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“You,” he says. “I can’t believe it’s you.”
Chapter sixty-four
Emma
He can’t believe it’s me.
The man with the brutally cold blue eyes is still holding onto my wrists, but I don’t pull away. I need to know what he means. Ihaveto know. “What does that mean, you can’t believe it’s me? What does that mean? Who do you think I am?”
“Iknowwho you are,” he says, and I swear the ice in his eyes is downright brittle with those words.
“Emma!”
At the sound of Savage’s voice, the man’s grip on my wrists loosens and then falls away. “What do you mean?” I demand, but it’s too late for answers. Without a word, he walks in the opposite direction and disappears down the stairs. I blink, and he’s gone, leaving me wondering if he was really here. Savage steps to my side, and I shiver, hugging myself, haunted by the man and his words. You. I can’t believe it’s you.
“Why do you look like you just saw a ghost?” Savage demands.
Jax’s voice lifts in the air. “Savage!”
“I found her!” Savage calls out over his shoulder, but his eyes are homed in on me. “Emma, answer me,” he orders.
“Emma!” Jax shouts, and by the time I’ve rotated toward his voice, he’s in front of me, and I’m being pulled into his arms. “Thank God,” he breathes out, cupping my face. “You scared the shit out of me all over again,” he declares, and this panic in him freaks me out.
“Who was that man?” I ask urgently, grabbing the lapels of Jax’s suit jacket. “Who was he?”
“What man?” Jax and Savage ask at the same moment.
“What man?” I ask incredulously as I twist in Jax’s arms to look at them both. “Didn’t you see the man? Isn’t that why you’re freaked out?”
“What man?” they both demand again.
My stomach knots with the certainty more is going on than I know right now. “Piercing blue eyes,” I say. “Fifties maybe, I think. He was here and—”
“Where did he go?” Savage demands, stepping to our side.
“He’s the groundskeeper, Savage,” Jax replies, flicking him a look and facing me, his hands settling on my shoulders. “His name is Echo Woods. He’s been here since I was a young boy. He’s a good man.”
My brow furrows. What would the groundskeeper know about me or my family? “No. No, that makes no sense. We can’t be talking about the same person.”
“No one but Echo has those eyes,” Jax says. “Did he say something to you?”
“She doesn’t seem like she thinks he’s a good man,” Savage interjects. “And I’ve known a lot of really shitty men who pretended to be Mary fucking Poppins. What the hell happened, Emma?”
I rotate to face both men, once again, and I don’t miss the way they angle toward me, the way they stay so close that I can’t breathe. “Why are you both suffocating me? Why were you running around looking for me?”
“You damn near got pushed off the castle ledge last night,” Savage snaps. “Then you disappeared with the patio doors open.”
“I took a walk, which shouldn’t be a crime. And I shut those doors. Why is this such an issue?” I frown. “I shut the doors.”
“Uh huh,” Savage says. “Well, the doors were open, and I, for one, wanted to make sure I wasn’t scraping you off the rocks.”
“Holy fuck, Savage,” Jax curses. “Do you have any version of a filter?”
I think of the panic in Jax when he found me just now. I think of the panic in him last night when he remembered his brother holding me over the ledge. “I told you I was going to explore,” I say, turning to him and sliding my arms under his jacket. “I didn’t mean to scare you. The doors must not have latched right. The wind must have blown them open.”
“I should have told you to stay put,” he says, stroking my hair. “At least until we know who left you that little gift this morning.”
“The envelope?” I release him, and I’m back to looking between both men, looking for answers in their faces that they aren’t offering in their words. “What was inside it that has you both this on edge?”
