another obvious avoidance that has me demanding, “What was in the envelope, Jax?”
“Nothing,” Savage says. “Nothing was in the fucking envelope.”
I step toward Savage and poke the big brute’s chest. “I’m serious. What was in the envelope that you weren’t supposed to look inside of?”
“You’re a feisty one, aren’t you?” Savage asks, glancing at Jax over my shoulder. “Not sure I want to put a gun in her hand like you do.”
“What does that even mean?” I demand, turning to Jax again, focusing on the one answer that feels the most important. “What does that mean? Why do I need a gun that, for the record, I don’t want?”
His hands come down on my arms. “Savage and I just had a conversation about this while looking for you. I want you to learn to shoot.”
“No,” I say, without hesitation. “I don’t like guns, and fear isn’t forcing me to start liking them. What was in the envelope?”
Savage makes a frustrated sound and answers, “Nothing means nothing.”
I try to whirl on him, but Jax holds me steady. “He means that literally, baby,” Jax says.
I blink, confused. “Nothing?”
“It was empty, which means it was meant to scare you or—”
“Someone took what was inside,” Savage adds, “and we had no cameras in place to let us see who.” He steps to our profiles again, right beside us. “Now what the hell happened with Echo?”
I answer Savage, but I stay focused on Jax. “He said ‘You. I can’t believe it’s you.’ like he knew me.”
Jax’s eyes narrow, and something flickers in their depths, but it’s there and gone before I can name it. “The entire staff knows you’re here,” he says, a logical reply that somehow doesn’t match what I just saw in his eyes. “I’m sure that’s what he meant.”
I dismiss his dismissal, shaking my head, and fold my arms in front of me, angling toward both men. “No. No, it was more than that. It was as if he’d seen a ghost.”
Savage and Jax exchange a look, and Jax motions for Savage to leave. Savage grumbles something unintelligible and then says, “The electrical team will be here in half an hour.” With that, he strides away.
Jax catches my hand and steps into me. “Let’s walk and talk.”
It’s only then that I remember his meeting. “How
did it go with Sawyer? Why was he here?”
“He found out you were here.”
My eyes go wide. “Then someone told him. Brody maybe. Or Jill. Or even Echo. Someone who wanted me out of here. Does everyone here hate me, Jax? Do they all believe my family did something to Hunter? Is that what this is about?”
“I don’t believe it was Jill, Brody, or Echo. But it pains me to say that it could have been a staff member he’s paying to report back on our operation.”
“And you want to do business with him?”
“Wanted Emma. Wanted. All of that is past tense. You know that.”
“Are you done with him?” I hold up a hand. “No. No, don’t answer that. I meant it when I said you need to take care of your business. I support you. I trust you.”
“I’m done with him. He doesn’t know it yet, but I’m done with him.”
“What does that mean?” I ask again.
“He wants to ruin your family, baby. I need to find out how and stop him. I need to keep him close right now. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”
I’m suffocating in enemies. I’m suffocating in hate. Even Jax came to me out of hate. Everyone around me has an agenda, and as a Knight, this is nothing new. I’m my father’s daughter, and the implications of that mean more now than ever. I let myself believe he was a hero, and maybe, had I seen the truth of who and what my father was, I could have stopped Hunter from dying. God, did he do it? Did he kill him?
Jax releases me, scrubbing his jaw. “You don’t trust me.” He shoves back his jacket, settling his hands on his hips. “What? No. No, Jax. That’s not—”
“Of course you don’t. How can you? I came to you out of bitterness, and my damn brother tried to fucking kill you last night.” His expression tightens. “Let’s go back to the castle.” He actually starts to turn away from me, but not before I see the cut of emotion in his eyes. I’ve hurt him without meaning to hurt him. This man has put everything on the line for me, asked me to live with him, even, despite all that is stacked against us. He cares. I care, and I need him to know how much. I need him to know how vulnerable I’m willing to be for him.
I catch his arm and turn him to face me. “You’re right if you assume what you saw in my face just now is about you. It is. It was.”
“You don’t trust me,” he repeats.
“I do trust you, and you matter to me. You.” I step into him, close, aligning our legs. “I’m falling,” I swallow hard, biting back a confession he might not be ready to hear, “I’m falling hard for you, Jax.”
He doesn’t ease. In fact, every muscle in his body tenses beneath my touch. “Then what do I feel right now, Emma?”
“I just—I don’t want to be a trigger that sets someone off like I did Brody last night. That Echo thing wasn’t what you think. I felt something in him. I feel like we’re in a garden of poison roses, and one wrong turn and a thorn will rip us to pieces.”
He catches my hip and cups my face. “No one is going to rip us to pieces.” His thumb strokes my cheek. “I won’t let anyone rip us to pieces.”
“Jax—”
His lips brush mine. “Let’s take a time out from the rest of the world. I want to show you something special.”
His voice is warm, and when he leans back to look at me, his eyes are warmer. Now, I’m warm, too. And God, how I want that timeout. How I want to just pretend there are no thorns. Suddenly, all the problems we’re facing fade into the garden. All the poison fades into the darkness of the past. He matters. The pause matters. That something special he wants to show me does, he does.
“Yes,” I say. “I’d like that.”
The warmth in his eyes seems to expand and wrap around me, a magnet pulling us together. We turn and start to walk, and that’s when the odd sensation of being watched washes over me again like we’re not alone. Someone is watching us and that someone is a poison thorn.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Emma…
I can’t take it.
“Jax—”
“Savage’s team is in place. Yes, we’re being watched.”
The very idea that he feels what I feel, more so, that he’s connected to me enough to read me, is both intimate and comforting. I tell myself my imagination is going wild. There is no malice in the eyes upon us. There’s protection. Jax motions to the edge of the walkway. “Follow the line of lights,” he says. “They’re on the main trails where there are cameras, and all lead to the beach or the castle.” He lifts my knuckles to his mouth and kisses my fingers. “Better yet, stay with me. I’ll take care of you.”
Old demons flare with his well-intended comment, the idea of being taken care of actually creates a recoil in me, a fear of being vulnerable that I understand all too well. It comes from my father’s head games, and it comes from another place, another experience, another man. A man who doesn’t deserve to be in the same room as Jax.
Almost as if Jax is proving that protection he’s offered, his arm slides around my shoulders, and he pulls me close, sheltering me with his big body. And he does feel like a shelter from a storm that rages around us. The problem is that the storm is perhaps a storm of blood, his blood, caused by my family. I should be sheltering him. And I will, I vow silently. I will.
We turn right down a path, and to my relief, the sense of being watched fades into the wind, perhaps aided by the hard lines of Jax’s body next to mine. Tension eases from my body, and after a short walk, we stop at a stairwell that is ironically framed by rose bushes. “I promise there are no poison thorns,” Jax says, catching my hand with his and winking.
That wink twinkles I laugh, because this is Jax, and the man has a way of making me laugh at the most unexpected moments. I love this about him. He gives me a little tug, and we start walking again, our destination easy to spot in the stunning white beach house we’re now making a beeline for. “What is this place?”
“Special,” he says. “And a large part of my history.”
The mystery and the history together have me stepping lighter and faster, while all the fears and worries of minutes before really do find a pause button. Right now, this man is sharing a piece of himself with me, and I’m all in. The wind gusts around us, and this time, it doesn’t feel like a replay of me on that landing in the tower with Brody holding me at the edge. It’s about Jax. It’s about the romance of being here with him, the idea of living here with him. That’s where I want and need my head to be right now. That’s where he wants and needs me to be, too.
We finish the walk and cross a sidewalk to walk up the side steps to a porch that wraps the front and sides of the house. “What is this place?” I ask again.
He catches my waist and turns me to him. “The house I grew up in.”
“I thought you grew up in the castle,” I say, my hand settling on his chest, and I don’t miss the thrumming of his heart. This is an emotional moment for him, and I want to know why.
“Until I was thirteen.”
Realization hits me. “When your mother left.”
“Exactly. My father owned the land, and he built this house for us to be the new family we’d become. He said it was for us, but I think it was for him. He needed to get away from the whispers and gossip about my missing mother. No one has lived here since my father died, but I come here often. It was his escape and then mine. Now it can be ours.” He takes my hand. “Let’s go look.”
Warmth spreads through me all over again. He’s letting me inside his world, and I want to be in his world. He matters, I repeat in my mind. Just him. He leads me forward, the ocean to our left, close, so close that I can hear the waves crashing on the shore and rocks. Jax stops at the door and uses a security system to unlock it, pushing it open and reaching inside to flip on the light.
“Ladies first,” he says, and I move forward. I catch his hand and pause to push to my toes, pressing my lips to his cheek. “Thank you for sharing this with me.”
He cups my head and kisses me, and it’s not just any kiss. There’s passion, so much passion, so much that it consumes and drugs me. It owns me, he owns me, because he kisses me like no man has ever kissed me, like he can’t breathe without me. And when our lips part, for a moment, or two, or ten, I can’t say, we just breathe together. The moment, or moments, end with his fingers on my cheek. “Go inside, baby.”
I nod and move forward, pleased when Jax catches my hand, stepping in behind me, his body close, the door slamming behind us. I’m now standing in a stunning room, which is so completely different from the castle that it’s as if I’m in another world. The room is long, the ceilings high, the floors a dark shiny wood. The fireplace is almost floating inside a wall to my left. A giant winding stairwell of the same wood as the floor is to my right. I imagine him and his brothers running up and down those stairs. I imagine their father sitting by that fireplace with his sons, and I’m sad that it seems he never loved again.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, and when I turn to face Jax, his hands are already in my hair.
“You’re beautiful.” His voice is low, rough, and when he kisses me, his tongue is gentle, sensual. “This can be our place. Or the castle. Or anywhere you want. I don’t care where.”
Every part of me is alive for this man. My body heats. My heart swells. I want to say yes right now. It’s what he wants me to say. I could so very easily, but what if he ends up hating me? What if the truth reveals something he can’t live with, and I’m here, heart and soul, when he does?
“Jax—”
“Don’t answer now,” he says, and then he’s kissing me again, but this kiss isn’t like the kiss of moments before. It’s changed. It’s darker. It’s deeper. It’s demanding, possessive. A kiss that claims and says that he owns me. And with any other man, I’d fight to prove he doesn’t own me, but not Jax. I don’t resist even a little bit. I don’t fear what that means. I want him to know I’m all in because that’s what this is about. My hesitation. My trust that he still doesn’t feel he has.
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