Maybe he should just call it off. Maybe it was stupid to think he could keep doing this and keep her unimportant—at a distance.
Now wasn’t the time to get involved with anyone. Not with Maizy to consider. She was supposed to be his only focus, but Em was eating that promise to himself alive. At first, he’d liked that Em didn’t want to ask him a million questions. That meant he didn’t have to come up with answers for them. He wasn’t ready to explain the parts of his life involving Maizy.
Yet, he was asking Em questions because he was interested—because he liked her—because he couldn’t stop insinuating her image into the life he’d once pictured for himself.
Maizy didn’t help, either. She’d informed him, after seeing her at the school, she liked Miss Em. She was pretty, and she wore red lipstick, and in Maizy’s book, that equaled idol status.
The other day at the school, when he’d thought Reece was there, he’d panicked, but when he saw Maizy with Em, he knew everything was all right. That Em would look out for her—keep her from harm.
After seeing the way Maizy looked at Em, with that admiration little girls have for their older counterparts, he knew she’d be good for Maizy.
But she didn’t want to be good for anyone but herself and her sons—and he thought he didn’t want that, either.
He didn’t. Then the other night, she’d blown him away. There was nothing special about it he could pinpoint. He thought it was cute that she’d never used a vibrator, cuter that she wanted to try one with him. That’s what she was in this for, right? To experience new things.
As long as they were within his parameters, he was happy to oblige.
Until that one moment, that single second when he’d caught Em watching him between her legs. That brief flicker of a moment where her eyes darkened and she became aware of something—that something between them. It existed. It pulled him, touched him, made him just as aware.
He’d needed a minute to process it. Let it sit.
It was still sitting three days later. Three long days where they couldn’t get together because she had the boys and he had a huge glitch in this damn security program he was convinced no one could solve but Harper.
“You forgot your lunch,” Gage said from the doorway to his office. He threw a bag labeled Madge’s down in front of him and pulled out a chair. “Figured I’d eat with you so you wouldn’t be lonely.”
He didn’t want to eat. He wanted to see Em. But he didn’t say that. Instead, he pulled out the deli-wrapped sandwich from the bag.
“So what’s new, big brother?” Gage’s eyes pinned his over a ham and cheese with onions.
“Nothing.”
“How’s Emmaline?” he whispered her name and batted his eyes in the worst reproduction of a woman Jax had ever seen.
Jax shrugged like it didn’t matter how she was. “Dunno.”
“Well, I hope you find out soon so you’ll stop being such an asshole.”
“I’m not being an asshole.”
“Yeah, you are. Who flips out over a wet bath mat like that? You miss her, so you’re cranky. No big deal.”
He bit into his sandwich and considered. Okay, maybe he’d gone a little overboard by throwing the bath mat in the garbage to make a point, but it wasn’t because he missed seeing Em.
It was because he was sick and tired of getting out of the shower only to find Tag had drip-dried on the damn thing without even bothering to pick it up. “It was a soggy mess on the floor. Who gets out of the shower soaking wet like that?”
Gage shrugged his shoulders. “Isn’t that what a bath mat’s for? To protect the floor when you get out of the shower wet?”
“I don’t miss her.” Yes, you do.
Gage dropped his sandwich on the surface of the desk and wiped his mouth with the paper napkin. “Look, whatever, okay? You keep telling yourself this is just you know what. But you’d better get some more you know what soon, or we’re firing you as head of the household—because you’ve been an ass.”
“It can’t be more than you know what.” Shit. Now he’d said it out loud. That meant it held meaning. It meant he was mulling.
“Why can’t it, Jax? Why does everything have to be so complicated with you?”
“Because she doesn’t want it to be any more than that, and neither do I.”
“And you can’t convince her that’s a stupid decision?”
“I don’t want to convince her of anything. I have too much on my plate. Reece showing up for one.”
“So you really think that was her at the school?”
He’d put everyone on red alert since that day. Maizy was to leave from school with no one but a Hawthorne. Ever. “I know it was damn well her. What I don’t know is why she’s skulking around Plum Orchard, showing up at Maizy’s school, calling my number, but not returning my calls. I’ll tell you this, she better stay the hell away from Maizy.”
“I agree. So what does Reece have to do with Emmaline?”