“What do you want, York?” I demand, knowing this man well enough to know that he does nothing without a self-serving agenda.
“I was out of the country when your father died. I wanted to come and check on you.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” I say, knowing what he wants, what he’s always wanted, “but I didn’t inherit. Perhaps you could date Randall, my brother’s right-hand man. He’s now been given more power than me.”
He steps closer and I step back because yes, I believe in standing my ground, but this is York. This is a man who convinced me to do things I barely know as me. His gray eyes spark with sharp, distinct interest.
“Running?” he challenges, and coming from him rather than Jax, it feels different, like a threat. Like I’ve made myself his prey.
“Running is a reaction,” I say. “I’m making a decision to say no. No. That’s my safe word, remember?”
His lips quirk. “I don’t believe in safe words. Remember?”
“And there you go,” I say coolly when indeed, I remember all too well. “One statement that personifies the beginning, middle, and end of you and me.”
“Stop,” he says, his gray eyes glinting steel. “Stop drawing the line neither of us wants drawn. I’ll step over it. Why make me?”
He’s wrong. I don’t just want a line between me and him, I want a wall. “I told you, York. I didn’t inherit.”
“And I told you, I wanted to check on you.” He steps to me again and this time, I don’t back away. He’s close, too close, when Jax couldn’t be close enough. “No one knows you like I know you. I’m your safe place. I’m the one who knows all of your secrets. I’ve always kept them between us. I’ve always protected you and your family.”
In other words, he will destroy me and my family if I cross him and his family. Marion must have sensed that I knew about the affair. She wasn’t willing to risk me telling and her losing the husband that gave her Breeze Airlines. Or there is more to this. Something else they think I know, but I don’t know at all. The something else, combined with things I read in my father’s journals, is the only reason I rein myself in when I want to back him up in every possible way.
“York Waters.”
At Jax’s voice, I jolt, and instinctively rotate to find him standing just inside the patio, while York does the same.
“Jax North,” York says. “How the hell have you been?” It’s a familiar greeting that gives me pause and reminds me of the similarities of my conversations with each man, the reference to me running. Are they friends? Is this all just one of York’s head games?
Any second, I expect Jax will join us. They will crowd me. They will play the game of power and submission, but that’s not what happens. York crosses to greet Jax, but any relief I feel by the distance quickly fades with the familiar way these two interact. Maybe this isn’t a game, but if these two are friends, I know more about Jax than I ever wanted to know.
The two men shake hands and I tell myself this formal greeting defies true friendship, but I’m too soon off my father’s death, too clear on his sins, thanks to that journal, to risk being cornered. A cluster of a good six people joins us outside and I embrace the opportunity this presents. In a rush of fancy dresses and tuxedos, I find easy passage, slipping back inside the yacht. Once there, with sure footing, I cut through the crowd and make my way to the top deck. Scanning the crowd for Chance, hoping to avoid him so as not to give York a chance to use my brother against me, I fail.
Chance steps in front of me. “There you are. How’d it go?”
“York is here,” I say, a detail that he’ll understand is awkward for me, despite the fact that the two of them are old college buddies and still golf on occasion. They wouldn’t if Chance knew what I know about York, but I can’t tell him without exposing a piece of me that I don’t want exposed. “Between him tonight and Randall last night, I need that timeout, Chance. I’m going to catch an Uber.”
“Stay. I’ll run cover for you.”
I squeeze his arm. “Why don’t we both just leave?”
“The President of Nations Bank is here. He wants to talk. Right after—”
“Chance,” I plead softly, desperate to escape before York somehow uses Chance to pull me into the damn belly of his sins. “You took a timeout last night,” I add. “I need one now.”
The blonde, whose name I suddenly can’t remember, joins us again. “Chance, I was hoping to ask you one more question.”
His eyes warm with the prospect and I squeeze his arm again. “I’ll see you Monday at the office.”
“You’re sure?” he asks, concern in his eyes.
“Positive,” I assure him, offering him a hug before I rotate away from him and disappear into the crowd.
Somehow, I manage to navigate the deck and make it to the exit without being stopped. Once I’m street-side, I walk a block to the main pier and sit down on a bench where I order an Uber. It’s going to be a twenty-five minute wait, which means there must be a cluster of conventions in town. Huddling into my jacket, the cold wind off the ocean is nothing compared to the cold chill of seeing York again. I start replaying everything that happened and rather than focusing on York, it’s Jax that consumes me. Jax whose lips on my glass have me thinking about his lips on my lips. Jax who I would have been a fool for and willingly too, I do believe.
Minutes pass by and my Uber doesn’t arrive. It’s been twenty-five minutes. I need to walk. Forget the Uber. I take off toward the corner when I suddenly hear, “Emma,” in a deep, masculine, and now familiar voice.
I turn to my left and find Jax’s long, lean, muscular body stepping out of the rear of an SUV, the kind of SUV car services use. His jacket is gone. His tie loose. His sleeves rolled up to the elbows, exposing muscular forearms, and a tattoo on his right forearm that I can’t begin to make out. All I know right now is that he’s here. He’s not on the yacht with York, colluding with the enemy. Despite how much I want this to matter, it means nothing really. This could all be part of a bigger plan and I’m suddenly angry, played with, and emotional. I learned a long time ago that emotions are bad. Emotions cut you more than the person who created them.
Nevertheless, that’s where I’m at coming off a month of grief and confusion. I snap. “How are you even here?” I demand, closing some of the space between us.
He pushes off the door and before I can blink, he’s standing in front of me, but he doesn’t touch me. He’s close, too close, but somehow not close enough when there was only too close with York. “I came looking for you.”
“Why would you look for me?” I counter, not holding back. I don’t need another person playing games in my life. “What do you want, Jax? What do you really want?”
“We have unfinished business,” he says, his fingers curling around the lapels of my jacket, walking me closer, the heat of his body scorching. “And I’m not a man to leave anything unfinished.”
Unfinished business.
It’s a common statement that right now, on this night, sends chills down my spine. A statement I read in my father’s journal just a page before he might well have ordered a murder. With Jax, I want it to be about me and him and shared champagne, and so much more. Unfinished business could mean many things and when Jax leans in closer, my hand flattens defensively on his chest, but the touch—that touch—is intimate, so very intimate, and for a moment, I can’t speak.
“What are we doing right now, Emma?” he asks softly.
“How do you know York?”
“With caution and not by choice. We are not friends.”
“That’s somehow managed to be a non-specific and quite specific at the same time. How do you know him?”
“His family owns cruise ships that serve North Whiskey.”
Cruise ships that serve a whole lot more than whiskey. I don’t like that connection. “I need to leave.” I try to turn away.
He holds fast to my lapels and pulls me to him, our legs colliding, the hard lines of his bo
dy hugging mine. My gaze jerks to his, the night darkening his blue eyes, the streetlight catching flecks of amber in his intense stare. “Run with me, not away from me.”
“I don’t even know you.”
“Then change that. I’m not asking you to marry me. I’m asking you to get to know me the way I want to know you.” Somehow, this statement manages to be the perfect mix of alpha male and vulnerability. “Come with me.”
“Where?” I whisper, and I can feel my body swaying toward his.
His hand slides under my hair, a warm strong hand, his thumb stretching to my jaw, tilting my face to his. His blue eyes still catching amber gold in the streetlights, a dominance in their depths that shouldn’t arouse me, but there’s no fighting my reaction to this man, or to who I am deep down inside. And I am the woman who is drawn to a man like Jax. Perhaps to a man too like York.
“I promised you a castle,” he says, “but I’ll settle for anywhere where I can do this.” His mouth closes down on mine, his tongue pressing past my lips, a quick tease that I still manage to feel in every part of me. Goosebumps lift on my skin and his mouth lingers above mine, a hot breath promising more before he strokes deep. And then, he’s kissing me, a wicked, passionate kiss that is pure heat, greedy even, fierce. Alluring. Passionate. Addictive. And then gone, his mouth is gone, and I’m panting as he says, “Say yes and I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
Every warning that York stirred in me earlier fades away with the taste of this man on my lips, every warning is immediately reasoned away. This is one night and then Jax is gone. This is an escape. Death and grief allow me permission to need this. That damn journal gives me permission to need him. I’m going to do this.
“I want off this street corner,” I say. “I want to leave. I want to leave with you.”
His eyes warm, approval and satisfaction in their depths that somehow isn’t arrogant. He laces his fingers with mine and walks backward, guiding me to the door of the SUV. And then he does something unexpected. He steps aside and motions me toward the back doors, a silent invitation to enter or walk away, to make my own decision. I climb inside, letting the soft leather absorb my body, a willing victim, as he’d wanted.
CHAPTER TEN
Emma…
Jax follows me inside the SUV and shuts the door, only to catch my hand, preventing any distance I might place between us. There’s a message in how easily and quickly he removes any idea of space between us. There is no running from Jax North. Right now, I’m doing just what he suggested last night. I’m running to him, with him.
He eases us around so we’re facing each other, his hand easily caressing away the soft, thin velvet of my coat, his palms settling on my knee beneath the hem of my dress. The intimate touch shouldn’t be shocking, but I’m not prepared for the intensity of my body’s reaction to his hand on me or just how easily he consumes me. “I have a plane waiting to go anywhere you want, even the castle I promised. Or we go to dinner. We can get drinks. We can go to my hotel. You decide, Emma.”
I decide.
This is not what I expect from dominant man like Jax. Do I want to get on a plane and escape with him? Yes. Yes, I do, but Jax still has a connection to York that feels risky to me. So do I want to go to my apartment, in a building where my brother lives and every good memory of my father died with the revelations of his true self? No, but it’s the smart decision, the one that offers me control.
“My place is only four blocks and two monstrous hills away. We can go there.” I don’t offer time for debate. I call out the address to the driver, who lifts his hand in confirmation. “It’s nearby,” I say as if that explains everything. As if I’m saying “I can’t wait to get you naked” and well, I can’t. I don’t want to give him the chance to be another York. I don’t want to give him a chance to be anything, and yet somehow, some part of me knows Jax is not that simple to understand. There is no black and white with this man.
He studies me, something dark and hard in his gaze that feels out of place in this moment, and yet still sexually charged. I want to understand that something dark and hard, but he leans forward to speak to the driver, and I have the distinct impression it’s so that I can’t read him. This bothers me. It bothers me in ways I don’t expect to be bothered. Perhaps it’s paranoia. Perhaps it’s more, but my thoughts are shut down short again as my cellphone rings, my spine stiffening with the sound. I don’t even have to look to know who is calling.
Certainly, it could be my brother, but it won’t be. It’s York. Digging my phone from my purse, I glance down at the screen and confirm York as my caller. Just knowing that he’s back to pursuing me twists me in knots, and I’m not sure my apartment is the right choice. What if he shows up? I decline the call and Jax settles back beside me, and already we’re moving, less than five minutes from my building.
I don’t look at him, my mind racing with the possible ways this could turn on me. My damn phone starts ringing again and I want to turn it off. I do, but I can’t. I really can’t. There are reasons I can’t, even outside of York.
“Emma.”
At the soft, but insistent prod in Jax’s voice, I hit the decline button on my phone again and look at him. “Yes?”
“Take the call.”
There is a tight quality to his voice as if he knows who this is, and is not pleased. On one note, I’m certainly happy he isn’t pleased, simply because it lends to the idea that he and York are not aligned. On another, this is awkward. The ringing starts again and I concede to the inevitable, “I’ll be quick. ” I hit the answer button. “Yes?”
“I’m on my way to your apartment.”
I want to shout. I don’t. “Do you like hallways? Because that’s all that’s waiting on you there.”
“Is that really how you want to play this?”
I open my mouth to tell him that I’m not his booty call, but the idea of Jax hearing that doesn’t please me. “I’m hanging up and turning off my phone.”
He snorts. “We both know you won’t turn off your phone.”
I hang up and I block his damn number, which is long past due, before sliding my phone back into my purse. “See?” I ask lightly, if not a bit high-pitched. “Off in one block with a block left to travel.”
“How long has York wanted to fuck you?” Jax asks.
The question, direct and crass, actually delivers relief. If he knew who and what I am to York, he wouldn’t have asked that question. I don’t even care that we have a driver. I whirl around and face him, meeting his now cool blue stare. “He already did. We were engaged.”
His eyes flicker and darken all over again, unmasked displeasure in the depths of his stare. “You were engaged to York Waters?”
“When I was stupid despite being in an elite college. It was years ago. He was—I thought he was the answer to every problem I had at the time. Instead, he now represents every mistake I’ve ever made wrapped up in one human being. So, did he fuck me? In so many ways you can’t even imagine, and I didn’t even have to be naked for about half of them.”
Those words are my confession that I didn’t mean to make, that I hate that I made in front of the driver. The vehicle stops at my building.
Jax doesn’t react, doesn’t move. He’s stone, his eyes searching my face, and I can almost see where his mind is traveling. He knows what happens on those special cruises York charters, he knows what York is all about, and now he thinks he knows me.
“Thanks for the ride,” I say and scoot toward the opposite door.
He catches my arm and then my waist, sliding me back toward him until our faces are close. “I thought I was invited upstairs?”
“I don’t need to be judged, Jax. I can go elsewhere for that.”
His hand settles on my face and he tilts my face to his. “Isn’t assuming you know what I’m thinking, judging me?”
“I suppose it is so—what were you thinking, Jax?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Emma…
“
Let me be your answer, Emma.”
My fingers curl on his lapel. “You barely know me. I keep having to say that to you. And I don’t need a man to be my answer, Jax.”
“Well, then you can be mine.”
I blanch at this unexpected reply. “What answer do you need?”
“Many,” he says, “and right now, you’re my lifeline. I know where you are right now. I know loss, and I know it recently. I know it presently. Am I still invited upstairs, Emma?”
He knows loss. How have I forgotten that he too just lost his father, but also his brother? Suddenly I know why this man affects me beyond his obvious good looks. It’s the understanding we share. It’s the loss. It’s the answers we need to questions after a death but can only find in another who understands there are no answers. There is just death and life and a need to live in the moment, to survive what is gone.
“Yes, Jax,” I say, my breath hitching on his name. “You’re invited up to my apartment.”
For a moment, we linger there, our lips close, the pain of loss between us, but suddenly, the energy shifts, softens with the curve of his mouth a moment before we both laugh, the pain banked beneath a lighter moment. A lighter moment that comes for no reason but perhaps a need for sanity, a burst of bottled-up emotions that are safer here than other places. It’s a good moment. An erotic moment filled with sexy promises, and yet it’s a comfortable, wonderful moment like I haven’t shared with a man in a very long time. Okay, never. I have never shared a moment like this with a man. York ruined me that way.
Jax reaches for the door and I catch his arm. “Wait.” I swallow hard. “York—”
“I’m not him. Judge me by me, Emma.”
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