Jax (Cocky Cage Fighter Series) (13 page)

A hundred and fourteen bucks to pour a dollar bottle of vinegar on me and scrape my sore skin with a fifty cent razor? Wow, what a rip. I hand over my debit card, which is when Jax catches up to me.

"I was going to take care of the bill," he says.

I didn't miss the sudden flurry of females suddenly converging and crowding around the small checkout desk. There's more open mouths gawking at Jax than the blow up doll section in a sex shop.

"That's ridiculous. It's my back and leg, so why would you take care of it?" I ask him.

"Because it's my fault you're here this weekend in the first place." 

"Right," I say at the reminder that I'm supposed to be here on business. I'm his attorney. I just gave my client a freaking hand job. After he got me off while he had his mouth on my breasts.

Awesome.

I can imagine writing that up for the State Bar Ethics Committee.
Well, members of the committee, I didn't fuck him, I just stroked his cock until he came. No, I didn't clearly conflict myself out of his case. I can represent him without remembering what it feels like to have his tongue in my mouth and on my tits while his hand is between my legs.
Gah!

"Page, wait!" Jax yells after I take my receipt and walk out the front doors. "You don't have any shoes on. Let me at least get a cab."

"I'm fine," I say, already feeling tiny pebbles embedded into my heels. I hope it’s pebbles and not say, pieces of broken beer bottles or dirty syringes?

"Hard-headed woman," Jax mutters behind me.

When we reach the hotel I go straight to the elevator banks and smack the up arrow, hoping Jude and their dad will bring my flip flops and towel in with them.

"I'm sorry," Jax says when we're alone in the small metal box. Those two words make me feel about the same amount of inches tall. It's exactly what he'd said last night when he rejected me. "I crossed a line I swore I wouldn't with you, and it won't happen again."

"Good to know," I say, crossing my arms over my barely covered chest.

"Hey, this is all your fault-"

"My fault!" I exclaim.

"You can't keep flaunting your ass and tits in front of me and expect me to keep my hands off of you! But from now on that's
exactly
what I'm going to do."

"Yes, I think you've already made that perfectly clear, you big jerk."

I pull my keycard out of my bag before the elevator doors open so I can quickly escape this infuriating man. After I slam my room door practically in his face I pull off my sandy, wet bathing suit and take a warm shower, which burns the fire out of my stings.

If my mood isn't shitty enough already after making a fool of myself and being extremely unprofessional, when I unplug my phone from the charger I've got three missed calls from Elliot, two from my dad, and one from my mom. Wonderful.

Elliot has also taken the time to send me a few sweet text messages to let me know he's thinking of me. One says, "
Where the hell are you
?" and another later one says, "
You're fucking him, aren't you
?" 

Feeling brazen I simply type in a response of "XOXO you, too" and hit send before turning my phone off and slumping backwards on the king size mattress. My eyes are heavy from exhaustion after the day's excitement, so it takes no time at all for me to fall sound asleep.

...

I wake up to a knock on my door, or on one of the rooms next door. Sitting up I glance over at the alarm clock beside the bed and see that it's six-thirty. I've been asleep for over two hours. There's another knock, definitely on my door. I only have a towel around me from my shower, but say screw it. Checking the peephole first I see that it's Jude in a black
Havoc
logo tee and cargo shorts.

"Hey, Jude," I say when I open the door.

He winces before looking up and down the hallway. "Thank goodness no one heard you," he says on an exhale. "Appropriate greetings for me are ‘
Hi, Jude’
or ‘
What do you want, Asshole’
but never ‘
Hey, Jude’
."

"Why?" I ask. "The Beatles?"

"Yeah. You have no idea how many goddamn times I've heard that shit."

"Got it. So, what's up, Jude?" I ask him with a smile.

"Much better. And I've got your shit," he says, holding out my flip flops and towel.

"Thanks," I say, taking them while struggling to keep my towel secured around my nakedness.

"Nice outfit, but they may not let you in to eat wearing just that," he says.

"To eat?" I ask.

"Yeah, we're gonna grab dinner at Hard Rock before the fights. You're still going, right?"

I glance next door to his brother's room, certain he'll be there. I need to suck it up and pretend like nothing happened so that we can try and get things back to normal.

"What happened with him?" Jude asks, instantly killing that hope.

"Doesn't matter."

"How's your back?"

"It's okay, not hurting nearly as much."

"Well, hurry up and get dressed. We've got a seven o'clock reservation and I'm starving."

"Yeah, yeah. Keep your panties on." I smile.

"Speaking of panties," he says, tilting his head to the side and checking out the bottom of my towel. "I'd take a guess and say you're not wearing any, are you?" he asks with a wide grin. Of course Jax's door opens at that moment, probably because he'd been eavesdropping through the thin walls.

"Ugh," I groan before shutting my door on them both.

"What'd you do to her?" I hear Jude ask his brother.

"Nothing. Mind your own goddamn business," is Jax's harsh reply.

I quickly blow dry my still damp hair before pulling it up into a high ponytail. I decide to slip on a short, casual navy blue sleeveless dress with a brown leather belt and matching wedges. After I brush my teeth, put on a little mascara, eyeshadow and lipstick I'm ready to go. I grab my purse and open my room door to find all three Malones standing around waiting patiently for me.

Where the heck is their mother? Even though I've been tempted, I'm scared to ask in case something horrible happened to her, like she passed away. I don't want to be the one dredging up a tragic history. Martin Malone is a pretty upbeat guy, although there does seem to be a sadness about him, noticeable by his frown lines.                                                          

Tonight their dad is dressed like Jude in a plain green tee and khaki shorts. And even though Jax is outfitted just as casually, he somehow wears his relaxed fit jeans and snug navy blue shirt like they're worth a million bucks. Oh and how cute, the two of us match all the way down to our toes. He's even got on a brown leather belt low on his hips and dark brown
Sketchers
on his feet. When I finally work my way up to his face, of course he's smirking down at me with his cell phone in his hand.

"Oh look how sweet, the Boppsey Twins coordinated," Jude says before he and his dad start laughing at us.

"I can go change," I say, turning back to my room, but Jude grabs my arm and tugs me along toward the elevator.

"You're not changing. I'm starving," he says while we wait for the elevator.

When it finally comes we all file on. For whatever reason I can sense that Jax is the big warm body standing behind me in the corner. When I feel a breeze like my skirt is being lifted I certainly
hope
it's him and not his dad. Jude's completely innocent, since he's standing next to me.

"Why are you sneaking a peek under my skirt?" I snap, pressing my skirt down as I spin around to face him.

"Oh please." Jax huffs and buries his hands in his front pockets to appear innocent. "I was looking at your stings."

"You could've just asked."

While I'm fussing at Jax a group of people crowd into the confined space with us. I'm nudged forward, so that I'm now chest to chest with Jax. I expect him to smirk or make a comment about me trying to touch him, but he doesn't. Instead he presses his back against the wall and lifts his face to the ceiling, sucking in deep, open-mouth breaths.

Of course! The man's claustrophobic. All the other times we've been on the elevator together it was just us or one or two people, never crowded like tonight. It probably doesn't help that it's hot as Hades with an exorbitant amount of strong perfumes, colognes and hairspray clogging up the air. We only have a few more floors to go, but it seems like it's taking forever, stopping on each and every one.

"My older brother, you met him yesterday, Logan? He's terrified of cats," I tell Jax softly to distract him. "Even kittens."

He looks down at me with a tightly clenched jaw and a raised eyebrow, silently asking me to keep going.  

"When I was ten or eleven I found these three really cute little black and white kittens out near the dumpster behind our church. They couldn't have been more than a few weeks old, so tiny and meowing like crazy with no mama cat around. Of course I wanted to keep them but noooo. I remember when I picked one up and ran over to show my parents Logan screamed like a little girl in front of everyone. The whole congregation was still standing around the parking lot gossiping after the service, so they heard him screeching before he ran back inside. He was sixteen or seventeen at the time."

The last sentence makes the corner of Jax's lips raise, coming close to an actual grin.

"So you didn't get to keep any of them?" he asks, as the elevator jerks like we're moving again.

I shake my head. "Nope. Logan waited at the church while we took them to a vet's house. Afterward, I remember telling my parents I wanted to be a vet and rescue animals when I grow up so I could actually keep all the kittens and puppies. They told me I was too smart and pretty for such a disgusting job, and that my choices in life were marrying a wealthy man or going to law school."   

"So you didn't want to go to law school?" he asks with a scrunched forehead.

"No, but I was still single when I graduated from college."

"What'd you major in?" Jax asks as I hear everyone filing out of the elevator on the first floor.

"Biology" I laugh. No one ever asks me that, it's just a given that I was probably Pre-Law with some major like Political Science. "Even though I had a 4.0 GPA, with that major I probably just barely squeaked through admissions at Georgetown because I was a legacy."

"Why didn't you just go to veterinary school?" he asks. We both inhale deep cleansing breaths when we make it into the open floor of the high ceilinged lobby, escaping the cluster of people.

"Because my parents wouldn't pay for it and I didn't have any money," I say with a shrug, when we catch up to his dad and Jude.

"I'd pay your tuition," he says.

Wait, what does he mean by that?

"Pay what tuition?" Jude asks when we approach.

"For veterinary school."

"Huh?" Jude asks, echoing my thoughts again. I look back over my shoulder at Jax in confusion.

"You know I have more money than sense," Jax says.

His dad mutters a "Got that right."

At the same time Jax asks, "What does it cost, a few hundred thousand?"

"Don't be silly, Jax. I'm not going back to school, and even if I was, I definitely wouldn't go back on your dime for
a few
hundred thousand
."

He clearly must be joking because otherwise...it's too preposterous to wrap my head around.

"Now that we've cleared that up, can we please go eat?" Jude whines.

"Lead the way," I say with a sweep of my hand, since no one's moving and things are uncomfortable after Jax's extremely unexpected but generous offer.

"Thank fuck," Jude says as he takes off ahead of us, continuing to grumble about delays. "Everyone's taking their sweet ass time."    

"Scared of
spiders
," Jax says to me, nodding toward his sibling's back. He says the last word louder than the rest.

"Ah! What the fuck?" Jude screams after he does a little hop that brings his knees up to his chest. "Where's a spider? Is it a big one?"

"You stepped on it. I'm pretty sure it's dead," Jax teases Jude, which causes him to have a full body shiver.

"So what are you afraid of?" Jax asks me while we walk toward the Hard Rock Cafe.

"Failure," I admit, since he'd been honest with me. “And snakes."

"Huh, really?" Jax asks, scratching the side of his head like I've noticed he does whenever he's thinking. Bending down next to my ear, he whispers so only I can hear him, "I don't remember seeing you flinch earlier today. You wrangled that python in my pants like a pro."

An embarrassed laugh escapes me at the same time cold chills race down both arms from feeling his warm breath against my ear.

"Guess yours is the exception," I respond, unable to help my smile.

...

Dinner is uneventful and mostly quiet as the men shovel food in their mouths the entire time. I'm talking appetizers, salads, entrees,
and
my favorite, dessert. After Jax, Mr. Money Bags, insisted on paying the check we went over to get our seats at the Xanadu Theater.