‘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!
She had taken precisely two lovers in her twenty-nine years. The first had been one of her university lecturers, twenty years her senior, on a single night ten years ago. The second one had been a man on a summer dig in Tunisia four years ago—a man who had a wife and children back home in England. Admittedly that was something Stazy had only learnt after spending the night with him, when his wife had telephoned to inform him that one of his three children was in hospital and he was needed back home immediately!
Neither of those experiences had resulted in Stazy feeling any warmth or pleasure in the act, let alone having an orgasm. They certainly hadn’t prepared her for the seductively lethal charm and good looks of Jaxon Wilder!
She stepped back abruptly. ‘As it happens I’m not involved with anyone at the moment. Nor do I wish to be,’ she added with cold dismissal.
It was a coldness so at odds with the quickened rise and fall of her breasts, the deepening in colour of those sultry green eyes and the soft swelling of poutingly moist lips, that Jaxon wanted nothing more than to take Stazy in his arms and prove her wrong!
That need hovered in the air between them for several long, tense seconds.
Stazy’s chin rose as she deliberately tilted her head back in order to meet his gaze.
Did she have any idea how tempted Jaxon was by that challenge? Of how he wanted nothing more at that moment than to pull her into his arms and kiss the hell out of her?
Stazy was a beautiful woman in her late twenties, and as such she had to be aware of exactly what she was doing. Which begged the question—did she actually want him to kiss the hell out of her …?
STAZY took a step back as she saw the look of sexual interest that had entered Jaxon’s narrowed eyes. ‘Perhaps you would like to concentrate on the papers and I’ll sort out the diaries?’ To her dismay she sounded slightly breathless, and Jaxon was still standing close enough that she was aware of the heat of his body and the tantalising smell of his aftershave.
‘Fine,’ he agreed huskily, that smoky-grey gaze unblinking.
She continued to eye him warily, very aware that something—she wasn’t quite sure what—hung in the balance in these tension filled minutes. Something deep and almost primal. Something so nerve-tinglingly huge that Stazy feared it threatened to tear down the structured life of academia that she had so carefully surrounded herself with these past eleven years!
Jaxon felt as if he could have reached out and touched the sudden and obvious panic that spiked through Stazy as her eyes widened and the slenderness of her body trembled. The very air between them seemed to shimmer with that same emotion.
The question was why? What was so wrong with a man finding Stazy attractive enough to want to kiss her? Maybe even make love to her?
Had she been hurt in the past to the extent that it had made her wary of all men? Or did she only feel that wariness where Jaxon was concerned? She had certainly seemed to imply as much earlier!
Admittedly the newspapers had seemed to take great delight in photographing him with the beautiful actresses he’d been involved with during the past ten years; but in reality they really hadn’t been that numerous—and a lot of the photographs that had appeared had actually been publicity shots, usually for the film he was currently working on.
Even so, he didn’t feel that was any reason for Stazy to look at him in that wary and suspicious way. Almost as if she feared that at any moment he might rip her clothes off before throwing her across the desk and having his wicked way with her!
It was an idea that might merit further investigation, but certainly wasn’t something Jaxon thought was likely to happen in the next few minutes!
He eased the tension from his shoulders. ‘Shall we make a start then …?’
‘Why not?’ Stazy felt as if she were emerging from a dream as she forced herself to reply with the same lightness of tone, before ignoring him completely