Total pages in book: 213
Estimated words: 202770 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1014(@200wpm)___ 811(@250wpm)___ 676(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 202770 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1014(@200wpm)___ 811(@250wpm)___ 676(@300wpm)
“Never?”
“I haven’t spoken to her since she left.”
“Even when your brother died?”
“Not a word, but my father was killed in a skiing accident six months earlier. If anyone knew how to reach her, he would have, but he was gone.”
“Was she the root of your anger issues?” she smartly queries.
“Yes,” I say, no hesitation to that reply. I know my demons, perhaps a little too well. “I was getting into fights and my father had enough. He took me to a gym and told them to knock some sense into me. It worked.” I think back to that first day in the ring, to getting punched and pissed off, and standing up and screaming, “More! Do it again!”
“Where are you right now?” Emma asks, nudging me with her arm.
“Remembering that first day in the gym.” My lips turn up in a wry smile. “My father was smart to drop me there. He was a good man.”
“I wish I could say that about mine.” She shakes her head. “Why did I go there? Let’s skip that topic. Did your father remarry?”
“No,” I say, letting the topic of her father go, when I’d rather not, but her loss is fresh. I get that. “He didn’t remarry,” I add. “I don’t think he had it in him to love again. He loved the hell out of my mother. Passionately. Intensely. I didn’t have to be an adult to see or know that he got hurt. My tough as nails father was shredded inside, but stayed strong for his boys.”
“No wonder you’re thirty-four, marriage material, and still single.” She holds up a hand. “Not that I’m contemplating marrying you. We’re the worst match ever. Our families hate each other.” She curls her legs in front of her and I finish off a slice and catch her leg, turning her to face me, sliding my arm under her knees. “We are whatever we decide we are.”
“I’m never going to be a relationship girl again, so you know I’m safe.” She cuts her stare.
I catch her chin and turn her gaze back to mine. “I’m not him.”
“Stop saying that. Leave him outside of us.”
“Fair enough,” I concede. “I won’t say that again.”
“And even so, no you’re not him, but you do want something from me.”
“I started out wanting something from you. Now I want you, Emma.”
“But you do want more. Please don’t pretend otherwise.”
“Emma—”
“I don’t want my brother to be my father, Jax,” she says, in what might appear as a dramatic change of topic but it’s not. She’s telling me she feels like I’m going to take him from her, the way that journal took her father from her. “He can’t be,” she adds. “We’re close. He has to be on our side. I can’t lose him, too.”
She thinks I’m going to hurt him. She thinks she’s falling for a man who will hurt her and her family, and there lies the real problem. That’s why I came. She knows it. I know it. I don’t even consider denial.
Chapter twenty-nine
Jax
We both know why I sought her out, and we both know that’s not easy for her to put aside, but I do now. I focus on her and where this problem of our two families leads her. I focus on how her experiences may lead us to some semblance of closure. “How close are you and Chance, Emma?”
“We have dinner once a week. We live in the same building. We have coffee a couple of mornings a week. He’s pulled away since dad died, but grief is something we all handle in our own way. It makes no sense that my father went after your brother for the castle but he didn’t come to you when you took over. And yet, my brother told you the will said he had to make an offer?”
“He did.”
“Nothing about this makes sense,” she says. “I feel like I just need to go and confront Chance.”
“Here’s the thing, sweetheart. You can do that, but he’s going to tell you just what he told me and us already. Making an offer on the castle was in the will. He’ll stick to that story.”
“Maybe, but maybe not. Not if I push him. I think the biggest obstacle I have with Chance is him wanting to protect me the way I want to protect him. We both want to preserve the good memories of our father.”
Preserving her father’s memory might well be Chance’s way of preserving her opinion of him, as well, but I don’t say that. We’re going to find out one way or the other who her brother really is, but it’s not going to be here and now. She knows it. I know it.
Emma brushes off her hands and stands up. “I need to show you something.” She disappears into the bedroom where I hear her messing around in what I believe to be her suitcase. I stand up and join her to see if I can help.