Embrace: The Secret Billionaire Asher Christmas Duet, Two (The Dark Christmases Book 9)

by Z. L. Arkadie

  I felt eclipsed by Jake’s presence as he stood behind me while I sat at my desk. That was his idea of giving me space I’d asked for. At first, he’d leaned over me, face beside mine. But I asked him to please move, and that was the new position he had taken, which was still too close for comfort.

  I tapped my foot, waiting for my computer to finish booting. I was trying to think of something to say when my screen finally appeared.

  “Oh, there it is,” I announced.

  He leaned over me again as I clicked on my browser and typed in the web address.

  “Jake,” I said, feeling giddy energy surge through me.

  “Yes,” he whispered, his mouth close to my ear.

  “Really?”

  “Really what?”

  “I mean … You’re very close.”

  He snorted a chuckle. “You know, we can figure this out either way,” he said.

  My fingers remained frozen on the keyboard. What did he just say? I was still processing his claim as I continued typing.

  “Could you please, like, move away?” I sounded as strained as I felt.

  “We’re not attached in the family way, Penina,” he said, holding his position.

  “Our blood might be, though.” I tapped the keys harder. “Give me space, please.”

  “You ever watched Game of Thrones?” he asked.

  “Ha!” I scoffed as my computer finally coughed up the website. And he still hadn’t backed away yet. “Yes, and do you remember how it ended for those maniacal and incestual twins?”

  “I do. And in Jaime Lannister’s defense, he wasn’t maniacal. She was.”

  I chuckled as I clicked on the red button that read Results. “Well, the woman in our circumstances is never going to fuck her brother.”

  Finally, he moved away from me to let out a belly laugh.

  A box appeared, asking me to put in my pin number. I did it.

  “What?” I yelped, looking at the big red banner telling me to call a number to hear the results and schedule an appointment with the local Spencer and Jada Christmas Indemnity Fund coordinator that was assigned to my case. I was beyond frustrated. “This is just an unnecessarily complicated process.”

  “It seems Spencer’s still all about control,” he muttered.

  “What?” I asked, obviously not because I didn’t hear him. I wondered what he meant by that.

  “Forget it. Listen, I want to take you somewhere,” he said.

  I felt my blank look intensify as I lost interest in whatever comment he made about Spencer. “Where?”

  “Just trust me.”

  I pointed back at my computer. “Well, first I have to call this number.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said.

  “I can’t not worry about it. We have to know.”

  He pointed at my computer. “Not that way, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “Again, trust me.” He snapped his fingers. “Come on, babe, chop-chop.”

  I sighed. He’d called me babe, and that felt so intimate. I pondered whether I should insist that we keep our distance from each other until we knew for certain whether we were related by blood or not. With my luck, we were. However, whatever had made me gravitate to him from day one had taken full control of me. I was extremely curious about where he wanted to take me. Plus, my adventurous side was hard to put away once I’d been intrigued by something.

  “I have no surgeries for the rest of the day, and you’re off. We have no excuses. Let’s go.”

  He held his hand out, which I reluctantly took. And, unfortunately, as soon as our skin touched, fireworks exploded inside me.

  I quickly retracted my hand and shrugged, pretending I hadn’t felt a thing. “Okay, then, lead the way.”

  Chapter Three

  Penina Ross

  It was a sticky and muggy late afternoon, but I had come to love the intense humidity that made ninety degrees feel like a sauna. I thought it was quite refreshing that we walked instead of easing into the back seat of Jake’s hired car. It was better, actually. We shouldn’t be in confined spaces at the moment. Anything could happen. For instance, my crazy brain was trying to persuade me to convince him to go somewhere with me where we could be alone, a place where no one else could find us, so that we could fuck our brains out before we learned the results. What in the hell is wrong with me?

  “You’re frowning,” Jake said as we walked past Bernard’s Bakery.

  I blew out my cheeks as I sighed. “Well, I’m not happy about all of this.” An idea struck me, and I pepped up. “Hey, we’re both doctors. Let’s get our blood tested.” Then I groaned as I rolled my eyes, remembering the nosey lot who worked in the lab. “Forget it.”

  Jake chuckled. “I already thought of that.”

  “Who’s Spencer?” I asked so quickly that I was positive I had cut him off.

  “My brother.”

  “Then call him.”

  “We don’t have to. The lab is running our DNA. I had Si do it.”

  I tried to rub the tension out of my temples. “Si? Si …” I repeated lowly. “Simon Brown. Chief Brown? You refer to him as Si?”

  Suddenly, Jake took me by the waist and guided me to lean against the brick wall beneath an awning. As my head tilted back, our mouths nearly touched, and I could feel his warm breath ease into my mouth past my parted lips.

  “You say you want to know more about me, then get ready, because there’s a lot, and not much of it is good.”

  I swallowed. “I can handle it,” I whispered.

  As we stared into each other’s eyes, those passing by us didn’t exist. The hums and roars of cars making their way up and down the street were mute. Do we kiss? And if so, should it be deep, hard, and long?

  Jake was keeping his hard body away from mine. Rarely had I brushed up against him or felt him without him being at some stage of an erection. We were in the beginning stages of a fast-burning relationship and couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Even during the moments when he lay beside me in bed, we rubbed, touched, and groped each other. And now we were forced to remain at a suitable distance from each other.

  “I’ll confess so this can pass,” Jake said.

  I gulped, hypnotized by the penetrating eye contact we held. “So what can pass?”

  His fingers trailed down one side of my face until his thumb slid down the middle of my lower lip. “Soft … I want to kiss you.”

  I was overly sensitive to his touch as I croaked, “Me too.” I cleared my throat. “We can’t do anything about it except let it all pass. We’re only human, Jake. It will—”

  Without warning, his lips gently touched mine. The kiss wasn’t lengthy or passionate, but it was still sensual, transmitting our love and longing for each other.

  “There.” He sighed with his eyes closed, as if he had to compose himself. A grunt that sounded deep in the back of his throat escaped him, then he tasted his bottom lip. “We should walk.”

  I nodded, only neither of us moved. The longer we stood there, the more anxious I became. I realized I had to take the lead when it came to breaking free from the strong magnetic current that linked us.

  My head felt loopy as I walked. Jake was right by my side. We didn’t hold hands, and we kept enough distance to appear like two people who had a casual connection walking on the sidewalk.

  “So …” I checked over both my shoulders. “You don’t want me to refer to you as Asher?”

  “No.” His answer was firm.

  “Not even in private?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t like the name?”

  I studied his pinched expression as he glared ahead, and I recalled the comment he’d made during our first dinner together. He said he didn’t like his name, and I’d thought he meant Jake Sparrow, but I was sure he was referring to Asher Christmas.

  I checked around us again. “But Jake Sparrow is a fake name?” I whispered.

  “Not for long,” he muttered.
r />   “You’re going to make it real?”

  He sucked air sharply between his teeth. “Penina, so many questions, babe.”

  I raised a finger in objection. “No, Jake. You can’t refer to me as babe.”

  He smirked. “I can always refer to you as babe. We’re going to figure this out regardless of the results.”

  I scowled at the ground. That was the second time he’d claimed we were going to “figure it out.” I didn’t know about him, but I, for one, wasn’t going to knowingly fuck my brother, period. “Where are you taking me anyway?”

  “It’s on Dauphine,” he said as we walked past parked cars and lots of people. We were in the touristy part of town, down on the lower edge of the French Quarter. I hadn’t visited the area in a while. We kept moving away then back together while making space for other pedestrians to pass, so we didn’t have to worry about maintaining a platonic distance. Shuffling past crowds of horny college students and drunken boys from every sort of fraternity under the sun, we conversed about some of the incidences from the past that Christine told me about but I couldn’t remember.

  “The brain has a way of self-protecting, doesn’t it?” he said then trotted ahead of me to open the door of a bookstore.

  “Yes, it does, but—” I raised my eyebrows and held them high. “You wanted to show me books?”

  He pointed his head toward the inside of the shop, signaling for me to enter. “Only one book.”

  I narrowed my eyes playfully at him as I walked inside. Jake smirked and winked back. I beat back the desire to kiss him and breathed in the overpowering scent of old, printed paper. The place was far from a super-modern Barnes & Noble type of bookstore. Most of the books on the shelves looked worn. Large boxes that contained used books arranged by genres sat open for us to pick through if we were in the mood to hunt for something worth reading. Back when I was in college, before the semester started, I used to call at least a hundred bookstores like the one we were in, asking if they sold any of the textbooks that were on my syllabus. Whenever I struck gold, I ended up buying a book that cost over hundred dollars brand new for only ten to twenty bucks.

  I followed Jake along the stacks. “It seems as if you know where you’re going,” I said, sliding my finger across the spines as we passed.

  Jake turned sideways but not all the way around. “I do know where I’m going.”

  “So there’s something you want to tell me through a book, eh?”

  He snorted a chuckle. “It can better explain where I come from than I can.”

  “How’s that?”

  “It’s a lot of what we were just talking about,” he said, taking care to keep his voice low. “When you’re in it or involved, you can’t see it unless there’s someone on the outside looking in.”

  I nodded. “True.”

  At the end of the aisle, he turned the corner, and three girls who had just caught sight of him nearly shit themselves, keeping their dazzled gazes pasted on his magnificent face. I was glad when we turned another corner. The eager girls were annoying me. Then Jake stopped in the center of the aisle, and without having to search, he plucked a book off the shelf and held it out for me to take.

  “This is for you,” he said.

  I hesitated, eyeing him suspiciously as I read the cover. “The Dark Christmases?” I asked as I took it.

  “It’s about my family. If you want to know why I’m Jake Sparrow? Read this.”

  Once again, I noticed how close he was. I couldn’t take a step back, or I would crash into the shelf, so instead I held up the book, putting it between us to create some distance, then read the cover.

  “Written by Holly Henderson—that’s a name with killer alliteration.”

  “She’s my sister-in-law,” he said without chuckling at my attempt to lighten the mood.

  “Is this an unauthorized biography?” I asked.

  Jake stepped closer. The book was against his chest, and I could feel the heat coming off his body. “She was invited to our estate for the Christmas holiday six years ago. I knew what my sister had planned, but I didn’t approve. I …”

  I waited for him to finish, but then I turned to see what he was watching. The three women who’d given him eye service earlier were in the aisle, pretending to be looking for a book.

  “Come on. I’ll pay for that,” he said, nodding toward the opposite end from where they stood browsing.

  When we made it up front, the cashier, an older gentleman who wore bifocals that were too big for his classically handsome face, couldn’t stop staring and grinning at Jake either. Jake must’ve also noticed that the man was tuned in to him, because he seemed fidgety. After paying with a fifty-dollar bill, he told the guy to keep the thirty-eight dollars in change.

  “You look familiar,” the cashier said, remaining intensely focused on Jake’s face.

  Jake glanced at me.

  “Aren’t you related to one of those Christmases?” he asked.

  Jake smiled nervously. “Nope. But I get that a lot. That’s why we’re buying the book.”

  The guy grunted thoughtfully, unable to take his eyes off Jake. Then he shook his finger at him. “You’re the triplet. The one that’s been missing. Someone said they’d seen you in the area. And I’ve seen you in here before.”

  I worked like hell to keep my jaw from dropping, although I was sure my face had turned red. A triplet?

  He was still pointing as he said, “They’re accusing you of killing your father, and that’s why you’ve been missing.”

  The cashier was reading all of Jake’s reactions. For the most part, Jake kept his cool. He was no longer grinning and using charm to throw the man off, though. His face was expressionless. But the fact that he hadn’t moved an inch was evidence that he was petrified.

  The guy handed Jake his change anyway, and he automatically took it and stuffed into his pants pocket.

  The cashier flashed a toothy grin. “Don’t worry, though. New Orleans ain’t concerned about what happens outside of New Orleans.”

  Without saying a word or looking at me, Jake turned and walked out of the store, leaving me standing there. I’d never seen him that flustered before. Even when the woman outed him three nights ago, he’d kept his cool. I had no idea what to do as I looked from the exit to the cashier. I felt as if I had to beg him to please keep his word and never mention that he’d seen Jake or Asher Christmas around. I was afraid that now that someone in the general public had recognized him, Jake would run, and I would never see him again.

  “Um …” I said.

  The guy smiled weakly and went back to doing whatever work he had been doing before we came to the register. It was the weirdest thing. It was as if he’d said what he wanted to say, and since Jake was gone, Jake was now the furthest thing from the man’s mind.

  “Have a nice day,” I finally said to the cashier.

  “You, too, darling,” the man said as if I were just any old customer he was being nice to.

  Chapter Four

  Penina Ross

  At first, I thought Jake had left me behind, and quite frankly, I would’ve been okay if he had. He needed time to process what had just happened. And perhaps that jarring experience injected him with common sense. Get away from your possible sister, whom you’re attracted to. Get far away. But as I walked back the way we’d come, I heard him call my name from behind. When I turned, he was standing right there.

  “Are you okay?” I asked as he closed the gap between us.

  “No. What the fuck was that?” he asked with an uncomfortable laugh.

  I shook my head. “I’ve never seen you that rattled.”

  He seemed unable to look me in the eyes when he shrugged.

  “And you’re a triplet?”

  He scratched the back of his head. “I don’t want to talk about it, Penina. It’s in the book.”

  I glanced down at the title in my hand, respecting the fact that it contained all the answers I needed. “Well, what are you going
to do now that you’ve been recognized?”

  He checked over his shoulder then up the street. His energy felt erratic. After narrowing his eyes at whatever he had spied, he pointed his chin in that direction. “Look at where the crowd’s going. There’s a music festival. You want to go?” He was smiling again.

  I shook my head as I jerked it back. “Are you serious, Jake?”

  His sexy smirk was back and more seductive than ever. “I’m very serious.”

  “But …” I moved closer to him. “He just said you murdered your father,” I whispered.

  Jake’s smirk faded as he garnered steady eye contact with me. “The man in the bookstore doesn’t know what he’s talking about. My father was on his deathbed for many months before he died. It was kept secret, which is why people have come up with their harebrained theories of how he passed. I did not kill my father. He was sick, and he died.”

  I didn’t know what to believe when it came to Jake anymore. However, I had to go with my gut, and it told me that I should believe he was telling me the truth until I learned different.

  I heaved a sigh, letting what had just happened in the bookstore drop. “You want to go to a music festival together?”

  “I’m not asking anyone else to go with me,” he said.

  I nibbled anxiously on my bottom lip.

  “We can eat, dance, have some fun …” he said.

  I squished one side of my face. “Are you sure?”

  “Penina, if the nature of our relationship has to change, then we’d better work on being friends only. Don’t you think?”

  I turned to watch a horse and buggy carting tourists gallop by. It sounded as if he was certain we were family.

  “Did you give me the book because you know for certain we’re related?” I asked, staring at the cover.

  Jake took the book out of my hands and put it into my purse. “Out of sight, out of mind.” He winked. “And the answer to your question is, I don’t have the test results. Therefore, I can’t confirm that you’re not Randolph’s daughter. However, I just have a hunch you’re not.”