The Billion Dollar Bachelor(3)

With his father, Patrick Morrow, in the hospital, the responsibility for both the company and the family fell to Jax. And he would do what needed to be done in order to keep control of both. He just had to keep a cool head and not let his emotions get in the way.

Sipping his whiskey, he let his gaze drift over the rest of the bar. He liked this place. It was unpretentious—which was just about impossible in his neck of the woods—and so was its clientele. He especially liked the fact that even though they must know who he was—being one of New York’s richest and most successful businessmen made anonymity next to impossible—they left him alone.

There was a stir near the doorway, a brief ripple of interest flickering through the people huddled nearby. Automatically he looked, curious to see what had caught their attention since apparently even he was old news.

It was a woman. She was tall and long-limbed, wearing an expensive red silk cocktail dress that molded to slight yet by no means uninteresting curves. Her black hair was coiled in a glossy, elegant chignon at the back of her head, exposing a long, elegant neck.

Jesus. He could imagine slipping his fingers around that neck. Taking her in a firm grip. Not enough to choke or hurt her, never that. But enough to feel the texture of her skin and her heartbeat underneath his fingers as he pushed her up against a wall. Had her hard and fast and …

Fuck. Where had that thought come from?

Jax rubbed a hand over his eyes. He must be really drunk if he was having fantasies about up against a wall sex with a stranger. Especially since one-night stands had never been his thing.

The woman was still standing there, looking around with a smile curving her luscious, red-painted mouth. Like she’d found Nirvana or something. Which was odd since a beautiful, sophisticated woman like her didn’t belong in a place like this, she really didn’t.

Heads turned as she moved into the bar, watching her progress. She seemed oblivious to the stares, her dark eyes taking everything in as if she’d never been in a bar in all her life. The stained ceiling, the scuffed wooden floor, the dim lighting, the sound of blues coming from the jukebox in the corner.

And as she looked at everything else, Jax looked at her. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her and he didn’t know why. In his world, beautiful women were a dime a dozen and he had his pick—power was their aphrodisiac and he had it in spades. So really, this girl with her black hair and her red dress that spoke of sex and sin, was just one more.

Yet there was something about her that caught at him like a fish hook. For all her sophistication, she moved with a hint of uncertainty, as if she wasn’t quite sure of her high red heels. And the way she looked at her surroundings … He was sure he’d caught both wonder and satisfaction crossing her delicately carved features. Like she was amazed at where she was and pleased with herself for finding it.

She stopped just short of the bar, a flash of that uncertainty lingering on her face. Then she turned her head and those interested dark eyes met his.

And he felt the impact like a blow. Like he’d been plugged into a wall socket and the switch thrown.

The whiskey haze vanished, all the alcohol burned through by the fire that suddenly ignited inside him.

He’d always been cool and calm and logical, keeping all his passions locked away. Because decisions made in the heat of moment were seldom good ones—he’d learned that years ago, the day his father had brought Sean home to live with them. And certainly, leading Morrow Incorporated had only confirmed it.

But the moment his gaze locked with hers, all his cool, calm logic vanished. The company ceased to exist. The scandal currently rocking it utterly forgotten, his family gone along with it.

The only thing he was aware of was the fact that for the first time in his life, he wanted.

And what he wanted was her.

*

The guy sitting at the bar in the corner held her frozen to the spot. She couldn’t have said what he was wearing or even if he was handsome or not; the only thing in the world was the fire that burned in his intense blue eyes. The kind of fire that lurked in the heart of a blaze, so intense it didn’t burn orange but a bright, clear blue.

The kind of fire that burned you to ash.

Pandora tore her gaze away, her heart racing even more madly than it had done when she’d escaped the limo. Men looked at her a lot and she was used to it. But what she wasn’t used to was having a response that wasn’t a shiver of repugnance.

Because it definitely wasn’t repugnance she was feeling right now. It was more a dizzying kind of excitement that made her breathless. Like the rush she got when she hacked into a really complicated firewall with her laptop, which would earn her major punishment if she was ever caught.