Infatuation - A Club Destiny Novel (34 page)

“
Murphy,” Travis greeted,
eyeing him suspiciously when he approached.

“
Walker.”

McKenna didn’t even spare him a glance, but
that didn’t stop Tag from interrupting.

“
Didn’t know you were in
town,” he told the man sitting beside McKenna, drinking a beer and
watching him closely.

“
Didn’t know I had to get
permission,” Travis smirked.

Why was it that he suddenly felt like a
foolish teenager trying to prove his own worth? He was reduced to
childish machismo standing here, practically facing off with Travis
Walker when it was apparent the two of them were only talking.
Hell, they weren’t even sitting that close to one another, but Tag
still didn’t like it. At all.

There were two words that
came to mind, but no matter how hard he tried, Tag couldn’t seem to
spit them out. Instead, he allowed his arm to gently brush
McKenna’s, wondering if there was a chance in hell that she felt
exactly how sorry he was.

*** ~~ *** ~~ *** ~~ ***

McKenna made it into the
office a little after seven the following morning. That was later
than usual, but she hadn’t been able to fall asleep until close to
three, and she felt like death warmed over. She was sure she looked
like it too.

Her office didn’t look
much better.

By the time she arrived, Whisper was already
there, along with two security guards that Alex McDermott had
placed on twenty four hour watch.

“
Hey,” Whisper greeted
when McKenna walked through the main doors.

The place looked a million times better than
it had even the night before when she stopped by after Tag left her
house. Seeing everything she worked so hard to build in such
disarray had caused her to go to the club for a drink where she ran
into Travis Walker.

They shared a beer, but it
didn’t take long for her to remember he wasn’t much of a
conversationalist, or maybe he just didn’t find her interesting.
Either way, after Tag had come and gone, she called it a night.
Only that wasn’t when her night ended.

Unfortunately, she spent the better part of
it replaying every scene from every time she had been near Tag for
the last couple of months only to make herself hurt that much
more.

“
Did you call the
insurance company?” Whisper was standing in front of her now as she
stared at the mess around them.

“
Not yet,” she told her.
“That’s the first thing I’m doing this morning though.”

That was the plan anyway.
Just as soon as she docked her computer and figured out whether
there was anything pressing to take care of. She wasn’t sure how
anything would take more priority over getting everything in the
office replaced, or having the walls repaired, but for some reason
McKenna had a hard time dealing with it all right then.

When she made it to her office door, she
slowly pushed it open, remembering what she had seen the night
before.

And there it was.

In brilliant red paint
sprayed across the wall was the word “whore” in bold, capital
letters. If she had any doubt who had done this, she definitely
didn’t now. Surprisingly, there hadn’t been a single printed
article the day before about Club Destiny or the McCoy’s by any
newspaper or online blog that she knew of, so at least something
good came out of it all.

“
Are you ok?” Whisper’s
voice startled her, and McKenna spun around to see her friend
standing in the doorway.

“
I will be,” McKenna said,
hoping Whisper assumed she was talking about the mess that Crawford
had made. What she was really referring to was the devastation that
had currently taken up residence in her heart.

That thought immediately invoked memories
from the night before when Tag stood beside her chair, his eyes
boring holes into her skin as he spoke to Travis. She never said a
word, and she never looked at him. Mostly because if she had, she
would’ve broken down in tears and she was tired of crying. In fact,
she was pretty sure her tear ducts had dried up.

“
Have you talked to him?”
Whisper asked in an unusually soothing voice.

“
Who?”

That prompted Whisper to put her hands on
her hips and stare back at her like she had lost her mind. “Ok,
woman. I’ll let you play this game for a few more minutes, but
that’s all you get. Ten minutes tops. Then I’m coming back in here
and there better be a damn smile on your face, or I’m going to put
one there myself.”

Whisper’s outrage actually made McKenna
smile. She couldn’t help it. Her friend had the ability to make her
laugh even when she didn’t want to. She was such a drama queen.

“
See, I knew it wouldn’t
take ten minutes,” Whisper retorted before turning and walking back
down the hall to her office near the front.

McKenna was tempted to
call Whisper back in because the moment she was out of sight, her
smile disappeared. As much as she wanted to wish away all of the
hurt, the anger, the confusion that riddled her body, she was
unable to do it because thoughts of Tag were constantly running
through her mind.

The night before she had come up with a
million ideas on how she could’ve handled the entire situation
differently, but she always came back to the same thing. She
should’ve never laid eyes on him because that was when it all
started.

From the moment she saw him for the very
first time, McKenna had been fixated on him. Something in the
confident way that he moved, the assured way he spoke, and the
sensual way he made her feel with just the slow, gentle caress of
his eyes over her skin made her want him. And now that she had, she
wasn’t sure how she was going to go on without him.

If she had to compare what she felt for Tag
to any man she had ever known, there was absolutely nothing that
came close. It hadn’t mattered how much she warned herself ahead of
time, McKenna’s heart had been his from that very first kiss when
he stole her breath with the gentle press of his lips. And each and
every subsequent time he touched her from that moment on, he had
taken another piece of her soul without her permission.

She might very well be
able to live with it if she didn’t feel cheated. As if she never
had a chance in the first place. But that was how Tag made her
feel. He’d closed himself off, and although she knew without a
doubt that he wanted her, he was refusing to give himself to
her.

For whatever reason, the stubborn man would
close himself off from her indefinitely.

Shaking her head to try and get rid of the
depressing and unchangeable truth, McKenna pulled her laptop from
her bag and docked it on her desk. As she waited for it to boot and
her monitor to come to life, she willed her hands to stop
shaking.

Ever since he walked out
of her house, an unshakeable chill had taken up residence in her
soul, and no matter what she did, she couldn’t get warm.

As soon as her computer
was up and running, she immediately opened her email, hoping to
lose herself in work for a few hours. She glimpsed through the
headings of the emails filling up her inbox, trying to decipher
which might be more important when she came across one
titled
YOU THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN
ME
. All caps definitely attracted her
attention and McKenna clicked on it to open the email
fully.

The image on the screen shocked her to the
point she swore her heart stopped beating.

~*~:*~

“
Murphy,” Tag answered
when the unfamiliar number registered on the screen.

“
Mr. Murphy, this is
Whisper,” the soft voice said, confusing him.

Whisper?

“
Is something wrong?” he
asked, immediately getting to his feet.

He began pacing the floor of his office as
his heart raced like he had just run a marathon.

“
I think you need to come
over here,” she said, sounding as though she were trying to keep
her voice low.

“
Where?” he asked as he
headed to the hook on the wall to retrieve his coat. He knew there
was only one reason Whisper would be calling him, and he didn’t
care where she told him to go, he would be there within
minutes.

“
Sensations
office.”

Tag locked up the door as
he exited before heading down the main corridor that would lead him
outside. He had come to his official law office because that was
the one and only place that it seemed didn’t remind him of McKenna.
Even his own house reminded him of her, and she had never been
there.

“
What’s wrong?” he
questioned, but didn’t stop as he hurried to his car, tossing his
jacket on the passenger seat and folding himself inside before
starting it.

“
I was going through the
emails, and...”

When Whisper didn’t
continue, Tag squeezed the phone, impatiently wanting to rip the
answer from her, but knowing he needed to relax. Shit, he didn’t
even know what the problem
was
.

“
I’m the only other person
who sees the general email, other than McKenna, but there are
pictures...”

Fuck
.

Tag drove, doing his best to abide by the
traffic laws as much as possible, but not really seeing much of
anything around him.

“
I’m less than five
minutes away,” he told Whisper, before disconnecting and dropping
his phone into the center console.

Tag didn’t even need to
ask what pictures they were because he had a pretty good idea. By
now, there was no chance that McKenna hadn’t seen them, and
surprisingly he was more worried about how she would react to them
than how anyone else would.

Almost exactly five
minutes later, Tag was strolling through the main door of
Sensations, Inc. and he didn’t stop to greet Whisper when she
headed his way. His feet wouldn’t allow him to stop, so he headed
right for McKenna’s office, tapped on the door once before opening
it.

All concern for the
pictures immediately dissolved as a blind, maddening rage ignited
from within when he saw the word written in bold red ink behind
where McKenna sat. That son of a bitch!

Pulling out his phone, Tag pulled up Cole’s
contact card and hit the button. “I want someone over to McKenna’s
office to paint. Today,” he told his step-brother harshly. “I don’t
give a fuck how much it costs, or who you find, just get them over
here now.”

Tag disconnected the call
as soon as Cole agreed. He knew he wouldn’t need to explain because
Cole had already been to McKenna’s office, and he wasn’t sure why
anyone else hadn’t done the same thing. She should not be subjected
to that filth.

“
Tag,” McKenna was
standing at her desk, staring at him like he was breathing fire,
and he wondered if he possibly was. He was so angry, his head was
beginning to throb.

“
I want to see the email,”
he told her when he managed enough self-control not to bark the
demand at her. To his surprise, she simply stepped back from her
desk, holding her hand out as though telling him to have at
it.

Tag moved around behind
the screen and peered down at the image staring back at him.
Oh, fuck
. He scrolled
through the email, looking at image after image of the very first
day Samantha and Sierra went to the club’s monthly get together.
Someone had probably filmed the entire thing because there was
image after graphic image that included every single one of them in
various positions, doing things to one another that never should
have made it to a camera lens.

Glancing up at McKenna,
Tag suddenly didn’t know what to say. She looked physically ill,
and he could only imagine. When he took a step toward her, she took
two steps back.

“
McKenna.” Tag had no idea
what to say, but he knew he needed to say something.

Anything that would take the look of
complete and total rejection off of her beautiful face.

“
Don’t,” she whispered,
wrapping her arms around herself. “I don’t want to hear a word.
Those were taken before I even knew you, and I don’t need any
explanations. They pretty well speak for themselves.”

Tag wished like hell he could’ve prevented
her from seeing him so intimate with Sam, but this was outside of
his control.

As a matter of fact, all
of this was outside of his control. He couldn’t stop Stephen
Crawford from wanting whatever he thought he deserved; he couldn’t
stop Susan Toulmin from wearing her emotions on her sleeve and
expressing them in a very peculiar way; he couldn’t stop Logan and
Luke from trying to protect the women they love, and more
importantly, Tag couldn’t stop himself from falling in love with
McKenna Thorne.

All of those things had
already taken place, and no amount of denial or rejection was going
to change the way people chose to react, but there was one thing he
might have a chance at.

“
I’m sorry,” he whispered,
feeling every emotional wall he’d ever erected crumbling down
around him as he stood staring at the best thing that had happened
to him. “No, wait,” Tag told McKenna when she started to talk over
him, “just listen to what I have to say.

“
I’m sorry you had to see
the pictures,” he began, noticing how she glared back at him, “I’m
sorry that you were somehow dragged into this mess, but above all,
I’m sorry that I don’t know how to express what I feel for
you.