Jackson's Trust

by Violet Duke

  And after spending a few minutes googling her, he’d made a few more key discoveries. Via her professional profile on LinkedIn, he found that she’d just finished her MBA the year prior. Impressive. And via the fifty or so other articles linked to her name, apparently, she was the daughter of a longtime ultra-conservative Utah politician. Surprising.

  The woman just kept getting more and more interesting.

  Seeing her walking around and waving at folks a few minutes later, looking polished and perfectly put-together—and ready for another round of lying—as she made her way across the break room over to him, Jackson couldn’t tamp down the sudden urge to ruffle her up a bit.

  And he had a good idea of how he could accomplish that.

  When she gave him that perfected-for-Lloyd smile he’d known was coming, Jackson bid her good morning and launched right into his attack, completely straight-faced. “So, sunshine, why don’t we jump in and get started with some football basics as we head upstairs. How about I explain the different offense and defense positions first. Got your notebook ready?”

  Just like that, she looked ready to poke her pen in her eye. Or his.

  Oh boy, this was going to be fun…

  —

  Great. Leila had to fight hard not to let the slow intellectual death she was dying on the inside show while she pasted an eager oh-me-oh-my smile on her face and took out her notebook. She made sure to open to a fresh page so she’d have plenty of room for some major doodling while Jackson talked, and proceeded to poise her pen at the ready.

  But then the man started his rudely remedial training with the quarterback position—for crying out loud—and she knew she wasn’t going to make it even a few minutes without a volcanic eruption of snark.

  What she needed was a distraction. Big enough to hopefully put an end to this training altogether.

  She quickly put some stars in her soon-to-be-rolling eyes and tried dazzling him with the same vapid smile that had made Lloyd all buttery during her hiring interview earlier in the week.

  As if she’d channeled Pavlov himself in this little experiment, Jackson’s eyes instantly fell down to her lips in utter fascination—men—and his highly educational lesson abruptly came to a stop.

  Thank God.

  “You know what?” he gave her an indulgent half-grin, the kind that all the men she’d grown up around usually reserved for the women they thought were really adorably stupid. “I’m probably getting ahead of myself. Why don’t we start with breaking down the game first? That way, you’ll know what I mean when I talk about touchdowns and field goals and the sort.”

  He had to be freaking kidding! Of all the annoying, condescending—

  Her barely contained glare sliced up to his now laughing eyes when she belatedly realized, “You’re messing with me.” It wasn’t a question. Judging by his expression, Leila was pretty certain that he’d been fully prepared to keep regressing his lesson to explaining how many yards were on the field, hell, to even showing her the color of a football, if she’d let him.

  “Not messing with you per se. More…running a test.”

  “On how much I know about football?”

  “I think we both know the answer to that question, sunshine.”

  She startled, momentarily distracted from his use of that grating nickname again. He looked so confident about her knowledge of football. What in the world? But she’d been so careful….

  His gaze lowered to her lips again. “I simply wanted to see how much it would take for you to lose that fake smile and forced shiny-eyed look.”

  That whiskey-warmed voice of his took on an equally entrancing “serious” tone that was a spellbinding match for those sexy-as-hell glasses he wore like a freaking cover model.

  For some reason, she was then hit out of the blue with the wayward thought as to whether he wore his glasses—and just his glasses—when he got ready for bed.

  His mouth curved up at one side into another amused half-grin. “Damn, I’d offer a penny for your thoughts right now, but something tells me I’d be under-negotiating by a heck of a lot.”

  Everything the man said was so intelligently sexy. A major turn-on.

  Even so, she hit him with the most affronted look she could pull together, which still simmered with honey and butter, of course. She was well aware how these fragile male egos worked in this old boy’s network. “Something tells me that I could say the same thing about your thoughts…Mr. Gray.”

  Oh lord. Why did she pause before his name? That hadn’t been planned. Don’t you dare think about the fifty shades of color in his tie, Leila!

  He grinned. “Touché. Why don’t we get upstairs and start your actual training before I start thinking thoughts that’ll make me bankrupt.”

  His tone was so business-like and matter-of-fact that it took her a few beats to process his words. The man was some sort of sneaky flirting savant. Clearly, she’d need to keep her wits about herself if she didn’t want to accidentally trip and fall into his bed.

  Or couch, or closet, or dark corner, added her imagination helpfully. Leila kept her expression impressively reaction-free, however, as she busied herself getting her higher-floor-access key card out as they walked over to the elevator.

  Ooh, elevator. Her brain added that to the list.

  Stop it, Leila!

  “So you’re the most senior analyst here, right? Does that sort of make you the head of the department?” she asked, mentally patting herself on the back for how steady her voice was. Nicely done. She was a professional. She could do this.

  He shrugged. “I guess if you had to put a label on it. But I don’t make anyone call me Mr. Gray or anything.” His lips twitched to the side as he leaned a few inches closer to swipe his keycard and push the button for the twentieth floor. “And certainly not with an ‘e’ instead of an ‘a’ in my name,” he added quietly.

  Dammit! If women couldn’t count on an unreachable, exclusive claim over popular erotica references, the whole gender inequality war was even less fair than she’d thought. She feigned a look of confusion.

  Luckily, Leila was allowed a moment to regroup when the elevator stopped at the next recording floor and a bunch of studio production crew folks filed in to fill the elevator to capacity. During those few short seconds, Leila watched as a stunning blonde expertly wove her way through the bodies until she—oops—bumped up against Jackson with a look of mock surprise.

  Thank goodness the woman’s well-inflated breasts had cushioned the impact.

  Though Leila wasn’t thrilled with the development, the ever-present reporter in her seemed to want to focus more on breaking the situation down into microscopic data than getting unproductively jealous. Good. That said, Leila couldn’t help it when her data-driven brain began hypothesizing about the physiology of air displacement—as in, if the woman’s current breathiness was the direct result of the funbags on her chest having suddenly grown at least another cup size somehow.

  Science was all around us, after all.

  After a while, however, she let go of her snarky scientific ponderings and began concentrating on listening in. Sure, she felt a twinge of envy that Jackson was gifting the woman with smiles that Leila had yet to receive, but mostly, she found herself fascinated with the exchange.

  Aside from alternating between laughing a tad louder than what standard elevator decorum considered polite, and then contradicting that lack of consideration by whispering most everything else she was saying into his ear, the woman seemed sweet. Genuinely taken with Jackson.

  Jackson, however, was considerably less receptive. He was friendly, yes, but nothing more.

  Interesting. And it didn’t even look like he was doing it for Leila’s benefit.

  A flirt savant with parameters. Darn it, why did he have to be so intriguing?

  Two floors later, and they were alone again. Leila couldn’t resist. “Is she not your type? She seems like she would be.” Inquiring minds wanted to know. Not because she was tryi
ng to gauge his type for her own personal investigation or anything.

  Visibly surprised, he gave her one of those half-smiles again and shook his head. “Rachel is great. Gorgeous, smart, sweet.”

  “Yes, I can see why you weren’t flirting back with her; she sounds just wretched.”

  He chuckled. “Damn, caught that, did you? I was trying to be nice about it.”

  And he had been. It was perhaps the nicest brush-off she’d ever witnessed. Not without a bit of regret, however. Hence her questions.

  They reached their floor and he lowered his voice as he walked them toward his office. Before they got there, however, he redirected them around a corner and opened the door to an impressively lavish conference room. The moment he shut the door behind him, he turned and gently backed her away from the big picture windows lining the far end of the wall. When they were tucked invisibly into one of those dark corners her brain had been imagining earlier, he negotiated point blank. “If I answer your questions, you answer mine about why you’re hiding what you know about football. Deal?”

  Chapter 5

  Leila had absolutely no idea why she liked the fact that he split the focus of his gaze almost equally between her eyes and her lips, but she did. She didn’t let the warm fuzzies in her stomach affect her negotiating, however. “That doesn’t sound like a fair deal. If my reasons get out, it would turn my life upside down, but from what I gather from water cooler talk yesterday alone, most of the women in this building don’t really care what your reasons are for friend-zoning any woman not looking for a quick hook-up—they all want to sleep with you regardless.”

  “An exaggeration.” After a droll brow quirk, he had the grace to smother back a grin. “For the most part.”

  Lordy, the man made honesty—even the utterly male variety—yet another seductively charming quality he’d been endowed with too much of.

  She was in deep, deep trouble.

  “My reasons,” he added, “and what’s hidden beneath those reasons are two different things. I wasn’t planning on revealing any of my secrets, sunshine. So I wouldn’t expect you to, either.” He stepped forward and stared into her eyes. “Not yet, at least.”

  T-R-O-U-B-L-E. She could almost hear the universe’s cheerleaders shouting the seven letters while the crowd shouted back, J-A-C-K-S-O-N in response.

  She shook her head to clear all the clamor. “Fair enough. Answers minus the deep, dark secrets. Deal?”

  A flash of something way more intent than mere interest, and a good distance away from acquiescence, darkened his gaze before he tilted his head in agreement.

  Somehow, she managed to keep her wits about her. “You first.”

  He backed up two steps then. As if they were playing a two-person board game. “I don’t flirt with women who want more than I can offer—namely, a relationship. Or anything resembling breakfast come morning.”

  Well, that was…honest. “The prototypical perpetual bachelor.” Shame, he didn’t seem the type.

  And judging by the sudden darkness clouding his eyes, he agreed with her. Huh. “You don’t like being a bachelor?”

  He blinked and the clouds vanished. “Damn, Lloyd should’ve hired you as a junior reporter. You’re like a pit bull with a tug toy.”

  She blinked back at him, making it clear she wasn’t going to apologize for it. Nor was she going to stop tugging.

  With a grudging sigh and the tiniest look of respect, he replied, “My life is…complicated.” He broke his gaze away from her. “A relationship would be doomed to fail from the start.”

  He sounded genuinely disappointed. Almost wistful. The way her grandmother had sounded years ago when her doctors told her she had to change her diet to cut out sweets, her favorite thing ever.

  His eyes found hers again. “Funny thing is that I used to be one of those guys who figured he’d have a kid or two by now. Cute hell raisers who’d help me spoil their mom on Sunday mornings, that sort of thing.” Doting affection filtered into his tone. “And vice versa. A partner in crime who’d help me plan surprises for the kids who would be so stinkin’ adorable that I’d max out the memory on my phone taking photo after photo.”

  Good grief, she was pretty sure one of her ovaries just fainted.

  She had the sneaking suspicion that she was going to fall for this man. Hard. “So because of your secretly complicated life, you only date women who want…”

  “Sex.” His eyes stayed glued to hers as he dropped the one word like a bomb. “Just sex. At their place, not mine. Occasionally, with lunch or dinner as well, but never breakfast.”

  Wow. That was the very definition of just sex, all right.

  “That honest enough for you?”

  Yep. That worked. Did it settle her curiosity at the moment? Unquestionably. Did it get her to want to widen the number of spaces between them on the game board?

  Not so much.

  She watched him watch her reaction to his answer, and gave him the smile she knew he wasn’t expecting. Along with the follow-up she knew he really wasn’t expecting. “So you flirting with me earlier was you picking up on some sex-only, no-breakfast-in-bed vibe I have going on?” she teased. “That’s a pretty powerfully accurate gift you got there, Skippy.”

  Aaand they were back to standing on the same square on the game board.

  “Sunshine, why do I get the feeling you don’t really have a boyfriend?”

  —

  Jackson found his palms flat against the wall on either side of her shoulders before he could stop himself. And yet he did nothing to remedy what was surely a bad decision on his part, work-wise. Instead, he just watched her, and waited for an answer.

  Her gaze pulled away from his a moment later, and dropped down to his tie. While her teeth sank into that lush lower lip he’d been fascinated with since yesterday, she reached out her free hand to straighten and smooth out his tie.

  Oddly, the unbidden action was a penetrating fist to his chest. He hadn’t been lying about having had more than a few passing thoughts of a wife and kids to spoil. And this tie-straightening? It belonged right there in the vault with all the other untouchable daydreams for his life.

  When her lips parted then, instead of an answer, he got another question. “Why do you insist on calling me sunshine?”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “I’d rather you call me by my name.”

  Exhaling slowly, he admitted, “Me too. Which is why I’m sticking to sunshine.”

  Eyes still glued to his tie, she resumed her distracting lip biting, looking as reflective as she did amused. “So does that mean I shouldn’t call you Jackson?”

  Holy shit, he liked the sound of his name on her lips. Too damn much. “Call me Jackson.” It wasn’t a reply to her inquiry. It wasn’t even a request. It had edged over to a demand, which he tried to dull the alpha impact of by reminding her, “You didn’t answer my question.”

  After a moment’s pause, she finally shook her head. “No boyfriend. But don’t tell anyone else here that.”

  He nodded. Yeah, that worked for him. He didn’t want any of the other vultures in the station circling around her. “So what’s your stance on morning-after breakfasts?”

  Her gaze never wavered. “I actually like cooking breakfast for one,” she replied with an honesty he could hear clear as day. “But,” she concluded softly, “I think that’s an irrelevant point for us.”

  Coming from any other woman, the finality in that statement would be merely disappointing. Coming from Leila, his brain was finding it almost unacceptable. “Let me guess. You don’t sleep with guys you work with.”

  She answered via a slight head tilt, before driving the point home. “This job is really important to me.”

  Enough said. That was that.

  Jackson did his best to curb the disappointment while he dropped his hands from the wall and backed away. “I don’t blame you. It’s a great opportunity for your career.” He grit his teeth against the urge to crowd her
back up against the wall when he saw her chest rise and fall, at a pace that matched his own.

  Hell, even the way the woman breathed was a turn-on.

  Being the consummate professional around her was going to be a damn nightmare. But not impossible. He just had to focus. “So that brings us right back to why we’re here today; throwing you into the deep end so you can hit the ground running in this amazing career opportunity.”

  Her eyes widened the slightest bit in surprise. “Just like that? No muss, no fuss? I’m now in the same category as Rachel, never to be flirted with again?”

  He almost laughed at that as he swept another quick glance over her. Commercial-shiny, sleek layers of caramel and toffee framing her face, ultra-feminine curves he couldn’t spend too much time on without disrupting the fit of his slacks, and approximately a mile or two of toned legs. Seriously, she was superheroine pretty. Tough and sexy, with a sweet country rock goddess smile, and a hella cute tomboy way about her that she couldn’t hide. Not even under that chic thigh-high skirt and five-button blouse—yes, he’d counted—she had the rightfully held confidence to wear unplastered to her body…

  The same category as Rachel? Was she kidding? Christ, she belonged in a category all her own. When you threw in her wit, fire, and football chops, Jesus, she was basically his dream girl.

  “Don’t think it’s going to be easy for me not to flirt with you, sunshine. But I respect your commitment to your career.” So saying, he walked over to the refreshment bar at the corner of the conference room and poured them both some coffee, giving his brain the time it needed to shift gears and make good on his declaration.

  This wasn’t going to be easy.

  Because while he had absolutely no problem stepping back when a woman wasn’t interested, Leila wasn’t disinterested. In fact, all evidence would point to her being about as interested as he was.

  She was just…off-limits.

  A volatile combination.

  Chapter 6

  Leila watched Jackson’s rigid posture slowly relax the farther away he got from her. By the time he was on the other end of the room, he’d flipped the conversation around completely, and his voice turned casual, friendly, and all business.