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.