Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 68249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Jax.
“Uh, uh, Cherry, you don’t have to do this, OK? If you do, it will only ruin your life. Do you get that? I mean, think about it. Murder or even assault is a punishable offense, and I will press charges, I guarantee it.”
“You can’t press charges if you’re dead,” Cherry said and slashed the knife toward me.
Two feet separated us now, and I kept up my backward pace, pressing my palms forward and moving my ass back so my abdomen was the section furthest from her. “An astute observation,” I said. “Listen, I understand times are tough for you, and I know exactly what it’s like to love someone who doesn’t love you back.”
“He does love you back,” Cherry snapped and jabbed the knife toward me.
Jax burst out of the shadows and ran right into the stripper. He grasped her wrist and twisted it hard. She dropped the knife and let out a shriek, kicked her legs. He held her around the waist and dragged her back down the alley, away from me and toward the lights on the street.
I skirted around the switchblade and hurried after them, trembling from head to toe.
“Hey,” Jax called to me. “You wanna call the cops, maybe?”
“Right!” I fished my cell out of my coat pocket.
The next two hours were a blur of activity. Cherry screaming blue bloody murder and Jax holding her at bay. The cops making the arrest, removing the knife, asking me for my statement, shoving Cherry into the back of a cruiser, all while Jax looked on. He stood close to me, his arm brushing mine, but not around me, just yet.
After Cherry had been carted off, screeching at the top of her lungs, Jax spoke at length with one of the officers about taking out a restraining order against her.
“It’s better to follow a legal process in this case,” Jax muttered to me, out of the side of his mouth. “If it was up to me, this would be handled differently.”
“It’s not up to you?” I asked.
He studied me, those ocean-blue eyes glittering by the neon light from the lampposts. “Not anymore,” he said.
Shivers spread down my spine, but the cop returned from his cruiser with the information Jax needed, and the tension dissipated somewhat. Finally we were done, and Jax walked me to his car—an Audi this time—and opened the passenger-side door for me.
I slipped onto the leather seat and put on my seatbelt, then leaned back against the headrest, and squeezed my eyes shut.
A car door slammed, the engine purred to life, and we cruised away from the studio and the scene of mayhem. Tonight had been yet another reminder of how tough life would be, of how—a thought struck me in the center of my forehead and I turned my head only, opened my eyes and watched Jax.
He drove with both hands on the wheel, his grip strong, his focus on the road. Lights flashed by, casting beams of orange and yellow across his open-collared shirt, the tattooed forearms, his neatly trimmed beard, the strong nose.
“Did you sell the club?” I asked at last, my pulse ticking up again. All through the debacle with Cherry, my mind had been divided between the threat of the blade and that question. Had he really sold Club Queen? And if so, why? “Jax?”
“We’ll talk when we’re home,” he said.
I looked out the window and frowned at the skyscrapers, the palm trees, the lights. “This isn’t the way to Ron’s house.”
“No,” he replied. “I said, when we’re home. My home. Our home.”
Chapter 29
Jax
I walked Riley through to the kitchen and sat her down on one of the barstools, silent since she’d asked me whether I’d sold or not. All in good time. All in good fucking time. I loved this woman, but she still had some explaining to do.
“Jax?”
“Do you want something to drink? Water? Soda?”
“Water would be good,” she replied.
I fetched a bottle from the fridge, unscrewed the cap and placed it in front of her. “There,” I said and leaned my palms on my kitchen counter, watching as she drank and a droplet snaked down her throat.
She finished and put down the bottle, played with the top, her tan brow wrinkling up, hazel-flecked eyes measuring me. “Did you sell—?”
“Riley,” I grunted, “you just put yourself in danger. I’m not going to talk to you about the fucking club until you tell me what the hell you were doing at the studio.”
“Dancing,” she replied and didn’t sound the least bit ashamed about it. “I forgot how that’s a crime.”
“Breaking and entering is.”
She clicked her teeth together and didn’t comment.
“But shit, I don’t even care about the breaking and entering. Do you know what I do care about?”
Riley shrugged, worried the bottle’s cap with her fingernails.
“That you endangered the life of our child.”