“Jack,” she whispered.
My name—whispered by another woman.
The wrong woman.
This isn’t right.
Get away from her.
Twelve
Margot
He was kissing me like I’d never been kissed before.
Like he was going to war. Like he didn’t care about breathing. Like something in him needed something in me so desperately, he had to find it or die trying.
Not that I wasn’t willing to give it up. At that moment, I’d have flung my panties across the barn like a scone at a political fundraiser.
He was so different from any man I’d ever kissed—everything about him exuded strength and raw masculinity. His chest was so broad, his arms so muscular, his cock so hard, his mouth so commanding as it moved down my throat. It was intoxicating. I’d have let him do anything he wanted to me, just to experience being at the mercy of such power.
Jesus Christ, where did this come from?
I’d sensed him warming toward me throughout the day, and there had been that electric moment in the chicken coop when he’d put his hands on me, but this… This.
He shifted my body so I straddled his thigh, pulled my head back and ran his tongue along the strand of pearls at the base of my neck. My clit pulsed. My hands flexed on his back.
Oh my God.
Oh my God, I’m going to have an orgasm. In a barn. With a farmer. Who I met yesterday.
And it’s going to be SO. GOOD.
I whispered his name…and he pushed me away.
As if hearing his name had signaled the end of a scene we were filming, he put his hands on my shoulders and stepped back, separating us.
We stared at each other in silence, both of our chests rising and falling with rapid breaths. His eyes were clouded with something I couldn’t read—I saw desire there, but pain too.
He dropped his hands. “You should go.”
“Jack, please, can’t we—”
“Go!” He roared, putting his hands on his head. “Just get the fuck out of here, Margot! Now!”
Hurt and confused, I turned and ran from the barn across the yard, tears burning my eyes. I cut a wide berth around the house, hoping Pete and Georgia wouldn’t see me, and darted out to the road where I’d parked. When I reached the safety of my car without being seen, I pulled the door shut and collapsed against the steering wheel.
A few tears spilled over, and I wiped at them with my filthy hands, angry I was this upset over a stupid kiss. “Fuck you, Jack Valentini. I was right about you to begin with. You’re nothing but a foul-mannered jerk.”
So what if he was handsome underneath that scruff and dirt? So what if he had a big, broken heart somewhere inside that massive chest? So what if he had a big dick and probably knew how to use it?
He was an asshole.
And he was a client.
But that kiss…that kiss.
Why did the best kiss I’d ever had have to be with him?
“Dammit!” I banged my head against the steering wheel a few times, then pulled myself together.
In my purse, I found a handkerchief and dabbed at my eyes and nose, dismayed by the amount of dirt that came off my face. I stared at it, noticing how the embroidered navy blue M of my monogram was beginning to fray. Tossing the soiled linen aside, I started the car and drove back to the cottage, berating myself the whole way.
What the hell had I been thinking? It didn’t matter what he looked like naked or how he kissed or why he’d pushed me away. I worked for him, and that was a boundary that shouldn’t be crossed.
He probably realized that too. You should be glad he came to his senses before you started flinging your panties around.
Back at the cottage, I took a long, punishingly hot shower, vowing to put Jack out of my mind and concentrate on the work that needed to be done. I had a meeting with Pete and Brad and Georgia tomorrow, and I wanted to go in prepared. More than prepared—if Jack said anything to them about my less-than-professional behavior, I had to counter that with proof I was good at my job.
When I was finally clean, I put on my pajamas, pulled from the freezer a pitiful frozen lasagna that probably came off an assembly line six years ago, and opened a bottle of wine. While I waited for the lasagna to heat up in the microwave, I called Jaime.
“Hey,” she said. “How’s it going?”
“Great.” I forced myself to be cheerful. “I’m fired up. I’ve got lots of ideas.”
“Awesome. Hit me.”