Jax grinned and looked at Sean. “Welcome home,” he said.
Chapter 8
Abby reached over and snagged a second glass of champagne from one of the waiters circulating through the g crowd that was gathering on the old quay sticking out into the Hudson like a broken finger. Looming over the crowd was the huge, run-down shell of an old factory that used to house the old Morrow HQ back in the forties.
The event organizers—Donovan’s responsibility—had outdone themselves in her opinion. The interior of the old building had been cleaned enough to hold a party in but not enough to totally kill the industrial feel of the place. Small tables were dotted throughout the interior as well as out on the quay. Lighting had been rigged up, mostly discreet table lamps that threw evocative shadows onto the steel walls of the building while making sure people could see enough to know who they were talking to. A couple of bars had been rigged up to cope with the crowd. The atmosphere was fantastic, the summer evening breeze soft, the George Washington Bridge in the background.
Abby sipped her champagne as more people joined the crowd. She could see Sean standing with Jax and Donovan, the ground-breaking ceremony due to start in a couple of minutes.
Her heart tightened as she watched him chat with his brothers. He was dressed in the custom-made tux that had arrived for him the day before, looking so unbearably sexy it made her mouth dry. It fit him perfectly, highlighting his lean hips and powerful shoulders, his bow tie expertly tied by herself. He’d finally gotten a haircut the day before also, going quite short, the blond strands glowing gold in the spotlights that were set up around the quay.
Different from his brothers with his fair hair and dark eyes. Taller than either of them, too. But for all of that, he looked like he belonged. Like he was one of them. And, God, he was even smiling.
She took another sip of champagne, watching him.
He’d told her about what had gone down at Jax’s meeting, and ever since then, it had been like he’d found some kind of purpose. He dressed in his suit every morning, the driver coming to take them both to the Morrow offices to work. Then, at night, after the day was over, she’d come back to his hotel suite and he’d fill her in on what he’d been doing. He’d accepted becoming part of Jax’s negotiating team and had been given homework on the various different deals Morrow was in the process of handling, as well as a brief to look into Morrow’s security team.
He was busy. And she liked the look in his eyes when he talked to her about what he’d been doing. The excitement in them. It made her start to think things she shouldn’t. Like what would happen when this was all over, what he would do, where he would go.
He hadn’t mentioned staying in New York or staying at Morrow. But she hoped he would because she wanted to keep in touch with him, that was for sure.
Only that?
Abby ignored the voice in her head. She couldn’t think about more than that. There wasn’t anything more. They’d said a week with each other. That was the deal. And hell, wasn’t she looking forward to finishing off with this job and finally moving on to the new one at Victoria’s company? New challenges and all that?
Something ached just behind her breastbone but she tried to ignore that, too, letting her gaze wander to the photographers moving among the crowd, taking pictures of the rich and famous. Preparing to capture the ceremony itself.
God, everyone was going to go mad for Sean Morrow in his tux, she just knew it.
“Hey, darling,” a slurred male voice said from beside her. “Enjoying the evening?”
She glanced around and found a guy standing at her elbow. Not anyone she recognized. She gave him a pleasant smile anyway. “Yes, thank you.”
“What are you doing afterward?” The man sidled closer as the crowd continued to grow, waiting for the ceremony to begin. “We could go get a drink.”
He looked like he’d already had enough to drink for both of them. “I don’t think so,” she said, keeping it friendly. “I’m here with someone already.”
“That’s a shame. It could be our secret maybe?”
She wanted to inch away but the crowd now hemmed her in. Turning away, she kept the smile plastered to her face. “Thanks for asking but no thank you.”
“Awww, come on.” The guy stepped closer, almost brushing her side. “Just one drink.”
Standing with his brothers as someone fiddled with the microphone stand, Sean glanced in her direction. She gave him an encouraging smile while at the same time murmuring, “I said no,” to the drunken idiot beside her.
“Hey, I’m being friendly here. I think the least you could do is let me get you one drink.”
Sean’s brows pulled down and a frisson of foreboding crawled down Abby’s spine. “The speeches are beginning,” she said quietly. “I don’t think you want to go for a drink now.”
“I don’t care about the damn speeches.” And much to her shock, the guy slid an arm around her, pulling her in close. “You and me, darling. Don’t be shy.”
Surreptitiously, Abby tried to disengage herself but the guy was like a limpet, his arm tight around her waist. “Let me go,” she muttered, pushing him.
He gave a drunken laugh and held her more firmly, lifting his other hand to do God knows what, knocking her glass out of her hand so it smashed onto the wooden quay beneath their feet. The sound was loud enough for heads to turn in her direction and she thought that might make the man let her go, but he didn’t.
“Don’t worry about that. We’ll get you a new one,” he muttered. “Come on, darling. Let’s get out of here.”
“Leave her alone.”
Abby swallowed, her heart pounding.
Sean had appeared through the crowd, his hands in fists at his sides, an expression of taut fury on his face.
The drunk guy, clearly too drunk or too stupid to understand the danger, rounded on him. “Fuck off. I saw her first.”
“Sean,” Abby began.
But it was too late. The arm around her waist was yanked away as Sean closed a hand around the man’s shoulder and pulled him back from her. He cursed, swung a fist, only to meet one of Sean’s that caught him straight on the cheekbone. There was a sharp crack, the man’s head jerking back, the crowd around them gasping in shock, rippling away from them.
“Sean!”
Sean didn’t listen. The drunk guy was fighting back, launching at him, gripping on to his shirt and pulling. Material tore. He ducked the guy’s wildly flailing fists but the glass from her broken champagne flute must have disturbed his balance because he stumbled and the guy landed a lucky hit on his mouth.
Sean gave a low growl and let fly with another punch, catching the man in the stomach. He bent over, groaning, while Sean knocked his legs out from under him. The guy went down, cursing and gasping. The crowd had given the pair a wide berth, muttering.
Jax and Donovan had pushed their way through, staring at the man on the ground, then at their brother.
Abby couldn’t breathe. It had all happened so fast. Sean had blood seeping from a split lip. His bow tie was askew, his shirt ripped, a darkening bruise on his cheekbone. He glanced down at the man on the ground, then back at her. Then at the staring crowd around him. And blinked.
“What the hell is going on?” Jax demanded.
Sean said nothing, his chest heaving. Then suddenly he turned around and began shouldering his way out of the crowd. Camera flashes popped while people began taking pictures with their phones, the whispers of the crowd swelling in volume.
“Sean!” she called breathlessly. “Wait!”
But he didn’t stop.
“What happened?” Jax asked.
“Some guy was hassling me, and Sean … ”
“Sean beat the shit out of him,” Donovan finished, looking down at the man now out cold on the ground.
“Christ,” Jax muttered. “Donovan, can you deal with this lot?”
“And I’ll get Sean,” Abby said, already starting in the direction he’d gone.
The street near the factory’s entrance was packed with cars, limos, and cabs, headlights streaming in the dark, outlining his tall figure as he approached the gate.
“Sean, wait!” she called out. “Where are you going?”
He halted and glanced back at her, his expression unreadable. “Away.”
She took a breath, slowing her pace to a stop. “Why?”
“Why the hell do you think? I can’t be around other people right now, Abby.”
“Because you beat up some drunk guy?”
His jaw tightened. In the dark, with blood on his mouth and a bruise on his cheek, his shirt torn, he looked dark, disreputable, and incredibly dangerous. “It’s not exactly the best look for my image, is it?”
“He wouldn’t let me go.”
“I didn’t have to punch him.”
“He swung at you first.”
“But I didn’t duck. I wanted to hit him, Abby. I wanted to take him down and I did.” He heaved in a breath, looking back toward the factory and the bright lights of the ceremony. “Fuck it. I don’t belong here. I never did.”
A small, sharp pain slid behind her heart. “Taking a swing at some drunken idiot doesn’t mean you don’t belong, don’t be ridiculous.”
“You know what’s ridiculous?” His gaze settled on her, dark and relentless. “Me thinking I’m a Morrow just because I got my hair cut and put on a tux. That’s ridiculous. Van was right: put a monkey in a suit and it’s still just a fucking monkey.”
Abby took a breath. “God, that’s not what you are. You were protecting me. That’s Morrow to the core.”
“Not the kind of Morrow Jax was hoping for. I’m bad blood, Abby. I’ve always been bad blood.”
“That’s not true.” She hated the bitterness in his voice. It hurt in ways she wasn’t prepared for.
“Yes, it is,” he said. “Jax’s big moment, Morrow solidarity and all that shit. And all that’ll hit the headlines will be me losing it and beating the crap out of someone.” His hand went to the bow tie around his neck, pulling at it, tearing it off. He threw it away with a viciousness that made the pain inside her worse. “Some fucking moment.”
“Don’t. You’re being too hard on yourself.”
Sean took a step toward her. “You think that guy won’t press charges?” he demanded. “Of course he fucking will. It’ll go through the courts and Jax will have to let it because he can’t be seen as perverting the course of justice. Christ, I should have stayed with the club. Me coming back was never going to work, not from the start.”
“It did work, Sean. It was working.”
“Bull-fucking-shit. I was set up to fail from the moment I walked into Jax’s office. And the moment you came in after him.”
She swallowed, a lump rising at the back of her throat. “So, what? This is Jax’s fault? Mine?”
“Yeah, shit, why not? If you hadn’t been involved, I would never have stayed.” There was an expression in his eyes she’d never seen before, a black kind of anger that burned bright and hot.
“No,” she said slowly. “This isn’t about me. This is about you.”
His expression became granite. “Like I told you right from the very beginning. I’m bad blood. It’s not my fault you didn’t listen.”
“You’re not bad blood, Sean. I don’t know where you got that idea from but—”
“I’ll tell you where that idea came from.” He came right up to her, towering over her, bloody and torn, anger blazing in his face. “Every damn person in my entire fucking life. My mother, my father, my stepmother. Every person who was supposed to take care of me and didn’t.”
She went still, staring at the fury in his eyes. He’d talked to her back when they were kids about his stepmother, who’d taken her resentment at her husband out on him, and his father, who’d taken him in and then ignored him. But not about his mother. Never, in fact. She hadn’t asked, either, because she’d always gotten the feeling he hadn’t wanted to talk about it. The only thing she knew was that the woman had died.
“Your mother,” she said. “Is she the one who put that thought in your head?”
A car turned behind Sean, the headlights casting his face into darkness, outlining the strong, powerful lines of his figure. “She shot herself,” he said in a voice she didn’t recognize. “I came home from school and … I found her.”
Abby went cold, shock pulsing down her spine. “Oh, God.”
“She’d told me that morning she didn’t have enough money to pay for me to go on a school trip to the zoo. I was angry. I told her I hated her and … she told me she hated me, too. Except, I didn’t mean it. But I knew she did because when I got home, there she was. In the kitchen. There was blood all over the table and … ” He stopped dead.
Sirens echoed, music throbbed, the sounds of the city going on around them. As if nothing had happened. As if life was carrying on as normal. Because that’s what life did. When you were falling apart, everything else kept right on going and so did you, no matter how much it hurt.
Abby reached out, wanting to hold him, help him in some way, but he held up a hand. “Don’t.” His voice was low. “Don’t touch me.”
She stopped, her heart aching. “Sean … ”
“She must have known I would be the one to find her. That I usually came straight to the kitchen after school to get something to eat.” He wiped his mouth with a shaking hand, smearing blood. “She was supposed to take care of me. She was supposed to fucking love me. And she didn’t. She took the easy way out and left me to clean up her mess.”
Abby couldn’t see, tears blurring the lights of the cars in the street beyond. “That’s not your fault, Sean.”
“I know it’s not my fucking fault! She was the one who killed herself. She was the one who left me to clean up all that blood. She was the one who took herself out of my life because she couldn’t deal with one fucking kid!” Anger was pouring off him like lava from an exploding volcano, thick and hot, burning everything in its path. “And then my dad comes in like he’s my fucking savior, taking me to live in his house with a new mom and I’m all excited, thinking maybe this time it’ll be good. But no. I’m left with this bitch who hated my dad for cheating on her and who took out her resentment on me. And Dad? He basically ignored me from then on. That prick didn’t give a shit.” His blood-smeared hand curled into a fist. “No one gave a shit.”
The lump in her throat had gotten bigger, making speaking difficult. “It’s not your fault,” she repeated.
The look in his eyes blazed. “Stop fucking saying that.”
But she could see the fear that lay behind his anger. He did think it was his fault.
The pain in her chest expanded outward, for the scared little boy he must have been coming home to find his mother in a pool of blood. For the kid who’d thought he was going to a better place after his father had come for him, only to find himself right back where he started.
“You’re not to blame, Sean,” she said thickly. “They’re the ones who screwed up. Not you.”
He turned his head sharply away, tension vibrating in every line of his body, his chest heaving as though he’d run a hundred miles. “Mom blamed me for being the reason Dad never left his wife for her. I tried and tried to be a good son, to make it up to her, but she couldn’t get past it.” He paused. “I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good enough to make her choose me, not that fucking gun.”
“Sean, that’s—”
“You see now why I can’t do this?” he interrupted, turning back to her, the look on his face raw. “Mom shot herself rather than have to deal with me. My stepmom hated my guts and my dad basically left me to deal with that myself. I’m bad blood, Abby. And I always fucking will b
e.”
“No! That’s not true! You’re not bad. You’re the most incredible man I’ve ever met.”
The look on his face was so bleak she wanted to weep. “If I was so incredible, then I would have stayed. If I had, you wouldn’t have lost our baby.”
The words were a blow she hadn’t been expecting, a knife in the dark, sliding between her ribs, biting deep. “No,” she said hoarsely. “No. There was nothing you could have done.” Heedless of his earlier warning, she walked right up to him, staring into his bruised face. “And I won’t let you take that on as well, do you hear me?”
His hand came up as if to touch her face and then stopped. Dropped away again. “I was supposed to fix it. I wanted to do this Morrow thing for you. Help you in your job. Make you proud. I was supposed to make up for the way I left you. But … I fucked it up.” The darkness in his gaze made her throat ache with unshed tears. “I can’t fix it. I can’t fix any of it.”
She blinked. Hard. “So, what? Your answer is to leave? How can you fix anything if all you’re doing is running away?”
His expression closed down. He stepped back and away from her. “You have your way of dealing with the past. And I have mine.”
“Running away every time it gets hard is not dealing with it, Sean!”
“Neither is pretending the past doesn’t exist.”
His quiet words were sharper than knives. Abby sucked in a breath. “I’m not—”
“Aren’t you? Not wanting to talk about anything. Always moving on, always looking toward the future. Christ, Abby. Can’t you see that you’re running, too?”
He’s right. You know he is.
Despite her best efforts, a tear escaped, sliding down her cheek. Welling up from the stubborn little knot of pain she carried around with her. A pain she’d been running from for years. A pain that didn’t have anything to do with the child they’d lost but had its roots in the cold house she’d been brought up in. A father whose constant slights had left scars no matter how successful and strong she told herself she was.
The Billionaire Biker Page 10