by Nicola Marsh
She didn’t do anything but catapult into his arms at a speed that sent them staggering backwards and slamming against a brittle stone wall.
He didn’t care.
As he buried his nose in her hair and inhaled a lungful of delicious berries, her arms wrapped tight around his waist, he couldn’t care less about anything.
He had Ruby in his arms again.
He had no intention of letting go.
* * *
‘When your text said “see you soon” I thought you meant back at Armidale.’
Ruby stroked Jax’s chest, her fingertips skating along the skin, her cheek resting an inch from her hand. His heart beat strongly beneath her ear, the fast beats indicative of their fast reunion.
She’d missed him.
More than the sex, more than the intimacy, she’d missed this. Lying close to him in the aftermath of another sensational orgasm, making desultory small talk, content to do nothing but bask in the afterglow.
‘I couldn’t wait ’til Sunday to see you.’
She propped her chin on her hand, looked him in the eye. ‘Missed me, huh?’
‘Like you wouldn’t believe.’
The sincerity in his glare warmed her. So she’d been silly enough to fall in love? By the way he was looking at her, he was halfway there himself.
What had changed?
She didn’t want to disrupt their unexpected reunion, didn’t want to risk him closing down on her as he usually did when she mentioned anything remotely emotional, but if they were to have any chance he had to start opening up to her.
‘Careful. Admitting you missed me is tantamount to revealing emotion, something you tend not to do.’
He stiffened, the shadows instantly darkening his expression. At least he didn’t feel the need for a sudden bathroom visit or snack.
‘You’re saying I have difficulty expressing emotions?’
She raised an eyebrow and his mouth kicked into a smile.
‘Okay, okay, maybe I do but there’s a damn good reason for it.’
Daring to hope he’d confide in her, she sat up and clutched the sheet to her chest. ‘Tell me.’
After a long, drawn-out moment, he shimmied up the pillows, still within touching distance, his wary gaze not leaving hers.
‘I had a great childhood. Loved my folks. Idolised them. Had a ball with the constant parties and going out and staying up later than other kids. We lived the high life, together.’
A deep groove slashed his brows as she braced for the tough stuff.
‘Until I graduated uni and heard the rumours. Working in the corporate world, there were mutterings about Dad, why he made millions on deals that sent other people broke. And why a cultivated high-society woman like Jackie Blaise would be with a guy of dubious background. Slumming it, apparently, considering Denver’s dad was a small-time petty drug pusher who ended up dead for his double dealings.’
She didn’t want to stem the flow, didn’t want to intrude, but felt compelled to say something to fill the growing silence.
‘That’s harsh about your pop.’
He shrugged. ‘Never knew him. Accepting Dad’s betrayal...much harder to accept.’
‘He was using your mum to cultivate rich friends to scam?’
Jax winced. ‘I still don’t know if he genuinely loved Mum, or just saw her as a meal ticket. She adored him, he used her and fleeced most of her friends for millions.’
‘How did your mum cope?’
Sadness pinched his mouth and she itched to smooth it away. ‘She joined him.’
She didn’t want to push him, didn’t want to probe too deep for fear of opening old wounds, but she’d never felt closer to him than she did at that moment.
This was true intimacy, the sharing of confidences, of secret fears.
She didn’t want him to stop.
‘What do you mean?’
‘A lot of rumours circulated when he went to prison. Rumours of an accomplice.’
Pain, raw and undiluted, flashed across his face and she reached out to momentarily cup his cheek before letting her hand fall. ‘There was an extensive investigation but the police never found proof Mum was implicated, so she got off.’
He shook his head, disgust curling his upper lip. ‘The fact she ran and didn’t look back not long afterwards pretty much proves she must’ve been involved. Makes me sick.’
His hands clenched into fists, bunching the sheets. ‘Their friends trusted them and they embezzled every last cent.’
She traced his knuckles, smoothing each one until first one hand, then the other, unfurled. ‘Bet they shattered your trust too.’
He glanced away and her heart bled at his bleakness. ‘Dad ruined everything. For months after his incarceration I couldn’t work in this city, not with Maroney as a surname. And while people didn’t blatantly blame Mum, I reckon they must’ve suspected.’
‘So you left.’
He nodded. ‘Never looked back. Mum’s mum knew Denver was a ratbag all along and didn’t trust Jackie’s judgement so she left me the mine in her will and I headed west to prove myself.’
Ironic, that in proving himself he’d almost ruined her. If the Seaborn mine went under, so did Seaborn’s.
Not worth thinking along those lines when they’d come so far. And would continue to grow, together, if she had any say in the matter.
‘You’ve never visited him?
His incredulity answered the question before he opened his mouth. ‘I want nothing to do with him.’
Her fingers stilled as she covered one of his hands with hers. ‘I heard his appeal’s coming up.’
A deep frown slashed his brows. ‘Yeah, as I’m constantly reminded by the press contacting me for the inside scoop.’ He made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. ‘Those vultures won’t take no for an answer.’
‘Might be good to talk to them, hmm? Or maybe go see your dad, kind of like an exorcism of the past?’
He stared at her as if she’d suggested he break his dad out of jail. ‘I’ve spent the last decade distancing myself from the old man’s poison. Why on earth would I want to see him?’
She saw the shadows clouding his eyes, the pain contorting his mouth, and wanted to butt out. But intimacy went beyond the physical and he had to let her in.
‘Because he’s your father. Because you said yourself you’d had a great relationship until he was arrested.’ She took a deep breath and ploughed on. ‘Because it might help you lose the latent anger eating you up inside.’
‘You don’t know anything about me,’ he muttered, his expression bleak as he glared at some spot over her right shoulder.
‘Yeah, I do,’ she said, intertwining her fingers with his and gripping tight. ‘You’re an incredible guy and it’s not worth letting the past twist you into knots. Maybe if you just talked to him—’
‘No.’
Jax flung off the covers and stood so fast she almost tipped off the edge of the bed.
‘Jax—’
‘I’m taking a shower.’
He stalked across the room, emotionally closed off, the distance between them more yawning than ever. If she hadn’t already realised she’d fallen in love with him she would’ve known it at that moment, for his impressive taut butt didn’t register as much as the anger radiating off him.
She did the only thing a woman in love could do.
She followed him.
Jax lifted the flick mixer and stepped under the rain-shower head, wishing the hot water would wash away the anger and bitterness and regret eating at his soul.
Regret he hadn’t confronted his dad years ago, regret he hadn’t set a PI to find his mum, regret he’d blurted his sorry tale to Ruby.
Way to go with making this a romantic weekend.
He’d stuffed up. Big time.
If there was one thing he hated more than thinking about his dad it was pity. Pity he’d seen in Ruby’s expressive eyes.
He thumped the stone wall, wishing h
e could punch it ’til his knuckles bled.
Not that it would help. He’d trodden the road to oblivion in his twenties. Had lost himself in alcohol and women. Until he’d found a new way to obliterate the humiliation of being Denver Maroney’s son: making millions his dad could never touch.
Not that he’d ever been a drunk or a user, but for the first six months after Denver went to jail and the business world continually rejected him, he’d drowned his sorrows by partying as hard as dear old Dad had used to.
Until he’d inherited the mine and never looked back.
He hadn’t been back to Melbourne in ten years, avoiding the ghosts of his past. Now, thanks to an amazing woman, he was considering staying put.
What the hell was he thinking?
A pair of soft arms slid around his middle as Ruby pressed against his back, her body in full contact, not saying a word as the water cascaded over them.
He knew. Knew why he was contemplating this madness, knew why he’d let a woman into his heart for the first time ever, knew why it was worth risking the hurt again.
Ruby Seaborn, with her ready smile and infectious laugh and innate vibrancy that brightened a room just by being in it, was a woman worth risking everything for.
He turned, searching for the right words to explain his behaviour. She stalled him by placing a finger to his lips, her eyes conveying more than words ever could.
Gone was the pity. Replaced by a depth of caring that squeezed his lungs in a vice.
Her loaded stare didn’t leave his as her hands slid over his chest, tracing ridges, skimming his nipples, heading lower.
He tensed as she skirted around his hard-on, his angst at revealing too much gone, replaced by the relentless, all-consuming drive to have her. To drive deep into her repeatedly until all he could focus on was the heat and slickness and release.
Silently cursing his lack of forethought in not keeping a stash of condoms handy, he stilled her hands. Only to have her slide away, her skin slippery and wet, as she knelt before him.
She finally broke eye contact to stare at his hard-on, inches from her mouth, and he throbbed in response.
She smiled at the movement, a coy smile that didn’t waver as she edged forward, excruciatingly slow, until her lips wrapped around him.
He swore and extended his arms out to the sides, bracing against the stone walls, as Ruby took him all the way into her warm, wet mouth.
She cupped him underneath with one hand, the other wrapping around the base of his shaft as she sucked and licked and drove him insane.
Insanity was good. Insanity obliterated the questions she’d raised a few moments ago, questions he’d already asked himself but hadn’t answered.
Should he go see Denver? Confront him? Put the past to rest?
Ruby purred as her tongue swirled around the head of his arousal, around and around, slow, languorous strokes that made a man forget everything but the feel of a talented woman driving him to the brink.
She licked the length of him, from tip to base and back again, her rapturous expression firing his libido.
He loved that about her: her uninhibited, genuine enjoyment of sex.
She tugged at him and he groaned as her slick mouth took him all the way in again.
So much heat. So much wetness. So much pleasure.
The pressure built too quickly but he was powerless to stop, unable to look away from the biggest erotic turn-on. The woman he loved on her knees pleasuring him with her mouth.
She picked up the pace, her hand and mouth moving in sync. He watched his sexy erotic fantasy come to life, her unabashed joy in giving him what he needed fuelling his passion.
When she ramped up the suction and squeezed the base of his shaft simultaneously, his mind blanked a second before he exploded, the force of his orgasm rocking him back until he hit the wall behind.
It took him a good five minutes to recover his wits. Five minutes in which he licked his way down her slick body and pleasured her with his mouth until she screamed.
Five minutes until he realised what had registered in his subconscious before his orgasm had slammed him sideways.
He loved her.
Man, oh, man.
* * *
‘Glad I intruded on your solo weekend?’
Ruby reluctantly shifted out of her new favourite spot in the world, snuggled under her husband’s protective arm, and glanced up at him.
‘What do you think?’
The smile that sprang so readily to his lips made her as happy as him being here. ‘I think we’ve had a well-deserved weekend away from business.’
‘And a weekend to reconnect.’
She half expected him to bristle at the inference or make some smart comment that they’d never connected in the first place but, thankfully, he didn’t. That alone demonstrated how far they’d come this weekend.
Jax had opened up to her, had revealed more about his buried insecurities than she’d ever imagined, had cemented what she’d secretly hoped since he’d arrived unexpectedly.
That he cared as much as she did.
Everything he’d said, everything he’d done this weekend, proved it.
She’d have to broach the topic of what was really going on here eventually but for now she was content basking in the romance of being on a decadent weekend away with her husband.
‘About that...’
The mischievous twinkle in his eyes made her pulse leap.
‘What?’
‘Reconnecting.’ He brushed a kiss across her lips and she sighed, content for him to kiss her for ever.
He eased away and whispered against the side of her mouth. ‘I’ve got a surprise for you.’
‘I’m all for surprises,’ she said, thinking nothing could top the refreshing ways he continued to invent for pleasuring her in the bedroom.
He slid a hand into his jacket pocket, pulled out a small square box and held it out to her on his palm.
Her heart stuttered and stalled before firing as if it had been shot with adrenalin.
If that box contained what she thought it did, she’d been wrong.
Surprise didn’t come close to describing what she was feeling.
Elation? Joy? Love that defied logic?
She shouldn’t have fallen in love with him so quickly, shouldn’t have fallen at all.
They were so different, worlds apart, but none of that mattered as he gazed at her as if she was the only woman in the world for him.
‘Go ahead, open it.’
Her fingers trembled and she shook her head. ‘You do it.’
‘Okay.’ His cocky grin reeked of a guy who knew he had her, a guy confident in his ability to woo and charm and confound.
She held her breath as he eased open the lid of the crimson velvet box, not caring it wasn’t one of Seaborn’s signature navy boxes, not caring much beyond anything but seeing the ring he’d chosen for her.
‘For you.’
The breath she’d been holding whooshed out in disappointment as she stared at the half-carat ruby and diamond cluster.
She shouldn’t be so ungrateful but as an engagement ring it ranked a lowly two out of ten. Not her taste, not her style, not what she’d imagined at all.
Oblivious to her shock, he plucked it out of the box and held it out.
‘It’s a promise ring. Means I promise not to be too much of a jerk about this fake marriage when we sort out where we go from here.’
Numb, with ice trickling through her veins, she watched him slide it onto the ring finger of her right hand.
Not an engagement ring at all.
A promise ring, what some people referred to as pre-engagement, the engagement ring you have when you’re not really having an engagement.
And what the hell did he mean by not being a jerk when they sorted out their fake marriage?
What was this, a trinket to buy her off so she wouldn’t lose her cool when he said ‘thanks for the good time, babe, but I’m outta here’?
Stunned into speechlessness, she stared at the ring, the waning sunlight catching the diamonds, sparkling at her with jauntiness.
‘I chose a ruby for obvious reasons,’ he said, raising her hand to his lips and kissing the knuckle above the ring.
Great, he planned on giving her the brush-off with a tacky namesake too.
Catty and ungrateful, maybe, but she couldn’t get past the fact he’d only given her a promise ring when she’d expected so much more.
‘You don’t like it.’
His cold flat tone scared her as much as the truth she’d have to tell him.
‘It’s not that—’
‘Then what is it?’
He dropped her hand and eased away, leaving her cold and bereft and craving his warmth.
‘Look, Jax, the ring’s nice—’
‘Nice?’ He spat the word, equating it with disgust. ‘Nice is for cupcakes. Nice is not for a guy giving a girl a ring.’
Disappointed he didn’t know her better, didn’t know her well enough to know what she liked, she tried to smooth the escalating tension.
‘It’s just not what I—’
‘Want, right?’
He thrust his hands into his pockets, his formidable glower radiating a depth of anger she’d never seen before from him.
‘My mistake. Won’t happen again.’
Stunned, she watched him stalk towards his car, his angry strides eating up the ground too fast.
‘Jax, wait—’
‘Don’t worry, I won’t renege on our deal. Your precious Seaborn’s is safe.’
He paused and looked back, a tortured expression twisting his handsome features. ‘That’s all you ever cared about anyway.’
‘That’s not true,’ she yelled, her brain and feet finally working in sync as she ran towards him.
Too late.
He gunned the engine, reversed in a squeal of tires, and floored it out of the driveway and out of her life.
* * *
Ten hours later, Jax’s flight touched down in Perth. During the drive back to Melbourne, finalising details at the office, heading to Tullamarine airport and the monotonous three-hour flight to Perth, he’d done his best not to think about Ruby.
And failed miserably.
Her rejection of his ring burned and he lost count of the number of times he’d absent-mindedly rubbed his chest where a permanent ache resided.
