Infatuation - A Club Destiny Novel (39 page)

“
No reason,” Whisper
lied.

“
I find that very hard to
believe. Sit down. Talk to me,” McKenna told her assistant as she
pushed her keyboard away and focused solely on the vibrant, glowing
woman in her office.

She couldn’t help but
remember the last few times she saw Whisper. McKenna was pretty
sure there were issues in her life, and she kept hoping her friend
would reach out to her, but, unfortunately, McKenna had been
wrapped up in her own drama.

“
How’s Anna?” McKenna
asked, deciding to jump right in with both feet.

“
She’s amazing,” Whisper
said dreamily.

McKenna smiled and cocked
an eyebrow, waiting for Whisper to elaborate. She didn’t. “Well, I
could’ve told you that, so you’re going to have to give me more
than that.”

Whisper laughed, and her
husky, seductive chuckle echoed through the room and probably the
rest of the building if she had to guess. Her friend was definitely
not anything like her name would suggest.

“
I think we both realized
exactly what we were doing.”

“
And that was?” McKenna
felt clueless, and she wondered why Whisper seemed to be talking in
circles.

Whisper grinned slyly.
“Let’s just say, we have decided not to take for granted what we
have anymore. It took us a long time to find each other and in less
time than that, we’d somehow managed to start drifting apart. I
love her. She is my world, and maybe, just maybe, I took a
little
“what not to do”
from your book.”

McKenna’s eyes widened and
then she laughed. Loudly. “What
not
to do? I know you did not just say
that.”

“
Yes,
boss lady. If nothing else, over the last few weeks, I’ve learned
that you’re supposed to go after what you want because
you
taught me that,”
Whisper said, pointing her finger directly at McKenna. “And I also
learned that you aren’t supposed to run away from it once you find
it. I learned
that
from your sexy lawyer man.

“
Then, most importantly, I
learned that if you want something bad enough, it’s worth
everything it took to get it. And it’s worth every second invested
after because there are some people who are not as blessed to have
found it. And you never know how long it might last.”

McKenna sat back in her chair, tapping her
pen on her thumb as she regarded her friend’s words of wisdom.

She knew that what Stephen Crawford was
doing was ultimately affecting lives. In many ways. Ways he
probably wasn’t even aware of. But, she was damn sure he didn’t
realize that he had brought a couple back together because of his
ignorance and his desire to tear everything apart.

To top it off, Susan
Toulmin was bound and determined to ensure she hurt others the way
she felt she had been hurt, and though McKenna absolutely didn’t
agree with her methods, she could almost understand her
logic.

“
Well, regardless how this
turn of events happened, I’m super thrilled that the two of you are
working it out. You’re both amazing women who deserve each other.
You complement one another nicely.”

“
That we do,” Whisper
agreed. “Now, I think I better get outta here. I really do have a
date this time.”

“
Be careful and have fun.”
McKenna watched as Whisper practically skipped out of the
room.

Wow.
It was crazy how things happened, but when they resulted in a
woman who was as happy as Whisper, McKenna didn’t feel the need to
question it.

Glancing at her watch, she
realized it was just after five, and she had one last thing she
needed to get done. Sending off a quick note to Tag, inviting him
to her house for dinner, she jumped right into the article she
hoped to have out the following day.

By the time she was finished, McKenna was
about half an hour late for meeting Tag. She glanced at her cell
phone but noticed he hadn’t called, so she figured he got tied up
and would probably get there about the same time she did. Shutting
down her laptop and dropping it into her bag, McKenna hefted the
bag on her shoulder and grabbed her purse.

Walking down the hall, she dug through her
purse for her keys and looked up in time to come almost face to
face with Stephen Crawford.

“
Mr. Crawford,” McKenna
said coolly, trying to ignore the painful pounding of her heart
against her ribs.

“
Ready to do that
interview yet?” he asked, sounding eerily calm.

“
Interview?” She knew
there was no way to get out of this confrontation, so she could
only hope if she pretended not to know what he was talking about,
it’d give her at least a minute to come up with a plan.

Since she already had her
keys in her hand, she couldn’t very well reach back in her purse
and grab her handgun because he’d wonder what she was doing and the
last thing McKenna wanted was for this to go bad.

“
Yeah, you know the
interview you’re going to run tomorrow because if you don’t, I’m
going to make sure pictures of your boyfriend and that whore,
Samantha McCoy, are plastered all over cyberspace.”

The memory of those photos
made her stomach churn, but McKenna ignored it. Those were in the
past, they didn’t matter anymore.

Tag and Sam mattered
though. To McKenna. She cared about what happened to them, and she
wasn’t about to let this crazy bastard get away with ruining lives
because he was a selfish, greedy asshole.

Shifting her bag on her
shoulder, McKenna stared back at Stephen, seeing the crazed look in
his eye. She still had a hard time understanding how he could’ve
gotten so greedy that he resorted to blackmailing. She wondered
whether his father even knew, but then again, if the Crawford’s
were working to cover up environmental problems that would
ultimately cost them a fortune, she could see how he
might.

“
What did you have in
mind, Mr. Crawford?”

“
Please, call me Stephen.
It’s not like I haven’t seen you intimately.”

McKenna choked on the bile
that threatened to come surging from her throat. She knew exactly
what he was referring to, but it made her sick to think of what
perverse things he might’ve done while looking at her
pictures.

“
Those were tastefully
done, by the way,” he added. “I would’ve much preferred to see more
of your pretty pink pussy, but now that you’re frequenting the
club, I figure I might just get my chance.”

“
Not in this lifetime,”
McKenna bit out, her fury overshadowing any self-preservation she
might’ve had.

“
See, that’s where you’re
wrong,” Stephen said as he lunged toward her.

Before McKenna even knew what happened,
Stephen was flying the opposite direction, his arms flailing as he
lost his step and went crashing into the wall.

In the next instant, she was in Tag’s arms,
and she wasn’t sure whether she was the one shaking or if his rage
was vibrating right through his limbs.

~*~*~

Tag didn’t know how McKenna had ended up
alone in her office, but the first thing he did after the police
escorted Stephen Crawford off of the premises was call Alex. He
demanded that the security guard now permanently assigned to
Sensations, Inc. be there until everyone went home. And if he had a
problem with that, he could find a new job.

The second thing he did was take her home.
To her house. She was a little shaken up, but he was pretty sure he
was more upset about what happened than she was. Tag had to admit,
he was rather impressed with the way she was handling Crawford when
he showed up. Had it not been for the phone call he received
minutes before from Chase Reed, things could’ve turned out very
different.

He suspected Chase would’ve intervened if
necessary, but he was still trying not to blow his cover. Since he
was now a member of the club, with the same level of membership as
Stephen Crawford, he at least could keep tabs on the guy.

Luke or Logan weren’t
thrilled with their newest member because according to Logan, they
were just layering a problem over a problem. If the other members
got word that they had a UC in attendance, Club Destiny might just
go to shit faster than if the member list was leaked.

But, it wasn’t like they
had much of a choice these days. They could either continue to try
and Band-Aid the problem or give up and allow the walls to come
crumbling down around them. Fortunately, no one knew that Stephen
Crawford had already sent the pictures to McKenna, and if Luke or
Logan were to find out, Tag wasn’t sure he’d be able to protect
them from themselves.

He might’ve been slow in understanding the
reason they would go to any extreme for the one they loved, but
since finding McKenna, Tag finally got it. And tonight, his only
intention was to hold her close and ensure she knew just how much
she meant to him.

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

The following morning, Tag
was sitting at the breakfast bar in McKenna’s kitchen watching as
she moved back and forth, effortlessly putting a breakfast together
that was better suited for an army than just the two of them. She
seemed a little nervous, but he wasn’t sure why. The only
possibility he could come up with was she was still shaken up from
Crawford, although she seemed better than all right the night
before.

Tag smiled as he remembered.

“
What are you smiling
for?” McKenna laughed as she turned on him and Tag laughed right
along with her.

“
If you only
knew.”

“
Oh, I think I’ve got an
idea,” she teased, turning back to the stove.

When Tag’s cell phone
rang, interrupting their perfect morning, he was tempted not to
answer it. Since that had never worked for him before, he snatched
it up from the bar and growled when he saw who it was.

“
Murphy.”

“
Where the hell are you?”
Logan quipped, and Tag almost thought there was a smile in his
voice.

“
Why the fuck do you
always ask me that?”

“
Because I can. Now answer
the damn door.” The line disconnected and a second later, the
doorbell rang. McKenna stopped in her tracks, staring back at him,
but she no longer looked happy.

“
I’ll get it,” Tag told
her.

Walking to the front door, Tag pulled it
open, expecting to see Logan, but he was not expecting to see
everyone else.

There was a wolf whistle,
followed by Ashleigh’s voice as she said, “Holy shit! Did you know
he had all that ink?”

Tag ignored her, then
stepped back allowing them all to file into McKenna’s house. He
only hoped she had time to put on more clothes than she had because
if not, they were about to get a show.

After shutting the door,
Tag snuck into McKenna’s bedroom and pulled a shirt from the
closet, one he had placed in there the night before. Once he was at
least semi-dressed, he returned to the kitchen to see everyone had
managed to trap McKenna in the kitchen.

“
What’s going on?” he
asked as he slipped between Ashleigh and Sierra on his way to get
to McKenna’s side.

“
Did you know about this?”
Logan asked, his mouth a grim, hard line.

“
What?” he asked, grabbing
the small sheet of paper from Logan’s hand. It looked like an
article that had been printed out.

It only took a second for
it to sink in and Tag turned to look at McKenna. She looked
terrified.

“
I’m sor-”

She was quickly cut off when Sierra threw
her arms around McKenna’s neck, practically pushing Tag into the
counter behind him. Following Sierra was Sam and then Ashleigh.

“
I can’t believe you did
this. I don’t know how to thank you,” Sam whispered, but the whole
room heard it.

“
It wasn’t that hard,”
McKenna said when the women finally gave her room to breathe. “It
was just one woman with a broken heart talking to another. As easy
as it is to lose control because you can’t have something you think
should be yours, doesn’t give you the right to trash everyone in
the process.”

Tag pulled the paper back
in front of his face to read the article beside a picture of Susan
Toulmin:

Strength Times Ten

I met a woman recently who
told me that she wasn’t strong enough to let go. That holding on
was the key to happiness; the key to making the pain go
away.

This woman is no different
from you and I. She’s beautiful, successful, and she bleeds red
when she’s wounded. She’s a strong woman, an independent woman who
has accomplished success all on her own. However, this woman
doesn’t define success by her career, or her intelligence, or even
by those who love her. She defines success by the one that got
away. In her eyes, she is a failure.

That’s where she is wrong.

It was during my
discussion with her that I realized I am that very same woman,
except my life
is
defined by my strength and my success, and there is no need
for anyone else to be strong for me. I don’t need someone else to
lift me up; I can do that all on my own. I’ve used brute force to
get where I am, tenacity to show I can do it on my own, and my
independence to prove that I am not dependent.