Mercy(White Collared Part 1)(28)
Jaxon.
Tom rushed to her side. “Are you okay, Katie?”
“The woman told you not to touch her,” Jaxon rumbled in a deep, authoritative voice that vibrated low in her belly.
A chill unrelated to the weather spread goose bumps down her arms and pebbled her nipples into hard points. What was he doing here?
Tom puffed out his chest in a laughable attempt to compete with Jaxon for alpha male. “I don’t know who the hell you are, but you’d better take your hands off my girlfriend before you regret it.”
“Ex-girlfriend,” she said, sliding out from Jaxon’s hold and moving closer to Tom to make sure he got the message she was about to deliver. “I’ll never forgive you for cheating on me with Hannah. We’re through.”
The snarl on his face transformed him from friend to foe. “Fine by me. Saves me having to justify to my parents why I’m wasting my time with you. Guess they were right. You can take the girl out of the trailer, but you can’t take the trailer out of the girl.”
A low growl was the only warning she got before Jaxon charged Tom and punched him in the nose. Tom fell to his knees, blood pouring from both nostrils. Jaxon drew back his fist for the next hit.
She caught his arm to keep him from making a mistake he’d regret. “Stop! Jaxon, it’s fine. I just want to go home.”
Breathing heavily, he looked like a wild man, his pupils shrunken to pinpoints and his black hair sticking up in all directions. She had to get him out of here. They couldn’t afford the press or the police catching wind of him fighting. “Would you please drive me home . . . Jax?”
He lowered his fist, and his body’s tension eased. He surveyed her for a moment. Then he scooped her up in his arms and carried her away, holding her to his chest. As she spotted his car on the other side of the street, she considered protesting. After all, her ankle was fine. But having him take care of her felt too damn good.
The darkness she’d expected to find in him earlier had reared its dominant head. This man wasn’t the one who’d decorated the walls with paintings of rolling hills and fields of poppies.
This man had fought before.
This man believed in defending a woman’s honor.
This man could be capable of murder.
Chapter Eleven
AFTER PROVIDING DIRECTIONS to her apartment, Kate melted into the heated leather seats of the car, thankful for modern technology. Shivering, she rubbed under her eyes, not surprised her fingers came away smudged with mascara.
Jaxon sat next to her, his anger almost tangible. While she looked like something between a raccoon and a drowned rat, he resembled Poseidon, powerful and dangerous. The muscles of his triceps and biceps glistened and flexed as he spun the steering wheel. She had to sit on her hands to keep herself from touching him.
So many questions bounced in her mind, she didn’t know what to ask first. What was the best way to interrogate her client/pretend Dom/wannabe lover? “Do you want to tell me what happened back there?”
He ground his teeth and his muscles tensed. After a loud exhale, he said, “He hurt you.”
Lots of people have hurt me. “I tripped. Accidents happen.”
His lips tightened into a thin line. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”
Oh. That. Choking back the nausea, she repressed the image of Hannah riding Tom to climax and committed herself to never thinking of it again.
She pressed her hand over her heart. “I won’t miss him. We were growing apart, not that we were close to start. It’s the fact he cheated on me with my purported friend. I don’t care I lost a boyfriend, but I will miss my friendship with Hannah.”
He swore under his breath. “Good friend?”
“Best,” she answered. “And the kicker? We’re both interning for Nick. I have to face her every day at work knowing how little our friendship meant to her.”
“You don’t think you can forgive her?”
“No. Once you lie to me, I’m done. I don’t give second chances.”
Hannah and Tom’s betrayal had transported her back to a time when she’d made the worst mistakes of her life, when her core beliefs had been shattered like a bullet to rose-colored glass.
She’d learned life’s lessons the hard way. Mothers didn’t always love their children. You were guilty until proven innocent. And there was no such thing as anonymity when it came to the press.
At fourteen, she’d found solace in a bottle of Jack, cocaine, and boys—many, many boys and, sometimes, grown men. When she’d climbed out of her self-imposed hell, she became determined to live in a way her father would have been proud of. Just because she no longer saw through that rose-colored glass didn’t mean she had to turn cynical.