He sucks in a breath and looks skyward, a muscle ticking in his jaw, and I am instantly living with regret again. We fucked away his immediate reaction to that DNA test, but we never really talked about how he feels. I should have talked to him about what he feels. I toss the journal back into the suitcase and cross to stand in front of him, wrapping my arms around him. “I’m sorry. I would love nothing more than to have coffee with you and to just forget all of this for as long as the Harvest lets you.”
His gaze lowers, and his hands come down on my waist. “Whatever you think he wrote about my mother, I don’t want to know.”
My heart squeezes. “Okay. Yes. I get it. Jax, I—”
He cups my head and kisses me, a deep tormented kiss that torments me right along with him, before he says, “I know you want this over and so do I. I get that, too, Emma. I do.”
“I know. I know you do. The thing with your mom—”
“The part where she most likely had an affair with your father? Or the part where my brother seems to have known and tried to shut the family out of the family business?”
“We don’t know that’s what was happening. My father blackmailed your clients. He probably blackmailed your brother, too.”
“Or not.” He takes my hand and kisses it. “Coffee.”
He’s done talking about his mother, and I don’t push him. Not now, not before he goes to the Harvest. He needs a break from this. I see that now. “Coffee,” I agree.
He surprises me then by adding, “Bring the journal and forget I said I don’t want to know. I need to know.”
“Jax—”
He kisses me hard and fast. “I need to know.” He turns me around to face the suitcase and steps behind me, his big body framing mine, leaning in close to murmur, “Don’t make me spank you.”
My cheeks heat with the reminder of our erotic encounter last night, and I’m not so sure his threat is working. I think I liked it a little too much because yes, please. Spank me. “Emma,” he prods softly.
“Yes?” I ask, smiling but not looking at him.
“What are you thinking right now?”
“I plead the fifth.” I laugh and hurry forward to grab the journal.
He laughs low and sexy, and when I face him again, the look we share is scorching. “Careful, baby, or you might not get that coffee.”
I close the small space between us and push to my toes to kiss him. “For the record, I’m crazy about you, too, Jax North.”
He catches my lower back and molds me close. “Last night.”
“Last night?”
“Last night.” His voice is low, rough, affected.
Heat radiates between us, and we say nothing more. We laugh. We laugh together. It’s one of those moments with Jax where everything is just so right. He catches my hand and kisses it again. “Coffee, baby.”
“Yes, please.” And with that, and what feels like a deepening intimacy between us, we head to the kitchen. It’s one of those moments when Jax feels like the answer to every question in my life that has ever needed answered. And yet, that clawing foreboding sensation roars to life once again.
Maybe that’s about me and not Hunter.
Maybe I’ve lived as my father’s daughter for so long that anything that feels good must end. In fact, my father used to lecture us about not getting too comfortable. All good things, he’d say, end.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Emma
A few minutes later, Jax and I sit side-by-side at the island with cinnamon bean coffee in our steaming cups next to us and plates filled with pastries. The cinnamon coffee his father loved. “Are your brothers as sentimental about your father as you?” I ask, cringing with the realization that I’ve just spoken as if Hunter is still alive, but Jax takes it in stride.
“Hunter was,” he says. “Brody, no. Brody’s always been the rebel who didn’t want to be like dad, but he loved him. He loved the hell out of him. And my father respected Brody’s independence.”
I sip my coffee. “You were the same, right? At least for a while you were boxing?”
“Like any young man, I needed to find myself and where I fit in, but ultimately that pulled me back here. I still returned here to work with Hunter, under dad. Brody couldn’t take being in Hunter’s shadow, thus why he started opening his cigar and whiskey shops.”
“Did Hunter go through the same ‘find himself’ kind of thing?”
“No. Hunter, on the other hand, was always dad’s clone. He was the chip off the old block. That’s why this whole DNA test thing sideswiped me.”
“A test doesn’t change how he was raised and by who. He was your brother, Jax. Just like you’ve said many times.”
“A brother I didn’t know might merge with the Knight operation and not tell me in advance.”
“We both know my father was dirty. We both know he had a habit of blackmailing people.”
“I want to believe that was the case, but why not come to me?”
“It’s called blackmail for a reason. It controls the victim. Think about the DNA test. My father had it. What if he threatened to expose it?”
Jax lifts his cup to his lips, drinks, and then says, “It wouldn’t have changed anything. He would have retained his role as CEO. He was good at his job.”
“What if my father threatened to connect Hunter to York’s sex scandal or some other scandal that would destroy him? In that case, Hunter would have lost his role as CEO. He would have lost everything. And I’m sorry to say that my father was a man who would do such a thing.” My lips press together, and guilt for being my father’s daughter, while Hunter is gone and dead, slices through me. “But he was.” I try to turn away from him.
He catches my hand and I swear when this man touches me I feel him everywhere, inside and out. I’m crazy for him and we’re destined to crash and burn. “You are not your father,” he says.
“But I will always be a reminder of my father.”
“You are the only reason I didn’t become your father. You, Emma. You brought me back when I was walking over the revenge cliff. And because of you, I’m going to deal with your brother as your brother, not my enemy. I need you to trust me on that.”
“I have no reason not to trust you, Jax. You’ve been honest, brutally so, from the beginning but I’m not sure how you feel the same about me.”
“You haven’t lied to me.”
“But evil, or at least asshole, seems to be in my blood. Look at my brother. I thought he was honorable, but after last night, I don’t know anymore.” A thought hits me. “And speaking of jerks and last night, what happened with Sawyer and the whole groping Jill incident?”
“Let’s hope it didn’t make it to groping but he left before Savage’s people had time to pour the tray of drinks on him.” His lips quirk. “Too bad.”
I laugh. “Be kind to your potential client, unless he groped her. Then punch him or something. Will he be at the brunch?”
“I doubt it. Most of the brunch crowd will take a tour of the property and attend random samplings along the way. Staff will handle that, not me.”