She shivered, suddenly relaxing into him. “Who else could it be for?”
Cupping her face, he pulled her upward so she had to stand on tiptoe to keep her balance in heels. “For me. The booze is for me, but I’ll share if you ask nice and keep being so pretty. I only brought one glass, though. I thought this party was BYOB. And the candles are just some supermarket candles with names like Party In A Pear and Green Apple Meadows. It’s not like they’re the really expensive ones. But I figure, seeing as there’s no electricity out here, and it’s as dark in this guesthouse as my thoughts were about you, we might need some light.”
Disappointment reared its head. Apparently, Knight In Shining Hawthorne was off the clock.
That was a grossly unfair assessment. She’d made the rules; now she had to play by them. “Do green apples grow in meadows?” she joked, wondering why she wasn’t experiencing even a shred of unease. There was no hesitation when she straightened her spine and let her breasts graze his chest. None. Because it felt damn good. So good.
She looked right up at him like she’d been to this rodeo before. Like she had a T-shirt that said she had.
His eyebrow rose just as his arms snaked fully around her waist, pulling her tighter. “I think the real question is, do pears have parties?”
The flickers of light from the candles bounced off his thick hair, creating chocolate highlights she’d spent many a daydream sighing over. The angles and planes of his face were somehow sharper and even more defined with the soft glow. “You don’t suppose your brothers or Maizy might wonder why the guesthouse looks like it’s on fire, do you?”
Jax grazed his nose along the exposed length of her neck, making her nipples bead tight. He pulled away long enough to grab the bottle of wine and a single glass. Plopping down on the air mattress, he patted the space next to him. “Fear not, fair maiden Emmaline. Got that covered. When I’m working on a project, the beginning stages of it are always the hardest for me. I need to work things out on paper. So I requested seclusion and quiet. We have a Hawthorne family rule about space and respecting it. Because I freelance at home often, they’ve all learned to give me the time I need.”
She watched him pour the white liquid into the glass and bring it to his lips while she settled beside him. “So you think they really believe you’re out here in the cold guesthouse, working on a project instead of inside in your warm office?” Did it matter if they believed why Jax was in the guesthouse?
Maybe a little. It shouldn’t, but it did. A little.
Evolution from prissy spinster to bed-hopper takes time, Emmaline.
“I don’t have an office yet. It’s just a room full of boxes and a cold cement floor. That’s where you and all those ideas you have come in.”
“I see,” she said, smiling up at him, forgetting her concerns again. “Maybe you’re not so bad at this after all.”
Jax’s fingers wound around a long strand of her hair as he offered her the glass—which she took without hesitation. “So, covert ops covered?”
She sipped at the wine and paused. Alcohol always loosened her up, but she wasn’t worried about loosening up at all.
No. She was more fascinated by the idea her lips would touch the rim of the glass Jax’s lips had just touched. It was a small thing, really, but intimate—sensual.
“I should be sick with nerves right now.” Why wasn’t she worried a man was going to see her naked—the only other man to see her naked aside from Clifton? Especially one she knew would have a body that belonged on the cover of a magazine.
Why wasn’t she worried he would inevitably see the stretch marks lining her belly and hips because she’d gained fifty pounds when she was pregnant with Gareth?
Why wasn’t she worried Jax would cringe at the sight of the dimpled pockmarks on the outside of her thighs or the way her left breast sagged to the right? Why? And why was she telling him she wasn’t worried about not being worried about it?
“Because?”
Her fingers curled into the soft knit of the sweater at his waist and tugged him closer, gazing at him over the rim of the glass. “Because this is uncharted territory for me. I’ve never sailed this sea. I should be a nervous wreck.”
He pulled back, the muscles lining his jaw twitching. “Not once?”
“No. Have you?”
Jax opened his mouth to answer, but Em planted a hand on his lips. “No. Don’t answer. No personal information.”
He nibbled at her fingers, making her toes curl. “Then I won’t tell you I have sailed this sea, but the itinerary was a little different.”
“So you’ve had a lot of cruise directors?”
Once more, he opened his mouth to speak, and she stopped him, disgusted that even at a time like this, her naturally curious nature wouldn’t shut up. “Scratch that.”
Jax nodded, but his eyes were amused. “Right. No sharing. Which means I won’t tell you how many times I’ve done it.”