Page 32 of Here Comes Trouble
‘Is this the kind of thing you’re after to impress your editor?’ he asked, his voice tinged with scorn.
Clearly, she’d hit a nerve.
She shook her head quickly. ‘I want to try and understand what it is that drives you, to round the piece out and give a fair and honest representation of you as a person.’
‘Am I not interesting enough to write about without you feeling the need to expose my deepest shittiest secrets?’
‘Of course you are.’
Tears welled in her eyes and shame landed in her stomach with a thud as he turned back and she saw pain in his expression.
‘I won’t write about any of that, I promise. I’m sorry for prying, it wasn’t to get some salacious gossip out of you; I was genuinely concerned.’
‘Well, you don’t need to be. I’ve coped fine without your pity up until this point.’
They gazed at each other in silence for a moment, before Xander turned away to stare back out across the lake.
Now she was beginning to see the real Xander, she felt a desperate urge to keep that side of him as protected as he did, to keep that version of him just for her.
What was happening to her? She’d been so determined not to fall for his charms when she first arrived here and now all she could think about was how to get closer to him.
How could she want something that terrified her so much?
She picked at her food some more, eventually laying the plate down on the rug in front of her in defeat. It had been delicious, but she just couldn’t bring herself to eat any more of it, not when her stomach felt like it was full of rolling marbles.
‘You had enough?’ he asked, nodding at her abandoned plate.
‘Er, yeah.’ She was glad he couldn’t see how flushed her face was in the growing darkness.
After packing the remainder of the food back into the hamper in silence, he lay back on the rug and gazed up at the sky.
Jess couldn’t stop looking at him, thinking about how his powerful body would feel under her hands and how overwhelmed by his enigmatic presence she was. He did something to her she couldn’t explain.
Turning his head, he caught her gawping at him.
‘Sorry for flipping out like that. Don’t take it personally, I’m just in a bit of a funk today,’ he said.
Shaking herself out of her trance, she fumbled around for the wherewithal to get her feelings back under control.
‘I can understand why you don’t feel comfortable talking to journalists about your past. It must have been really hard growing up like that.’
He sat up, turning to face her and brushing his hands together before carefully laying them on his lap. ‘Yeah, well, in my experience some journalists make it their life’s work to route out your most embarrassing secrets just to further their own career.’
‘You have someembarrassingsecrets? Can you tell me about those so I can cash in and make my fortune?’ she said, willing a gleam of mischief into her expression.
He raised an eyebrow at her but smiled. ‘I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,’ he said, leaning forwards and looking into her eyes.
The smile dropped from her face as she struggled to deal with the sudden intimacy. That feeling was back, the one from earlier, when she’d thought he was going to kiss her.
His gaze flicked from her eyes to her mouth and the surge of need to be kissed nearly floored her.
As if sensing her desperate want, he leaned in further, his seductive gaze locked with hers, closing the distance between them.
Her breath came shallow and fast from her lungs and her heart raced in her chest as his mouth came so close to hers, she could feel the whisper of his breath on her lips.
She was frozen. Captivated. Caught. She daren’t move a muscle in case she turned to dust in front of him.
‘What do you want from me, Jess?’ he murmured against her mouth so she felt the vibration of the sound on her skin.
