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I enter the bathroom, and I don’t stop until I’m in the closet where I drop my towel and start to dress. “Are you going to tell me that you didn’t align yourself with him to ruin us?”
I take that well-deserved punch and pull on my pants before I turn to face her. She’s right. I did. Her family killed my brother. “I’m fighting for my family, Emma, just like you are for yours, but for me, everything changed when I met you. I told you that. I meant it. You need to decide if you believe that or if you don’t.” I grab a shirt, hang it on a standalone rack and start unbuttoning it.
Emma steps between me and it. My hands come down on her arms. “I need to get rid of him. That means I need to get dressed.”
“My brother is all I have, Jax.” Her hands settle on my chest, heat radiating off her palm. “My mother took off. She’s always half gone. My father was never there for me. Now he’s gone. My brother was it for me. I don’t want to lose him and—and I think I’m going to lose him.”
I catch her chin in my fingers and drag her gaze to mine. “You have me. You don’t know that yet, but you will. You have me. Whatever happens, this doesn’t end any other way.” I turn her and walk her into the corner, next to a line of my suit jackets, and I make damn sure she knows how serious I am. I say exactlywhat I’m thinking. “I didn’t bring you here to plot against you or your family. I brought you here because I need you with me. Now that you’re here, I don’t want you to leave. I want you to move in with me. We’ll fly back and forth to San Francisco if we have to, but move in with me.”
“We just met. Like literally just met.”
“I knew from the minute I kissed you, hell, the minute I met you, that you were like no other woman before you, Emma. I don’t want our families to have the chance to divide us. That means we stick together, but don’t answer now. Think about it while you’re here. Just know that’s what I want.” I brush my lips over hers, and the sweet little sound she makes tightens my groin. “I want you,” I say. “I want you so fucking badly it hurts, and when I say want, I meanwant, Emma. Really fucking want. You matter to me, woman.”
She swallows hard. “You matter to me, too,” she whispers. “So much that it scares me. He’s my brother, Jax. If he was involved, he doesn’t deserve my support, but I don’t want to lose him.”
“I know, baby.” My hands settle on her hips. “I know. Look, Emma, I have my own version of demons. Things that fuck with my head, just like you have yours.”
“I know that. I’m not trying to make my world more important than yours.”
“Our world now, Emma. Let me go take care of Kent, and we’ll talk all of this out. We need to decide together, if A, B, or C, happens, here’s what we do. Fair?”
“That is about as perfect as this gets. I don’t want to fight like this again.”
“And that’s why we’re going to talk this out.” I kiss her and step away, grabbing my shirt and slipping it on. She stays leaning on the wall, watching me.
My cellphone rings again, and I grab it from my pocket where I’ve stuck it to find Savage’s number. “Savage,” I tell Emma, and she pushes off the wall and sucks in a breath.
“Savage,” I greet, my eyes holding Emma’s.
“No poison, but asshole that I am, I want to keep you alive. I had a look at Emma’s little gift.”
My eyes meet Emma’s. “And?”
“Let’s have a man-to-man pow wow, and by man-to-man, I mean without Emma.”
Chapter sixty
Jax
Savage is pissing me the fuck off.
I told him to wait. I told him not to look in the damn envelope. And I told Emma we’d do this together, that we’d open the envelope together. But I swear as I stare into her beautiful eyes and see the fear there, I hesitate in my response. I hesitate because I know where that fear comes from. It comes from her confession about being alone. It comes from her need to hold onto her brother. It comes from her desire to run before I push her away, because that’s what she thinks is going to happen. And so I hedge, I hedge while my mind chases my right move.
“I have a meeting,” I state. “I’ll contact you when it’s over.” I don’t give him time to push me while Emma is watching. I move on. “Are your men in place?”
“They’re here and ready to kick ass, but let’s talk about your meeting. Kent Sawyer. I took the liberty to do some research. That’s another reason we need to meet.”
“I know who and what he is.”
“Want to bet a date with Emma on that?”
He’s testing my patience. “You think you’re funny, Savage—”
“I put things in real terms. There’s rarely anything funny about reality. But let me be clear. You don’t know everything you need to know about Kent Sawyer. Be careful or you’ll lose more than Emma.”
“Says the man who can’t follow instructions.”
“My directive, outside of a paycheck, is to keep you and Emma alive,” he says. “Who gave me that direction? Me. That’s who fucking gave me that direction. And I’m the king. I listen to me as you should. I’m the almighty on this. Because I’m not good at living with dead people on my mind. Call me selfish, but I don’t want to try. So, what I’m telling you is not to shut Emma out. I’m telling you that my job is to keep you and her safe. She is going to react to what’s inside that envelope and that reaction could get her killed.”
