“Ms. Pope, I’m Xavier. I’ll be your driver for this evening.”
“Nice to meet you.” I smile and follow him to a sleek black limo.
Wow, he really went all out.
“Do you know where we’re going?” he asks curiously.
My eyes widen at his question. “No, do you?”
He lets out a throaty laugh and opens the door for me. “Yes, ma’am.” I take a deep breath and scoot into the back. “It’ll only be about ten minutes to our destination. There’s champagne chilling in the bucket if you’d like a glass.”
“Yes!” I say, almost too eagerly.
Get a damn grip.
I take a small sip and the bubbles tickle my nose. Jackson’s thoughtfulness warms my heart. Even though we saw each other a few hours ago, I’m excited to see him again. It appears he managed to plan quite a bit in a short amount of time.
We arrive at what I’m assuming is a restaurant. Xavier comes around, opens my door, and sweeps his arm to the side where I see Jackson walking toward me. He looks breathtaking. I know that’s not the manliest way to describe him, but there is no other word. He takes my breath away.
My eyes eat him up and I’m pretty sure I lick my lips at the sight of him. He’s dressed in a black pinstripe suit with a white shirt, the top button undone, and his eyes burn even in the darkness. I can see the blue shift to green and deepen as he approaches me. That may be a trick of light and shadow, but I like to think it’s lust making those eyes change like that. The same lust that has my heart racing a mile a minute right now. His smile is wide when he reaches me, but he doesn’t say anything.
Finally, after an eternity—or what feels like it—his low, rough voice breaks the silence. “You look beautiful.”
“Thank you for this. The limo, last night, everything. It’s too much. I never really thought of you as a limo guy.”
“I’m not, but you deserve to feel special. So no, it’s not too much. It’s only the beginning.” He takes a step closer and extends his hand, giving me a single stargazer lily. Does he know they’re my favorite?
Between his words and now this gesture, I’m liquefying. “I love lilies. How did you know?”
“Ashton,” he says matter-of-factly. Of course she would know, but it surprises me that he thought to ask.
“I think you’ll like these plans better than the last.” Jackson grins and grips my hand. Hell yeah. I won’t be climbing any walls in this dress.
We begin to walk forward when suddenly he stops. He turns and tenderly grabs my face with both hands, pulling me gently until we’re an inch apart. “You really are beautiful, baby.” Before I can respond, his lips are on mine. My eyes flutter closed and I grip the lapels of his jacket. His strong arms wrap around my lower back, pulling me into him. What may have started as a tender kiss turns into a passionate exchange. Jackson pulls that out of me. He consumes me, making me forget where, sometimes who, I am.
Dropping his hand, he squeezes my ass and I giggle. Well, that’s one way to stop it. And very Jackson-like. My hand slaps him playfully across the chest as I shake my head at his antics.
“Come on, Muffin. Let’s go eat.”
“Keep it up and I’ll show you how much you’ll pay for using that name.”
“I don’t take lightly to threats, Muff.” I smile and walk forward. He growls and wraps his arms around my waist, pulling me flush against his chest.
“Well, wait until I show you how fucking good it feels when it’s no longer a threat,” he murmurs seductively, staring straight into my eyes.
My stomach clenches and I tremble from the timbre of his voice before he releases his hold. Could he be any sexier?
I’m grinning ear to ear as we enter the restaurant and are seated. It’s beautiful. Candles sit on all the tables and huge chandeliers hang in the center of the room, creating beautiful rainbow prisms everywhere. The walls are deep burgundy and almost look like fabric, which only adds to the ambiance. Everything seems so upscale. It doesn’t surprise me Jackson would choose a place like this. He’s rugged but sophisticated—a walking contradiction.
“I’ve ordered for us already. The chef is a good friend. He’s making us something special.”
Typically, I would be less than excited about someone deciding my meal for me—I’ve had enough of that shit to last a lifetime—but with Jackson it feels different. He’s not trying to take away my choices. He’s simply being kind. “Thank you for all of this, Jackson. It’s very sweet.”
He leans forward. “You’re welcome. I’m just lucky you fell into my chair that day.”
I laugh and turn my head to the side, hiding my embarrassment. Not one of my finest moments. When I finally recover, I look up to find him smiling warmly. “Thanks for reminding me.”
“Hey, look where it got us.”
“Where exactly is this?” Because of my constant self-doubt, I need him to spell it out for me. I don’t want to get too attached to him and have the rug pulled out from under me. Jackson is a man any woman could easily fall in love with, and he seems to have a direct line to my heart.
“I don’t know where it is, but I know I want to be around you. I know I’ve thought about you every day and every night since we’ve met. There are a lot of things we need to learn about each other. But you fell into my life and I won’t let you fall out. So whatever this is … it’s ours.”
My eyes swim with emotion. It takes everything inside of me not to cry. That was the best answer he could’ve given me—it’s honest and real. I sigh and look at him with a hopeful heart. “I want us to get to know each other. I never thought we’d be here.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought you were like all the other guys I’ve met—cocky and looking for one thing.” I shrug and smile. “Not to be a bitch, but you were so intense. I’d never felt anything like that before. Then you turned out to be my client. You keep breaking my rules.” It’s true. Each time I tell myself I’m not going to do this or that, he finds a loophole and I no longer care about my rules anymore.
We fall into a comfortable silence as we let the words settle around us. There are a lot of truths yet to be told. I don’t know how to tell him about what Neil did, or that one of his trusted consultants is a part of my past. There’s no way to know for sure if he heard what she said that day in the conference room. I don’t even know if Piper’s still working with Raven. Regardless, it’s going to come to light at some point.
Throughout dinner we talk and laugh. He tells me more about some of the antics he and his sister, Reagan, got into as kids. We talk about my mother a little and how I haven’t spoken to her since the phone call in Virginia. Jackson makes me nearly fall out of my chair laughing when he tells me the story about Mark and Aaron when they first became SEALs and some of the prank wars they had.
“Okay. So you seriously glued ketchup packets to the toilet seat?” Insane. They’re all insane.
“Fuck yeah, we did. And when Mark sat down, you would’ve thought a bomb went off in the head. There was ketchup everywhere.” His eyes are filled with humor.
“And what did he do back? I can’t see him being like, ‘Good one,’ and letting it go.”
“Oh hell no, there’s no backing down. Mark has one thing I don’t.”
“Which is?” I ask.
“Patience. So he waited until my guard was slightly down. My truck is my baby—you don’t fuck with my F150. Mark, being the prick he is, decided I needed to really suffer. So he took my license plates and flipped them upside down, but then he somehow got into the cab.” I smile and roll my eyes at the talk of his precious truck. As he remembers whatever his friend did to repay him for the bathroom casualty, his smile fades. “It was December and cold as shit. The motherfucker took pepper spray and soaked my floor mats and my air vents. Every time I turned the heat on I couldn’t see because my eyes watered so bad.”