Page 26 of Revelations of A Secret Princess

CHAPTER SIX

JAKECOULDN’TSTOPthinking about Caro Rivage. She was in his head every time he tried to read the report before him.

It wasn’t figures he saw. It was Ariane’s nanny, earlier today, throwing herself across the snow at risk of life and limb. Then later, limp and pale, making him curse himself for taking her word that she was uninjured.

He’d leaned down, about to lift her into his arms and carry her. For an instant he’d seen hunger in her expression. An answering beat of need had pulsed through his blood, but a second later her expression had morphed into something like fear.

Before he could prevent her she’d clambered to her feet, insisting on walking. But Jake wasn’t fooled, he’d seen her stiff movements and insisted on a doctor.

Fortunately the doctor, checking out both nanny and child, had declared no harm done. Caro would suffer only bruising.

Yet Jake couldn’t put her from his mind.

At least he knew he could trust her with Ariane. Caro might have been severely injured or killed with that desperate dive.

Jake’s heart had been in his mouth. He wasn’t used to being on the sidelines, watching others act. Guilt gouged him. He should have been the one to save Ariane but he hadn’t been within reach.

The experience had changed him. Like varnish stripping away layers, there was nowhere now to hide the attraction he shouldnotfeel for his niece’s nanny.

He tried telling himself it was because she was so good with Ariane. Even when his niece drew into herself or, very occasionally, acted up over something that to him seemed insignificant. There were times when he thought Caro too strict and others when her refusal to respond to a display of childish temper made him want to intervene. But he knew so little about child-rearing that he held back and each time he’d been glad, as Ariane became more like the engaging child he knew.

Frankly, those small displays of temper were a relief. When he’d first seen Ariane after the accident she’d been a shadow, withdrawn and wan.

Time, and Caro Rivage, were helping.

Yet hiring her hadn’t been his best decision. Because no matter how he tried to distance himself, he couldn’t ignore her. Or the awareness thickening his blood when she was near.

He didn’t date staff.

He didn’t pursue mousy women.

Yet, despite her penchant for wearing browns and dull navy, Caro Rivage wasn’t mousy. The quiet manner couldn’t conceal the lambent fire that blazed when she smiled at Ariane. Or when she forgot to be meek and treated him to a glimpse of that proud—and, he was sure, passionate—woman behind the mask.

That hidden woman made Jake’s blood sizzle. He’d bet every million he’d made that hers sizzled too. Today her expression had made him want to forget every reason she was off limits. To break through the tension that hummed between them like electricity through a high-voltage cable.

He’d wanted to discover if she melted at his touch.

Even the way she dragged her hair into that tight bun, like a nanny a century ago, was perversely alluring. Instead of making her look frumpy, the style drew attention to the purity of her neck and jawline, and that small but exquisite mouth. Molten heat pooled in his groin at the memory of that mouth, as pink and delicate as a rosebud.

Rosebud? Delicate?

His last lover had been confident, sophisticated and gifted with a wide, mobile mouth that she used with sinful persuasiveness.Thatwas the sort of woman he dated, clever, amusing and blatantly erotic.

Why did Caro Rivage tie him in knots? The other day he’d found himself pondering her neat collarbone, glimpsed beneath the V of another primly buttoned blouse, wondering if her skin was as soft as he imagined! He’d leaned in, drawn by the hint of sweet spice in the air as she moved, till he realised what he was doing.

Jake set his jaw, shoved his chair back and shut his laptop. It was midnight but he’d never settle to sleep. He’d work off this excess energy in the gym till he was too fatigued to think of rosebud mouths, creamy skin and that husky, feminine voice.

It was a good plan. The only trouble was, when he pushed the door open to the cellar fitness complex, there was Caro standing between the pool and the hot tub, head bent as she undid the belt of her robe.

Her hair, instead of being yanked back in a bun, fell in waves past her shoulders, making her look soft and young. The guarded, self-contained nanny was gone.

Jake’s throat dried as she shrugged the robe off.

She was tall, slender but with a sweet, streamlined curve to her hips. She wore grey lace-edged knickers and matching singlet top. The outfit had none of the conscious seductiveness of a scanty bikini but she radiated an innocent eroticism that dragged his libido into raging life.

Every muscle tightened as blood hurtled to his groin. Every masculine response he’d fought to control roared into life.

Attraction.

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