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“I told you. I don’t hate you, Emma.” He kisses me again. “No hate. Just a lot of raw shit from losing my brother. You get that, I know.”
“Yes,” I say softly, my heart hurting for him and his loss. His brother was young and I don’t know that I know how he died, but there’s an edge to Jax that says now isn’t the time to ask. “You went to law school?”
“It felt like the best way to contribute to the business. Middle son and all. I felt a need to prove my worth.”
“I considered law school for the same reason, but for me, it was about being a girl. My father was old school. Men were stronger, better. More worthy.” I cut my stare. “How did we start talking about this? I don’t want to talk about him right now.” The phone on the wall by the door rings. “That’s security. They’re probably trying to clear the ice cream delivery.” I stand up and walk to the phone, answering to give clearance for the delivery. “Ten minutes,” I say. “They called the security desk.” I look down and realize I’m holding the journal. The journal of a manI idolized. The journal of a man Jax hated. The journal that says he might have a good reason.
“I’ll be right back,” I say, walking toward the bathroom before my emotions get the best of me.
I never make it. Jax catches my hand and turns me to face him. “What just happened?”
It’s the same question he’d asked me during sex, and like then, I don’t hold back. I’ve done way too much of that in my life. I’m not doing it now with Jax. “You hate my father.”
“That has nothing to do with you and me.”
“Because we’re just fucking. Right. I know. I—”
“Is that what this is to you, Emma? Just fucking?”
“You’re leaving. We just had this conversation. North Whiskey. The castle in Maine. You remember that, right?”
“It’s not that simple and we both know it. Otherwise, I’d be gone right now. Well fucked and back in my own hotel room. If you were anyone else, I would be back in my hotel room right now.”
“You live inMaine,Jax.”
“And yet I’m right here, now, with you, and if I remember correctly, you told me that’s where you want me. Has that changed?”
I could end this. I could send him way. Ishouldsend him away, but I’m not going to do that. He knows it. I know it. “I don’t want you to leave. Not yet.”
“Not yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Then I won’t leave,yet.” He reaches down and lifts my hand that holds the journal. “What is this and why are you holding onto it for dear life?”
I like Jax. I might even be able to fall for Jax if we lived closer, but this moment reminds me I’m in dangerous territory. I’mholding the secrets my father kept in my hand, and Jax hated my father.
Chapter sixteen
Emma
The doorbell rings and I’m saved from explaining away the journal or I think I am. Jax doesn’t quite let it go so easily. “I’ll get the ice cream,” he says, and then he lifts my hand, the one holding the journal, to his mouth and kisses it. It feels like there’s a point, like he somehow knows what the journal is to me, and my father, but that’s impossible. He can’t know.
He heads for the door, and I watch him walk away, exiting the bedroom. My gaze drops to the journal. The things inside it are horrible. And the truth is, I don’t know how Chance, who worked with our father every single day of his life, while I was kept at a distance, wouldn’t know. I love my brother but I question him now. I hate my father for giving me that thought.
Padding across the hardwood floor, my stocking feet slip on the slick surface, the way I feel like I’m slipping in every part of my life. And suddenly, I’m cold. Really cold. I flip on the fireplace and sit down on the lounger in front of it, tossing the damn journal to the side of my bed. I want it gone, out of sight, out of any conversation.
Jax re-appears in the doorway, all that hard muscle even harder now than a few minutes ago, which of course isn’t true, but every time he enters a room, he gets better. He’s fire to the ice that protected me when I left York, melting it away, and far too quickly for comfort. He indicates the bag in his hand. “You’re going to love this place.”
“I’m eager to try it.”
He sits down next to me and pulls out a half pint and then another, and another, for a total of six. I laugh. “My God, Jax. You got so much.”
“I don’t know you yet, Emma. I didn’t know what to order.” He hands me a spoon. “But I’m about to know a little more.”
There is warmth in his eyes and his voice, the kind of warmth that I could bask in forever I think. The kind of warmth every girl wants to feel when a man like Jax North looks at her.
“I picked six of my favorites,” he adds.
