by LJ Evans
“Did you do all this again?” I asked, darting an eye in Dax’s direction.
“Cillian helped this morning,” he said with a shrug.
Dax the cook. Dax the romantic. Dax the protector. I wasn’t sure how to fit all these pieces into my image of him. I wasn’t sure my heart could handle it. These new versions of him battered at my defenses in a way that I wasn’t used to thwarting.
Cillian appeared in the doorway, serious and frowning.
“There was another note,” he said, handing me his burner phone.
Dax’s suave smile was wiped away.
“What? Where?” Dax demanded as I read the words on the screen.
“They left it with the doorman of your building,” Cillian grunted an answer to Dax.
I read the words three times, stomach flipping faster each time, with my heartbeat increasing. When I looked up, both men were staring at me expectantly, waiting for me to translate for them. “It says, ‘We know you left the city, betrayer. Six days. There’s nowhere you can hide.’”
“How do they know we left, Cillian?” Dax growled.
“I’m working on it.”
“They’re getting information somehow,” Dax pushed, frustration leaking through his tone and his body.
“The person who delivered it worked for one of those paid messenger services. We’re following the lead,” Cillian insisted.
Dax turned to me, but I was stuck on the word betrayer. Kaida had whispered it to me outside the sedan after my father had followed us to En Feu.
I sank into the nearest chair. Kaida had been my bodyguard for years after Otōsan had sent my male chauffeur packing. She’d pulled me from clubs when I could barely walk, made sure I was with the men I left a party with by choice, and searched high and low for me the night I’d disappeared into Dax’s bed without warning. I’d completely trusted her with every aspect of my life, even when I knew she was reporting back to my father what I did. She’d still felt…safe.
Becoming Otōsan’s driver after he’d disowned me was Kaida’s reward for having spent years trailing after the shameful daughter. She idolized my father, knowing who he was, like I’d once idolized him not knowing.
“Is my father still in San Francisco?” I asked Cillian.
He nodded.
“I think… I think it might be Kaida Ito.”
I explained why, and Dax’s face grew dark.
“If it’s Ito-san, then your father is surely behind it. She wouldn’t risk doing something without his approval,” he said quietly.
I wasn’t so sure. “I don’t know. In some ways, she might feel like it’s her duty to keep him in the dark while she handles it. The Oyabun shouldn’t have to get his hands dirty. He should be able to deny any knowledge.”
“But she knows your father would be unhappy with her. He commanded everyone to stand down. Wouldn’t it mean she was dishonoring him as well?” Dax questioned.
Yes. But maybe, like two wrongs making a right, two dishonors would bring back respect. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.
“It’s still something we can check,” Cillian said, leaving the room.
The silence left behind was heavy and dark.
Dax handed me a plate of food, but I couldn’t do much more than fiddle with it.
After I gave up, Dax led me out the back door to where a vehicle waited. It wasn’t a typical golf cart. It was a souped-up version, half quad and half cart. It had room for four people and a small trunk space. There was a picnic basket already stowed there with a blanket and a beach bag.
As I went to get in, Dax handed me an oversized, floppy hat.
“Where’d you get this?”
“By the back door. I know you like to stay out of the sun if you can help it.”
My white skin burned easily, the blisters peeling away to reveal only more pale flesh instead of the warm oak that Dax turned in the sunshine.
Dax joined me in the backseat, and two of the security team, Mike and Armando, climbed in front. When Dax tugged me up against him, I pushed away.
“The ride down to the beach is going to be bumpy,” he said in my ear. “I want to cushion you so it doesn’t hurt as much. Please let me.”
“Now you say please? Where was that earlier when you threatened to haul me to the beach in my nightgown?”
Mike made a small choking sound, and it had my lips curling upward. Dax couldn’t see it because I was tucked up tight against him with my skin slowly turning into molten lava. But I still felt the quiet chortle that went through him, the somberness of the kitchen lifting ever so slightly, just like the fog slowly dissipating from the shore.
Dax
11 PAST THE HOUR
“Forget the world.
I'll hold you in my arms,
As we twirl around.”
Performed by Imelda May
Written by May / Vito
I was surprised when Jada relaxed into me instead of fighting it.
The road to the beach was really a half-overgrown trail full of rocks and holes, and I doubted my wisdom in choosing the beach for our outing. But if I’d stayed in the house with Jada, locked up in her bedroom, I was pretty damn sure my hands and lips would have ended up on her skin again.
I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep my hands to myself even out in the open along the shore with Mike and Armando watching us. They’d seen worse, working for Reinard Security and traveling with me and my circle of spoiled rich kids. But I’d always tried to respect them and the person I was with by not shedding our clothes right in front of them.
The fog hadn’t quite cleared yet, and the wind had more bite than I’d expected as we journeyed along the path heading down. Jada tucked her chin and hid behind the hat I’d given her, holding it down with a semi-raised hand, body tightening as we hit every hole along the way.
When we finally got down to the shore, it was littered with branches and debris from the last storm that had blown through not even a week before. This part of the beach that Vanya owned was essentially a private cove, the rocks on each side extending into the ocean like arms, offering us privacy that the main beach in Avalyn didn’t.
As Mike and Armando checked the area, Jada helped me clear a spot to spread the blanket I’d brought with us. The seagulls squawked above us, and from the far line of rocks marking the cove, the sounds of sea lions could be heard, filling the air with barks and grunts. The scent of the sea was much stronger here than on the beach in St. Micah. It was rougher, edgier than the soft smells of the islands.
After we’d sat down, Jada asked, “Now what?”
I laughed, but it was at myself more than at her. There was nothing more to do sitting on the shore than there was sitting in the parlor at the house. I pulled The Sound of the Waves and a pile of pails and shovels from the beach bag. “It’s reading or building a castle. Which would you prefer?”
She stared at the buckets I’d found in the mudroom. “I have so many questions. Like who was Vanya with that had kids? And exactly when it was that you last built a sandcastle?”
“My cousin on my mother’s side has two children. The last time we were all together at St. Micah, there was a sandcastle contest going on in town, and they recruited me to help them build one.”
“And you were, what? Ten?”
I laughed. “No, it was just a couple of years ago.”
When she didn’t reply, I grabbed her hand and helped her up from the blanket. “Come on, mon amour, let’s see what kind of castle-building skills you have.” She prickled at the endearment, as I’d intended.
“None. I have no sandcastle skills. And didn’t you tell me I was supposed to rest?”
“It’s a sandcastle. It’s not like you’ll be lifting heavy beams or anything. I’ll carry all the sand-filled buckets,” I said and handed her the shovels.
I moved toward the water, and she followed.
“The trick is to be close enough to the w
ater so that it’s damp, but not so close that it washes away too soon.”
“Oh my God, if only Benita and her vampires could see you now. They’d never call you Mr. Suave again.”
I smirked. “They don’t call me that now.”
“Yes, they do.”
Benita had called me other things when we’d been in bed together. But for some reason, her sex talk had never done it for me when normally I was all for murmured words of desire and lust.
“Are you going to build your own or help me?” I asked her.
“It isn’t a competition,” she said.
“I thought everything was a competition to you.”
She glared at me. “No. You just bring out my vicious side.”
My smile grew. “Well, we could make it a contest. Mike and Armando could be the judges.”
“They’d just vote for yours because you’re their boss.”
“Or maybe they’d vote for yours because you’re slightly more beautiful than me.”
She snorted. “Way to be humble, Armaud.”
I shrugged. “I’m pretty, what can I say. Me denying it would be like denying the sky was blue.”
She took the plastic shovel and hit me on my arm with it. “You’re ridiculous.”
But I loved that her shoulders were relaxing, and the strain around her eyes was softening. The note this morning had been just another reminder of the seriousness of what was happening. I didn’t want to think that Ito-san could be gunning for her, not after the woman had defended Jada multiple times since I’d known her. I’d liked her, trusted her to protect Jada from not only the drunks around her but herself.
I rolled the cuffs of my jeans and dug my toes into the sand. I walked closer to the waves before turning back around and dragging my feet until I found the exact spot I wanted. Then, I sank down and started filling the bucket.
Jada hesitated but eventually joined me.
We spent the next hour in almost silence. A hushed word was uttered here or there about sticks or windows or moats. The castle grew until it was about waist high on me and almost to Jada’s shoulders. I pulled out the smaller tools from the beach bag, concentrating on shaping the castle as if I was carving wood.
Jada stopped working, but I could feel her watching me. When I glanced over, her eyes were relaxed and happy, a simple joy filling her face. I wondered if she’d ever had the chance to build a sandcastle as a child. I wondered who would have taken her to the beach and spent a day lost in the sand, and I couldn’t imagine anyone in her life having done so. It hit me hard in the chest, thinking about all the things she’d been denied.
“What other skills have you been hiding from me, Armaud? Cooking, sandcastle construction, romance reading, and what?” she asked with a sardonic twist of her lips.
I arched an eyebrow. “Some secrets are better learned by experiencing them.”
I meant the innuendo, and I was pleased to see her mouth part slightly as she realized exactly what I suggested. In the sun hat, with her long strands blowing in the breeze and her sweater slipping from a shoulder, Jada looked like a movie star, like she should have been in a noir film from the thirties or forties—black and white and yet full of life. The sun was finally breaking free of the fog, sending rays to the ground like lightning bolts, and they shimmered around her like a halo, as if showing off all the good in her that she normally hid from the world.
I took the burner phone from my back pocket and snapped a photo of her with the sandcastle.
“I really should take one of you with your baby,” she said, all sarcasm, as she waved at the castle we’d built.
I pulled her so that she was tucked up against me. “We’ll do one together.”
I shot a few more pictures, thumbing through them and realizing how, despite our differences, Jada and I seemed to fit. We looked like we belonged together. Or maybe that was just my foolish eyes filled with longing. I wanted to send the picture to my father, to show Papa this side of Jada—the woman who’d never been able to be a girl, happily playing with buckets of sand.
“This one,” I told her, showing her the image of her I’d taken. Her beautifully shaped lips were smiling, and it had reached her eyes so they were sparkling like stars. The side of her face with the majority of the scratches was turned away, and the sun hat was tilted to give her the softest, sexiest look I’d ever seen on Jada. On any woman. “I think I should have it framed.”
And just like that, I’d ruined the moment. Pushed one level too far too fast. The smile was hidden back away, her eyebrows furrowing together, and she stalked off to the blanket.
I swirled a couple more designs on the castle and then joined her. I pulled water and snacks from the basket and offered them to her. She took the water and picked at some grapes. The sun beat down harder, banishing more of the clouds, and I took off my shirt so that I could use it as a pillow.
Jada unbuttoned the cardigan and lay down with it behind her head. She wasn’t next to me, but she was close enough that I could pull her legs over mine. She didn’t object, but she didn’t really acknowledge it either.
I opened up The Sound of the Waves and started reading.
I didn’t look up, but she was watching me again, as if she could understand the words better by the way I moved my lips.
After a while, I put the book down and asked, “Do you ever wonder if you were born in the wrong time?”
“What?” she asked with a frown.
“Sometimes, I wonder if I would have fit better into the late nineteenth century.”
She chuckled.
“Why is that funny?” I asked.
“Only a man would say that.”
“Explain,” I said as I dragged my hand along her calf, massaging it, reveling in the joy of touching her without her pulling away.
“Well, if I’d been born in that time, I would have been locked away and forced to do whatever my father said until my omiai when all my rights would have transferred to my husband.”
“To be fair, that almost happened to you over a hundred years later.”
I kicked myself for bringing up the engagement her father had thrust upon her with Ken’Ichi Matsuda, because her whole body tensed again. I moved my hands along her leg again, easing the muscles, journeying up over her knee to dig my fingers softly into her thighs.
“Well, I wouldn’t have known any better back then,” she said. “I would have thought it was the way I was supposed to live. If my father had caught me having sex with the chauffeur back then, I would have been institutionalized or abandoned.”
I didn’t want to repeat my mistake by reminding her that she had been abandoned—long before she’d started having sex with men. She’d been alone in a ballroom at thirteen when I’d first met her.
“I wouldn’t have been able to own a company with Violet,” she continued. “We would have had to have a man sign all our contracts. And if we’d refused to have children, they could have divorced us and left us with nothing.”
“Do you want children?” I asked.
“I’d be a horrible mother,” she responded without thought.
“That isn’t what I asked.”
She looked like she was going to give me some sarcastic retort, but then she bit her bottom lip, tugged at the hem of her tank top since she didn’t have a phone to play with, and then said, “No marriage, no kids, Armaud. It isn’t in the cards for me.”
We were silent for a moment while I moved on to massaging her other leg, from her ankle all the way up to her thigh.
“What about you? Do you see tiny Daxes in your future?” she asked.
“Honestly, up until recently, I hardly felt like an adult myself.”
She watched my fingers as they journeyed back and forth over her legs. “The lifestyle we led…following the next big party…following the racing circuit…it didn’t really scream adulthood.”
I nodded.
“What changed?” sh
e asked.
“Dawson and Violet. Seeing how happy they are together. The fact that they’re out there, right this minute, trying to get pregnant. It feels like it’s time for the next chapter of all of our lives.”
Her breath caught, and she pulled her legs away from mine to sit up. She winced less than she had the day before, but it would take weeks for her to be back to normal.
“Well, there are plenty of women out there who would happily become your wife,” she said. Her wall was back up. Somehow the conversation had hit on a nerve.
“The world seems to think we’re already engaged,” I said with a small smile.
She laughed sarcastically. “That’s because you used it as a ridiculous excuse to get into my hospital room.”
“I’d do it again, if I had to,” I said truthfully, my heart in every word.
She picked up a grape and threw it at me. I hadn’t been ready for it, and it bounced off my cheek and rolled onto the blanket. I picked it up and tossed it back at her, but she just batted it away.
“Go find Benita or one of your prior conquests to try and schmooze. It isn’t going to work on me.”
But I thought maybe it was already working a little. Jada had never had someone stick around when she needed them most. She’d never had someone run after her when she pushed them away. I was determined to be the first to do so.
Jada
HOW BAD CAN A GOOD GIRL BE
“Tried to resist you but I couldn't.
Tried not to kiss you, knew I shouldn't.
But I was weak for you,
You got to me.”
Performed by Imelda May
Written by Imelda Mary Higham
The talk of children and marriage tugged at some secret part of me that I wasn’t sure I’d ever known existed, just as seeing Dax building a sandcastle with childlike joy had. What would it be like to spend time on a beach with him as little ones ran around us, telling him he was doing it wrong or begging to put the flag on the highest turret?
