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“I have dinner reservations, honey. I need to go.”
“Wait,” I say, and I go in. “Why did dad want the North Castle?”
To my shock, she bites out. “What the hell are you doing, Emma?”
“I just—”
“Stay away from this. If I ever hear you bring up that castle again, I swear—Just don’t go there. I need to go. And you need to stay at your place.” She hangs up.
I pant out a breath. Oh, God. Dad killed Hunter. He had to have killed him. I stand up and I throw my phone as hard as I can throw it, shoving fingers into my hair. This can’t be real. It can’t be real. I reach for my phone to call my brother, but it’s gone. I threw the damn thing when I don’t do stupid things like that. Ever.
“Damn it,” I murmur, and rush down the stairs, intending to find it, but my gaze sweeps wide, and I halt, my heart thundering in my chest.
The blue-eyed man is standing on the beach staring at me. Just standing there. Now I’m staring at him and his attention jabs at me. It’s sharp, hard, uncomfortable. He hates me. I feel the hate. It swims in the ocean air, threatening to drown me. And then he starts walking toward me. I turn and run up the stairs. “Jax! Jax!”
I make it to the porch and rush toward the door. Jax opens the door and grabs me, pulling me close. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“The man. The man again.” I twist in his arms and stare at the spot where I’d seen him but he’s gone. He’s a ghost again. A ghost that hates me.
Chapter seventy-five
Emma
“What’s wrong, baby?” Jax asks again, and I turn to face him, my hands landing on the solid wall of his chest, over his heart, but it’s my heart that’s about to explode right now.
“That man. The blue-eyed man. Jax, he was on the beach staring at me.”
“Echo?” he asks.
“Yes. Yes, him.” My fingers curl around his shirt. “He was there and started walking toward me and then he was gone.”
“Baby, he lives up the beach. He has to use the stairs just past us to get to the castle. He wasn’t coming at you. He was going to them.”
“No.” I shake my head. “No, he stared at me like he hated me.”
His hands come down on my waist. “He was like a second father to me and my brothers. He was close to Hunter. He saw changes in him that seemed to coincide with your father visiting here. I’m sure being his daughter, and being with me, is something he doesn’t understand. I need to talk to him.”
“What visits by my father? Why do I feel like I’m missing something?”
He takes my hand. “Let’s sit.”
“So there is something I don’t know?”
“More an experience I had with your father here, that I need to tell you about.”
“Just tell me. I don’t want to sit. I can’t sit after Echo’s stare down.”
“All right,” he says, guiding me to the railing where we both rest our elbows, the ocean stretching before us. “I’d been traveling for weeks and Hunter wouldn’t return my calls. Keep in mind that I was Hunter’s next-in-charge.”
“And he just ignored you?”
“Yes. I came home and came here. It was shortly after my dad died. Hunter was in his office in a meeting and I was pissed. I walked right in.”
I turn to him. “It was my father?”
“Yes.” He rotates to face me as well. “It was your father.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?”
