Hold Me Tight: Heartbreakers by Cait London

hurting. Or you’re out for revenge. Living with you isn’t necessary. I don’t understand you.”
    Those steady, silver-blue eyes hadn’t flickered, denying nothing. “Your choice,” he said quietly. “But I want you with me.”
    After a sleepless night, one in which she couldn’t remove Alexi’s light kiss at the door of her suite, Jessica had dressed quickly. She’d driven to Seattle and to safety—to what she understood and could manage. It wasn’t possible to simply step into a life outside these elegant walls and the stress of a corporation—or was it? Was it only an enticing dream?
    Jessica watched the ships passing by and thought of another waterfront, one with the Amoteh Resort overlooking it.
    She mentally jerked herself back into her elegant Seattle office and tried to push away thoughts of Alexi. She tried to forget how her instincts had told her to wrap her arms around him, to kiss those hard lips and taste his hunger, meet it with her own.
    Alexi stirred her sexually, that was all, she told herself, and sailed through another stack of paper. A cowboy on the make and looking for a rich— That image didn’t fit Alexi.
    Willow had wrapped herself into a tight wall of secrecy. Her replies to Jessica’s queries gave nothing away. A window had been broken in her shop, but she was certain that it had only been a child tossing a rock—an accident.
    Was it? Or was Willow in real danger?
    “Thank you, Audrey.” Jessica smiled briefly at her personal assistant who had just brought in a luncheon tray.
    Audrey arranged Jessica’s favorite dish, a Crab Louie salad, onto a table by a window overlooking Puget Sound.
    Willow would be exactly what Alexi should have—a sweet, giving woman.
    Alexi, on the other hand, wasn’t sweet. Jessica had experienced the primitive male instincts that simmered beneath that rugged appearance. Whatever had run between Jessica and Alexi had been too instinctive to be false, too hot and hungry.
    Maybe he just needed sexual relief. Maybe she did. Maybe it was just two people meeting at the wrong—or right time…. Maybe that’s how one-night stands were done—needs met and fed, nothing more…. But with Alexi there would be more…and she hadn’t allowed herself to be a woman for so long—if ever. Alexi made her feel—made her feel, senses hiked, anger, tenderness, fear, hunger.
    Quiet and efficient, Audrey had gone back to her desk. Jessica stood and smoothed her hair in its neat chignon. She’d crawled out of a destitute situation, met Robert and had started a new life. Now he was gone and she carried on what he had loved, Sterling Stops. Jessica rubbed her emerald wedding bands; she wasn’t a woman for a fling—or was she?
    She’d heard about summer flings and shipboard romances from her friends.
    Alexi wasn’t a man to be forgotten—even now, she wondered how he would taste without that fine control, unleashing his hunger…. What instinct moved inside her to make that happen? Was it because she loved challenges, and Alexi wasone big, fascinating temptation to step out of her box and live as a woman, to feel as a woman?
    The brisk knock at her office door sounded before Howard pushed his way into the room. “So you’re back.”
    He flung himself into a chair in front of her desk, jerked open his tie and stared at her. Howard looked like his father and, for a heartbeat, a sweet memory slid by Jessica. Then Howard’s harsh voice cut through it. “So you’ve had a nice little holiday.”
    Jessica sat behind her desk, putting the distance and her official power between them. Perhaps Alexi was right about Howard—that he was furious another man had entered her life, that the ante had been upped. “It was nice—yes.”
    “I could have spent New Year’s Eve with you.”
    “I assume you mean with your wife—together. I’m certain you could have booked into the Amoteh Resort if you wanted. The suites are beautiful, furnished with local artisans. The furniture