Read A Bride for Jackson Powers (Desire, 1273) for Free Online Page B

but in a nice way.”
    His thumbs moved up under her hair. Her skin was soft and cool, her hair warm and silky. He had a sudden urge to place his mouth where his fingers were, and it scared him so much he dropped his hands, brushed them together and said briskly, “There, that ought to do it.”
    She sighed and slumped back against the wall. Jax sighed, too. He wasn’t given to sighing. If he’d brought along his laptop he could’ve made some headway on the Arzan case, but he’d figured on a turnaround trip.
    No more touching, he decided. Rationality was one of the first casualties in extraordinary circumstances. He’d read about a couple of strangers who’d been stuck in an elevator together for five hours. The guy had subsequently proposed, the woman accepted and the marriage had lasted all of three weeks.
    For the next few hours Jax made a deliberate effort to avoid touching her. It only made things worse. Naturally his brain stayed focused on what it was he wasn’t supposed to do.
    She had to be as aware of the growing tension as he was. The more they avoided even the slightest accidental touch, the more some mysterious magnetic force attracted his hand to her shoulder, her hand to his arm. Both pairs of eyes to both pairs of lips.
    Dammit, they were strangers, Jax reminded himself. Ships that pass in the endless foggy, sleety, ice-bound night.
     
    With no breakfast, lunch or dinner to divide the time into measurable segments, they took brief naps, then woke to go check and see if anything had changed.
    Nothing had. Gates were unmanned. Information stations were swamped. The official line was that weather improvements were expected momentarily. A warm front was moving up from the Gulf. Announcements would be made.
    Sunny was handling things remarkably well, Hetty thought, for a teething baby with a diaper rash who stayed wet and hungry most of the time. She was learning to sit up. Robert, her stepgrandson, had sat alone at five months, but Hetty tactfully refrained from crowing. Sunny was heavier. Heavier babies had more to support.
    Besides, she had a feeling Sunny had spent far more time in her carrier than Robert ever had.
    For long stretches of time they remained silent. Oddly enough, it was a comfortable silence, yet awareness of each other was never far from the surface.
    Jax wondered how long she’d been widowed and if she’d taken a lover yet. He wondered what her husband had been like and how good their marriage had been. There’d been a considerable age difference, if the guy was a ’Nam vet.
    Hetty wondered about Sunny’s mother, and what had happened between the two of them. She wondered about the other women in his life. Surely there must be someone. Jax wasn’t the kind of man not to be romantically involved. He practically radiated sex appeal.
    Only not with her. Not intentionally, at least. Not that she expected him to make a pass, because even with her new clothes and her new hairstyle, she was still plain old Hetty Reynolds.
    Bored, restless, frustrated and physically uncomfortable, they lapsed into small talk to pass the time. It wasn’t something Jax excelled in, but it beat dwelling on all the work piling up on his desk. Not that he was obsessed by his profession, but when a man contracted to do something, he was obligated to follow through. It was a creed he’d learned early and had done his best ever since to live up to.
    Hetty sighed and shifted her position. “This floor’s not getting any softer.” Beyond the glaring lights outside, the sky was dark.
    It was as close as she’d come to a complaint. Jax wished he had a cushion to offer her, but his coat was covering Sunny now that her blankets had to double as diapers. He could offer his lap, but under the circumstances, that probably wouldn’t be smart.
    “So, d’you want to talk politics?” he asked after another long stretch of silence. “How about religion? Favorite foods? Nah, scratch that.” He dug out his roll of