‘SO.’ STAZY STOOD uncomfortably in the middle of the spacious sitting room of what had turned out to be the penthouse apartment of a twenty-storey building set right in the middle of the most exclusive part of London. The views of the brightly lit city were absolutely amazing from the numerous windows in this room alone, and there appeared to be at least a dozen furnished rooms equally as beautiful in the apartment Jaxon had told her he only used on the rare occasions when he was in London.
‘Let’s not start that again, hmm?’ Jaxon prompted huskily.
‘No.’ She smiled awkwardly. ‘This is a very nice apartment. Does it have—?’
‘Hush, Stazy.’ Jaxon trod lightly across the cream carpet until he stood only inches in front of her. ‘Tomorrow, if you really are interested, I’ll give you the blurb that I received on this place before I bought it. But for now I believe we have other, more important things to talk about...’
‘Do we?’ She looked up at him searchingly. ‘I have no real idea of what I’m even doing here!’ She wrung agitated hands together. ‘You had lunch with my grandfather today. Came to the restaurant this evening supposedly to join us for coffee and dessert—and then didn’t even attempt to order either one of them. You then kissed me in front of dozens of other people after my grandfather left—’
Jaxon put an end to her obvious and rapidly increasing agitation by taking her in his arms and kissing her again.
More intensely. More thoroughly. More demandingly...
‘You know,’ he murmured several minutes later, as he ended the kiss and once again rested his forehead on hers, ‘if I have to keep doing this in order to get a word in edgeways this is definitely going to take all night!’
Stazy gave a choked laugh. ‘I don’t mind if you don’t...’
‘Oh, I’m only too happy to go on kissing you all night long, my darling Stazy,’ he assured her gruffly. ‘Just not yet. First we need to talk. I need to talk,’ he added ruefully. ‘To make it completely, absolutely clear how I feel.’
She caught her bottom lip between pearly white teeth. ‘How you feel about what...?’
‘You, of course!’ Jaxon lifted his head to look down at her exasperatedly. ‘Stazy, you have to be the most difficult woman in the world for a man to tell how much he loves her!’ he added irritably.
Stazy stilled, her eyes very wide as she stared up at him. ‘Are you saying you love me...?’
‘I’ve loved you for months, you impossible woman!’
‘You’ve—loved—me—for—months...?’ she repeated in slow disbelief.
‘See? Totally impossible!’ Jaxon snorted his impatience as he released her to step away and run a hand through the darkness of his hair. ‘There are millions upon millions of women in the world, and I have to fall in love with the one woman who doesn’t even believe I love her when I’ve just told her that I do!’
It was entirely inappropriate—had to be because she was verging on hysteria—but at that moment in time all Stazy could manage in response was a choked laugh.
Jaxon raised his eyes heavenwards. ‘And now she’s laughing at me...!’
Stazy continued laughing. In fact she laughed for so long that her sides actually ached and there were tears falling down her cheeks.
‘Care to share the joke?’ Jaxon finally prompted ruefully.
She leant weakly against the wall, her hands wrapped about her aching sides. ‘No joke, Jaxon. At least not on you.’
‘Who, then?’
‘Me!’ She smiled across at him tearfully. ‘The joke’s on me, Jaxon! I’m so inexperienced at these things that I— Jaxon, I fell in love with you when we were at Bromley House together. I didn’t want to,’ she added soberly. ‘It just...happened.’
Jaxon began walking towards her like a man in a dream. ‘You’re in love with me...?’
‘Oh, Jaxon...!’ she groaned indulgently. ‘There are millions and millions of men in the world, and I have to fall in love with the one man who doesn’t even believe I love him when I’ve just told him that I do,’ she misquoted back at him huskily.
His arms felt like steel bands about her waist as he pulled her effortlessly towards him, his gaze piercing as he looked down at her fiercely. ‘Do you love me enough to marry me...?’
She gasped. ‘You can’t want to marry a doctor of archaeology?’
He nodded. ‘I most certainly can! That is if you don’t mind marrying an actor and film director?’
‘Excuse me,’ she chided huskily, ‘but that would be a multi-award-winning Hollywood A-list actor and director!’
‘Whatever,’ Jaxon dismissed gruffly. ‘Will you marry me, Stazy, and save me from the misery of merely existing without you?’
She swallowed. ‘Being alone in a crowd...?’
‘The hell of being alone in a crowd, yes,’ he confirmed huskily.
Stazy knew exactly what that felt like. It was how she had felt for the past three months since she’d last seen Jaxon...
Tears welled up in her eyes. ‘I’ve been so lonely without you, Jaxon. Since my parents died I’ve never wanted to need or love anyone, apart from my grandparents, and yet you’ve managed to capture my heart...’ She gave a shake of her head. ‘I love you so much, Jaxon, that these past three months of not seeing you, being with you, has been hell.’
‘Hence the weight loss and lack of sleep?’ He ran a caressing fingertip across the dark shadows under her eyes.
‘Yes.’ She nodded miserably.
‘When you said a few minutes ago you were inexperienced in things, you meant falling in love, didn’t you...?’
She gave a self-derisive laugh. ‘I’ve never been in love. I’ve had two lovers, spent one night with each of them, and they were both utter disasters!’ She grimaced.
‘Forget about them.’ Jaxon reached up and cradled each side of her face, his love for her shining out of his liquid grey eyes. ‘We’re going to make love, Stazy. Real love. And it’s going to be truly beautiful.’
‘Yes, please...’ she breathed softly.
‘You haven’t agreed to make an honest man of me yet,’ he reminded her huskily.
‘Is that a condition of the beautiful lovemaking?’ she teased.
‘I do have my reputation to think of, after all...’
Stazy laughed huskily at the dig as she threw herself into his waiting arms. ‘In that case—yes, I’ll marry you, Jaxon!’
‘And have my babies?’
Babies. Not only Jaxon to love, but his babies to love and cherish... ‘Oh, God, yes...!’ she accepted emotionally.
‘Then you may now take me to bed, Dr Bromley.’
She chuckled at his prim tone. ‘If you think I’m going to sweep you up in my arms and carry you off to the bedroom before ravishing you then I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed!’
‘I’ll do the sweeping.’ Jaxon did exactly that. ‘You can do the ravishing.’
‘With pleasure, Mr Wilder,’ Stazy murmured throatily. ‘With the greatest of pleasure.’
And it was.
Just over two years later...
‘I’m truly impressed,’ Jaxon murmured teasingly in her ear as the two of them stepped down off the stage to the rapturous applause of his peers, after going up together to receive yet another award for Best Screenplay for Butterfly Wings. ‘I think you thanked everyone but the girl who made the coffee!’
‘Very funny,’ Stazy muttered as she continued to smile brightly for the watching audience as the two of them made their way back to their seats.
Jaxon chuckled. ‘And after you were once so scathing about the length of the speeches made at these awards, too!’
‘Just for that, you can be the one to get up to Anastasia Rose if she wakes in the night!’ Stazy dropped thankfully back into her seat, her smile completely genuine now as she thought of their beautiful six-month-old daughter waiting for them at home. Geoffrey had opted to stay with his beloved great-granddaughter rather than accompany them to another award ceremony that he had declared would be ‘far too exhausting at my age!’
‘I’ll have you know that Anastasia Rose and I have come to an arrangement—I don’t wake her up if she doesn’t wake me up!’ Jaxon grinned smugly.
‘Really?’ Stazy turned in her seat to look at him. ‘Does that mean we can have our own very private celebration later...?’
Jaxon chuckled. ‘Insatiable woman!’
She arched teasing brows. ‘Are you complaining...?’
‘Certainly not!’ He kissed her warmly—something he had done often during their two-year marriage, whenever and wherever they happened to be.
They both knew and happily appreciated that life, and love, didn’t come any better than this...
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from NOT JUST THE BOSS’S PLAYTHING by Caitlin Crews.