The Talk of Hollywood (6 page)

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!

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 …?

S
TAZY
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 to concentrate all her attention on the piles of papers.

On the surface, at least. Inwardly, it was a different matter!

What had happened just now?

Had
anything
happened …?

Maybe she had just imagined the physical tension that had seemed to crackle briefly in the air between Jaxon and herself? Or—worse—maybe that physical awareness had only been on her side?

No, Stazy was sure it hadn’t been. But, as she had
assured him earlier, she certainly knew better than to take seriously any emotional or physical games a man as experienced as Jaxon might decide to play. He was only here for a week, and then he would depart to commence making his pirate film, at which time he would probably forget Dr Stazy Bromley even existed.

As long as she kept reminding herself of that fact she should escape from their week’s confinement together unscathed.

‘Geoffrey seemed more than a little … evasive as to his reason for the need for extra security when I spoke to him on the telephone earlier …?’ Jaxon looked across the dinner table at Stazy. The butler had served them their first course of prawns with avocado before once again leaving them alone together in the small and sunlit family dining room.

Stazy looked extremely beautiful this evening, having changed into a knee-length red sheath of a dress that should have clashed with that red-gold hair and yet instead somehow managed to add vibrancy to the unusual colour. Her legs were long and shapely in high-heeled red sandals, and her sun-kissed face was once again bare of make-up except for a red gloss on the fullness of her lips. A light dusting of endearing freckles was visible across the bridge of her tiny nose.

It had only taken one look at her when they’d met up in the drawing room before dinner for Jaxon to once again become aroused, quickly bringing him to the conclusion that suffering a whole week of this torment might just be the death of him.

‘I did try to warn you that until Gramps has something he thinks we should know he’ll play whatever this
is pretty close to his chest,’ Stazy answered unsympathetically.

Jaxon arched dark brows as she continued to eat her prawns and avocado. ‘You seem to be taking it all very calmly?’ It ‘all’ included those security guards at the main gates, as well as half a dozen more he had seen patrolling the grounds when he’d looked out of his bedroom window earlier—several of them accompanied by dogs.

She shrugged slender shoulders. ‘I lived here with Granny and Gramps for almost ten years.’

‘And you’ve had other security scares in the past?’

‘Once or twice, yes,’ Stazy said lightly.

‘But—’

‘Jaxon, if you’re that worried about it you always have the option of leaving,’ she reasoned softly.

Great—now she’d managed to make him sound like a complete wuss! ‘I’m happy where I am, thanks,’ he dismissed—or at least he would be if he didn’t feel so on edge about his constant state of arousal whenever he was in Stazy’s company!

Admittedly Stazy was beautiful, but she was nowhere near as beautiful as some of the women Jaxon had been involved with in the past. Nor did she make any attempt to hide her distrust of him. In fact the opposite.

Which was perhaps half the attraction …?

Maybe—although somehow Jaxon doubted it. Stazy was like no other woman he had ever met. For one thing she didn’t even seem aware of her own beauty. Add that to her obvious intelligence and it was a pretty potent mix.

Jaxon had never been attracted to a woman simply on her looks alone, and he liked to be able to talk to a
woman out of bed as well as make love with her in it. Stazy Bromley obviously ticked all the boxes as far as his raging libido was concerned.

Stazy wasn’t sure she particularly cared for the way in which Jaxon was looking at her from between those hooded lids—almost as if he were thinking of eating
her
for his dinner rather than the food on his plate!

She had deliberately put on her favourite red dress this evening, in order to give herself the boost in confidence she had felt she lacked earlier. After those tension-filled minutes in her grandfather’s library she had felt in need of all the armour she could get where Jaxon Wilder was concerned, and feeling confident about her own appearance was definitely a good place to start.

Or at least it would have been if the moment she’d seen him again she hadn’t been so completely aware of how dangerously attractive Jaxon looked this evening, in a loose white silk shirt and those black denims that fitted snugly to the leanness of his muscled thighs and long, long legs.

His shirt was unbuttoned at his throat to reveal the beginnings of a dusting of dark hair that no doubt covered most of his chest. And lower. That ‘lower’ being exactly where Stazy had forced her thoughts to stop earlier today. Unfortunately she didn’t seem to be having the same success this evening!

This just wasn’t
her
, damn it. Those two attempts at taking a lover had not only proved completely unsatisfactory but had also firmly put an end to any illusions she might have had where she and men were concerned. She certainly didn’t indulge in erotic fantasies about movie stars—or any other man, come to that!—and the sooner her grandfather returned from London and put a stop to this cosy intimacy for two the better!