He held himself very still as he heard her move away because if he made the slightest movement, he’d be turning and going after her. Locking the door so she couldn’t escape. Keeping her here.
He’d once thought he’d never do that to her, but love changed the equation. Made people do stupid things. And he didn’t trust himself around her, not an inch.
Her footsteps sounded on the floor as she made her way to the door. Then they receded, going down the hallway.
It’s good she’s going. She needs to be far away from you.
Yeah, it was a good thing. She needed to be free, not trapped and suffocated by him.
The front door of his apartment shut with a heavy, final sound.
Jax stood in his lounge, staring at the lights of the city in the darkness beyond, his hands in fists at his sides, a raw, angry pain throbbing in his chest.
She’d torn something from him and he knew what it was.
Snow White had taken his fucking heart.
Chapter 11
The hotel wasn’t the nicest but it was the best Pandora could afford on the one salary payment she’d gotten from Morrow. The wallpaper was dingy, the carpet old, there was a suspicious looking stain near one of the windows, and she could hear the couple next door having sex but hey, it could have been worse. She might have had to pay extra for the Internet.
Sitting cross-legged on the bed, her laptop open on her lap, Pandora opened her Web browser and typed in the URL of a major news Web site.
Jax had said he was going to break it off today and it would be good to know if that was the case. Along with her laptop, she’d grabbed a few clothes on her way out of the apartment yesterday, including a hat and sunglasses—she’d need them when the news broke and the press went nuts.
The ache that had settled behind her heart the moment Jax’s door had shut behind her, throbbed. Stupid. Leaving him had been the right thing to do. The only thing to do. She’d done it for herself so it really shouldn’t be hurting quite so damn much.
It wasn’t like she was in love with him or anything. Love was nothing but bars on a window. A key locking a door. A cage keeping you in. And she couldn’t stand that.
Freedom. That’s what she’d wanted. That’s all she’d wanted.
Blinking furiously against the prickling behind her eyes, Pandora glanced down at her laptop screen.
And there it was.
Morrow Calls It Quits. The engagement of the year is off as the relationship between Jax Morrow and fiancée Pandora Garret shatters … .
Pandora swallowed, her throat tight, the pain in her heart growing sharp little spines, digging in. So he’d done it. He’d called off their engagement. Cut all her ties to Morrow.
Great. Freaking wonderful.
Abruptly she shoved her laptop away and slipped off the bed, walking the narrow, cramped length of the room then coming back again. A restless, hollow feeling coiled in her gut. Like she was missing something.
Dammit, why didn’t she feel better? Why wasn’t she thrilled with the news?
She could go anywhere she wanted. Do anything she wanted. She was free. Truly free.
But still that pain in her heart wouldn’t go away.
You know why.
No. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t. Freedom was what she’d wanted.
Are you so very sure?
Her throat hurt, her eyes burned. She turned and stumbled back to the bed, sitting on the edge of it. Then she bent her head, pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. Light burst behind her closed lids like fireworks.
No, shit, it was Jax she wanted. Jax she’d been so hungry for. Right from the start he’d given her all the things in her life she’d been missing. Freedom. Passion. Confidence in herself. Safety. Love … .
Tears filled her eyes and she had to press her hands against her lids harder. Jax had told her he loved her and yet he let her go.
Unlike Dad.
Pandora blinked and raised her head, realization tipping over her like a bucket of ice water.
For years her father had told her that he was keeping her safe, keeping her protected for her own good. Yet he hadn’t given a shit about her, not really. Because if he’d truly loved her, he’d have let her go.
Like Jax had …
It was lack of love that trapped. That confined. Love on the other hand …
Love set you free.
Pandora brushed away the tears that kept leaking out despite her best efforts. Okay, so, yeah. She was in love. She was in love with Jax Morrow. Which meant she had some decisions to make.
But first there was a small matter to handle. The small matter of her father.
Jax had told her he’d got his private investigators onto digging up dirt on Nick, but she knew he hadn’t managed to find anything, at least not yet. Which meant his announcement of their broken engagement would put her father’s blackmail plan in motion.
Well, she wasn’t going to let that happen. No matter he said he’d deal with it, that she wasn’t to investigate her own father. This was her mess as well as his and she couldn’t let him take the fall alone.
She wasn’t Snow White lying in her coffin, helpless and sleeping. Hell no. She was the fucking prince.
Pandora pulled the laptop to her. It didn’t take long to bring up the right site and sure enough, the backdoor she’d left in the firewall all those years ago was still there. Five seconds later, the firewall was in ruins.
She smiled. The Morrows weren’t the only family in the world who had secrets.
*
Hours later, she made her way to the apartment building that had been in her father’s schedule and waited outside it. It didn’t take long for him to come out.
The bulletproof limo was already waiting at the curb, Thing One and Thing Two plus a whole lot of other Things milling around.
Nick Garret strode toward it, the look on his face absolutely expressionless. Which meant he was pissed. Which was good. She wanted him pissed.
Pandora stepped out of the shadows and walked down the sidewalk. She didn’t bother to announce herself. The bodyguards—if they were any good, and Nick’s bodyguards were always extremely good—would have spotted her the moment she moved.
The crowd of men near the limo froze. Then her father noticed and he froze, too.
“Pandora,” he said, very quietly. The expressionless cast to his face rippled, something that might almost have been feeling crossing it. “I’m surprised to see you here.”
“Hi, Dad.” Her voice was calm, level. “I guess you’ve seen the news.”
The bodyguards were moving, surrounding her.
“Indeed I have.” Nick stayed where he was but his dark eyes roamed over her as if checking she was all there. “And I have to say I’m disappointed. Very disappointed. But I’m a man of my word. I’ve got a few documents that will be making their way into the hands of a few officials tomorrow. Morrow was a great company. Pity it won’t be for much longer.”
Pandora met his gaze, matched him stare for stare. “Those documents aren’t going anywhere. In fact, you’re not going to send them at all.”
“Oh?” One brow quirked, a cold smile beginning to turn his mouth. “And why is that?”
She pushed her hands into the pockets of her jeans, ignoring the menacing stares of the bodyguards. “Did you know I hacked into your computer systems years ago? Well, I did. I was bored and I wanted to see if I could do it. Turned out I could. And I can get back in again anytime I want because I left myself a backdoor.” She allowed herself a smile of her own. “You’ve got a whole lot of nasty little secrets all of your own, haven’t you, Dad?”
Her father’s expression darkened. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Wouldn’t I? You may have the police in your pockets but you don’t have the media. In fact I’ve got quite a few online friends who’d be very keen to see a few personal Garret e-mails.”
He sneered. “You’d never do that, Pandora.”
“Giv
e me one reason.”
“Because I’m your only family. I’m your father and—”
“No you’re not,” she cut him off, suddenly coldly furious. “You’re not my fucking father. You never gave a shit about me. So why should I give a damn about you?”
The sneer vanished. He took a step toward her, anger twisting his features. “You do this and you’re dead to me.”
“You know what, Dad? I don’t care.” She lifted her chin, met his dark eyes, so like her own. “I’ve given you a choice, which is more than you ever gave me. Take it or leave it.”
She didn’t wait for him to reply. Just turned around and began to walk away.
Perhaps he’d put a bullet in her back. She wouldn’t put it past him. But she’d gambled on the fact that he had a shred of decency left in him. A shred of feeling for her.
And perhaps she was right after all, because the only sound she heard was of the car doors closing and the engine starting. Driving away.
Leaving her alone.
*
“Canceling the party is going to cost us shitloads. Can’t we have it anyway?”
Jax ignored his brother. He kept his attention on the stock-ticker running along the bottom of the left-hand monitor. Morrow stock had dipped significantly after the news of his engagement had broken. Which surprised him. He’d thought most investors would have been relieved to get rid of the Garret association.
“What’s happening with the docklands project?” he demanded curtly. “Do we have any buyers yet?” Christ, he just wanted that gone. He wanted everything that reminded him of this mess, of Pandora, gone.
Donovan didn’t say anything.
Jax jerked his head up. There was a flicker of green in Donovan’s eyes. An angry flicker. Christ, he hadn’t had any time for his brother’s shit before, he had even less now. “Well? Report, Donovan.”
The other man’s jaw tightened, the angry sparks in his gaze glittering. Then his lashes fell. His voice, when he spoke, was expressionless. “I have a few. Just playing them off.”
“We don’t have time for games. I want it sold.”
“But presumably you want actual money for it, right?”
Jax drummed his fingers on the desk, angry. He knew he shouldn’t be taking it out on his brother but he couldn’t seem to help himself. The raw feeling hadn’t gone away and it didn’t take much to set him off. That detachment had gone with Pandora and hadn’t come back.
“Sell it. I have plenty of other people who can handle it if you can’t.”
A muscle jumped in his brother’s jaw but his voice was full of his usual lazy amusement. “Relax. I’ve got it all under control. We’re a team, right?”
Jax chose to ignore the sarcasm. “Fine. Now leave me alone. I’ve got work to do.”
After his brother had gone, Jax stared at his screens, at the unrolling news stories and stock-market prices, at the incoming e-mails and the spreadsheets. The chiming of his scheduler as tasks came up.
What he should be doing was getting Donovan to keep a handle on the news channels and other members of his staff to check and see if Garret had gone public with his Morrow information. Applying pressure to the investigators. Have his PR team on standby to handle the flak when it came.
But he couldn’t seem to get up the energy. It felt meaningless. Unimportant.
The company he was in charge of, the company his father and grandfather had sweated blood bringing from the criminal underworld and into legitimacy, the company that had been so important to him, now felt insignificant.
He almost didn’t care if it went down. Pandora was the important one. He’d freed her from the engagement, freed her from him. Which meant that now she could have the life she’d always wanted to have.
His intercom buzzed.
“Shit,” he muttered. He really didn’t want to answer it. Leaning over, he pushed the button. “Yeah?”
“Pandora Garret is here to see you, Mr. Morrow,” his personal assistant said without inflection. “I’m afraid she doesn’t have an appointment.”
Every single cell of his being went still at the sound of her name. What the hell was she doing here? Hadn’t he told her what he’d do if she ever came back? “What does she want?” he demanded hoarsely.
There was a pause. “She said she has something to tell you.” Another pause. “And that if you don’t see her, she’s going to come in … Miss Garret, stop!”
The doors of his office slammed open and Pandora stood on the threshold, his flustered-looking PA behind her.
Jax shoved his chair back and stood up, his heart tightening in his chest.
It had only been a day or two since she’d gone but he couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away from her. She was in the skinny jeans she always preferred and a tight black T-shirt, her black hair down her back. Her face was flushed and her dark eyes glowed with familiar determination. So fucking beautiful.
“Mr. Morrow,” his PA began.
He didn’t even look at her. All he could see was Pandora. “It’s okay, Grace,” he said thickly. “Miss Garret can stay.”
His assistant frowned but backed out of the room, shutting the doors behind her.
Silence fell.
“Hi, Jax,” Pandora said, her voice quavering just a little.
He could hardly speak but he forced out the words. “What the hell are you doing here?”
She thrust her hands in the back pockets of her jeans, her chin lifting, strong and proud. Shit, she wasn’t a princess. She was a fucking queen.
“I’ve got a couple of things to tell you.”
“Things? What things? You don’t remember me saying that if you came back, I wouldn’t let you leave?”
Her throat moved but she didn’t flinch from his gaze. “I remember.”
“Then, Christ, what are you—”
“Are you going to let me speak or what?”
He took a breath, his heart hammering. Desire was rising inside him, intense and burning and he knew this time it wasn’t going to be easily beaten down or controlled.
“Talk to me,” he bit out.
“Okay, so firstly, I went to see Dad.”
“You went to him alone?” He gripped the edges of his desk to stop himself from going over there and shaking her or pulling her close, he wasn’t quite sure which. “Are you completely insane?”
“Probably. I just … couldn’t let you or your company take the fall for my father’s blackmail. It’s not fair. So I made him stop.”
Jax blinked at her. “What? How?”
“I hacked into his systems a few years back, mainly because I was bored and I was honing my skills. I didn’t do anything with any of the information because…” She paused, her voice thickening. “Because I guess, like you said, he’s my dad, you know? And I didn’t have anyone else. I thought … I thought he loved me. But he didn’t. Not really. If he did, he wouldn’t have kept me locked up for years or handed me over to his damn colleagues.”
“Pandora, I—”
She held up a hand, stopping him. “I haven’t finished. So I left myself a backdoor in his system and last night, I went in and downloaded all the information on him I could get. Then I went to see him and told him that if he released any information against Morrow, I’d use what I had against him.” Her mouth tightened. “It would send him to jail for a very, very long time.”
Shock swept through him, along with an icy fear. “You little idiot. Didn’t I tell you not to do that? He could have killed you.”
“He didn’t, obviously. Even he wouldn’t stoop that low.”
“Why, Pandora? Why did you do that?” The raw feeling had begun to burn like fire in his chest but he didn’t move. He couldn’t. Like if he did, he’d shatter something. He didn’t know what it was and he didn’t know what to say but if he stayed still, if he stayed quiet, perhaps it would all become clear.
“Why?” Her eyes were very dark, liquid. “Because I figured out something. I figured out why I left you.”<
br />
“You wanted freedom. You didn’t want to be trapped.”
“No. That wasn’t the reason. I left because I was in love with you and it scared the shit out of me.”
He felt like he’d been turned to stone. “What?” The word came out as a whisper.
“I thought love meant being in a cage. Because that’s what Dad did. He told me it was for my own good. My own protection. And I believed him. For a long time, I believed him.” She took a breath, her T-shirt pulling tight across her breasts. “Then I met you. And you let me make my own choices. My own decisions. You didn’t keep me in a cage. You gave me everything that was missing in my life, and when I wanted to go, you let me.”
He could barely speak. “You know why, don’t you?”
“Yeah, Jax. I do.”
“Because I love you.”
A tear slowly ran down the side of her cheek. “Yes. And that’s kind of what I figured out. Love isn’t about confining someone. It’s about setting them free.” She took a step toward him. “Which means I’m free to make a choice, Jax. A real choice. For myself. And … I choose you.”
*
He looked hard and intimidating and unapproachable, his blue eyes cold. And her heart felt like shriveling up like a plant in the hot desert sun. Had she made the wrong choice? The wrong choice to leave him, the wrong choice to come back?
But it was too late to go back now. This was her decision and she had to stand by it.
“Me, Pandora?” There was no softening in his face, tension in every line of his posture. “Are you sure? You know what I want. That’s you. Forever. And once I have you, I’ll never let you go. Understand?”
Her throat felt thick, the pressure of all the emotion inside her pressing hard against it. She walked over to the desk and went around it to where he stood, easing herself in front of him. Then she reached up and touched his firm mouth, following the line of it with her fingertips. “But I don’t want you to let me go, Jax. Because being with you, loving you, is freedom.”
A shudder went through his powerful body. “Ah … baby … don’t do that.”
“Too late,” she murmured. “I love you, Jax Morrow. And I’ve made my choice.”
The Billion Dollar Bachelor Page 12