End Game by Lisa Renee Jones
“Take another test,” he says. “Go take it.”
“Yes. Okay.”
I walk to the bathroom and he follows me, standing outside the door as I go inside. I tear open the box and I’m shaking a little inside and out.
“Did you take it?” he asks.
“Just now. It’s…” My eyes go wide and he opens the door.
“It’s what?”
I turn to face him. “It’s—I’m—”
“We’re pregnant,” he supplies, clearly able to form the words that I cannot.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Are you—”
He pulls me to him and kisses me. “Happy? Yes. I am. I didn’t expect to be, but I am. Because you, Emily Brandon, are my wife and soon to be the mother of my child. Because, somehow, you manage to give me everything I don’t know I want and prove it’s everything I do want and even need.”
And I think I might cry if I could stop smiling and if he wasn’t kissing me again.
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Dear Readers,
Typing “the end” is as surreal for me as Reagan’s death was for Emily! It was torture to write Derek’s death, and even though I’d known all along he would die, I almost changed my mind! But there were so many ways Derek’s death changed Shane and defined his future. There are many ways his death could affect the events that happen in the future. If Emily’s brother ever shows back up, can you imagine how Derek’s actions will affect how Shane reacts to that threat?
But as I sit here imagining what could come next, there is nothing planned as of yet. But! I’d love to write more about Emily and Shane. Already I’m imagining her freak out as she remembers the wine she drank before knowing she was pregnant. I’m thinking of her working from home to be with the baby and opening her offices in the same building as the mall, right next door to Shane’s law firm. And when all is well, Martina returns! Or Emily’s brother.
Or not.
I do not know if I will write more of Shane and Emily at this point, but I will be writing Seth’s story. There is a woman in Seth’s past who will soon be in his future too. I’m very excited to share how he became the cold, calculating “fixer.” Look for this in 2018. And Jessica. Oh, how I love Jessica. I think she needs her Latin love in Cody, and soon! I must write Jessica’s story. I hope you think so as well.
With all this said, I am not quite ready to be done with this chapter of the story. For that reason, I want to leave you with a scene from Bad Deeds that was never published, as a thank-you for taking this Dirty Money journey with me. Just as a little context, this takes place after Adrian’s uninvited visit to Shane and Emily’s apartment in Bad Deeds, when Adrian makes a business proposition to Shane that includes full infiltration of his drug cartel in Brandon Pharmaceuticals. Of course, neither Shane nor Emily reacts well to this, and you saw the initial scene from Shane’s POV, but I originally wrote it in Emily’s, which is what you’ll read below! I hope you enjoy it!
Xoxo,
Lisa
ALTERNATE SCENE FROM BAD DEEDS
EMILY
Shane closes the small space between us, and the force of dark torment I’d seen, felt, and even tasted on his lips in the elevator earlier pales to the dominance and power he radiates now. I can almost feel the iron control he’s erected around himself, and I wonder if this is the aftermath of standing toe-to-toe with the drug lord he’s just agreed to do business with, a fact that I can barely get my head around. Something happened out there on that patio between Shane and Adrian Martina that I don’t quite understand. It wasn’t friendship, but it wasn’t the absolute divide I’d expected either.
Shane stops in front of me but doesn’t touch me, as if he’s weighing my mood, my reaction to his nearness and the meeting I just witnessed, and therefore I dictate his next move. “Everything you heard out there was about strategy,” he says.
“Strategy?” I demand tightly, disliking the way he’s repeated Adrian Martina’s words. “Are you really telling me that you’re willingly going to go into business with that man?”
“We’re already in business with him,” he says. “I’m trying to limit our exposure while I get him the hell out of my company, and do so without getting us all killed.”
“In other words, you’re going into business with him.”
“I told you—”
“You’re already in business with him,” I repeat, and desperate to force another answer, another solution, I reach for a way out. “Martina doesn’t want to do business with Derek. He knows he’s a risk.”
“I think he made that quite clear tonight,” he says before I can go on.
“Right. Exactly. He wants you, and if you aren’t involved, maybe he walks away. So you walk away first, now. Give the company to your brother and let’s go to New York and you—”
“Derek will end up dead and you know I won’t let that happen.”
He’s right, so I try another approach. “Go to the FBI. Negotiate a way to save your family.”
“The FBI’s a two-headed beast. The good agents will turn us into snitches, which equates to dead or in hiding. The bad ones will run straight to Martina. So no. I cannot go to the FBI.”
I believe him, and while the corruption and limits upon us should be what bother me, they are not. At least not in this moment. It’s the interaction between him and Martina niggling at me, insisting I revisit it. “What was that I witnessed between you and Martina? There was—”
“Strategy,” he repeats, and his hands go to my waist, firm, warm, possessive. “You witnessed strategy.”
“Strategy? Playing nice with a drug lord is strategy?”
And in a blink he’s maneuvered us both, and I’m now pressed against the couch, his powerful legs framing mine. “I need you to trust to me to handle this.”
“This isn’t about trusting you, Shane. It’s about protecting you. It’s about helping you.”
“I protect you,” he says. “You don’t protect me.”
I blanch. “What? No. We protect each other. That’s how it is or we aren’t who I think we are.”
“Right now, in this, it is. It’s me protecting you. I need you to let me do what I need to do.”
“What you need to do? What do you need to do, Shane?”
His jaw clenches. “Let me handle this, Emily.”
“So that’s it?” I demand, feeling that door I’d sworn wasn’t shut back in the elevator shut now. “You handle this? I stand on the outside and pray you come out alive?” My jaw sets. “No,” I repeat. “I won’t do that. I can’t do that.”
“You will. The end.”
It’s a sharp command that induces shock, which is quickly followed by anger I fight to rein in. He’s been through hell today. He’s not himself. He doesn’t need a war with me on top of everything else. “Let me off the couch, Shane,” I say softly, pressing on his chest. “Let me go.”
“I’m not letting you go, Emily.”
It’s clear to me that he’s not talking about this moment, but I am. “Let me go before I forget that all the hell you went through tonight is the source of your assholeness. Because I’m really trying, but—”
He tangles his fingers in my hair, tilting my face to his, adrenaline rushing through my veins. “This isn’t about me being an asshole, Emily,” he declares, his voice low, gravelly. “Distancing you from all of this, anyway I can, is about protecting you. What part of that do you not understand?”
“What part of ‘I have to protect you’ do you not understand?” I counter, gripping his arms. “I have to protect you. Don’t you see that, Shane? I need—”
His mouth slants over mine, swallowing my words, his tongue licking into my mouth in a long, deep stroke followed by another, and I can taste his emotions in his kiss again. The anger. The torment. The lust. Oh yes. There is lust. There is hunger. So much hunger. It expands in every passing moment, rising up, demanding notice, until it has a living, breathing life of its own. Until I’m not sure if it’s his o
I sway into him, trying to get closer, but abruptly he tears his mouth from mine and his body lifts, breaking our connection. “Shane,” I pant out, his name a plea and a question I don’t even intend to ask but that I want answered.
His fingers tighten ever so slightly, erotically, in my hair, his lips lingering a breath from another touch, and I can almost taste his lust, his need, but still he holds back. Seconds tick by, the air thickening with my blood until I can no longer breathe. “Shane,” I whisper, gripping his shirt, holding on tighter, and I think that’s what he needs, even if he doesn’t know it. For me to hold on tighter. Or maybe that’s what I need.
He reaches down and covers my hand as if he’s telling me yes. Hold on. He’ll hold on too, and I silently vow then, that yes. We will. His family, my family, will not tear us apart. “I need,” he breathes out, his breath tickling my lips again. “And every sentence I start with those words right now,” he adds, his voice low, gravelly, “ends with you naked and me inside you.”
Heat rushes though me with the words that promise the satisfaction of every fantasy he’s stirred in me tonight. “Then why do we still have clothes on?”
“This is just fucking. No talking,” he says, his teeth nipping my lobe, his fingers tugging free the knot I’ve made at the bottom of my blouse. “Just fucking,” he adds, licking the pinch left from his teeth and sending a shiver down my spine before he yanks free the remaining buttons on my shirt. His head lifting, his gaze meeting mine, the lust I’d tasted on his lips now burning in the blue flecks of his grayer-than-gray eyes. And the dark hunger I’d tasted on his lips and mine is now etched in every handsome line of his chiseled face. “Just fucking,” he repeats, reaching down to unsnap and then unzip my pants before cupping my face. “No making love right now, Emily. That’s not what this is. That’s not what tonight is. Do you understand? I need—”
“I know what you need,” I say, feeling the rage of his emotions as my own. Maybe it is my own. Maybe he’s unleashed what I’ve buried. Like coming home to everything I’ve run from and battled for months on end, and with it the understanding of what he wants: escape. Moments in time when that monster in his mind and heart taunts him with every betrayal and heartache he is living, when he can’t find a voice or a blade.
His hands go back to the couch, arms catching me, his stare probing, while my body is warm all over, the low throb of craving touching me everywhere he is not. And he’s not touching me. He’s just studying me, searching for something that I don’t know he’s looking for, perhaps searching for how much he dare show me. How much he dare demand. Yes. That is what he wants to know and I answer the question he hasn’t asked. “I know what you need,” I repeat, hunger beginning to claw at me, like my fears over Shane and Martina’s relationship, which is more than it should be, easier than I expected it to be.
Still, though, Shane doesn’t move, and while I have nothing but a feeling to go on, I sense him fighting for control over the beast that is his emotions, as if unleashing it is unleashing those feelings, commanding them. But I don’t want him to command these things. Not now. I know what it’s like to bottle those emotions, to force them into submission and struggle at random moments when they try to surface. Letting them go on his terms is control, and I reach forward and begin unknotting his tie.
His eyes sharpen and he releases me to take over, pulling the blue silk from his collar. “Lace your fingers together in front of you.”
I suck in air with the realization that he means to tie me up, to perhaps control me, when he can control nothing else. My old demons raise their angry heads with this knowledge, those demons that let me be controlled and manipulated in an almost self-punishing fashion. And when I search Shane’s face and look into his eyes, and as I look into his eyes, I see a question. Will I trust him? Do I trust him? And it’s then I realize that perhaps he needs me to trust him now, to trust himself? I think.… yes. Yes, that is what he’s asking and what he needs. He needs me to be the one person in his life who trusts him unconditionally. And I discover something about myself with this assessment. After all the letdowns and betrayal in my life, I need to both give and receive unconditional trust as well.
Decision made, holding his stare, I bring my palms together in between us and fold my fingers. His eyes narrow, his gaze locked with mine, his expression unreadable. He doesn’t move, seconds ticking by with no action, no movement, no touch. “Shane,” I whisper, his name a plea, seeking a reaction or really an action, which he gives me. I blink, and before I know what’s happening, I’m facing the couch and he’s already skimming the silk of my blouse down my arms, cool air washing over my warm skin. In another moment, my bra is unhooked, the straps falling forward and down my arms. It drops to the ground and Shane kicks it away, his big, hard body arching around mine, his hands pressing my hands against the couch, the thick ridge of his erection nuzzling my backside.
His cheek settles next to mine, and I inhale his spicy, masculine scent, sensations rolling through me, and I swear I can almost taste the raw hunger radiating off him. He wants and just as he said: he needs. And just as those things are palpable, so is his battle to fight those things and how they affect him. As if he’s mentally talking himself down, telling himself to shelter me, to protect me from something inside him he fears I can’t handle. Maybe he doesn’t even know that part of himself, but I want to know him, all of him. Maybe he doesn’t want me to know that part of him, and this hits a nerve.
“If you don’t trust me,” I say, remembering every man in my life, from my father to my brother and in between who showed me only pieces of who and what they were, “then why am I here?”
He turns me around to face him, the couch at my back, his powerful thighs framing mine, his hands at my waist, his brow furrowed. “You think I don’t trust you?”
“You asked for my trust and I gave it to you. I know you’re holding back. I know you don’t want to share—”
“I don’t want to scare you away.”
My hand flattens on his chest. “You can’t scare me away, Shane.”
ALSO BY LISA RENEE JONES
Hard Rules
Damage Control
Bad Deeds
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Lisa Renee Jones is the author of the highly acclaimed Inside Out series. Suzanne Todd (producer of Alice in Wonderland) says, on the Inside Out series: “Lisa has created a beautiful, complicated, and sensual world that is filled with intrigue and suspense. Sara’s character is strong, flawed, complex, and sexy—a modern girl we all can identify with.”.
In addition to the success of Lisa’s Inside Out series, she has published many successful titles. The Tall, Dark, and Deadly series and The Secret Life of Amy Bensen series both spent several months on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists.
Prior to publishing books, Lisa owned a multistate staffing agency that was recognized many times by Austin Business Journal and also praised by Dallas Woman magazine. In 1998, Lisa’s agency was listed as the #7 growing women-owned business in Entrepreneur magazine.
Lisa loves to hear from her readers. You can reach her at www.lisareneejones.com, and she is active on Twitter and Facebook daily. Or can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright N
Dedication
Author’s Note
Cast of Characters
Part One: The Grim Reaper
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Part Two: New Beginnings
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
A Note from the Author
Alternate Scene from Bad Deeds
Also by Lisa Renee Jones
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
END GAME. Copyright © 2017 by Lisa Renee Jones. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover photographs: man © Viorel Sima/Shutterstock.com; chess pieces © Domin Domin/Getty Images
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Jones, Lisa Renee, author.
Title: End game / Lisa Renee Jones.
Description: First edition.|New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017036195|ISBN 978-1-250-08385-2 (trade pbk.)|ISBN 978-1-250-08389-0 (ebook)