One Woman (Naked Trilogy Book 2)
Page 1
Table of Contents
DEAR READERS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
SAVAGE’S TRILOGY
MORE LILAH LOVE
CHAPTER ONE OF LOVE ME DEAD
CHAPTER ONE OF TANGLED UP IN CHRISTMAS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the supplier and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at lisareneejones.com/contact
All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination. www.lisareneejones.com.
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Dear Readers
Thank you so much for picking up book two in the NAKED TRILOGY! I’m so excited to share with you the next book in Emma and Jax’s story! Here’s a brief recap of what happened in book one:
Jax North is the CEO of North Whiskey. Emma Knight is a key player in the massive Knight hotel empire, owned by her family and ran by her bother, since her father died one month ago.
Jax sought out Emma because he thought her family was behind the death of his brother, Hunter, who was running the North Whiskey empire. His death was called suicide, but Jax and his other brother, Brody, never believed that to be true. The pain of their brother’s death is only compacted by the loss of their father six months prior to Hunter’s death in a skiing accident.
Jax is immediately aware that Emma isn’t like her father or her brother, Chance. He falls for her hard and he tells her exactly why he sought her out. Emma is dealing with her own father’s death only a month earlier and in the aftershock found paperwork and journals that referenced what seems like it could be a murder. She meets Jax’s no holds barred truth with her own. This Romeo and Juliet couple never intended to be consumed by the passion they have for each other, but they’re not about to uphold their families’ shady secrets and keep them from each other either. They’re all in together. It may not make sense, they may be doomed, but they’re determined to explore what is between them.
Meanwhile, Emma’s ex, York Waters shows up on scene. He’s been gone for years but he’s connected to her through business, as well. His aunt, Marion Roger, runs Breeze Airlines with her husband, Monroe, and they are a major partner to the Knights hotel empire. Emma can’t let her tortured past with York threaten her family’s business, but Jax isn’t about to let York’s sadistic stalking continue either.
Soon enough, Jax and Emma make a plan to go to his castle in Maine. To get away from everything, and get to the bottom of his brother’s murder. But as soon as they arrive, the North castle proves to be just as problematic as San Francisco did for them. As Emma is exploring the castle, she comes upon a landing in one of the high towers and encounters Brody North who soon has her dangling over the ledge of the tower with a menacing retelling of what happened to his brother on that very same ledge…
And that’s where we come back to…
CHAPTER ONE
Emma…
My heart is racing; cold wind off the Maine coastline blasting over me, biting at my legs beneath my skirt, the black space and drop behind me suffocating. The man holding me over the edge of the tower, brutally handsome and brutal is quite literal. “Do you think he jumped or was he pushed?”
I grab for him, but he’s out of reach. I can’t breathe. “I don’t know what happened to your brother, Brody,” I whisper, but then self-preservation kicks in and I shout. “Let me go!” But he doesn’t listen. He won’t listen, and I shout out beyond him, hoping someone hears me. “Help! Help! Help!”
“Stop shouting,” Brody bites out. “Stop fucking shouting.”
“If you hurt her, I will kill you.”
At the sound of Jax’s voice, I start crying. “Jax,” I plead, tears streaming down my face. “Jax.”
“Brody, you fuckhead,” he bites out. “She matters to me. She’s not one of them. Give her to me now.”
Brody’s jaw trembles, and I can see the struggle in his eyes. He wants to push me. He wants to push me badly. “I didn’t know who my father really was until he died,” I say. “I swear to you, Brody. I’m not like him. I’ll help you.”
“Why would I believe you?” he demands.
“Because I’m not him. Please listen. I’m not him.”
He draws in a breath and turns me, pressing me against the wall of the alcove where we stand. Jax grabs me and pulls me down to the room below, molding me close, his hand on the back of my head, his lips at my ear. “I’m so fucking sorry. So fucking sorry, baby. Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I breathe out. “Yes, now I am.”
“I’m crazy about you. I am so damn crazy about you. Do not listen to anything he’s saying to you.” I sink into him, clutching at the blue jacket of his suit, holding on for dear life. I don’t want to let him go. I was so certain I would fall to my death. “Go, Emma,” he orders, his hand brushing my hair from my face as he tilts my gaze to meet his. “Go now, okay? Go back to the main room. I’ll find you.”
His emotion is a storm that thunders and roars, washing away everything but my fear for where those feelings might lead him and his brother. My cheeks are cold and hot all over but when my hand settles on his jaw, he’s fire, anger burning through him. Anger that could prove dangerous, and I force myself to calm, to calm him as well, but all I manage at first is, “He’s grieving. I know he’s grieving.” Somehow, I don’t tell him how certain I am that Brody would have pushed me, not now. “Come with me,” I add. “Come down from here with me before you talk to him.”
Brody chooses right then to interject. “That bitch needs to go now before I grab her and throw her out of here,” he snarls.
Jax is all about control. I know this about him.
I’ve seen this in him, and in this moment, that control is tested. That storm inside him charges the air, and still, he kisses me before he turns me toward the exit. He steps into me, leaning in close, his lips at my ear. “I need you to leave now, Emma. Leave, baby. I’ll find you.” The words are tender, but there’s a whip to his tone, an absoluteness to it. This is an order, a command, and when he sets me away from him, my awareness of a war between siblings that cannot be fought by another bids my compliance.
I stumble forward and exit the chapel-like room, but the minute I’m out of sight, I hear Brody demand, “Why would you bring her here?”
“This is my home,” Jax growls. “And she is my woman, and if you forget those things again, you will not be welcome here.”
I stop walking and turn around. They’re family, and as much as I hate Brody right now, I read my father’s journal. I know that he might really have taken a life, a life that meant everything to two brothers, and Jax is one of those brothers. I can’t let my family be the reason the two brothers who are left lose each other. I can’t let me be the reason. “No,” I shout out, stepping back in the room by way of pure instinct. “He’s your brother. He’s angry and hurt, Jax. Don’t let me be the reason you two divide.”
Brody scowls at me. “We’re supposed to believe you want to save our family?” he demands, turning his attention back to Jax. “Are you fucking kidding me with this shit, man?”
“She’s not like the rest of them,” Jax says.
“The rest of them?” I ask. “You think my brother is like my father?”
“Yes,” Brody says. “He’s just like your fucking father.”
“We don’t know that,” Jax bites out.
“Fuck this bullshit,” Brody grounds out. “She helped murder our brother.” And when Brody takes a step toward me, Jax steps in front of him. In a blink, Brody is shoved against the wall next to the alcove.
“No!” I shout out, but Jax isn’t listening.
“Go now, Emma!” Jax orders. “Go!”
I inhale sharply, and I want to resist. I want to stay, but I also don’t want to make the situation worse. I think I am making it worse when I had the best of intentions. I do as Jax says, I rush through the room, past the stained-glass cross to my right and onward through the open doorway.
Once I’m in the hallway, I step to the wall and stay, listening. “If you ever touch her again,” Jax hisses at his brother, “I will make sure you feel pain in every way possible.”
“You’d do that over her?” Brody demands. “What is this? Are you using her to punish her family? Make this make sense to me.”
That question—is he using me—cuts and burns, and I hold my breath waiting for Jax’s reply, but I don’t have to wait long.
“I told you. She matters to me. Touch her again, and I’ll make you feel pain. And right now, you need to leave. You aren’t welcome here.”
“This is my family home, too.”
“I inherited it. I own the castle. You are no longer welcome here.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, hating this, hating to split Jax from his brother. They’re speaking again, but this time, their voices are so low that I can’t hear them. It worries me. It bothers me. I’m unsettled and cold inside, so very cold. I think I might be in shock. I think I’m running on adrenaline and headed for a crash I can’t have in the middle of the public castle. I push away from the wall and take off running. I turn down a hallway, following the stone path lined with artwork, certain I’m traveling the path I’d traveled earlier. Adrenaline pushes me forward, and it’s not long before I realize that the path has not ended in the place I’d expected. I’m now in a courtyard in the middle of the castle.
I’m lost in a castle that apparently wants to be the death of me.
***
Jax…
I keep Brody against the wall, giving Emma time to put distance between herself and him. “I don’t know what the fuck has gotten into you, Brody, but wake the fuck up. She could have died.”
“Like Hunter fucking died?”
“She’s not her father,” I bite out.
“You were all about making them all pay,” he reminds me. “Now you’re fucking her and you’re not?”
Fuck, I need him to shut his damn mouth. “She’s an outsider, Brody. She didn’t even fucking inherit. She’s going to help us find out what the damn obsession her family has with this castle is.”
“You’re being played, Jax. Don’t be a fucking fool. They want the castle, and where did you take her? To the fucking castle. We had a plan.”
“To find out what they want. And Emma can help, but not if you make her the enemy she’s not. I’m telling you, man. You make her the enemy, you make me the enemy. I don’t want that.” I release him and step back. “Leave, Brody. Leave now. Out the back door.”
His eyes burn through me. “Hunter’s message was clear. He wrote it down: ‘The Knights cannot get the castle.’” Brody pushes off the wall and steps in front of me. “You’re fucking her, and she’s going to fuck us. Mark my words. I’m not letting your pussy high ruin us.” He steps around me, and I rotate to watch him leave the room. And holy fuck, at least he listens and cuts toward the rear exit, away from Emma who I hope like hell is in the main foyer waiting. I’m already walking, trying to get to her before she can get a car here and leave.
I reach the door, and Savage, who I’d left at the airport to follow us here in a private car, only to have him disappear, steps in front of me. “I got in this place through the side door by the parking area. You need men, Jax, because this place is a bad guy’s wet dream.”
“Right now, I need you to go back the way you came in and make sure my brother leaves. Silver Porsche. He just held Emma over the ledge of the landing and damn near killed her. Go now.”
He curses, and I cut left while he cuts right, the lost time for that conversation lengthening my strides. When the main foyer is in sight, and Emma is not, I step inside the office to find Jill behind her desk. “Where’s Emma?”
Her brows furrow. “Isn’t she with you?”
Emma can’t get out of the front door without a code; Jill would have had to give it to her, which means she’s still in the castle, just not here, where Brody could still be as well.
CHAPTER TWO
Emma…
The wind blows over the high stone wall into the open courtyard that’s right here in the middle of the castle. I hug myself against the chill that I’m not sure is from the wind, but rather, the fear that I’d felt on that landing. The fear that I can’t quite shake. Saltwater settles on my lips, teasing my tongue, reminding me of how close the ocean is to our location. In turn, I wonder how close I came to falling down on the rocks that I suspect line the oceanfront. That’s how out of my normal head I am right now. Salty air has me picturing myself broken and dead on an oceanfront. Resisting the urge to go back the way I came for fear of running into Brody, I scan another hallway and decide it might actually be the path I should have taken in the first place.
“I just can’t get rid of you, can I?”
At the sound of Brody’s voice, I freeze, adrenaline surging through me, my options punching at my mind. I could run down the hallway in front of me, trying to escape another near-death experience, but I don’t even know where it leads me. I could end up cornered. And what does running do for me? Brody is Jax’s brother. I can’t leave Brody behind unless I leave Jax behind. And this family has a connection to my family that clearly has them screaming accusations of murder, while Brody seems to be willing to commit one himself. My father’s words scream in my head, demanding I listen. I have secrets, but his journal says that they’re nothing compared to my his own secrets. What about my brother? I’m not running. I’m facing this, starting with Brody’s threats.
I rotate and bring him into view, and he’s close, way too close for comfort, not more than a foot, but I don’t back away. I stare at him, tormented by his uncanny resembl
ance to Jax, a reminder that this man is his brother. And brothers matter, they do, but that only stokes my fury. At Brody for being an asshole and a potential killer. At my father for putting me in this position, for making me a target.
“I already told you I didn’t know who my father really was until he died,” I bite out, my voice vibrating with anger and that steady stream of adrenaline. “He’s dead, and he barely tolerated me when he was alive. Killing me would ruin your life and get you what? Revenge on a dead man?”
His lips thin. “I don’t believe for a minute you’re innocent.”
That does it. I’ve had enough of this man. Fear fades fully now, and I step toward him. I push that space limit I’d wanted to set only moments before, glaring up at him. “You know what I think?” I demand and don’t wait for an answer. “If killing me was your answer to Hunter’s death, then you’re the one who is like my father, not me.”
“Don’t even say his name,” he replies. “Because if I hear it on your lips, one more time—”
“Hey, asshole!” A male voice shouts out from behind Brody.
I don’t have to see the man who owns it to know who it is. It’s Savage, the big brute of a security person who Jax hired and who flew in with us and then left us at the airport to pick up a contractor who’s now working for him. Savage, who is a force of nature. Brody whirls around to face him. Savage steps just enough to the side to bring me into view, telling me he’s aware of my position, but his focus is on Brody.
“Why don’t you try and push me off a fucking landing,” Savage taunts. “I betcha you’re the one who falls.” He glances at me. “Go now, Emma, before this gets bloody.”
“Who the fuck are you?” Brody demands. “And what are you doing in my family home?”
“Apparently beating your ass,” Savage replies.
Aware that a fight will only make matters worse for Jax, I react instantly. “Damn it, Savage. That solves nothing.”
“I beg to differ, darling,” Savage drawls. “It solves a whole hell of a lot.” He glances up at me. “Go now.”