by Violet Duke
Just the other day, in fact, when their front office receptionist, Carly, had come into work looking like she’d spent the night prior crying, Jackson promptly went out and grabbed her an old-fashioned ice cream shake from the coffee shop across the street. Then he perched himself on her desk and launched into a hysterical alphabetized list of all the annoying, atrocious characteristics that described her now ex-boyfriend, who’d apparently dumped her for her roommate. Carly had been cracking up by the letter “j.”
Meanwhile, Leila had watched the whole sweet exchange from the hallway, where she’d melted into a puddle of goo by the time probably sometime around the letter “c.”
But that was nothing compared to what he did behind the scenes. While it appeared to be flying under everyone else’s radar, since Leila had been hovering in the background studying things like a fly on the wall these past few weeks, she’d noticed something about all the strange little occurrences happening around the station that half the workers thought were the act of playful poltergeists.
They were all being caused by Jackson.
Leila’s first week here, one of the reporters, a hardworking young woman named Cara, had been frustrated that her story was getting passed over for a tired story that every sports network in the country had been covering all week. But she was outvoted. Later, just as their main anchor was getting ready to report that tired story, his teleprompter suddenly blitzed out. Everyone panicked like crazy. The producers scrambled to try to find him a hard copy, but strangely, none—of the seven or so copies—were on the floor. While the other anchor fought to stall and buy them more time, Jackson suggested that they cut to a quick feature in the empty green room with Cara and that interesting little story she’d researched. Left without any other options, the producers followed Jackson’s suggestion. Cara nailed it. The producers were happy clams. But perhaps not as happy as the A.V. guys…whom she saw later on the receiving end of a Hollywood handshake from Jackson, along with a conspiratorial pat on the back.
Honestly, she couldn’t imagine anyone in her family’s circle going out of their way to help someone like that. With no personal agenda involved. No other intent than to help a fellow worker shine.
That aspect of Jackson’s character actually manifested in a bunch of different ways. In meetings, she noticed he was constantly encouraging the quiet ones to share their thoughts, while challenging the tired ones with something fun and innovative, or offering genuine, thoughtful praise to the spotlight hogs who seemed to need the attention more than anyone else.
And she never once saw him take credit, even when it was rightfully due. He always stood off to the side with a smile for all of his colleagues’ important moments, big or small, work-related or not.
With every day that passed, the ever-growing list of ways Jackson kept surprising her was never far from her thoughts.
He was never far from her thoughts.
Stopping outside of his office on her usual morning route to her desk, Leila couldn’t help the small intake of breath that came unbidden whenever she heard Jackson’s deep gravelly voice take command of the air all around him.
Sexy didn’t even begin to cover it.
In fact, she was so busy swooning over hearing him speak that it took her a few seconds to realize what exactly she was hearing.
“Steve. You’ll be fine. I can see you right now through the in-house feed. Nod if you can hear me. Good. Don’t worry about the producers. Just stay on my channel. It’s just you talking to me, man. Forget everyone else.”
Pause.
“Nope, don’t you go tensing up on me, Steve. I hear them counting you in. Remember, you’re just talking to me. Telling me how I was a thousand percent right about your precious Miners with their wimpy little O-line this week.”
Pause.
“Hehe, don’t flare those nostrils too wide now, man. I don’t need to see any bats in those caves.”
A few long minutes of silence came next, broken up by the occasional “uh-huhs” and another spectacularly goading comment about the Miners. Until finally, a proud, “Look at you. You nailed it. Not a single stutter. You knocked it out of the park, man.”
Jackson laughed. “No thanks needed. Anytime, buddy.”
A second later, a whooshing sigh filled the office.
Leila followed suit from out in the hallway. Heck, she was pretty certain she’d held her breath the entire time. They all knew how bad Steve’s stuttering had been getting lately. What Jackson just did for him…
“You going to stand there and hover outside my door all day, sunshine?”
Leila gasped. Embarrassed about being caught, but too curious about what she’d just eavesdropped on not to find out the story behind it, she stepped into the office and sank down in the chair in front of him.
He had that sexy backside-casually-resting-against-the-edge-of-the-desk stance as he muted his comm and unhooked his earpiece the way she imagined Clark Kent nonchalantly slid his glasses back on after stopping a speeding bullet.
Did the man do anything un-sexily?
“You just talked Steve through his entire segment.”
Jackson shrugged. “The guy’s been trying to quit smoking ever since he lost his uncle to lung cancer. So he’s been a little on edge. I know the bosses have been talking to him about his contract, and expressing some concerns.” His expression steeled stubbornly. “He’s a good anchor. I didn’t want to see him lose his job just because he was trying to save his own life.”
“And you didn’t do this down in the production booth because…?” She didn’t really have to ask. She just wanted to hear him say it.
Another half-shrug. “It didn’t need to be broadcasted. We all have rough times.”
Leila slowly shook her head in wonder. “Seriously, Jackson, you’re just a prince among men.” Not wanting to sound like a gushing fangirl, she added lightly, “I want to be just like you when I grow up.”
His hazel eyes flickered in amused pleasure over the compliment, before they dropped down to her lips like they did more frequently than she imagined he knew. She immediately kept talking, mostly to avoid licking her lips, which were—per usual during one of Jackson’s gazes—tingling as if he’d just kissed her senseless. “By the way, how did you know I was standing outside your office just now?”
He remained silent for a beat until his eyes left her lips to meet hers again. “You always smell like strawberries.”
The quiet sentence sounded like a confession, uttered as a benediction. But the blast of heat exploding in his gaze shortly after morphed it into something so much more.
This time his gaze was hot, hungry, and knowingly fixed on her mouth as she bit her lower lip to stem the gasp she couldn’t hold back.
His voice was a gravelly rumble. “That’s how I always know when you’re nearby, sunshine.”
—
Jackson watched Leila touch the end of her hair self-consciously. “I didn’t realize it was that strong,” she said softly with a frown.
It wasn’t. It was barely there, but he always noticed it. The fresh, feminine scent of her shampoo never failed to drive him crazy every morning.
He’d caught the faint scent the first day she’d walked past him. Sun-ripened wild strawberries, he’d determined, the kind that smelled as sweet as they did green. The summer before his senior year in high school, Jackson had been hiking to clear his head and temporarily escape the complications that had been his family legacy even back then. He’d stumbled upon an old field about an hour north of his home, along with a fellow football player he recognized from a neighboring school who was foraging through the bushes like a junkie looking for a pot plant.
Turned out, the prize was pretty close—wild strawberries that were the best damn thing Jackson could ever remember tasting. By the time the two of them had finished eating every last berry they could find at the base of that hill, Jackson had found a friend unlike anyone he’d ever met before. To this day, Bennett was still one of h
is best buddies, the one guy he could count on to take him on some crazy adventure whenever life stopped being fun.
So now, he had two reasons to smile over the scent of strawberries.
A few minutes ago, when he’d realized Leila was outside of his office smack-dab in the middle of his pep talk with Steve, Jackson had very nearly stalked over to his door and dragged her in. It was a near thing.
When she frowned and took an investigative sniff of her hair, he explained, “You can barely smell it; I just haven’t seen you all day, which is why I noticed it. But really, it’s mostly just in the mornings.”
“That makes sense, I guess, since I shower in the mornings before work.”
Great. Now the image of her naked in the shower would be forever attached to the scent of strawberries. He shifted in his seat.
“I honestly had no idea, Jackson. I’m sorry. I can switch to a different brand if it’s overpowering. I’ve never been one for dousing myself with perfume—in fact, I hate it when others do that—”
“Don’t,” he interjected before she got any crazy ideas. “I like it. Of course, I can’t eat anything with strawberries anymore without getting…let’s go with, ‘distracted.’ But that’s not a bad thing. You know, when I’m safely seated behind my desk. Which is probably where I should be sitting right now,” he added lightly, with an accompanying wink thrown in to redirect their conversation back to cooler waters. He didn’t want to actually have to go sit behind his desk.
Her lips twitched over the convoluted compliment. “You’re never going to stop, are you?”
Every male atom in his body charged up to full wattage at even the mere prospect of engaging in anything with Leila that would need stopping. “Sunshine, I haven’t even started yet.”
Damn, there they were back in warmer waters again.
“You haven’t?” she asked in an equally affected tone that pulled him in faster than a riptide.
“Just waiting for you to give me the green light,” he answered. Probably unwisely.
The answering flare of heat in her eyes was so much better than a green light, and he couldn’t help but take a very ill-advised step toward her.
Chapter 9
“Leila?” hollered a loud voice from the hall, interrupting Jackson’s forward progress, not to mention his silent communing with the traffic light gods. “We’re almost ready for you down in Studio B. Meet us down there in five.”
Despite nearly growling at the innocent messenger with the god-awful timing—talk about a jarring end to the undoubtedly non-HR-sanctioned game of Red Light, Green Light that had almost gotten started just then—Jackson had to smile at the announcement, knowing exactly how Leila would react to it.
Sure enough, Leila’s eyes were now brimming with a whole different kind of twinkle.
“It’s my first day filming a special investigative segment.” She beamed excitedly. “I have a two-minute slot during ‘Team Command Central During the NFL Draft.’ ”
Her adorable enthusiasm was contagious. “I heard. The ‘War Room’ special with the Outlaws. That’s awesome. The Outlaws’ war room is supposed to be the most state of the art in the league—I hear they can find things twice as fast as some of the other teams during the Draft.”
Grinning, she nodded giddily. “They sent us some room images and fun tidbits. Did you know their war room is actually three separate rooms, and they have back-up generators and all sorts of extravagant contingency plans for every situation, including natural disasters?”
He’d already read through her segment notes earlier, but the excited live summary was a thousand times cuter. “Very cool. Your segment is going to be a hit, I’m sure of it.” With her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling, and her nervous energy bouncing her up the walls, it was impossible not to tease, “Let me know if you want me to be on comm with you the whole time, too. I can whisper dirty, filthy football stats into your ear the entire time to keep your nerves down.”
She ducked her head down to try to hide—unsuccessfully—the sweetest blush Jackson had ever seen, and wide amber eyes now glittering with heat as well as excitement.
“There you go again,” he graveled in a husky murmur, “thinking thoughts neither of us can cash in on.”
And just like that, his fiery little wildcat was back. “As if you’re a harmless bystander in all of that,” she said with a defensive chin lift. “You intentionally make it hard as hell for a girl to resist those kinds of thoughts, and you know it.”
A growl rumbled through his chest and just barely stopped at his throat, in response to both her feistiness and her descriptive word choices.
Something was getting harder, all right.
“Your unfiltered honesty is hell on my good intentions, sunshine.”
Before his brain could shuffle through all the not-so-good intentions it had banked where Leila was concerned, he heard the muffled voices from the earpiece still slung over his shoulder asking when Leila was going to head on down.
Damn. He sighed and tapped on his earpiece. “You’d better go. They’re going to send a search party for you soon.”
She stared at him for a loaded second before nodding and getting up, gratifyingly reluctantly. About halfway to the door, though, she stopped and spun back around, walking back to his desk and holding out a small box he hadn’t even seen her bring into the room.
“What’s this?”
“I heard you talking with one of the guys last week about your friend’s mom having arthritis in her hands. You talked about her so fondly, so I made something for her. Hopefully they help.”
He took out a pair of fingerless mittens. “You knitted these?”
She shrugged. “It was easy. I know some old biddies from my town who swear by these. First thing in the morning, and each night when they put their joint salves on.”
Flipping them over, he chuckled at the curling pink tail along the top of the wrist and the triangular ears poking up from the index finger and pinky finger knuckles. “Piglets?”
Grinning, she petted one of the piglets. “I figured even if they didn’t help, at least they could make her smile when she looked at her hands.”
For chrissakes. She was…so. Damn. Sweet.
He couldn’t help himself.
Slowly, so slowly she could easily walk away if she wanted to, he closed the distance between them and then backed her up against the wall behind his open door, thankful that he hadn’t remembered to raise the privacy blinds on the picture windows separating his office from the main floor this morning.
His hands fell to her hips and anchored there, but he kept himself an arm’s length away. Well, half an arm’s length. He was only so strong. “Sunshine, you make me want things I shouldn’t hope for, shouldn’t even imagine I can keep.”
Eyes wide, voice barely louder than a secret, she asked, “Like what?”
He went with the answer at the very top of his list. “You.”
Her breathing hitched on a sexy-as-all-hell little gasp while her hands—which had been driving him crazy in their hovering dance barely an inch away from his obliques—eventually found a place to land. Her fingertips flexed against his muscles on contact and bunched his shirt at his sides in a slow, curling grip.
For Jackson, it was like experiencing a tactile purr of pleasure, and good lord, it did a fantastic job of decimating his ability to think straight.
All the while, she was observing him as closely as he was watching her. From the granite-hard strain locking his forearms to the deep, heavy rise and fall of his chest, her soft, curious glances tracked every one of his telltale responses to her.
When her eyes rose up to watch his lips part at the exact moment her palms skimmed lightly over his stomach, what was once simply a charged connection between them quickly turned into a whole-body hack on his senses. And he was defenseless to stop his response when her own lips parted in unconscious invitation.
He was a goner.
“Sweetheart, if you don’t wa
nt me to kiss you, tell me now. And use short, simple words. I’m not sure my brain can process any more than that at the moment.”
A deafeningly silent second passed before he felt her hands slide up his tensed torso and rest against his chest, fingers curling into another sexy, soundless purr.
His mouth came crashing down onto hers a heartbeat later.
The kiss began spiraling out of control from the very start, detonating as soon as her lips molded to his. His hands, still anchored on her hips, dragged her even closer until she was flush against him.
It took everything in him to keep the impulse to feel more, do more, have more in check.
He drew back, breathing harshly, his heart beating at a medically alarming rate. He had every intention of stopping at that one mind-blowing kiss.
But then Leila opened her eyes and looked up at him through her lashes, in a mix of veiled hunger and unveiled wonder.
A silent curse slipped past his lips. The more he got to know her, the weaker he got when it came to Leila. And at the moment, he was wholly unapologetic about it.
Seeing her look nearly as affected as he felt helped. Kept him from going straight for the caveman kisses, at least.
Gently, he dipped his head toward hers and nipped at her jawline, feeling a triumphant roar build somewhere deep in his chest when she exhaled a soft, pleased sigh.
Perfect. She was just goddamn perfect. Almost reverently, he swept his tongue across her lower lip, the way he’d been fantasizing about since the day they’d met. His hands speared through her hair—
A split second before the sound of something clattering to the floor brought them crashing back to reality.
Leila froze in his arms and then quickly jerked herself out of his embrace.
Eyes hazy with lust, frustration, and a dozen other chaotic emotions, Jackson swung his gaze to the door and saw Alan, one of his junior reporters who’d been chomping at the bit to venture into field reporting since last year. The man was standing, mouth agape, less than three feet away from them with a look of utter shock. Which was soon followed up by barely concealed disapproval for them both, and finally, clear disdain for Leila.
