Page 12 of Tangled in His Embrace

She rolled onto her side and clamped her eyes closed.

His chest vibrated with a suppressed laugh as he let himself out of her bedroom.

When he emerged from the hallway into the main living space, he found Gabby in the kitchen. She was wiping down the already clean counters. But what did he know? Maybe they really did need washing. “Hey.”

He saw her back stiffen before she responded without looking at him. “Thank you for putting her to bed.”

“You don’t have to thank me. She’s my daughter, too.”

Gabby kept her back to him and he noticed she’d rubbed the same spot at least a half dozen times.

Closing the distance between them, he placed a hand on her arm, trying to get her attention.

She jumped.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said, already beginning to put distance between them.

Jax knew he was going to have to do something to fix things between them. If that meant telling her why he left three years ago then so be it. But not now. Not with Taylor down the hall and able to interrupt them. He didn’t want to rush this. It was too important.

Knowing she wouldn’t agree to sit down and talk with him about anything other than Taylor, he latched on to his one bargaining chip. “Are you free tomorrow night? Since Taylor will be with my parents, I wanted us to sit down and discuss custody arrangements.”

She whipped her head around to look at him, all thought of cleaning seemingly forgotten. “What custody arrangements? You’re not... I mean... I let...”

He started to take a step toward her, but stopped himself. “Calm down. I’m not going to try and take Taylor away from you, if that’s what you’re thinking. I just want to talk about some specifics. Christmas is coming and I want to make sure we’re both on the same page, that’s all.”

“Oh.” She visibly relaxed. “Well, we can talk about that now.”

“I’d rather do it when we don’t have the potential of little ears overhearing.”

Gabby looked toward the hallway but, of course, there was no one there. She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and lifted her chin. He’d always liked to refer to it as her game face. “Of course. What time?”

“I was thinking around six. I could bring Chinese.”

“You don’t—”

“Let me buy you dinner. It’s the least I can do for interrupting your weekend.”

She scraped her teeth over her bottom lip, drawing his attention. He tamped down the urge to rub his thumb over her abused lip and suck it into his mouth.

“Gabby?”

“Okay,” she said, barely loud enough for him to hear.

He smiled, trying to lighten the mood. “All right. I’ll see you tomorrow night at six.” He paused, wanting to say something else but failing to find something that would express what he wanted to say without making her shut down even more than she already was. “Good night, Gabby.”

Jax didn’t wait for her to say it back. He grabbed his coat and left, reminding himself that waiting to say what he needed to say would be better for both of them in the long run.

***

He spent most of Friday trying to catch up on work. The end of the year was always hectic. All his clients seemed to have a to-do list a mile long and, of course, they wanted it all done before the end of the year.

At one thirty he removed the glasses he used solely for when he had to spend hours staring at a computer screen and rubbed his eyes. Jax had been at it since seven thirty that morning and all the letters and numbers were beginning to blur together. He needed a break.

Leaving his glasses balanced over his keyboard, he padded into his small kitchen and opened the refrigerator. There wasn’t a lot there as he hadn’t been to the grocery store for almost two weeks. It hadn’t seemed necessary when his mom had sent him home with a bunch of leftovers, but those were gone and he was left with not much more than the basics. He was honestly surprised he still had milk that hadn’t expired.

Deciding to go in a different direction, he grabbed what was left of the loaf of bread his mom had sent him home with and checked to make sure it was still free of mold before retrieving a can of tuna from the cabinet. It wasn’t ideal, but it would fill him up. He had at least three more hours of work to finish before he could call it a day.

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