One Man

by Lisa Renee Jones

  I scrub my jaw and press my hands to the counter, my method of letting her get dressed, instead of fucking her all over again, but I also replay the conversation I just had with her. I don’t know what this is, I’d told her, but damn it, I know what’s it's not—which isn’t what she had with York—and I need her to know that, too. I push off the counter and walk into the bedroom to find her already dressed.

  “Ready?” she asks, “because now I’m really hungry too. It’s already ten and we haven’t even showered.”

  She reaches for her bag and I grab it, catching her hip as I do. “I don’t know what this is, but I know what it’s not. It’s not about our family names or anything between your father and my brother. I need you to remember that.”

  “You remember that, too. You thought I was after the castle.”

  “I’ll remember if you’ll remember,” I say, and I can feel my own intensity, unintended intensity, flamed by guilt over that meeting with Eric yesterday, over my intentions to hurt her family. Fuck, to hurt her.

  “Yes,” she agrees. “Okay.”

  Okay. I want more but what more can she give me? I have to let this go. I force myself to move on. “Let’s get out of here and get back. I want you all to myself.”

  “I’d like that,” she says, a soft smile on her freshly glossed lips.

  Her smile is like a light switch, it lightens our mood. We head down the stairs, debating places to eat while my gaze sweeps her apartment, giving it a true inspection for the first time since I arrived. The lower level has floor-to-ceiling windows. The floors themselves are high-end light wood. The furniture is well made. It’s also a small space. The décor is simple. I keep using that word, but it fits. Emma doesn’t have a lot of money and she didn’t inherit on her father’s death. I’m back to something not adding up.

  “Starbucks would be good,” she says. “There’s one on the way. We could caffeinate and eat after the shower.” She frowns. “Or are you actually staying at a Knight hotel?”

  “No,” I say, moving on from a topic that highlights my hate for her family. “Starbucks is always good, especially since we don’t have them near the castle.” We finish the walk down the stairs.

  “You don’t have Starbucks near the castle?” she asks, in disbelief, thankfully moving on from my hotel choice. “I don’t know if I can go with you after all.”

  “I promise to keep you well-whiskey’d and pleasured to make up for it.”

  “Hmmm. That sounds dangerous. The well-whiskey’d part.”

  “I’ll hold you up if you have trouble walking,” I tease, repeating what I’d told her our first night together, and she laughs, grabbing a hoodie from the coatrack by the door. I grab my tuxedo jacket and shrug into it, finding myself wondering if there was a time that York made her laugh.

  “We look like quite a pair,” she says, letting her hoodie fall to her hips and motioning between us. “Me in sweats and you in a tuxedo.”

  “I’ll be in sweats and a T-shirt in a few minutes myself,” I promising, opening the door for Emma.

  She steps ahead of me only to gasp, “Chance. What are you doing here?”

  Her brother. This should be interesting. I step to Emma’s side, which places me and Chance in a direct view collision course that proves immediately enlightening. I’d hoped that I’d misjudged him. I’d hoped that like Emma, I’d decided his guilt over what went down with my brother’s last days, wrongly, but right now, looking into his eyes, I know I wasn’t wrong about him at all. He wanted Emma to feel me out, to see if he could get whatever his father wanted from my brother, from me—and I know it wasn’t the damn castle. He didn’t want her to catch me the way she caught me. That puts me too close for comfort and now I’ve caught him. The problem is that I just told Emma we have nothing to do with her family or mine, and yet, now, I know differently. Now, Emma is in the middle of me and Chance, and that has everything to do with family.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Jax…

  Emma’s reaction to Chance showing up is instantaneous. “We’re not buying the castle,” she says, linking our arms, her gaze finding mine. “I didn’t set this up. I swear to you—”

  “I believe you,” I say. “I know.”

  She studies me a moment and then looks between me and Chance. “The castle is a closed subject forever.”

  Chance pins his sister in a stare, one that burns with frustration, before his gaze slowly shifts to me again. “She didn’t set this up. Emma’s not that kind of person.”

  But he is. He fucking is and I have to wonder if he and York somehow communicated about my presence. He offers me his hand. “It’s been a long time, Jax.”

  I take his hand, and I don’t immediately let go. “Two years ago,” I say, my grip tightening, “at the castle, when my brother was still alive.” Our eyes hold, a push and pull, between us before I release his hand.

  “Yes,” Chance agrees, and to his credit he doesn’t look away. “He was a good guy.”

  Good guy? Fuck him. “Is that why Randall and your father did the dirty work with him? Because you couldn’t get by him being a ‘good guy’?”

  “I wasn’t aware of any dirty work,” Chance says, but the flick of his eyes to the left before he make eyes contact again, says otherwise. “Just a pet project of my father’s.”

  A fucking pet project? That description of a series of events the ended in my brother’s death about undoes my fucking temper and I never lose my temper. “His desire to own a castle, or our whiskey operation, which is on the same property?” I challenge.

  “That’s it,” Emma says. “Jax and I are leaving. I’ll see you later, Chance.”

  “Nonsense,” I say. “Emma got you your meeting, Chance. We’re headed to Starbucks if you want to join us.”

  Emma turns to stand in front of me, her hands on my chest. “I did not get him a meeting,” she says. “No. He’s not coming.”

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. I’ll talk to Chance.”

  “But you don’t want to sell and I promised you that this was over. And this could go sour quickly. I don’t want that to happen.”

  “It won’t. I plan to stay around, Emma, which means Chance and I need to get this behind us.” I soften my voice, my hands settling on her shoulders. “Let’s get it behind us.”

  She swallows hard. “I didn’t do this.”

  “I know that.”

  “She didn’t,” Chance says. “I will repeat that ten times if needed. I came by to check on her.” He motions to his hoodie and sweats. “I’m on my way to run. That said, I do want to know the man who obviously stayed the night with my sister and just made a statement that tells me that wasn’t a one-time deal.”

  My gaze lifts above Emma’s shoulder and meets Chance’s stare, a glint in his eyes, a warning. He’s worried about Emma. He thinks I’m using her to get to him now. “Then coffee it is.”

  Emma whirls around and poke’s Chance in the chest. “If you say one word about the castle, I will hurt you.”

  “I won’t bring up the castle.” He looks at me and adds, “It’s a dead topic.”

  Dead topic.

  Because my brother is dead?

  “Where are we going?” he asks. “I need to run by my apartment and take a minute.”

  He means he needs to make a few calls and cover his ass. “There’s a Starbucks on the corner, a block a way,” I say. “Let’s make it easy and go there.”

  He gives me a short incline of the chin. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  And I’m never getting my fucking shower. Chance heads down the hallway and Emma turns back around to face me, “Jax—”

  I kiss her. “Let’s go talk to security about York.”

  “You don’t even want to discuss what just happened between you and Chance? Or what could happen with Chance?”

  “What’s going to happen is that we’re going to talk and drink coffee with your brother. Then we’re going to shower because I’m still in last ni
ght’s clothes. And then, we’re going to fuck. After which, we’ll eat that real meal that has now become coffee before we come back here and do it all over again, with some work thrown in the middle. Okay?”

  “I approve of all of the above, but if you insist on keeping my brother a part of this, do you want to meet him in an hour and go shower first?”

  “No.” I ease her close again and damn it, she feels good, too good to walk away from. Too good to be a Knight. “I want to do this, get it over with, and then have you to myself for the rest of the day.”

  “Okay, but for the record, I think this meeting is poorly timed and bad for us.”

  “I’m not a man that puts off the bad. I get it over with. So all that is left is the good: you.”

  “Now you’re just trying to sweet talk me.”

  I rotate her and pull the door shut, before catching her to me. “There’s a lot of better things to do with my mouth and you than sweet talk.”

  “That was a very dirty thing to say,” she says, tilting that tempting mouth of hers in my direction. And damn, I want to taste her.

  “I’m a dirty guy, sweetheart,” I say, lowering my voice, roughening it up. “Haven’t you figured that out by now?” I lean in and kiss her neck, whispering at her ear, “And my kind of dirty is the only kind I want you to remember.”

  She pulls back to look at me, and that sexual tease of a moment fades into something else, something emotional, something that keeps me here far more than how much I want to fuck her again. “If you keep looking at me like that,” I say, taking her hand, “we’ll be back in your apartment, and we won’t leave.”

  “Can we do that and skip the meeting with Chance?”

  “No,” I say. “Lock your door, but I’m going to get a locksmith over here to put on new locks when we get back.”

  “I was actually thinking that I need to do that.” She locks the door and pockets the keys in a small purse she’s wearing at her hip. “Someone here had to give him a key. That freaks me out. And how am I going to find out who? No one is going to admit they did it.”

  “Which is why we need to go by security and talk to someone.”

  “No one who matters is here today,” she says. “And I need to have Chance handle it. He now owns half the building.”

  “And you rent.”

  She cuts her gaze. “That’s another topic for another day. One we can discuss if you want to discuss why you didn’t stay the event hotel, a Knight hotel?”

  Just like that, she shuts me down but she was a closed topic. And it’s not. I’m going to find out why she’s the redheaded stepchild, but what’s crazy is that I’m not sure she knows herself. Or maybe she does know because of that damn journal I didn’t read.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Emma…

  Jax and I walk through the lobby of my building hand in hand, and as crazy as it might seem to some, that’s the most intimate moment I’ve shared with this man. It’s that moment when I know this isn’t just sex. It’s a comfortable moment, too, a casual moment that could be awkward, but nothing with Jax feels forced. It doesn’t feel like an expectation but rather a need. We need to touch each other. When I was with York, it became about what he needed. It became about him. There was no “we” to consider. Just him.

  “Let’s talk to security,” Jax says right when we’re about to exit the building, tugging me in that direction.

  “No one that has any power is here today,” I remind him, tugging him to halt.

  “But the person who let York in damn sure is,” he argues. “We need to scare the crap out of whoever that is and make sure they know there are consequences for what they did. Do you have a problem with that? Because I really want to do this, but if it’s an issue—”

  “No,” I say quickly and like so many times before, I’m taken aback by this man. Jax is a powerful, confident man who knows himself, who owns a room when he walks into it, and yet somehow in this moment, he manages to take control and give it back to me. “Not at all. It can’t hurt anything.”

  Still holding my hand, he folds our elbows and kisses my fingers before he winks. “Then let’s do this.”

  Let’s do this, as in us, together. God, this man is trying to make me fall for him and I don’t know if that’s smart. Nothing he’s said erases the fact that he lives in another state or that he hates my family. Nevertheless, for now, I’m living in the moment, and just before we reach the security point, Jax leans close and whispers, “I’m going to rattle him and then you take over.”

  I nod and we halt in front of the desk. “Let me be clear,” Jax says, without introducing himself to the singular guard behind the station. “If York Waters, or anyone for that matter, gets into Emma’s apartment without her permission, she will sue you and call the police. I barely talked her out of it today.”

  Jeff, the thirty-something guard that has been here roughly six months, jerks his eyes to mine and doesn’t even ask who Jax is. “I have no idea what happened. I’ve been on duty all day.”

  I forget about who’s in control and get angry. “Someone let him up. He walked right in. Had I been alone—I need to know how it happened.”

  “Before it happens again,” Jax states.

  Jeff nods. “I’ll find out. It won’t happen again.” He looks at me. “I can call my supervisor.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Call your supervisor and have him call me.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he says. “Right away.”

  A few minutes later, Jax and I step onto the street and he slides his arm around my shoulders, setting us in motion on the short walk to the coffee shop. “I don’t think he did it, do you?”

  “No. He was too willing to offer up his supervisor and honestly, York is more likely to go to someone higher up the chain.”

  “Like the supervisor the guard just offered to call?”

  “Yes,” I agree, “like the supervisor. But he’ll have a plan. He’ll say he had a key that I gave him, which isn’t the case. I had the locks changed when we said our final farewell.”

  “That’s a story I’d like to hear,” he says.

  “I know,” I reply, glancing up at him. “One day. Maybe.”

  I expect him to push and steel myself to push right back, but that’s not what happens. We stop at the door to the coffee shop, and he opens the door for me and then catches me to him, all that hard muscle pressed close. “When you’re ready.”

  It’s the answer I don’t expect and really needed. “Thank you, Jax,” I say softly, and I can feel the pull between us, the expansion of something warm and wonderful. Oh yes. I’m falling for him and the fall will be sweet, the aftermath hard, but I can’t seem to care.

  He opens his mouth to speak but several people approach the shop, waiting to enter and he settles on kissing me before releasing me to enter the coffee shop. I step inside and scan the clusters of mostly empty tables, deciding a spot in the corner will be best. Jax joins me almost immediately, his hand settling on my lower back, and we step to the counter. I have this moment where I think—I don’t know what he’ll order, I wonder what he likes? And then I wonder if we will survive long enough for me to order for him and him to order for me.

  He encourages me to order first and I order a non-fat white mocha and a slice of banana bread. Jax orders a vanilla latte, non-fat to my surprise, and two slices of banana bread. With our bread in hand and coffee in the works, we head to a corner table.

  Once we sit down we focus on each other. “Vanilla?” I tease.

  “What’s wrong with vanilla?”

  “You don’t seem like a vanilla kind of guy.”

  “What do I seem like, Emma?”

  His voice is low, rough, his hand sliding to my leg, heat darting up my leg. “Something jolting and complex. Stout. A venti triple black and white.”

  His gaze lowers to my mouth and lifts. “Maybe I’m a lot simpler than you think.”

  “No,” I say, my rejection coming easy. “No, you’re not a simple m
an, Jax North. A simple man would not be in this Starbucks with me while wearing last night’s tuxedo. Not a simple man at all.”

  “And that means what to you, Emma?”

  “It’s simply an observation.”

  “There is nothing simple about that comment and we both know it. You’re trying to figure out if I’m like York. I’m not.”

  Guilt stabs at me because on some level, I know he’s right. I’m comparing him to York. It’s the curse he inherits by having me after that man, but on the other hand, I want to know who I’m dealing with. I want to know Jax. “There’s more to you than meets the eye.”

  “I really am a simple man, Emma. Family. Work. Focus on my goals.”

  I’m about to point out the reference to him boxing indicating something more, but they call our coffee order. “I’ll be right back.” He winks. “I need that Vanilla latte to keep up with this conversation.”

  I watch him walk to grab our orders, tall and broad, and even in a well-worn tuxedo, he owns the room. The women at a nearby table are watching him, admiring him, and I can’t blame them. I’m doing the same. He’s one of those men that women want, and men want to be, one of those men who has the world in his hands, and that shapes character. It shapes outlook. It shapes how he lives his life, and how he might shape mine if I let him.

  My cellphone buzzes with a text and I dig it from my purse to find a message from Chance: Running late.

  Jax rejoins me and sits down, placing the coffees on the table. “White mocha and a very vanilla latte.”

  “For the not very vanilla guy,” I say, eager to get back to where we were minutes before. Back to who he is and who I am. More importantly, how who I am reflects on who Chance is, before my brother arrives. “Jax, I know my dad wasn’t a nice person. I didn’t know until I read that journal, but I know now. Chance isn’t him, though. I haven’t even let him read the journal. We idolized that man. I don’t want to ruin him for my brother, too.”

  “How much time did you spend with your father, Emma?”