Chapter 23

Jax

I sat behind the chrome desk in my minimalistic office at our home base in Miami, and rifled through the legal documents Bane had placed on it this morning. This was one of the few times I’d actually been in this room.

Spare, empty of sentiment, with a good view. This was how I wanted life to be. Simple, aesthetically pleasing, sometimes funny—I had a set of prank items in the top drawer of the desk in case I felt like messing with Bane when I was here.

None of it made any fucking sense to me now.

I grumbled under my breath and turned the page. The words were simply ink markings. They were symbols that meant nothing to me right now.

Women never walked away from me. They begged me to stay. They threw themselves at me. They sometimes let me chase, but actually telling me to back off? Yeah, that never happened.

Everything about Riley was different from what I’d experienced in the past.

She wouldn’t let me protect her. She wanted to suffer through all of her shit like some type of martyr, and god knew, she probably still planned to have some other man’s spunk injected into her. Fuck, I couldn’t think about that.

I slammed my hands down on the desk, on either side of the contract, and the penholder on its corner rattled.

“Whoa.” Bane stood in the doorway, one hand on the knob. I hadn’t heard him enter, too lost in my irritation at what’d happened.

She didn’t want me near her? She didn’t want me to chase her? What the fuck was that?

“Dude?”

“What?” I snapped.

Bane entered the office and shut the door behind himself. He was the only one who had the nuts to do something like that when I was in a crappy mood. The others here buried their heads in their work.

He walked toward the desk and took a seat in the chair opposite me. “What’s up, Jax?” He asked. “You’ve been a bear with a sore ass for the past two days. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I replied, stiffly.

“Come on, man, I know you better than that,” Bane said. “When you’re in a foul mood, it affects our business. Remember that. We can’t afford to relax. We’ve got to keep moving.”

That was Bane. He had to keep moving because staying still meant losing, and he didn’t do losing.

“I can control my temper,” I replied.

“No, you really can’t. So why don’t we cut the shit, and you lay it out for me. Every problem has a solution, and I’m betting whatever’s crawled up your ass and died is easily removed.”

“Colorful,” I said.

“I try.”

I shifted the contract to one side and interlaced my fingers, rested my hands on top of the desk. “It’s personal.”

“So?”

“So, I don’t discuss personal.”

“Like hell you don’t. Listen, I’ll bet that thing in your ass is something to do with the radiant Miss Riley. Correct?” Bane undid the buttons of his jacket and let it hang open, rested his forearms on his thighs in his problem-solving pose. “What happened?”

I told him bluntly. Didn’t go into detail, just the basic facts.

Bane took it in and nodded once after I’d finished. “You gotta call her,” he said.

“That’s what you got from all of that? I gotta call her? She told me not to fucking call her, and I’ll respect her damn wishes.” I rose from my desk and walked to the windows flanking it. I leaned my arm against it and looked down on Miami, on the sports cars and the activity. I worked my fingernails against the meat of my palm, then flicked them free. “I don’t chase after women, Bane. You know that. Not in this sense. There’s the chase, and then there’s being a fucking pussy.”

Bane snorted.

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing, just never thought I’d see the day when Jax King would show real fear.”

I spun so fast the teal office walls blurred. “What did you just say?”

“Oh ho, that’s caught your attention. Listen, you know you’re my brother, even if not by blood. I’m going to call you on your shit,” he said. “That’s just how we operate.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. The fear thing, I mean.”

“Oh, come on,” he said. “You’ve never hesitated to close a deal or dominate, as you put it. Why now? Why pull back now?” Bane clicked his teeth twice, then inhaled through them. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” he replied. “Just, I’ve figured it out.”

“What?”

“Why you’re afraid.” Bane’s smirk made me want to slap it right off his face.

“Enough,” I said. “I’ve got work to do, and I’m not going to get distracted by personal shit.” Except that was exactly what’d happened. Man, Riley had crawled not up my ass but into my nerves. She pulled my mental strings like a goddamned puppet master.

“You’re in love with her,” he said.

My world dropped away for a moment. The words I’d refused to believe, that had haunted me each night she lay in my arms, spoken out loud by someone else. “Bane,” I grunted.

“You. Are. In. Love. With. Her.”

“Get out of my office.”

Bane didn’t budge—once again, the only person in this office who didn’t jump when I asked, “How high can you jump, motherfucker?”

“Bane,” I said. “I’m not interested in—“

The fucker waved a hand to cut me off mid-sentence. “Stop it. You’re afraid because you love her and you didn’t believe in that shit until you met her.”

“Because that shit is a farce,” I said. Money made the world go round. Money and sex, and that was all there was to it.

“Except you know that’s not true anymore. You love her,” he repeated. “You love Riley, so my question to you is this: if you love her, why are you letting her walk away?”

“What the hell else should I do?” I asked, and wagged a finger at him. “Not that I’m admitting to the love part, by the way.”

“Don’t be like that,” Bane said. “And what you should do is make it happen like you’ve made everything else happen in your damn life. Show her that you want her. That she’s not just yours but that you actually fucking care.”

“She lived in my apartment for four weeks. That doesn’t scream ‘care’?”

“Dude, you made her into a charity case,” Bane replied. “She thought you were being a nice guy, or that you wanted to get in her pants. I’m no expert on how women think but damn, that seems pretty obvious to me.”

So what the hell was I supposed to do? Buy her a bouquet of roses and a box of chocolates like some cheesy Hugh Grant motherfucker? That wasn’t me. All I did was business, food, and sex. And she probably wouldn’t let me cook her a lasagna and fuck her over the kitchen counter right now, given that she’d told me not to call her.

“I dunno, man, you’re a smart dude. You’ll figure it out,” Bane said and finally pushed out of his seat.

I’d been standing rigid, my fists hurting from the tension, palms sweaty. Taking that first step toward my desk was like a robot waking up from a shut down. My joints practically creaked.

Bane watched me walk to my chair, lower myself into it. “I came to ask how you were doing on the Letterman Building and what your decision would be, but I guess that’s not going to happen anytime soon.”

“What if we didn’t buy the Letterman Building?” I asked.

“Then we won’t be opening another club or restaurant.”

“What if we didn’t open another club or restaurant?”

“Are you just going to keep repeating what I say?” Bane asked and took hold of the back of the leather chair. It squeaked under his grasp, and the corners of his lips twitched upward.

“What if we did something totally fucking different?” I said, more to myself this time.

Riley’s studio was on the market. And if it wasn’t, I’d damn well get it on the market and buy it at a steal, because those were the contacts I had, and doing this type of business was like breathing to me.

I could easily snatch up that place and give it to her. She wouldn’t accept it, of course. She’d tell me that I couldn’t buy my way back into her life or some shit. But if I bought it and opened it, hired her to run it? Surely, she couldn’t say no to that. It was her dream.

She could save up the money she needed and buy it back from me, also at a steal, and that would be it. She wouldn’t need a goddamn loan. She wouldn’t need shit except for her raw talent as a dancer.

Riley could take the place and expand. She could hire new instructors, do other dance forms, hip-hop and whatever the hell else type there was. She’d flourish.

If I couldn’t have her in my bed, I could at least show her that I cared about her goals. That she wasn’t just mine, that she was a person I cared for. Loved.

Fuck, I really do love her. Fuck. Fuck.

My thoughts had revolved around it, danced away from admitting it. I’d focused on her being mine rather than loving everything that was hers.

“Dude.”

Oh shit, Bane was still around. I looked up at him.

“You look like you’re having an aneurysm. Your eyes are spazzing out from side to side. Are you going to say anything that makes sense anytime soon?”

“No,” I replied. “I can’t talk. I have to act. There isn’t much time.”

“Right.” Bane headed for the door. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”

“Why would I do anything stupid?”

“Love does that to people,” he replied, then opened the door and slipped out into the hall. He shut it behind himself, and I stared at it. It was that same misted glass as in our conference room.

I pictured Riley’s silhouette on the other side of it, her hands pressed to the glass.

Not just mine, ours. If she was mine, then I was hers, and I had to show her that. I snatched up the phone and started dialing numbers. By the end of this week I’d have that damn studio, and then I’d have her again.

No questions asked. No doubt in my damn mind. Riley Robinson was my woman, she had been for the past month, and she would be for the rest of our lives.