Chapter One
Jax
The moon glows with white light and hangs low and round over the nearby ocean darkened by night as if it, like the hundreds of guests in the garden of one of the San Francisco Knight hotels, is watching the beautiful brunette and star of the night. Emma Knight, is that woman, the twenty-eight-year-old heiress to the hotel chain’s worldwide empire, who, in fact, lost her father one month ago. Now, her brother Chance rules their hotel empire and her mother has fled to Europe for reasons few, I suspect Emma included, knows.
But I know.
She stands next to Randall Montgomery, her brother’s right-hand and confidant, a man who might be fit enough and decent enough looking if he didn’t act like he has a stick up his ass. A man on my radar for reasons he’ll soon regret. He wants Emma and her money and the empire her father founded. She is the furthest down the food chain of them all, and based on her history with her father, even further down than would be expected. No doubt, she inherited with her father’s death, but I wouldn’t be shocked to discover she was given a token instead of a goldmine.
The announcer stands at a podium and begins lavishly speaking of Emma’s father with purpose. Tonight, with women in fancy gowns and men in tuxedos, ice carved into sculptures and champagne poured in glasses, Emma is here to accept a philanthropy award on his behalf while her brother is curiously absent. If he were present, I wouldn’t be here. Neither I, nor any of the North family could stand her father, not that I find her brother any more palatable. Her father is gone, though, and now Emma is the proverbial queen of the hour. And the queen, unaware that she is, has had my attention for quite some time.
There’s irony in the fact that I, Jax North, the eldest now of the living North family offspring is, in fact, the man who watches her. An irony she’ll understand soon, but not too soon. For now, I stand at one of the rows of white-clothed tables, deep enough beyond in the crowd of people to be as good as in the shadows; a man whose family has done business with her family for decades, though l have been intentionally invisible in those endeavors just as I am here now. Present but unseen.
Emma steps to the podium, but not before I catch a glimpse of her pale pink floor-length dress. It’s elegant in its simplicity, in the way it highlights her slender but womanly figure. Her hands grip the sides of the podium and for a long moment, a full minute at least, she simply looks out across the crowd but doesn’t speak. There’s a charge of expectation in the room, a sense of the crowd pushing her to break the silence and when finally, her pink-painted lips part, the microphone crackles and squeaks. This seems to jolt her and she laughs nervously, a soft sweet laugh to match her sweet little ass. Perhaps the only sweet things about the Knight family.
“Thank you all for being here,” she finally says, and her voice is strained but suitably strong. “It’s an emotional night for me, as you might imagine, to be here tonight, among those honored who are living while my father is no longer with us. Even more so, to be present at a hotel that was the center of the world for him.” She cuts her stare and I can almost feel her struggling for composure, the way I struggle when I speak of my older brother.
“I loved my father so very much,” Emma adds, and the pain in her voice is it for me. I run a hand over the silk of my light blue tie, barely contained impatience in the action, but tonight isn’t the time; it’s not when I’m meant to find Emma and Emma me. It’s a thought that has me turning away and disappearing into the gardens, entering the hotel by a side door. I’m here in this hotel for one reason: Emma. It’s long past due that we meet. It’s long past due that she learns about the connection between her family and mine outside of a bookkeeper ledger. I stroll a carpeted hallway with elegant chandeliers dipping low at strategic locations, about to turn into the bar when I come face to face with Eric Mitchell, a man who is quite literally a genius. He’s also vice president in one of the largest corporations in the world.
“Long time, man,” he greets, offering me his hand. It’s a strong hand, and when I look into his blue eyes, I see the man born a savant, the man who sees numbers more than words. I see the man who helped Bennett Enterprises reach beyond a legal powerhouse to a conglomerate, even before acquiring an NFL team.
“Doesn’t Bennett own hotels, which would make you the Knights’ competition?”
His lips curve. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I went to school with Chance. Good guy.”
Good guy my fucking ass. “We should talk.”
“About?”
“All things green. How about lunch tomorrow?”
“I can make that happen. “
We set-up the meeting and the ways this little encounter has inspired me are many. I cut right into a dimly lit bar that’s desolate at the moment and thank fuck for it. The damn hotel is filled to the rim for the awards ceremony. But being alone suits me just fine right about now and I walk to the back of the bar and slide into a red leather booth that overlooks a room with couches, cushy chairs, and dangling lights but also provides a curtain for privacy. The Knight name is all about luxury and comfort, but at its core, it’s about greed. At my core right now, I’m about that speech Emma was giving, about the pain at its core. That pain is why I’m here.
A waiter appears and I order whiskey, North Whiskey, my family’s whiskey, which is in every Knight hotel in the country and beyond. I don’t give a fuck if it stays or goes or I wouldn’t be here. “Bring the bottle.”
He’s just filled my glass, and then it’s at my lips when Emma walks into the bar. Alone. She’s done her time on stage and ran for cover. The hotel might be hosting the event, but she isn’t. She’s halfway into the bar when voices sound behind her. She peeks over her shoulder and then with a panicked look, darts in my direction.
To my surprise—and I don’t surprise easily—she slides into the booth with me and pulls the curtain shut. “So sorry,” she says, claiming the seat next to me. “I really need to avoid a conversation and well, breathe a moment or ten. The only way to do that is to be having a private meeting that looks as if it’s just that: private, not to be disturbed.” She takes my glass and downs my whiskey.
Interesting that she didn’t run to Randall for comfort, but in fact ran away from him.
She glances at me, and when her beautiful pale green eyes flecked with amber meet mine, there is a charge between us, an awareness that parts her lips and has her turning away from me. Because she knows who I am?
“I’ll buy that bottle of whiskey for you,” she says, “for letting me intrude.”
A statement that either proves she has no idea who I am or that she’s playing me the way a Knight will play.
It doesn’t really matter. It’s like the sky opened up and delivered her right to me. “Considering I’m a North and that’s North Whiskey,” I say, refilling the glass. “I think I can handle paying for the bottle and helping the lady of the night hide out.” I refill my glass.
Her eyes go wide. “You’re Jax North.” She blinks. “Of course you are. You look like the North family, all tall, blond, and handsomely brooding.” She drinks a bit more. “And that’s the whiskey making me overly verbal. My father didn’t approve of me being overly verbal or drinking for that matter.”
She’s nervous, rambling in a rather charming, vulnerable way that I find attractive, for reasons I don’t try to understand.
“I didn’t know ‘overly verbal’ was a thing.”
“You didn’t know my father well, then. Actually, no one did.” She swallows hard. “Back to you.” It’s a hard push from any question I might have made about that statement “no one did.”
“You really do look like your father and brother. I can’t believe I didn’t immediately place you.”
“You mean Hunter, I assume, since my younger brother, Brody, beats to his own drum. A drum that doesn’t include running the core whiskey operation or any involvement with the Knight Hotel brand.”
“Yes, Hunter,” she says, and there’s a flicker in her eyes, an understanding that we’re talking about a brother that is no more with us on this earth than her father. “I met them both, briefly. I ah—”
I narrow my eyes on her waiting for her to finish that sentence, prodding when she does not. “You what?”
“You—”
“Lost them both, as you did your father,” I supply. “Yes. My father to a ski accident, a year ago next week. Six months ago next month for my brother.” I leave out the cause of death. That isn’t a place either of us wants me to go with the Knight family tonight. “Time helps, but anyone who tells you it makes the cut heal is lying. It just stops the bleeding.”
“Thank you for saying that,” she says in a deep breath, “because if one more person tells me time will make it all better, I might scream.” She softens her voice. “I’m sad to say that I barely knew your father and brother, and only know you now because my intrusion, that you neither chose nor invited.”
“Should I have?”
“Why would you? You don’t know me.” She laughs a bitter laugh. “Well, there is my family money. That’s what everyone knows and wants. They think they know my worth, but they know nothing.”
I don’t ask what that means. I dare to slide closer to her. I dare to allow my leg to press to hers, the current between us charming the air. “I am a North, which means that I have power and money. I don’t need yours.”
“Money feeds greed. What you have is never enough.”
“There are other things to want besides money, Emma Knight.”
“Can I deny that identity perhaps for the rest of my life?”
I lean closer, the scent of her distinctly warm—amber and vanilla, I believe—my interest in this woman piqued in both expected and unexpected ways. “Why would you want to?”
“A complicated answer to a simple question.” Her voice cracks and she turns away from me. She reaches for my glass again and downs every drop in it.
“More?” I ask.
“Yes, but I should warn you that I’m a very bad drinker.”
I refill the glass and sip before handing it to her. She stares at the glass before her gaze lifts to my mouth. Unlike moments before, she’s now thinking of exactly what I intended: about her mouth where my mouth was moments before. “I promise to catch you if you fall,” I say softly.
“Don’t start this relationship off by making promises you won’t even try to keep.”
Relationship. She’s planning on this encounter leading to more, which of course could simply be because I’m now in charge of my family empire. Or perhaps it’s about “more.” And I plan to make it so much more than this little rendezvous behind a curtain.
“I never make a promise I don’t keep,” I say, and I will catch her if she falls, because once I catch her, she’s mine. Once she’s mine, everything comes full circle.
“Never?”
“Never,” I assure her, “which is something my friends value and my enemies dread.”
“Do you have many enemies?”
“A man or woman with money and power always has enemies.”
Her cellphone rings and she pants out a breath. “Of course. They’re now looking for me by calling me.” She pulls her cell from her purse and glances at the number.
“Randall?” I ask.
Her gaze jerks to mine. “How do you know that and him?”
“I know a lot of people. Enemies everywhere, Emma,” I say softly, and I find myself really wanting her to listen. Really wanting to protect her, which is a contradiction to everything I would do otherwise where the Knights are concerned. “And that one wants to be in your bed. If he isn’t already.”
“How do you know that?”
“I told you. I know a lot of people and things.”
She sets her phone on the table without answering him.
“You aren’t going to answer?”
“No. I’m not going to answer. I’m not ready to go back.”
“Would you like to get out of here?”
“And go where?”
“A castle by the ocean.”
She laughs. “If only.”
“I’m serious, Emma. Come with me. I’ll take you away.”
“Would you be asking me that if I walked away from it all? The hotels, the money?”
The curtain pulls back and Randall is standing there, his dark hair slicked back, his gaze sliding between the two of us and landing on me. “What the fuck are you doing here, Jax?”
My lips quirk. “Enjoying good company and good whiskey.” I glance at Emma. “With a beautiful woman,” I add.
I expect her to blush and look away, but she doesn’t. For several beats she just looks at me, her stare unreadable, but the crackle in the air between us, the whip and pull of attraction, is damn near palpable.
“Emma,” Randall snaps, “you have people here honoring your father.”
“Right. Responsibility calls.” Her eyes, her sea-green eyes meet mine. “Thank you, Jax. For the company and the fine whiskey.” Randall offers her his hand, but she ignores it and stands up.
“Don’t you want the answer to your question?” I ask.
She glances behind her, over her shoulder, to meet my stare. “Yes, I do.” But she doesn’t stay for an answer. She walks away, doing the impossible, considering she’s a Knight and I’m a North, as she does; she makes me crave more of her, but that craving in me changes nothing. I came here, seeking her out, for a reason. That reason remains the same.
