‘Am I wrong in sensing the implication that you much preferred to go out riding rather than having to sit and eat breakfast with me …?’ Jaxon prompted dryly.
She looked across at him. ‘Is that what I implied …?’
He eyed her frustratedly. Knowing that beneath Stazy’s exterior of cool logic was a woman as passionate as the fiery red-gold of her hair, a woman who had become liquid flame in his arms as she absorbed—consumed!—the blazing demand of his desire before giving it back in equal measure didn’t help to ease that frustration in the slightest.
‘Besides which,’ she continued briskly, ‘I was up at six, as usual, and breakfasted not long after.’
Jaxon closed the door behind him before strolling over to sit on the edge of the table where Stazy sat. ‘I’ll have to remember that you’re an early riser if I ever want the two of us to breakfast together.’
Stazy could think of only one circumstance under which that might be applicable—and it was a circumstance she had no intention of allowing to happen! That didn’t mean to say she wasn’t completely aware of Jaxon’s muscled thigh only inches away from her where he perched on the edge of the table.
He looked disgustingly fit and healthy this morning for a man who had flown over from the States only yesterday: the sharp angles of his face were healthily tanned, that overlong dark hair was slightly damp from the shower, his tee shirt—black today—fitted snugly over his muscled chest and the tops of his arms, and faded denims outlined the leanness of his waist and those long legs. There was only a slightly bruised look beneath those intelligent grey eyes to indicate that Jaxon suffered any lingering jet lag.
‘I shouldn’t bother for the short amount of time you’ll be here,’ she advised dryly.
He gave a relaxed smile. ‘Oh, it’s no bother, Stazy,’ he assured her huskily.
She shifted restlessly. ‘Considering your time here is limited, shouldn’t we get started …?’
Jaxon didn’t need any reminding that he now had only six days left in which to do his research. Just as he didn’t need to be told that it was Stazy’s intention to keep her distance from him for those same six days.
There had been a few moments of awkwardness the previous evening, when he’d told Little that Stazy wasn’t feeling well enough to finish her meal and had gone upstairs to her bedroom. The knowing look in the older man’s eyes, before he’d quietly cleared away her place setting had been indicative of his scepticism at that explanation. But, being the polite English butler that he was, Little hadn’t questioned the explanation—or Jaxon’s claim that he didn’t want any more to eat either.
Food, at least.
Jaxon’s appetite for finishing what he and Stazy had started had been a different matter entirely!
Once upstairs, despite feeling exhausted, he had paced the sitting room of his suite for hours as he thought of Stazy’s fiery response to his kisses, his shaft continuing to throb and ache as he remembered having her legs wrapped about his waist, the moist heat between her thighs as he pressed against her.
A virtually sleepless night later he only had to look at her again this morning to recall the wildness of their shared passion. The fact that her appearance was every inch the prim and cold Dr Anastasia Bromley again today—hair pulled back and plaited down the length of her spine, green blouse loose rather than fitted over tailored black trousers, and flat no-nonsense shoes—in no way dampened the eroticism of last night’s memories.
In fact the opposite; if anything, that air of cool practicality just made Jaxon want to kiss her until he once again held that responsive woman in his arms!
‘Fine.’ He straightened abruptly before taking the seat opposite hers and concentrating on the pile of papers Geoffrey Bromley had left for him to look through.
That was not to say he wasn’t completely aware of Stazy as she sat opposite him. He could smell her perfume—a light floral and her own warm femininity—and the sunlight streaming through the window was turning her hair to living flame. A flame Jaxon wanted to wrap about his fingers as he once again took those full and pouting lips beneath his own.
‘Have you heard from Geoffrey this morning?’ he prompted gruffly after several minutes of torturous silence—minutes during which he was too aware of Stazy to be able to absorb a single thing he had read.
She shook her head. ‘As I’ve already told you, my grandfather has become a law unto himself since Granny died.’
Jaxon sat back in his chair. ‘And before that …?’
Her gaze instantly became guarded. ‘What exactly is it you want to know, Jaxon?’
He shrugged. ‘All my own research so far gives the impression their long marriage was a happy one.’
‘ “So far”?’
Discussing Stazy’s grandparents with her had all the enjoyment of walking over hot coals: one wrong step and he was likely to get seriously burned! ‘You know, we’re going to get along much better if you don’t keep reading criticism into every statement I make.’ He sighed.
It wasn’t in Stazy’s immediate or long term plans to ‘get along’ with Jaxon. In fact, after her uncharacteristic behaviour last night, she just wanted this whole thing to be over and done with. ‘Sorry,’ she bit out abruptly.
‘So?’
‘So, yes, their marriage was a long and happy one,’ she confirmed evenly. ‘Not joined at the hip,’ she added with a frown. ‘They were both much too independent in nature for that. But emotionally close. Always.’
‘That’s good.’ Jaxon nodded, making notes in the pad he had brought downstairs with him.
Stazy regarded him curiously. ‘You mentioned your own parents when you were here last … are they happily married?’
‘Oh, yes.’ An affectionate smile curved Jaxon’s lips as he looked up. ‘My brother, too. One big happy family, in fact, and all still living in Cambridgeshire. I’m the only one in the family to have left the area and avoided the matrimonial noose,’ he added dryly.
Stazy doubted that he was in any hurry to marry, considering the amount of women reputedly queuing up to share the bed of Jaxon Wilder. Something she had been guilty of herself the previous evening …!
‘I don’t suppose your lifestyle is in any way … conducive to a permanent relationship,’ she dismissed coolly.
Jaxon studied her through narrowed lids. ‘Any more than your own is. An archaeologist who travels around the world on digs every chance she gets …’ he added with a shrug as she looked at him enquiringly.
She smiled tightly. ‘That’s one of the benefits of being unattached, yes.’
‘And what do you consider the other advantages to be?’ he prompted curiously.
She gave a lightly dismissive laugh. ‘The same as yours, I expect. Mostly the freedom to do exactly as I wish when I wish.’
‘And the drawbacks …?’
A frown creased the creaminess of her brow. ‘I wasn’t aware there were any …’
‘No …?’
‘No.’
He raised dark brows. ‘How about no one to come home to at the end of the day? To talk to and be with? To share a meal with? To go to bed with?’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I suppose it can all be summed up in one word—loneliness.’
Was she ever lonely? Stazy wondered. Probably. No—definitely. And for the reasons Jaxon had just stated. At the end of a long day of teaching she