He blew out a breath as she headed out of the kitchen. He'd been a second away from breaching the distance between them and kissing her. He'd literally been saved by the bell. He needed to get his head together, focus on the mission. He'd achieved his goal. He'd convinced her to let him tag along so he could continue to steer her away from the club. Hopefully, that wasn't going to turn out to be the worst idea he'd ever had.
Chapter Seven
Maya glanced over at Jax as he drove them across town to Blake Cordero's house. Bringing him along was probably a bad idea. He was going to be a distraction, and she couldn't get sidetracked by a hot guy with incredible blue eyes and a mouth she really wanted to taste. She couldn't believe her libido was suddenly in overdrive when she'd been incredibly bored with men for the past six months. She'd had one loser date after another, when she even bothered to go online. And she hadn't met one person she'd wanted to talk to for more than five minutes. And kiss? It had been a hell of a lot longer since she'd felt this wild, tingling, rush of desire.
But this was not the time to start crushing on a man—a bartender, a guy who didn't seem to have much of a life plan. She frowned at that, realizing now she was hearing her mom's voice in her head, and her mother's favorite question: Why do you always pick guys who aren't going anywhere?
But she wasn't picking Jax for anything. He was just helping out. Her story had connected with his own past, which was terribly sad. She wouldn't have guessed he had such a darkness in his childhood. He gave off the air of a chill, blond-haired, Southern California guy who didn't worry too much or get worked up about anything. Maybe that was his defense mechanism, to keep people away, to keep them from probing too deep.
But he'd confided in her, and while she still didn't quite understand it, she wasn't going to question it. She'd been trying to do everything on her own, and it was nice to have someone else along, especially after everything that had happened last night.
She glanced in the sideview mirror, seeing a lot of cars behind them. Traffic in LA was always busy on Saturday afternoons, and today was no different. But Jax's earlier words about someone watching her rang through her head. Would someone follow her, thinking she might go get the journals?
"No one is following us," Jax said, reading her mind. "I've been keeping an eye out."
"Do you think I'm nuts?"
"That's a broad question. Want to be more specific?"
"Trying to solve a murder from thirty-six years ago that no one else could, including the police and two private investigators."
"You might be overly optimistic."
"That's a nice way to put it. It's not just about Natasha's death, though. I want to know more about her. I've become fascinated with her life. I'm not sure anyone knew the real Natasha, not even the people she loved. My father has one narrow view of her, and my grandfather has another. I feel like solving the mystery around her death, revealing her inner life, would be good for the family. She wouldn't be this shadowy darkness that we don't talk about. Unfortunately, except for my grandfather, no one else agrees with me. My dad is furious. My mom is angry that I'm upsetting my father, and I suspect my siblings will feel the same way when they realize what I'm up to. But I should be used to being on one side with everyone else on the other. That's usually how it goes in my family."
"Why is that?" he asked curiously.
"I'm different from them. They're all very determined, focused, academic people. My mom, Pam, is a history professor. My dad, Rex, is an accountant. He runs a large tax auditing firm called Owens and Ashton with his partner Don Owens. My older sister, Darcy, is a teacher, or she was until she got married to Matt and had a little girl named Zoe. Now she's trying to be the perfect stay-at-home mom. I think she's read every book on raising children that has ever been written. Her husband runs a software company. They moved to Carlsbad last year. My little brother, James, is in medical school in Boston. He wants to be a surgeon." She let out a