The Talk of Hollywood by Carole Mortimer Page A

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 thisis 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 awoman 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