Page 17 of Here Comes Trouble
Perhaps he’d pushed things a little too far with that last comment? Judging by her furious reaction to it she certainly seemed to think so. He’d found it amusing to toy with her when he’d realised she was more nervous around him than she’d previously let on, but he really should apologise tomorrow and see if he could get her back on side once she’d calmed down.
He wouldn’t usually entertain the idea of letting a journalist get anywhere close to him, but he liked Jess. There was something about her that fascinated him, something about her stoic determination not to let him get to her that made him want her more than anyone he’d met in a very long time. The thought of drawing her out of that brittle shell she protected herself with was thrilling. It did something disconcerting to him; causing a twisting heat to take him over and make him reckless – something he’d been determined not to be again until his new exhibition was in the bag – but teasing her had been such a turn-on. He’d love to see how she responded to a serious onslaught of flirting and whether he could change her mind about not wanting to sleep with him. He’d been surprised and not a little rankled when she’d said that earlier, and the egotist in him wanted to prove her wrong. It had been a long time since a woman had turned him down, which made it a point of pride.
He knew she felt some sort of attraction to him because of the unconscious way she responded when she was around him. Her pupils flared when she looked his way and her body language became charmingly jittery.
So why was she fighting it so hard?
He had no idea, but he was going to enjoy finding out.
* * *
Jess got back to her hotel room in a state of nervy agitation.
Her dinner with Xander had shot her adrenaline levels into the red, but now she’d calmed down she felt utterly exhausted by it all.
Lying in her bed she allowed her thoughts to skip over what had happened earlier. A small voice in her head started to whisper something about overreacting a bit. Hot embarrassment trickled through her as she thought about how uncomfortable she’d felt around Xander and how that had perhaps made her act a little more extremely than normal. He hadn’t actually said or done anything that bad. He was clearly deliberately trying to wind her up – and she’d let him.
Rubbing a hand through her scalp, she tried to wake up her sluggish brain. What the heck was she doing? She needed to relax and stop going at Xander like a harpy with a headache if she had any chance of getting him to trust her.
She was a smart, educated woman with good conversation skills; she could get what she needed for the article if she just stopped jumping down his throat every time he opened his mouth. No way was she going back to Pamela without something sensational to use in the magazine.
She was going to have to work harder at it, be tenacious.
It was totally doable.
Another scuttling sound, this time from the corner of the room, made her sit up and flick the bedside light back on. She couldn’t see anything, but somehow that was worse. What if the insects crawled up the sides of the bed and found their way under the covers with her? The thought of it made her skin crawl with disgust. Wrapping the sheets round her like a cocoon, she tried not to think about it and relax into sleep.
The scratching noise came again, this time from the other side of the room. Finding her earphones from her handbag, she stuffed them into her ears, connected them to her phone and turned the music right up. Putting the pillow over her head, she hoped, would be enough to ward off any uninvited bedfellows.
Her thoughts drifted back to Xander and what he would be doing right now. Perhaps he’d be in the shower, washing off the grime of the day, water and suds cascading down that impressive body of his as he soaped himself down?
The mere thought of it made her blood fire round her body again.
Her legs were twitching now as she lay there desperately trying to turn her thoughts to something innocuous so she could drift into a much-needed sleep.
Between the apprehension of dealing with Xander again and the worry about warding off the bugs, she seemed to have kicked herself back into a state of anxious alertness.
Sighing, she burrowed deeper into the covers and started counting sheep. She had a horrible feeling it was going to be a long night.
4
Xander had to check the address of the hotel that Rosa had given him twice before he finally concluded he was in the right place. Was Jess really staying in this dump?
An unfriendly receptionist finally gave him Jess’s room number and he walked along the grimy corridor and banged on her door with a foreboding sense of discomfort.
He’d woken up early that morning after a dream about Jess where she’d been buried under an avalanche of snow and he’d not been able to get close enough to rescue her. It was the most bizarre thing he’d ever dreamt – not least because he barely knew her – and the sense of loss it provoked had left a dragging sorrow in his chest that unnerved him so much he’d had to get straight up and go for a walk to clear his head.
Apparently, his subconscious was feeling very guilty about how he’d treated her the night before. So, here he was, cap in hand, ready to apologise for his insensitivity in the hope he hadn’t driven her away for good.
After another minute of banging, the door finally swung open to reveal a rather dishevelled-looking Jess, still in her pyjamas and with her normally immaculate bob sticking out wildly around her pale face. The dark bags under her eyes made him suspect she hadn’t slept well either.
Her face went from ghostly pale to beet red in the space of a second when she realised it was him at the door and her hands flew straight up to flatten down her thatch of hair.
‘Xander? What are you doing here?’
‘I came to invite you over for breakfast and to say sorry for being an idiot last night.’
Jess stared at him in wide-eyed astonishment. ‘Wow. Am I dreaming or did Xander Heaton just apologise to me?’
