All authority nodded, acquiescing to a guy that did not, technically, have any influence in their judgment, but who acted like he was the sole decision maker amongst them, Jax included.
“Right. Miss Anderson, can we use the cellar to get statements?” Jax asked, clearly wanting everyone else to leave.
“That’s fine,” Josh answered for her.
“Fine.” Bill said in as close to a whine as an expensive lawyer could. “Girls, you are coming with me. I would like to talk to you. If Mr. Williams thinks he knows best, let him deal with the police officers on his own.”
All the cops stiffened.
Chapter Thirty-Two
When they got out to the tables, they were the focus of every eye in the place. There was a camera crew outside, taking shots of one of the thugs being wheeled away in an ambulance. It looked like the white guy with the newly busted knee. The two others had already been cleared out.
It was private property, and it was clear her staff were not allowing reporters in. Probably the work of her father. Part of his practice was schooling his clients in what to say to the press.
“Okay now, Jenna, you need to freshen up your makeup,” Bill said as they sat. “Erika, lipstick. Your face looks pale without it.”
“Shouldn’t we look like victims?” Jenna asked tiredly, rubbing her temples. Erika was looking at Bill like he had two heads.
“You should look like victims, yes. But not half-dead ones. Your boys look great. Hero angle will keep them out of trouble. You need to look pretty enough to deserve them.”
Erika blinked three times, and stared at Bill harder.
“Welcome to my childhood,” Jenna muttered.
“Listen here—”
Jenna held up her hand. “I appreciate it now, Dad. If you can keep Josh and Jax out of trouble, then you are my best friend.”
“I should agree, but…wow.” Erika shook her head and took another large sip of wine.
“Jax is tap-dancing around this situation. He’s got it all under control. And Josh…well, that boy has some talent for controlling a situation. I didn’t realize. You’ve met your match there, sweetheart.” Bill looked over the wine list.
Erika snorted as she applied lipstick. Jenna had wondered where that color had disappeared to. She thought she’d lost it.
Erika saw her looking, and shrugged. “It looks good on me.”
Fifteen minutes later Josh walking into the room with Jax. All eyes left Jenna and Erika and found the boys. It was impossible to say who received more attention. Jax was ten times more attractive in his element, but Josh was his normal drop-dead gorgeous, walking on his liquid joints with a sway to those giant shoulders.
Both were heroes, too, and everyone loved a hero.
“Erika, let’s go.” Jax rubbed her back. “Just follow my lead and we’ll be okay. Okay?”
Erika took another large sip before Bill reached over and grabbed the glass from her. He got a look of death for his efforts.
Before they disappeared, Jenna heard Jax ask, “What’s with the lipstick?”
Josh stopped by Bill and looked at him with the glare of tempered steel.
Before her dad knew what he was doing, he was sliding out of the chair so Josh could slide in next to Jenna.
Like the general had when Jenna had done the same thing, Bill must’ve realized what he was doing halfway through, then made a show of doing Josh a favor. Josh waited with patience, and took his seat, putting his arm around Jenna and pulling her into his hard chest.
“You okay, love?” he asked in her ear.
She leaned into him, coveting the warmth unfurling within her. She closed her eyes and nodded.
“Jax’ll take care of you. Trust him,” Josh said.
“I do.”
“I don’t think he knows it.” Josh snickered. “He thought you were starting a mutiny earlier.”
“He’s gullible.”
“Yes, he is. He also knows you hate cops.”
“Jenna,” Jax said beside them.
“Already?” Josh said. Regrettably, she left the comfort of Josh’s arms. As she slid out of the booth, she noticed her dad was looking at her strangely. Before she could ask what the problem was, she was guided into her own wine cellar to be interrogated by four freaking cops. What had the world come to where she was going quietly?
She took a seat at the card table, unable to keep the scowl from her face. Jax stood to the side, silent.
“Jenna Anderson,” said the chubby man in uniform. He had a wide face, thick jaw with a jutting chin, and hard eyes. All the cops had hard eyes. She supposed it was the nature of the job in a city as dangerous as NYC.
“Yes.”
“May I call you Jenna?”
Jax gave her a pointed stare. She sighed. Jax was going to live to regret this.
“Fine.”
“Can you please tell us what happened tonight? We need your statement. As there were injuries, we need to make sure of the guilty parties. We also need to know if you want to press charges.” His voice was kind. He was treating her like a frazzled victim.
Usually she was in trouble. This was a first.
She gave the account of what happened, not embellishing, not playing sufferer, and not mentioning any weapons. When she was finished, the cops all nodded. They’d gotten what they were expecting.
“Thank you, Jenna. We know this is scary, and we appreciate your professionalism. You’re lucky to have Jack here, and Mr. Williams. They did good work tonight.”
What she wanted to say was, “So…we’re not in trouble, then?” But as Jax was staring at her with his own cop look, she figured her face was giving too much away. She adopted Josh’s stone mask and leaned back.
“Would you guys like some wine?” she asked, pushing a strand of hair from her face. Jax nodded approvingly.
“Oh no, ma’am. We’re on duty. Thank you for the offer. If you don’t mind, we’d like to talk to Jack for a minute before we go.”
As Jax escorted her out of the cellar, she wondered if the other cops were mute. One thing was for sure—having an in with the boys in blue was pretty handy. It had never been so easy talking to them, or getting away from them.
Jax was a keeper.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The four of them sat around Jenna’s kitchen table, drinking beer and trying to come down from the events of the night. Jenna looked wrecked, her hair disheveled, circles under her eyes, and her body sagging. The amount of chocolate she was shoving in her face was testament to how dead she felt, coming down off the adrenaline from earlier.
Josh wanted to ask her to leave this city now, tonight. If he was persuasive enough, he could get her to go back to Colorado. Her fight was almost gone, her hope dwindling, and the stress was visibly taking its toll on her.
The thing that kept him from saying anything was this building of hers. He knew she needed to finish it. It was her dream, and she needed to see it through. He wouldn’t take her away from it now. If he did, she would always think back with what-ifs, and he didn’t want that between them.
Once their beers were finished, Josh led Jenna into their bedroom—it felt good to say “their” bedroom, instead of hers—and slowly undressed her. He slipped into bed in his birthday suit and pulled her in next to him. She folded up against him eagerly, looking for his warmth despite the humidity of the air.
He slid his hand up her flat stomach and over the swell of her bare breast. He felt her nipple constrict from his ministrations, and tweaked it. He was met with silence.
He kissed up her neck slowly, grazing her skin, tickling her as he did it, expecting her to reach for him. He couldn’t help but notice her lack of enthusiasm.
Skipping ahead, he kissed her soft lips, slipping his tongue into her mouth as she opened in invitation. She would accept him, but wasn’t really excited about the idea.
That dampened the mood a little.
He was painfully hard and wanted nothing more than to find ec
stasy before they drifted off to sleep, but he could tell she was exhausted. The fact that she would go through with it to help him out was a sign of how good a woman she was. If he pushed the issue, bearing in mind how difficult her life was at the moment, he would be a dick. Thinking with his dick, actually.
Biting his lip, he backed off and curled up around her.
“Are you sure?” she asked tiredly.
No. “Of course. Go to sleep. I’ll keep you safe.”
“Thanks, Josh. I love you.”
“Love you too.” The constricting in his chest matched that of his balls. Love and lust raged around his body; he felt the heat off her skin, smelled her feminine scent. Christ, his cock was throbbing. Torture, this was pure torture.
He squeezed his eyes shut and focused on his breathing. He would be a gentleman if it killed him.
At the rate he was going, it might.
Jenna sighed, her breath tickling his neck. It wasn’t helping.
She turned away, probably sick of his cock poking her every time he breathed, and got in position for him to spoon her.
It. Wasn’t. Fucking. Helping!
Now her glorious, plump little arse was pushed up against his raging hard-on. He had to keep his whole body flexed to keep from sticking it in in one mad thrust.
“Josh…” she whined.
“Sorry. I’m trying—”
She cut him off with an irritated sound, infusing his lust with guilt, shifted quickly, and pushed back into him.
Oh holy, glorious saints! She’d impaled herself. He was now fully sheathed inside her, his cock a live wire, setting his body on fire.
“Get ’r done,” Jenna breathed, moving languidly to help him along.
And it did help. Oh, holy fuck, it helped. Before he could stop himself, he was pumping into her, feeling her lush ass give and take as he slapped against it. He grabbed a perfectly round breast and heaved against her smooth flesh. She moved and moaned, arched and shifted.
He would be a complete boob if he didn’t realize her response was just drama to hurry him along. She didn’t have any of her usual fire. Hell, she didn’t even sound like she was into it.
All that was a side thought to the tingling at the tip of his cock. A few more thrusts saw him climaxing, sputtering to a finish, and pulling out in a hasty retreat.
“Sorry,” Josh said in a pant, clutching her close.
“Don’t be sorry. I won’t be when I make you take me for a romantic dinner.”
Josh chuckled, glad the mood was light. “You aren’t great at faking.”
“Out of practice.”
If that didn’t make him feel like the king of his domain, nothing would. With a satisfied smile, he curled up around her and quickly fell into a deep sleep.
“Camille, go away. And shut the door,” Don boomed.
Jenna settled herself in front of Don’s large desk, currently cluttered with papers. Don settled back and put his feet on the desk and his hands on his stomach.
“Jenna, I wanted to talk to you about some sensitive material.”
Jenna got a tingle of apprehension. She wasn’t sure what to expect. She wasn’t even sure if this was job related or extracurricular. Josh not being there—and lately, every time Don talked about the danger, Josh had always been present—doubled her uneasiness.
She kept all this behind a blank face. “Okay.”
Don’s face was somber. “I heard about the attempted break-in. You should have told me.”
Jenna nearly sighed in relief. When her extremities stopped shaking, she shrugged. “It wasn’t as bad as a group of guys accosting us, so I forgot about it.”
Don looked at her closely for another minute. “I have recommended that you, Erika, and Mike transfer out to finish remotely. You can make periodic trips to the building site as needed, but I feel, and the company agrees, that you would be better off completing your assignment out of danger.”
Jenna leaned back in shock. “Don…I live here. Where the hell am I supposed to go?”
“I thought you and Erika had planned to head to Colorado after the building was up? Why not go there? Try it out. Call it an extended vacation. The company is paying until your deadline ends, in about a month, so you have a safety blanket. If you hate it, come back. If you like it, coming back for inspections and the like is on the company. All of this has been approved.”
Jenna’s mind whirled. Erika had planned to move, but Jenna hadn’t cemented her intentions yet. Now the company was trying to make the choice for her. This stupid building was like an earthquake in her life, only the pieces, after they were shaken all to shit, were falling into a different pattern than they had started in.
She hated that knowing look on Don’s face and that fatherly patience. Petulance always irritated him, so she decided to go with that. “What makes you think it will be any safer in a month?”
“I know why you went to visit Steve.”
Jenna’s stomach fell out of the casing of her body. She tried to deny it, but as her throat constricted, she had no choice but to keep silent.
“I have some longstanding connections on that side of town. I wanted to let you know that the contract is active. The upholder of the contract is at the top of his trade in the local market. If you decide to come back, or when you need to visit the site, I foresee no problems.”
Jenna sputtered and half stood up.
What was she going to do, run?
She sat back down with a plop.
Don was still looking at her somberly when he said, “Did you think I was going to leave you to take care of my mistakes? You know me better than that, Jenna.”
“Don…” Her voice was no more than a squeak. She stopped, regrouped, and started again. “Don, you are an executive. What are you doing… I mean, how did you know… Does anyone else know?”
The words came tumbling out, but Don waited patiently for her to sputter to a stop.
“I told you, I still have a lot of connections in that neighborhood—much like you, it seems. My connections remain a little fresher, though, because I give back.” Jenna was about to ask for clarification but Don steamrolled over her. “Now, this little debacle with Tweedledee and Tweedledum was unexpected. I played dirty to get those approvals, sure. But so did they. I beat them. I expected that to be the end of it. Expected them to take it like men. That was my mistake. But coming after my family? You don’t do that. That is crossing the line. I can’t tolerate that. What you should have asked, Jenna, is why I let you go into that neighborhood when I was planning to take care of it.”
Jenna’s head was buzzing. She couldn’t get it to clear enough to respond, so she sat dumbly, staring, waiting for Don to go on.
Don raised his hands in defense. He must’ve taken her silence as an accusation. “Now, Jenna, I know I shouldn’t have let you go, but there weren’t no other way. Steve’s got a soft spot for you. I’m not sure why, because he’s gay, so it isn’t your looks, but something in your shared past made him think you cared. God only knows what, because you’re not the caring type—at least you weren’t before Cliché—but he was the one that had to pull the strings. He is on good terms with…the upholder. I wouldn’t have been able to get him.
“Now, Steve has tried to go straight since the cancer. He said ‘no’ flat out to me. I needed you to soften him up. Needed you to ask in person, on your own, not knowing my intentions. I was hoping he would reconsider. And he did.”
This was a side of Don she only knew through hearsay and rumor, but seeing him talk about this like it was a business deal sent her world tilting.
“I should be mad,” she whispered. It was all she could say.
“You’ve been nothing but a bystander in this since the beginning. All of you. I’m proud of the way you stepped up. You and Erika. And the guys. You’re a fighter. I knew that, but it is another thing to see it. That you haven’t blamed me once is…”
If Jenna didn’t know any better, she would have thought Don was cho
ked up. It was a bit touchy-feely for her taste. She wasn’t used to it. Especially sitting at his desk on a weekday morning when she should be working.
“But a hit, Don?” she asked quietly.
“They messed with my family. You don’t do that, Jenna. They crossed the line.”
“Who else knows about this?”
“The same people who’ve known since you met with Steve.”
“And you knew I had those types of connections?”
“You’re not the only one that does her homework, Jenna.”
She supposed that was true. She’d known that.
“Even so, that was a bit of a stretch for me.”
“I know, kid. In my life now, it’s a stretch for me, too. But…looks like I win the experience contest.”
This conversation was surreal. Not possible. “How did a couple like us end up in a high rise in New York City?”
Don laughed. “We aren’t even the worst of it. We just have the stomach to do it in person.”
“Don, I would appreciate it if you didn’t speak of this to anyone. Even Josh. Or Jax. They don’t know.”
It was Don’s turn to be shocked. “You didn’t tell them?”
“Erika and I don’t want them knowing our shadier side. Plus, it’s illegal and they don’t need any part of it. I left no evidence, but still.”
“No, you didn’t. I figured I would have to clean some things up, but you were smart about it. Those twin fuck-ups shouldn’t have underestimated you—pardon my French. Or your guys—especially your guys. Your money will be returned to you. The transaction is paid in full. I brought this on you. I will clean this up.”
Jenna’s head sounded like a landline phone left offline for too long. They were two professionals, in business suits, in an office, talking about criminal activity. What was more, Don Jeffries didn’t look troubled in the least.
Instead of entertaining the ludicrousness anymore, Jenna skipped ahead. “Uh…okay. That last conversation aside, when are we supposed to leave?”
Unexpected Guardian (Skyline Trilogy Book 3) Page 26