Broken Resolutions: A Rule Worth Breaking / The Man She Can't Forget / Billionaire Boss, M.D.. Maggie Cox
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It wasn’t just her beauty that drew him to her. There was a refreshing innocence about Caitlin. Having met so many women whose hunger for fame and success made them employ any means possible to get what they wanted—his ex-wife being a case in point—he found Caitlin was like a breath of fresh air. Jake had never wanted a woman more in his life…wanted her with an ache that was the sweetest agony from the moment he woke up in the morning to when he lay down to sleep at night.
‘Good. Because it won’t go away,’ he continued. ‘Sooner or later we’re going to have to deal with it.’
Caitlin’s already pink cheeks flushed even pinker. Then she turned and fled into the bedroom to get dressed.
Sighing, Jake dropped down onto the squashy red sofa, picked up a cushion, then angrily jettisoned it onto the floor. Just what the hell did he think he was doing? He’d called in on her because he’d wanted to apologise for being so uncompromising at rehearsals, but as soon as he’d set eyes on her in that innocent terry robe of hers he’d known immediately that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath it. Somehow his rigidly imposed self-control had gone out of the window and all he’d been able to think about was how soon he could get her into bed.
He wanted to bury himself so deep inside her he’d assuage every ache he’d ever had…hers too. Yes, he’d had the odd one-night stand since Jodie had done the dirty on him—how else could he satisfy a healthy libido—but nothing could have prepared him for a hunger so primal, so insatiable, that it threatened to consume him body and soul if it wasn’t satisfied.
Dragging his fingers through his hair, Jake slowly shook his head. To add to his frustration Caitlin’s provocative scent lingered in the room, tormenting him. Where was she, for goodness’ sake? How long did it take to throw some clothes on? Longer than it would take him to tear them off that was for sure…
Restless, he got to his feet, his long legs taking him to the other side of the room and back again as he paced the floor. The living room was ridiculously small—almost oppressively so. A few family photos sat on the mantelpiece, along with a small glass jar full of assorted coloured crystals.
Jake was far too distracted to examine the photographs more closely, so he turned away to survey the rest of the room. A large pine bookcase dominated an entire wall, and there wasn’t a shelf on it that wasn’t crammed to bursting point with books. He barely stole a glance at the titles he was so keyed up, but he couldn’t fail to notice that most of the literature dwelt on self-development or philosophy.
Had Caitlin been interested in those subjects before or after her catastrophic relationship with the drug addict? Jake was curious. Clearly she must have been driven to seek out some sort of guidance after such an ordeal. Somehow he felt chastened. Living with a drug addict and alcoholic would certainly be no picnic. He himself had had friends and associates who’d been drawn down a similar destructive route. He’d told Caitlin that the music business was full of such casualties.
But she’d confessed to him that she’d lost everything, including her home. That must surely be the reason why she was living in this rabbit hutch. Jake would go stir crazy, living in such a confined space. Being the grateful owner of spacious homes in London, New York and LA—which were admittedly empty most of the time, due to his peripatetic lifestyle—he doubted he would manage even half as well if he had to live the way Caitlin did. Even his room at the quaint Pilgrim’s Inn was three times the size of this one.
Without realising it, his hands had curled into fists down by his sides.
He’d remarked to her that addiction was a disease, not a weakness, but by God he’d like just ten minutes with the jerk who’d ripped her off so badly that she was reduced to living in two shabby rented rooms.
‘What would you like to drink? Tea or coffee?’
Caitlin’s voice took Jake by surprise. Turning round, he avidly noted her long shapely legs, which were encased in soft worn denim, and the pretty pink top she’d donned, which was fastened at the front with little pearl buttons. In her apparent haste to get dressed the top two buttons had been left undone, inadvertently revealing the creamy cleft between her breasts, and the arresting sight made him catch his breath.
But she might not have left the buttons undone deliberately—she hardly needed to resort to feminine wiles to get his attention. All the woman had to do was glance at him with those bewitching emerald eyes and Jake was all hers.
‘Neither,’ he answered. ‘Why don’t you just come and sit down so we can talk?’
Caitlin acquiesced, her brows puckering when she noticed that one of her multi-coloured cushions was lying on the floor. Inside her chest, her heart was galloping at what felt like a worrying breakneck speed.
When Jake had asserted that sooner or later they would have to ‘deal with it’, had he been saying that it was inevitable that they had an affair? Because if he had then he hadn’t reckoned with her iron will. It didn’t matter how attracted she was to the man, she wasn’t the type to jump thoughtlessly into bed with him. Sean was the only man she’d ever been intimate with, and to be honest it hadn’t been anything to write home about even when she’d foolishly imagined herself in love with him.
Being a singer and a member of Blue Sky was far more important than having a hot little affair with the band’s manager, she told herself.
‘I was rough on you today.’ Still standing in the centre of the room, Jake rubbed a hand round his beard-darkened jaw. ‘I feel like I owe you an apology.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I pushed you too hard.’ He flinched as though genuinely regretting it.
‘You don’t have to apologise. I know I’ve still got a long way to go and I need all the help and guidance I can get. Rick says that you’re the best, and so do the others. I’m hungry to learn, Jake. You shouldn’t lose any sleep over the fact that you had to yell at me a few times.’
Gritting his teeth, he silently cursed the ache in his groin that refused to be tamped. It wasn’t the fact that he’d lost his temper a few times that he was losing sleep over. She was sitting on her sofa, looking about as tempting as Eve in the Garden of Eden, and her soothing velvet voice rolled over him like honey. She might not know it but she was seducing him as thoroughly as if she sat there naked, beckoning him to come to her.
‘Are you always this reasonable?’ He quirked an eyebrow.
Although he’d apologised, he was still spoiling for an argument—anything to defuse the sexually charged tension between them.
‘No.’ An amused smile played at the corners of her mouth. ‘Sean used to accuse me of being unreasonable all the time.’
‘Sean?’
‘My ex-boyfriend.’
‘The drug addict.’ Jake hadn’t meant to sound cruel, but the fact was he wasn’t in the mood to be magnanimous. A stab of jealousy had sliced through his insides at Caitlin’s reference to the man she’d previously been in a relationship with.
Suddenly rising to her feet, she let her fingers toy restlessly with the little pearl buttons on her blouse. The gesture inevitably drew his gaze.
‘Amongst other things he was a painter and decorator by trade. Not that he was in work very often…For obvious reasons.’ Her expression was briefly pained. ‘But, like you said, just because he was an addict, it didn’t mean he was a bad person. He was easily led by some unsavoury friends, that was the trouble.’
Caitlin dipped her head and Jake found himself automatically taking a step towards her.
‘So, you were “unreasonable” because you tried to warn him off those so-called friends?’
‘Yes… That and because I didn’t give him money as often as he liked to buy his drugs. I was struggling to keep the roof over our heads as it was. I