High-Stakes Bachelor

She refreshed the bath with hot water several times and just couldn’t seem to drag herself out of this perfect interlude. The rhythmic pounding of waves rolling ashore lulled her into the best semicoma ever. How long she sat there just soaking, she had no idea.

The bathroom door burst open.

She plunged to her neck in the water and it sloshed over the side of the tub. “Jackson!”

“Crap! Sorry. Thought you already went downstairs. Clothes. I’ve, um, got some. They’re Gran’s, but she said they would fit you. Sorry. I’ll just put them on your bed....”

“Get out, Jackson,” she said firmly enough to cut across his babbling.

“Right. Out.” But his gaze had riveted on the damned tub. And as tall as he was, he no doubt had a great view of her naked body. Which abruptly felt on fire from pretty much her neck to her toes.

“Go. Now,” she ordered him.

“Sorry. Gone.” Finally, he tore his gaze away from her and spun. He all but ran out of the bathroom and looked so silly doing it she had to laugh. Guy acted like he’d never seen a naked female before. Who’d have thought a hunk like him would be so self-conscious around women? She wouldn’t have guessed it in a million years.

The tranquility of her bath destroyed, she rinsed the last of the soap out of her hair with the detachable showerhead thingie. She stood up to dry off and it felt decadent to stand naked before that huge window with all of nature’s glory right outside.

She glanced down onto the broad stone veranda below and started. Jackson was staring up at her, transfixed. The glass was one-way, wasn’t it? If he’d lied about that, she was going to kill him!

Wrapping a towel around herself fast, she backed away from the window and dried off hastily. Using the blow-dryer she found in the big armoire where the towels and shampoo had been, she dried her hair into its usual shoulder-length frame of her face.

She actually dug into the makeup Minerva had put in the medicine cabinet and applied mascara, blush and lip gloss. Only time she usually wore the stuff was when she had a date, which happened exactly never. Tonight, though, it gave her the confidence boost she needed to go downstairs and face Jackson after he’d accidentally invaded her bath. That had been an accident, hadn’t it?

Naked, she moved out into the bedroom and smiled at the simple navy knit dress laid out on the bed. Its lines were high-end designer all the way. The lingerie lying beside it made her simultaneously blush and sigh with pleasure. Jackson’s grandmother wore silk thongs and see-through lace bras? Go, granny!

She’d secretly wished to own stuff like that over the years, but a combination of no one to wear it for and scraping by so she could pay her college tuition meant she’d never indulged the fantasy.

The sexy lingerie was a decent fit. She was more endowed up top than Minerva, which meant her bra cups ranneth over in a rather spectacular display of cleavage. But it was better than crawling back into her dirty, smelly camisole.

She pulled the casual knit dress over her head and the kitten-soft fabric caressed her body like a whisper. It was snug to the hips and then flared into swirls around her legs. The overall effect was to accentuate her curves until she looked like some kind of sexy vamp.

She stared at herself in the mirror. Who knew she could look so good in the right cut of clothing? Jackson’s eyeballs were going to fall out his head when he got a load of this plunging neckline and bulging boobage. A sneaking suspicion that Minerva had laid out this dress for that exact reason crept into her mind. So. Granny was machinating to throw the two of them together, huh? Fascinating. Jackson wasn’t lying when he’d said his grandmother was pushing him to settle down and start a family.

She wished the woman luck but held out no real hope of Minerva succeeding. After all, Jackson had been a superstar for nearly five years and could have had pretty much any woman on the planet in that time. But he’d never shown the slightest inclination to get married. There was no reason to think things would change at this late date.

Still, she gave the neckline one last downward tug before heading downstairs. Next to the library was a music room with a grand piano dominating the space. On a shelf behind it, she spotted...

Oh, my God. Is that an Oscar? She moved into the room and stopped before the famous statue on the mantle over a huge fireplace.

“I won that for being a coproducer on a documentary last year. I’d like to win another one with the new production company,” a male voice said from behind her.

She whipped around to face Jackson, the skirt swirling around her hips.

His eyes went wide as he stared at her. “Ana, what happened to you?”

Alarm slammed through her. She reached for her hair, her face. “What? What’s wrong?” She hadn’t seen any major bruising when she’d checked herself in the mirror before she came downstairs. Most of her scrapes and scratches were on her arms and hands. Amazing really, considering what she’d been through.

“You’ve got—” He broke off. “You’re—”

Her alarm escalated to panic. “What the hell’s wrong, Jackson? I’ve got what?”

“Uh. Breasts.”

She stared back at him. “I know. But what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he mumbled. “You just look...”

She strode over to him and stared up at him. “You’re scaring me. Tell me what’s going on, right now.”

“Jesus, Ana. Nothing’s wrong. You just look like...a...a woman. A hot one. With great...well...cleavage. That dress... You in it... Christ...” he mumbled.

Oh. She stood down from threat mode, letting out the breath she’d been holding. He’d scared the hell out her for a minute there. A little irked, she said, “I’ve been a woman all day, you know.”

“Well, yeah. But you weren’t wearing stuff like that when we were fighting.”

“The operative word being fighting,” she retorted. “Kinda hard to do that in heels and a French manicure.”

He cleared his throat and finally managed to tear his gaze away from her chest. She owed Minerva a big thanks later. At least the guy had finally figured out she was not only a girl, but a marginally attractive one. For him, that was apparently a big breakthrough.

“How about that tour of the rest of the house now?” she asked.

“Uh, yeah. Sure.”

He guided her through the mansion. It was a fairly simple layout, actually. A series of spacious rooms opened off the original central hall that ran from front to back. She gathered a kitchen was beyond the dining room he showed her and servant quarters were off in another direction. The entire back of the house was new and boasted big picture windows looking out on the ocean. The blend of old and modern was seamless and comfortable.

“There’s Gran on the veranda. Looks like Rosie’s got dinner ready.”

“Rosie?”

“Gran’s housekeeper, cook, companion and second-in-command around here. Be warned, she runs a tight ship. Don’t cross her.”

A tiny, gray-haired woman stepped into the family room just then. “Jackson Prescott. What lies are you telling your lady friend about me?”

“Rosie, this is Ana. And this is the infamous Rosie McKay.”

Wow. She was used to being the shortest person in a room, but Rosie barely reached her nose. The woman must not top four foot ten. But her eyes sparkled brighter than a sparrow’s and she looked ready to take on the world.

“Don’t listen to a thing that boy says about me,” Rosie declared. “Lies. All of it.”

Ana grinned. “I won’t listen to what he says about you if you won’t listen to what he says about me.”

“Agreed. Now head on outside. Supper’s served, and don’t you dare let my famous fried chicken get cold.”

She shooed them out through the French doors. Ana sank into the wrought-iron chair Jackson held for her, acutely aware that from his vantage point he was getting a great look down the front of her dress. She hoped he liked what he saw.

The moon rose as they dug into the platter of chicken and fruit salad. The simple meal settled her stomach and made her feel better. There was just something comforting about home cooking. There hadn’t been a lot of it in her house growing up. She’d mostly fended for herself by the time she was in school full days.

A chill crept into the air, and Ana was chagrined to feel her nipples puckering beneath the thin fabric of the dress and the thinner lace of the bra. God, did she have to go and starting nipping now?

Darned if Jackson hadn’t noticed it, too. He took in the view unabashedly, and darned if Minerva didn’t take in him taking it in, as well. Ana couldn’t be sure, but she thought she caught a hint of a smirk in the older woman’s expression. Schemer.

“So, dear. Do you feel like talking about today or would you rather not?”

She shrugged at Minerva. “There’s not much to tell. I walked out to my car to meet Jackson for dinner and some guy jumped me from behind. I didn’t see his face. I fought and screamed, but he hit me in the side of the head and apparently knocked me out. Someone called the police and... I was lucky. Then Jackson came and rescued me from all those medical people and their needles in the emergency room.”

“I did not—”

She threw him a withering look. “We’ve already been over this. You rescued me. I’m grateful, and you can just get over it.”

Minerva chuckled in delight. “Oh, I like her, Jackson.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Stay here as long as you’d like, dear. It’s entirely too much house for one person to rattle around in.”

“What about me?” Jackson complained.

“You’re always haring off to who knows where, and when you’re home you practically live over at that studio of yours. You’re gone more than you’re here.”

Ana grinned. Salty, the woman was. She officially liked Minerva back. They finished the meal with Jackson glaring at his grandmother, Minerva smiling smugly and Ana privately enjoying his discomfort. He struck her as the type who was used to always being in control, always in charge, always self-contained. It was refreshing to know he was a real man with real feelings and not some kind of robot under all that movie-star perfection.

Rosie came out to clear the dishes and Jackson jumped up to help her. He hauled in the heavy stuff while Minerva topped off Ana’s water and refilled her own wineglass.

As Jackson disappeared inside the house, Minerva asked, “How long have you and Jackson been together?”

“Uh, we’re not together. We just met today at an audition.”

Minerva looked visibly startled. Not his style to bring home his casual conquests, huh? Ana added by way of explanation, and in defense of her own morals, “I don’t think he even noticed that I’m a girl until he saw me in this awesome dress.”

“Oh, I noticed,” Jackson groused from the doorway. “Just because I was too professional to make a pass at you when I was lying on top of you in your audition doesn’t mean I didn’t notice.”

Ana gulped as Minerva smiled archly. “She does wear that dress rather well, doesn’t she?”

“Yes. She does.” Jackson’s voice was low and deep. Sexy. Slid across her skin like velvet. “Would you like to see the beach, Ana?”

“There’s a beach around here?”

“I blasted one out of the rocks a while back.” He moved over beside her chair and held a hand down to her. “Let me show you.”

He held out his hand to help her to her feet. She laid her palm in his and started at the heat of him. It permeated her flesh and drew her to him like a moth to a flame.

“Have fun, you two,” Minerva said behind them, her words floating away on the muted roar of the ocean.

“Interfering busybody,” Jackson muttered as he led her to a wooden staircase.

“She means well.”

“She just loves to meddle.”

“She loves you.”

Jackson snorted, but Ana would bet he knew she was right. Narrow steps wound down the cliff steeply. To a normal person, the descent would probably be a little alarming. But after her stunt classes, it was kind of fun to navigate.

They got to the bottom and stepped onto a tiny, secluded beach surrounded on three sides by towering cliffs and on the fourth by the ocean. White sand the consistency of sugar buried her toes. The whole beach probably wasn’t more than fifty feet wide and maybe half that deep.

“It’s perfect,” she breathed.

Jackson looked over at her in the moonlight. “Yup. Perfect.”

She got the feeling he wasn’t talking about the beach. She spoke over the ocean soundtrack. “Your grandmother seemed to think we were a couple. Do you need me to pretend that we are for a while to get her off your back?”

“You’d do that for me?” he blurted.

“Why not? She’s a lovely woman and it would make her happy. I’d love to repay her in some way for her hospitality.”

Jackson frowned doubtfully. “You don’t know her. This could backfire on both of us.”

“How?”

“No idea. But I know my grandmother. If there’s a way to make a fake girlfriend bite me in the butt, she’ll find it.”

Ana grinned. “It’s a good thing I’m not going to take that remark out of context, Mr. Prescott.”

Jackson laughed and snagged her around the waist, pulling her up against his delicious body laughingly. She tensed against him, and he turned her loose instantaneously.

He spun away, shoving a hand through his hair. “God, I’m sorry,” he mumbled over his shoulder. “You were just attacked. Of course you wouldn’t want some guy to grab you....”

“It’s not that,” she responded quickly. It was just that he was so darned gorgeous. So out of her league. So...perfect. And she was so...not. How to put that into words that wouldn’t make her sound like a total dork? She opened her mouth, mumbled incoherently and shut it again.

“What can I do to help?” he asked, steamrolling right over her attempt at an explanation. “Anything. Just tell me what to do. I want to help.”

“I’m fine,” she insisted.

“No, you’re not. You freaked out when I touched you.”

It wasn’t quite that dramatic, but he didn’t seem interested in listening to her protests. If she were more of a shark, she would play on his sympathy and get him to woo her romantically. But lies weren’t her style. “I swear, Jackson, I’m okay. Go ahead. Put your arms around me again and let me prove it to you.”

Very carefully, he stepped close to her.

“How tall are you?” she muttered, craning her head back to stare up at him in the dark.

“Six foot three.”

“Isn’t that huge for a movie star?”

He shrugged and rested his hands cautiously on her waist. “I guess it’s tall. I never have to worry about my female leads being taller than me.”

She smiled a little and reciprocated by putting her hands on his waist. “See? I’m fine.”

“So it wouldn’t bother you if I moved one of my hands up your back like this?” he murmured.

“Uh, no.” Shivers were spreading outward from the slow glide of his fingers, threatening to shatter her into a million pieces. But other than that, everything was hunky-dory.

“Can I cup the back of your neck like this? Your hair feels like warm silk on the back of my hand.”

“Yeah. Sure. That’s, um, great.”

“Do you mind me moving a little closer to you?”

A little closer? His clothes brushed against her dress from her shoulders to her knees. Something akin to a magnetic field emanated from him and enshrouded her, energizing her from head to toe. Dang. What was that? Charisma? Raw, animal sex appeal? Whatever it was, she could see why he had become a movie star.

He stared down at her, his eyes black pools in the shadows of his face. Even wreathed in darkness like this, he was beautiful. It just wasn’t fair. His mouth was less than a foot from hers, and she could taste the fine wine on his breath. She hadn’t been able to drink any of it because of the painkillers she’d been given, but she savored the hint of it, anyway.

The—whatever it was—zinging between them built until she thought she was going to explode. His eyes actually glowed a little as he stared down at her.

“Say something,” she whispered. “You’re making me nervous.” Not nervous in the way he was going to think she meant, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

“My grandmother likes you.”

“I like her, too. I’ll bet you I could convince her we’re dating.”

He exhaled a gust of silent laugher. “You could convince me without too much trouble.”

Ana blinked up at him in shock. Her? Him? Her and a movie star?

“Talk to me, Ana.”

Her mind was completely blank. The notion of the two of them as a couple knocked words completely out of her brain.

She blurted the first thing that came to mind. “Kiss me.”

Oh, no. Where on earth had that come from?

His head bent down toward hers. “If you’re sure, I won’t say no.” He was actually going to kiss her!

Her stomach leaped and twisted while she tried to think of something clever and casual to say back to him that wouldn’t make her sound like a moron.

His mouth touched hers very lightly. It wasn’t tentative in the least, merely very tightly controlled. Careful. Intentionally gentle. Ana shocked herself by surging up into him like one of the waves pounding the rocks behind her. His lips were as hot as the rest of him, scorching her mouth as they moved restlessly, obviously interested in deepening the kiss, but unwilling to do more.

She opened her mouth hungrily, and when he didn’t act on the invitation, she caught his lower lip between her teeth and bit down on it enough to get his attention.

“Well, then,” he breathed. And then his tongue plunged carnally past her lips. She met his tongue with her own, and they swirled together, wet and hungry.

Her arms looped around his neck, and one of his hands simultaneously slid down her back to the indent of her waist. He dragged her up against him until her toes barely touched the sand. Another kind of heat pressed against her belly, hard and demanding through the zipper of his jeans. He turned to the side, taking her with him, and pressed her back against a wall of cold, hard rock. “You okay?” he asked roughly.

Her entire body strained toward him, toward the fire of his hard body surrounding her. Oh, yes. She was more than okay. Her hands slid down his chest, down to his waist. Tugged at his shirt. Ahh, skin. Her palms flattened against his ribs, sliding around to the slabs of muscle that defined his back. The same muscles that had surrounded her in safety earlier.

He tasted of the wine he’d sipped at the end of the meal, sharp and heady and masculine. His mouth lifted away from hers, then kissed its way across her cheekbone. Across her jaw, her neck. Her shoulder. And then his kisses trailed across her collarbone toward the low neckline of her dress. He nipped at the higher curves of her breasts. And heaven help her, she ran her hands into his hair and pulled his head down to her breasts more tightly.

“I wanted to do this all the way through dinner,” he muttered.

“And I wanted you to do it.”

“The way your nipples puckered up made me crazy....” His teeth closed on one of the offending body parts through her dress, and she gasped at the pinch, her breast arching up into his mouth hungrily.

His hand closed on her rear end, pulling her hips up against his erection snugly. She didn’t recognize the wanton woman she’d turned into all of a sudden. Her right leg wrapped around his hips and he ground his hard-on lightly against her core through that thin little thong that did nothing to dull the delicious sensations exploding through her.

“What are you doing to me?” she gasped under the roar of the surf.

He made an incoherent sound in the back of his throat that managed to convey both laughter and possessiveness. Apparently, whatever it was, she was doing the same thing to him, too.

“You’d better tell me to stop right now, Ana. Or this is going to turn into something more pretty damned fast.”

“Don’t stop, Jackson.”

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