A Puppy for Christmas: On the Secretary's Christmas List / The Patter of Paws at Christmas / The Soldier, the Puppy and Me

He gave a rueful smile. ‘I’m really not a complete monster, Bree.’

‘I don’t think you’re a monster at all,’ she murmured.

‘No?’

‘No.’ She suddenly looked very serious. ‘I think you’re a wonderful father to Danny.’

‘You do?’ Jackson looked surprised.

‘Most certainly I do,’ Bree confirmed without hesitation.

‘Several times I’ve had the impression that you think I should have married and given him a mother and some brothers and sisters.’

Bree felt her heart sink at the very thought of Jackson with a wife and several more children—but only because a married Jackson would probably be even more impossible to work for, she told herself firmly. What other reason could there possibly be?

She shook her head slowly. ‘Marrying for those reasons would be completely wrong—for both of you.’

‘I couldn’t agree more.’ Jackson nodded. ‘Which is why I would never consider marrying any woman who couldn’t accept and love Danny as I do.’

Bree grimaced. ‘It’s really none of my business, is it?’

No, it wasn’t, and if Jackson hadn’t had such a lousy day so far maybe he wouldn’t be talking about it now either.

Jennifer had been her usual charming and beautiful self, and she’d made it obvious throughout lunch that she was expecting them to spend a couple of hours in bed together afterwards. Ordinarily Jackson would have been only too happy to oblige—as he had several times in the past.

But not today.

Today Jackson hadn’t been able to work up even a spark of enthusiasm for making love with Jennifer. In fact he’d felt quite the opposite; just the thought of her tall and willowy body had been a complete turn-off when compared to the softness of Bree’s body. A body that Jackson had found himself thinking about far too often during a lunch date with one of the most beautiful women in the world.

He looked at Bree now, attentively and appraisingly. She looked adorable, despite the weariness from her shopping trip evident in her expression. Several dark wavy strands of hair had escaped their confines to curl wispily about her cheeks and throat. The blue jeans she wore moulded perfectly to the slenderness of her hips and bottom; a blue sweater clearly outlined the curve of her breasts.

In spite of that weariness and untidiness Jackson knew he found Bree’s natural beauty infinitely more appealing than he had found Jennifer Greaves’s ultra-perfect looks!

Bree looked pained. ‘You seemed to imply earlier that there had been more than one crisis since you got back,’ she reminded him carefully.

‘I did, didn’t I?’ He paced the room restlessly, his considerable height and the width of his shoulders dwarfing her cosy sitting room. And causing Bree’s heart to start pounding and her palms to dampen …

These conversations with Jackson were … unsettling. Particularly so when she found his rakish good looks and the barely leashed power of his lean and muscled body just so—so overwhelmingly male!

‘Well …?’ she prompted warily as he continued to pace.

His eyes glittered with displeasure as he turned to look at her. ‘You had a visitor earlier.’

‘I did?’ Bree’s wariness increased as she wondered who that visitor could possibly have been. Certainly not Roger; they had parted amicably enough on the telephone earlier. And on the rare occasions when she met with family or friends it was always in town or at one of their homes; Bree had certainly never invited anyone to visit her here at Beaumont House. She’d always preferred to keep her work and her private life completely separate. Although she and Jackson hadn’t been too successful at doing that lately!

‘Yes,’ Jackson bit out tersely.

Bree bristled at the censure she heard in his tone. ‘I trust I am allowed to have visitors here?’

‘Of course,’ he snapped.

‘Well? Aren’t you going to tell me who it was?’ she demanded impatiently—really, Jackson could be one of the most infuriating of men!

As well as one of the most dangerously attractive …

His was a dangerous and disturbing attractiveness that Bree had found herself thinking about far too much today. She’d thought about him as she’d worked that morning. She’d thought about him as she’d eaten a light lunch before going out. And as she’d wandered around the shops, searching in vain for his Christmas present, she’d thought—of course—of nothing but him.

The cocoon of emotional and physical numbness that Bree had wrapped herself in over the past year had, she realised, been forced wide open by the intensity of the previous night’s lovemaking with Jackson!

So much so that her senses were running riot with physical awareness just from being in his presence again. Jackson made her pulse race,

and the smell of him—clean and earthy, with the underlying musk of a male in his prime—sent shivers of sensation down her spine. Her hands—hands Bree now clasped firmly together behind her back—ached to reach out and touch him. All of him. From the impressive width of his shoulders to the hardness of his muscled chest and stomach, and lower still to his—

Oh, dear Lord!

Bree swayed slightly on her feet as the heat of desire rushed through her. Her whole body was feeling hot, her nipples tingling as they became engorged, that warmth seeming to burn as it ached between her thighs.

She sat down abruptly on the sofa—it was that or risk falling down!

Bree had always believed that going weak at the knees was just a romantic expression; now she knew it to be absolutely true. If she hadn’t sat down when she had, she would probably have collapsed in a heap at Jackson’s feet!

What was happening to her?

Whatever it was, it was distinctly uncomfortable! And totally, utterly stupid if she wanted to continue working for Jackson.

Which she did.

Just the thought of leaving—of never seeing Jackson again, of being separated from Danny—was enough to make Bree’s chest ache. And not in a pleasant way either!

‘What are you thinking about?’

Bree looked up at Jackson warily, her breath catching in her throat as he focused all the intensity of his glittering blue eyes on her. She moistened her lips nervously, averting her own gaze and looking into the flames of the gas fire.

‘I’m still waiting for you to answer my question,’ she said softly.

‘But that wasn’t what you were thinking about, was it?’ There was a quiet, knowing triumph in his voice as he spoke.

Colour warmed Bree’s cheeks even as she raised heavy dark lashes to look up at him. ‘You can’t possibly know that.’

‘Can’t I?’

‘No!’

He raised his eyebrows, taunting her. ‘I know that whatever you were thinking about it hardened your nipples!’

The colour deepened in Bree’s cheeks as she looked down self-consciously and saw the clear outline of her aroused nipples against the soft wool of her sweater. She closed her eyes, groaning inwardly with mortification.

‘Maybe you were imagining your visitor was Roger Tyler?’