Carole Mortimer - Hired For His Pleasure

‘The sitting room is through here.’ She turned away from the intimacy of the bedroom to walk through to the adjoining room with its green carpet and cream sofa. A mahogany desk placed in front of the bay window looked out over the gardens at the back of the house, with the blue of the sea visible above the high wall that surrounded the grounds.

‘This is very nice,’ Jaxon murmured evenly.

Stazy eyed him derisively. ‘You seem a little … tense?’

Those grey eyes narrowed. ‘I wonder why!’

She shrugged. ‘Can I help it if the much publicised Wilder charm doesn’t work on me?’

Jaxon’s mouth thinned at the deliberate insult. ‘You shouldn’t believe everything you read in trashy magazines!’

Her eyes flashed deeply green. ‘I’ve never read a trashy magazine in my life, thank you very much!’

‘Too lowbrow for you?’ he taunted.

She drew in a sharp breath. ‘My grandfather made it clear to me before he left that he expected me to be polite to a guest in his home during his absence—’

‘I hate to be the one to tell you—but so far today you’ve failed. Miserably!’ Jaxon bit out.

Stazy eyed him coolly. ‘Being polite doesn’t mean I have to be insincere.’

‘If you wouldn’t mind …?’ He began to unzip those body-moulding leathers. ‘I would like to take my shower now.’ He arched mocking brows.

Stazy had no doubt that Jaxon’s challenging attitude now was in return for her earlier scathing comments about ‘the much-published Wilder charm’. But as he continued to move that zip further and further down his hard muscled chest she knew it was a challenge she simply didn’t have the sophistication—or the experience!—to meet.

‘Come downstairs when you’re ready and I’ll show you the library where we’re to work,’ she said stiltedly, before turning sharply on her booted heels and hurrying over to the doorway.

Totally aware of the sound of Jaxon’s throaty laughter behind her.

‘Where do you want to start?’

‘I have absolutely no idea.’ Jaxon looked down in some dismay at the copious amount of documents and notebooks Geoffrey Bromley had left neatly stacked on the desktop in the library for him to look through.

Jaxon wasn’t sure he would be able to get through them all in just the week Stazy had agreed to give him.

The library itself was full of floor to ceiling mahogany bookcases stacked mainly with leather-bound books, although some of the shelves near the door seemed to be full of more modern hardbacks that he might like to explore another time.

Jaxon felt somewhat refreshed after a long cold shower and a change of clothes, and thankfully had succeeded in dissipating the last of his erection as well as washing off the travel dust.

The erection was something—despite their sharp exchange in his suite earlier—that was guaranteed not to stay away for very long if Stazy was going to continue bending over the desk in that provocative way, her denims clearly outlining the perfect curve of her bottom.

‘Maybe we should just sort them out year by year today, and start looking through them properly tomorrow?’ he prompted tersely.

‘Sounds logical.’ Stazy nodded.

Jaxon regarded her through narrowed lids. ‘And are you big on logic?’

She looked irritated by the implied criticism. ‘I’ve always found it’s the best way to approach most situations, yes.’

‘Hmm.’ He nodded. ‘The problem with logic is that it leaves no room for emotion.’

‘Which is precisely the point,’ Stazy reasoned shortly.

No doubt—but Jaxon didn’t work that way. ‘Are these Anastasia’s diaries?’ He ran awed fingers lightly over a pile of a dozen small notebooks.

‘They certainly look like them, yes …’ Stazy frowned down at them as if they were a bomb about to go off.

He glanced up as he sensed her tension. ‘You didn’t know there were diaries?’

She gave a pained wince. ‘No.’

Jaxon breathed deeply. ‘Stazy, as much as you may choose not to think so, I do appreciate that none of this can be easy for you—’

Those green eyes flashed in warning. ‘I doubt you have any idea how much I hate doing this!’

‘Obviously Anastasia was your grandmother, and you only knew her during her latter years, but—’

‘But even then she would still have known exactly how to deal with someone like you!’ Stazy assured him dismissively. Even that red-gold hair seemed to crackle with her repressed anger.

‘Like me?’ he said softly.

‘You know exactly what I mean!’

‘I do,’ he acknowledged, with that same deceptive mildness. ‘I’d just like to hear you say it,’ he added challengingly.

She glared her frustration. ‘Jaxon, you’ve known from the first that nothing is going to make me like you or your damned film!’

‘Nothing …?’

Stazy stilled as she looked up at him guardedly. The darkness of that overlong hair was still damp and slightly tousled from his shower. His jaw was freshly shaven, and he had changed out of the black leathers into a tight-fitting white short-sleeved tee shirt that revealed the tanned strength of his arms and black denims that rested low down on the leanness of his waist.

He looked, in fact, every inch Jaxon Wilder—sex symbol of both the big and little screen. A stark reminder—if Stazy had needed one—of just how little it actually mattered to this man whether or not she liked or approved of him and what he was doing.

Her chin rose determinedly. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Jaxon, but I have absolutely no interest in … in providing you with a—a romantic diversion to help while away your leisure time during your week-long stay here,’ she assured him derisively.

‘What on earth makes you think I would be in the least interested in having you as “a romantic diversion”—now or at any other time …?’ His expression was amused as he leant back against the desk and looked down at her with mocking grey eyes, his arms folded across the powerful width of his chest, revealing the bulge of muscle at the tops of his tanned arms.

Stazy’s cheeks heated with embarrassed colour at this deliberate set-down. What on earth had she been thinking? Of course Jaxon’s challenge hadn’t been hinting he was in the least interested in her in a personal way!

‘But just to set my mind at ease, if things should go that way between us I’d be interested to know whether or not you’re involved with someone at the moment …?’

When had Jaxon moved so that he now stood only inches away from her? Stazy wondered warily. He was pinning her as he looked down at her with piercing grey eyes.

She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘I don’t see what that has to do with anything …’

‘Humour me, hmm?’ he encouraged gruffly.

The more immediate problem for Stazy—the whole root of the problem between the two of them—was that from their first meeting she had realised his magnetism was such that she wanted to do so much more than humour this man!

It was totally illogical. Ridiculous. Not only that, but it went totally against everything she had said and thought about this man!

And yet at this moment she literally ached to curve her body into his as she ran her hands lightly up the warmth of that muscled chest, over the broad expanse of his shoulders, before allowing her fingers to become entangled in the heavy thickness of that overlong dark hair to pull his head down and have those sensually chiselled lips claim hers.

This wasn’t just ridiculous—it was dangerous!

And so completely out of character that Stazy barely recognised herself. Damn it, she didn’t even want to recognise herself as this woman who couldn’t seem to stop fantasising about the two of them in one clinch or another!