High-Stakes Bachelor. Cindy Dees

as his grandmother floated gracefully down the central hallway, tsking, to disappear somewhere in the back of the sprawling home.

      “Is one the up staircase and the other the down staircase?” Ana asked under her breath.

      “Nah. You can go up or down either one. Although, I can say from experience that the left bannister is faster to slide down than the right one.”

      “You slid on the bannisters as a kid?”

      “Still do from time to time. But don’t tell Gran. She’d yell at me.”

      Ana grinned as he led her off the main foyer into a living room with English manor–style cove ceilings and mahogany wainscoting to die for. “This place is stunning, Jackson.”

      “Pain in the butt to keep up, though. I keep asking Gran to let me sell it, but she refuses. Says we’ll have to pry her cold, dead body out of here before she’ll go.”

      “I’m with her. This place is a treasure. Has it been in your family a long time?”

      He led her back across the foyer to another set of double doors, which opened to reveal a library. She gasped with pleasure since she’d always loved books. This room was lined, floor to ceiling, with volumes.

      “My grandfather was a movie producer. He bought this place for her as a wedding present. It was decrepit, and they restored it to a livable state. It was built in the 1920s by a silent movie star as a getaway back when this stretch of coast was pretty much deserted.”

      “What happened to him?” she asked.

      “He died when my mother was ten. Lung cancer. He was a chain smoker most of his life.”

      He led her upstairs, and a spacious sitting room stretched toward the back of the house and the ocean beyond. “Gran’s rooms are to the left. I’m in the new wing, this way. Let’s find you a bedroom.”

      She could hardly fathom the idea of having to choose between multiple bedrooms. Her upbringing had been modest at best, and rocky during bad times. Rocky also described her parents’ marriage accurately. She wouldn’t go so far as to say she’d had a happy upbringing. It wasn’t like she’d been abused or neglected. But love hadn’t been particularly abundant. It had been...safe. Adequate.

      Jackson stopped in front of a door and chuckled quietly to himself. “In here,” he directed her.

      The room he led her into was spacious and bright, with huge picture windows looking out over the ocean. The furniture was pickled pine, the fabrics creams and yellows. The view drew her to it and she stared down in awe at the majesty of the ocean and rocky cliffs below. “I can’t see a single house from here.”

      Jackson spoke quietly beside her. “I own the land all the way to that point on the right. I bought all the neighboring properties as they went up for sale and knocked the houses down. Restored the coastal habitat.”

      Wow. Such wealth was unimaginable to her. First this palatial layout, and now his own movie production company. She was just hoping to get steady work, enough to pay off her student loans and maybe make a modest living in the industry someday, not end up richer than Croesus.

      More intimidated than she cared to admit, she asked him, “Is there somewhere I can wash up? And if it’s not too big an imposition, can I borrow a clean T-shirt or something? This sweater’s pretty trashed after I rolled around on the ground in it.”

      He looked down at her chest and his pupils dilated noticeably. Alarmed, she glanced down. The sweater was more shredded than she’d realized and her beige camisole, now gray with dust, peeked through in multiple locations.

      “Uh, sure. I’ll go get some clothes for you.” He spun away sharply as if it had just dawned on him he was both staring at and talking to her chest.

      Huh. So Jackson had embraced the fact that she was a girl and not just a fight buddy, had he? A foreboding washed through her that his seeing her as a woman would open some doors between them that she didn’t know how to handle.

      So what if he noticed she was a girl? He was her boss, for crying out loud.

      “Bathroom’s in here. Towels are in that cabinet.”

      She stepped into a Victorian bathroom and sighed in delight at the gigantic claw-foot tub sitting in front of the window. Surf crashed into the rocks below, the foam white against the blackness of rocks and sea and night.

      “It’s one-way glass so no one can see in here from the veranda,” he informed her. “If you want to jump in the tub, I’ll go get some clean clothes for you.”

      “Deal.”

      He hesitated in the doorway and she looked up at him questioningly.

      He said low, “I’m glad you’re okay, Ana.”

      “Me, too. Thanks for rescuing me.”

      “I didn’t—”

      She cut him off. “Yes. You did. And we both know it.”

      His gaze skittered away as if he was embarrassed.

      She took pity on him and declared, “Scram. I want to go for a swim in that gigantic tub.”

      “Right.” He spun away fast, but not so fast that she didn’t spot the stain of color on his cheeks. Jackson Prescott was capable of blushing? Would wonders never cease?

      She poked around the bathroom as the tub filled, and found a new toothbrush still in its wrapper, a hair brush, shampoo and conditioner, and even some simple cosmetics. Wow. Talk about the hostess who thought of everything. Minerva must have brought this stuff in here while Jackson had showed her the rest of the house.

      Ana lit the half dozen pillar candles clustered beside the tub, poured some of the bath salts she found into the steaming hot water and sighed in pleasure as she stepped into the tub. She sank up to her armpits in the hot embrace and luxuriated in melting bliss. It was wild to think about how, three hours ago, she had been praying for her life, and here she was now, surrounded by this sartorial splendor. The mental whiplash was a little much to take in.

      She refreshed the bath with hot water several times and just couldn’t seem to drag herself out of this perfect interlude. The rhythmic pounding of waves rolling ashore lulled her into the best semicoma ever. How long she sat there just soaking, she had no idea.

      The bathroom door burst open.

      She plunged to her neck in the water and it sloshed over the side of the tub. “Jackson!”

      “Crap! Sorry. Thought you already went downstairs. Clothes. I’ve, um, got some. They’re Gran’s, but she said they would fit you. Sorry. I’ll just put them on your bed....”

      “Get out, Jackson,” she said firmly enough to cut across his babbling.

      “Right. Out.” But his gaze had riveted on the damned tub. And as tall as he was, he no doubt had a great view of her naked body. Which abruptly felt on fire from pretty much her neck to her toes.

      “Go. Now,” she ordered him.

      “Sorry. Gone.” Finally, he tore his gaze away from her and spun. He all but ran out of the bathroom and looked so silly doing it she had to laugh. Guy acted like he’d never seen a naked female before. Who’d have thought a hunk like him would be so self-conscious around women? She wouldn’t have guessed it in a million years.

      The tranquility of her bath destroyed, she rinsed the last of the soap out of her hair with the detachable showerhead thingie. She stood up to dry off and it felt decadent to stand naked before that huge window with all of nature’s glory right outside.

      She glanced down onto the broad stone veranda below and started. Jackson was staring up at her, transfixed. The glass was one-way, wasn’t it? If he’d lied about that, she was going to kill him!

      Wrapping a towel around herself fast, she backed away from the window and dried off hastily.