Cathy Gillen - The Heiress

“What was on my face?” Jack shifted his weight restlessly, abruptly looking as on edge and ready to do combat as she.

Raw emotion. The kind of vulnerability that was missing now that he had his guard up once again. Determined to pierce his armor the way he so easily seemed able to get through hers, Daisy taunted him softly, “You were mortified that you weren’t able to keep me from crashing that Deveraux family party tonight. You were afraid that Tom was going to be ticked off at you—which he clearly was. So now you’re trying to make it up to him by keeping me in your line of vision.”

To her disappointment, Jack didn’t even try to deny it. “You could have tried harder to lose me,” he said, as if he could have cared less how the evening turned out.

“Maybe I didn’t want to,” Daisy baited Jack lazily. “Maybe I was curious.”

The muscles in his shoulders and chest becoming more pronounced, Jack drained his root beer and tossed the can into the trash barrel next to the soda machine. He turned back to her, his expression grim. “About what?” he demanded curtly.

Daisy rubbed her bare toes against the cool concrete. She knew sparring with Jack this way was dangerous. But she couldn’t help it. She needed an outlet for her anger and frustration. Like it or not, this was it. “How far you’d go—or not go, as the case might be—to please Daddy Dearest. For instance—” Able to see she was getting to Jack at long last, Daisy let her lips curve in a soft, goading smile and tossed her soda can, too. “Would you deny yourself a chance to sleep with me?” Ignoring the racing of her heart and the weak funny feeling in her knees, Daisy held Jack’s eyes and undid the string tie at the back of her neck. When he didn’t move—didn’t react in any way—she reached behind her recklessly and released the zipper on her sundress.

Jack’s expression grew even grimmer, more forbidding. Although obviously aroused, he was not in the least bit amused by her antics. “Don’t do this,” Jack said.

“Why not?” Wanting to annoy him the way he had her, Daisy pushed the fabric past her hips, and stepped out of it. Her heart was pounding so hard she could hear it in her ears. “Am I getting to you?”

His eyes narrowed. “Put your dress back on,” he ordered roughly.

“I don’t think so.” Daisy reached for the clasp on her strapless bra.

He caught her hand before she could undo it. Perspiration beaded on his temple. “This won’t help your situation.”

Daisy laughed, softly and bitterly. “You mean it won’t help you to be caught sleeping with the boss’s other daughter.”

His fingers gently encircling her wrist, he forced her hand down between them. “It wouldn’t help either of us,” he said sternly.

More tired than she could ever say, of being told what to do, think, even feel, Daisy replied back, “We’ll just see about that.” And before Jack Granger could respond, she stood on tiptoe, wrapped her free hand around the back of his neck, tilted his head down and pressed her lips to his.

JACK KNEW he could get fired for this, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from responding to the fervor of her soft lips, any more than Daisy seemed able to put an end to what she was doing. Not that Jack hadn’t known going into this assignment that Daisy Templeton was wild and reckless to a fault. But this was something different, Jack realized as Daisy flattened the softness of her breasts against his chest as she kissed him. Even through the starched cotton of his shirt, and the transparent lace of her bra, he could feel her nipples budding, her skin heating.

“No,” he said, tearing his mouth from hers. Afraid of what might happen if he didn’t call a halt to this, and soon, he took her abruptly by the shoulders. Doing his best to keep his eyes from straying lower, to the tempting curves spilling out of her next-to-nothing underclothes, he forced her inside, to the safety of her cabin. “No.”

The misery pouring out of her faded, ending the possibility that she might just burst into tears and get rid of her pent-up emotions that way. As Daisy locked glances with Jack, hurt flashed in her eyes, then defiance. And unbelievably, Jack knew he was in an even worse quandary than before. He was the protector here, the defender. Not the man who took advantage…of any woman in turmoil.

“Okay.” Daisy smiled fiendishly and stepped back, reached behind her once again, and successfully unfastened her bra. She whisked it off and let it drop to the floor.

Jack immediately grew hard as a rock—like never before. He swallowed again, his whole body aching, and pretended he didn’t want to give Daisy what she was asking—no, begging—for. “Cut it out,” he told her grimly.

“Nope.” Daisy continued to hold his gaze as she tucked her thumbs into the edges of her thong panties, and slid them down, to reveal her downy soft curls.

Jack tried to appear unaffected by Daisy’s striptease, but it was impossible. She was without a doubt the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her skin glowed with vitality, her breasts high and full and round. Her nipples were as rosy and tempting as ripe raspberries. Her stomach flat and sexy, her mound covered with curls a shade darker than her wavy blond hair.

Delighting in his perusal, she lifted her arms above her head and stretched. Slowly, deliberately, she pirouetted, giving him ample time to study her tiny waist and curving buttocks, the long slender thighs, firm calves, trim ankles and dimpled knees. Turning all the way back to face him, she smiled again, and reached for a towel on the rack. “I think I’ll go for a swim.”

Not naked, she wasn’t. The last thing he needed was to have her either arrested—or assaulted—on the beach. And given that even the private beaches such as this were patrolled periodically during the evenings by local law enforcement, Jack moved to block her way. “You can’t do that,” he told her firmly. “Not without a swimsuit.”

“Sure I can. You can, too.” She sashayed forward, tucked her fingertips in the front of his trousers. “Haven’t you ever skinny-dipped?”

“Put your clothes on, Daisy. Now,” he ordered gruffly and succinctly.

“Why?” She batted her eyelashes at him flirtatiously and continued to play the vamp. “Am I bothering you?”

More than you could ever know.

“Just go to bed,” Jack continued to suggest with deceptive casualness. And sleep off your hurt and your fury.

“Sure thing.” Daisy sashayed closer in a drift of orange-blossom perfume. “But only if you join me.”

His heart thudding at the seductiveness of her smile, Jack asked in a taut, strangled voice, “Why are you doing this?” And why was he even considering giving in to temptation and making her his? Especially when he could see she was nearly as apprehensive as she was eager.

“I think the real question is, why are you resisting?” Daisy went up on tiptoe, linked both hands around his neck, and like a daring kid playing a game of Truth or Dare, pressed her nude body against the clothed length of his.

The heat of his desire burned through Jack’s skin. And it was all he could do not to tumble her back on the bed and see how silky wet and sweetly accommodating he could make her. “You know the answer to that.” As much as he wanted to make love to her—here, now—using her that way would hurt her, and Jack did not want her to suffer any more pain. She’d borne enough at the hands of her family.

Daisy’s Deveraux-blue eyes glimmered with a mixture of relief and wounded pride. “What I know,” she stated in a low tone, “is that you’re afraid and I’m bored. And I hate to be bored.”

Her chin set stubbornly, she moved past him toward the door. Jack caught her by the arm before she could step outside the cabin. He could see that she had been torn apart inside by the lies and the betrayal. But making love out of spite was no way to fix the mess she was in. All that would do, Jack knew, besides potentially cause him to lose the job he had worked long and hard for, was increase her emotional devastation. Maybe not now, while blindly reaching out for any comfort or distraction she could find, but when her frustration with the situation, with those close to her, subsided, Daisy would regret her rash behavior here tonight. Of that, he was very sure. Just as he was certain he would not be able to just talk her down. “You’re hell-bent on stirring up even more trouble tonight, aren’t you?”