A knock on the door startled her awake. Checking the time on her watch, she relaxed. About thirty minutes had passed, which was a pretty good power nap. She definitely felt more refreshed.
The knock sounded again. If there was a God it’d be a waiter holding one of those yummy blue drinks she’d seen everywhere.
“Coming,” she called, hopping from the bed. Yanking the door open, her excitement fizzled. “Oh. It’s you.”
“Tiny blue pill? So classic.” Jackson put a hand against his heart as he stepped over the threshold. “It hurt, but it was classic.”
She closed the door behind him a little harder than necessary. “Yeah, well, you won’t think it’s so classic when the news about our Lucie and her rich and famous fiancé being on the rocks ends up in the tabloids. Which will be all your fault, by the way.”
He leaned a shoulder against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “How will it be my fault?”
“Because!” She poked him in the chest. “You got me all fired up with your insults. Reid would never have said something like that about Lucie. He worships the ground she walks on. But it’s obvious you wouldn’t have the first clue as to how to treat a woman, so how we’re going to pull this off for an entire week is beyond me. Then again, when the girl from the front blabs about our little production back there, we’ll probably be thrown out on our asses, and then we won’t have to worry about it.”
She started to turn, but he held her arm captive, preventing her from storming off. “First of all, Jilli isn’t going to tell anyone anything.”
“Oh really. And why is that?”
“Because she’s the contact I told you about. She’s in on the whole thing.”
That little tidbit zipped through her brain, hitting all the necessary compartments needed to read between the lines. Her eyes widened. “So we didn’t have to…”
“Make such a big production?” he said with a wide smile. She noticed for the first time he had shallow dimples hidden beneath the short beard growth, adding to his panty-melting charm. Why were all the assholes so damn gorgeous? “Yeah, I know, but I figured we should get in the practice. Besides, now we’ve gotten our first fight out of the way.”
“Oh, you have no idea—”
“Secondly,” he said, interrupting her would-be rant as he dropped his amusement as easily as removing a mask, “contrary to your belief, I know exactly how to treat a woman. In every aspect.”
The charming, good-natured man she’d met had been obliterated by the serious one now standing before her. Vanessa had a feeling that this man—a man who could no doubt grant a lover’s every desire or conjure an enemy’s every nightmare—was his true self.
Something had stolen the air from the room. Topaz eyes burned into her, heating her body from the inside out and creating warmth between her legs from the suggestion his words lent. Words. Where were her words? She was never speechless. She argued for a living, for shit’s sake.
This man is Dangerous. Capital D intended.
Considering she wasn’t planning on going toe-to-toe with him in a cage any time soon, the threat of danger wasn’t to her physical person—unless earth-shattering orgasms had the potential to land her in a hospital—but to her emotional sanity.
Then, like the wind changing directions after a storm, he released her arm and the intensity and brought back the happy. Just. Like. That. “Now that we have that out of the way, I’d like to take you to an apology lunch.”
She had to tell her brain to stop analyzing his peculiar personality switches and fast-forward to his newest attempt at taking control of their situation. Clearing her throat, she smoothed her hands down her shirt and crossed her arms. “I’ve already eaten.”
“Okay, lunch is out. We’ll go get a drink on the beach.”
Damn, that sounded good. Not to mention there was a tiny part of her that wanted to know what he’d be like in a public setting, now that she knew the whole thing with Jilli was just his twisted way of amusing himself. Bastard.
“Sorry, but I have things to do. But don’t let me stop you. You should go enjoy yourself.”
He bit the inside of his cheek as his eyes narrowed in contemplation. “Reid said you’d be a tough opponent.”
“Reid’s a very smart man.”
“Come on, give a guy a chance to atone for his sins. You had to deal with a lot of my shit today. Let me make it up to you. We’ll have some drinks and start fresh.”
She’d definitely earned a drink. Hell, she’d earned several, in her opinion. Maybe if she let him buy the drink, he’d back off the rest of the week and she wouldn’t have to constantly avoid the distraction he was so capable of being. “Fine. We’ll go for one drink and call it square. Deal?”
He let loose that spectacular smile, accentuating the strong lines of his stubble-covered jaw. “Deal.” He clapped his hands together and made for the door. She followed him and then stopped as soon as he walked onto the porch.