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“Chance,” I plead softly, desperate to escape before York somehow uses Chance to pull me into the damn belly of his sins. “You took a timeout last night,” I add. “I need one now.”
The blonde, whose name I suddenly can’t remember, joins us again. “Chance, I was hoping to ask you one more question.”
His eyes warm with the prospect and I squeeze his arm again. “I’ll see you Monday at the office.”
“You’re sure?” he asks, concern in his eyes.
“Positive,” I assure him, offering him a hug before I rotate away from him and disappear into the crowd.
Somehow, I manage to navigate the deck and make it to the exit without being stopped. Once I’m street-side, I walk a block to the main pier and sit down on a bench where I order an Uber. It’s going to be a twenty-five minute wait, which means there must be a cluster of conventions in town. Huddling into my jacket, the cold wind off the ocean is nothing compared to the cold chill of seeing York again. I start replaying everything that happened and rather than focusing on York, it’s Jax that consumes me. Jax whose lips on my glass have me thinking about his lips on my lips. Jax who I would have been a fool for and willingly too, I do believe.
Minutes pass by and my Uber doesn’t arrive. It’s been twenty-five minutes. I need to walk. Forget the Uber. I take off toward the corner when I suddenly hear, “Emma,” in a deep, masculine, and now familiar voice.
I turn to my left and find Jax’s long, lean, muscular body stepping out of the rear of an SUV, the kind of SUV car services use. His jacket is gone. His tie loose. His sleeves rolled up to the elbows, exposing muscular forearms, and a tattoo on his right forearm that I can’t begin to make out. All I know right now is that he’s here. He’s not on the yacht with York, colluding with the enemy. Despite how much I want this to matter, it means nothing really. This could all be part of a bigger plan and I’msuddenly angry, played with, and emotional. I learned a long time ago that emotions are bad. Emotions cut you more than the person who created them.
Nevertheless, that’s where I’m at coming off a month of grief and confusion. I snap. “How are you even here?” I demand, closing some of the space between us.
He pushes off the door and before I can blink, he’s standing in front of me, but he doesn’t touch me. He’s close, too close, but somehow not close enough when there was only too close with York. “I came looking for you.”
“Why would you look for me?” I counter, not holding back. I don’t need another person playing games in my life. “What do you want, Jax? What do you reallywant?”
“We have unfinished business,” he says, his fingers curling around the lapels of my jacket, walking me closer, the heat of his body scorching. “And I’m not a man to leave anything unfinished.”
Unfinished business.
It’s a common statement that right now, on this night, sends chills down my spine. A statement I read in my father’s journal just a page before he might well have ordered a murder. With Jax, I want it to be about me and him and shared champagne, and so much more. Unfinished business could mean many things and when Jax leans in closer, my hand flattens defensively on his chest, but the touch—that touch—is intimate, so very intimate, and for a moment, I can’t speak.
“What are we doing right now, Emma?” he asks softly.
“How do you know York?”
“With caution and not by choice. We are not friends.”
“That’s somehow managed to be non-specific and quite specific at the same time. How do you know him?”
“His family owns cruise ships that serve North Whiskey.”
Cruise ships that serve a whole lot more than whiskey. I don’t like that connection. “I need to leave.” I try to turn away.
He holds fast to my lapels and pulls me to him, our legs colliding, the hard lines of his body hugging mine. My gaze jerks to his, the night darkening his blue eyes, the streetlight catching flecks of amber in his intense stare. “Run with me, not away from me.”
“I don’t even know you.”
“Then change that. I’m not asking you to marry me. I’m asking you to get to know me the way I want to know you.” Somehow, this statement manages to be the perfect mix of alpha male and vulnerability. “Come with me.”
“Where?” I whisper, and I can feel my body swaying toward his.
His hand slides under my hair, a warm strong hand, his thumb stretching to my jaw, tilting my face to his. His blue eyes still catching amber gold in the streetlights, a dominance in their depths that shouldn’t arouse me, but there’s no fighting my reaction to this man, or to who I am deep down inside. And I am the woman who is drawn to a man like Jax. Perhaps to a man too like York.
“I promised you a castle,” he says, “but I’ll settle for anywhere where I can do this.” His mouth closes down on mine, his tongue pressing past my lips, a quick tease that I still manage to feel in every part of me. Goosebumps lift on my skin and his mouth lingers above mine, a hot breath promising more before he strokes deep. And then, he’s kissing me, a wicked, passionate kiss that is pure heat, greedy even, fierce. Alluring. Passionate.Addictive.And then gone, his mouth is gone, and I’m panting as he says, “Say yes and I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
Every warning that York stirred in me earlier fades away with the taste of this man on my lips, every warning is immediately reasoned away. This is one night and then Jax is gone. This is anescape. Death and grief allow me permission to need this. That damn journal gives me permission to need him. I’m going to do this.
“I want off this street corner,” I say. “I want to leave. I want to leave withyou.”
His eyes warm, approval and satisfaction in their depths that somehow isn’t arrogant. He laces his fingers with mine and walks backward, guiding me to the door of the SUV. And then he does something unexpected. He steps aside and motions me toward the back doors, a silent invitation to enter or walk away, to make my own decision. I climb inside, letting the soft leather absorb my body, a willing victim, as he’d wanted.
Chapter ten
