Falling for King's Fortune / Seduction, Westmoreland Style: Falling for King's Fortune

“A man like me?”

She moved past him, bent over the top rail of the beautiful white crib and ran the flat of her hand down Mia’s back. Listening to her child’s quiet snuffles and sighs, she smiled. “You know,” she said as she turned back to him. “The playboy type.”

He laughed quietly. “You think I’m a playboy?”

She turned her head to look at him and almost wished she hadn’t. While he’d been holding Mia, he was gorgeous, but somehow safe. Now that he wasn’t…he looked much too tempting. All that bare, tanned, muscled flesh. The sleep-ruffled hair. The shadow of whiskers on his jaw. The heavy-lidded sexiness of his eyes.

Oh, God.

“I only know what I read about you,” she said and moved for the door. Best to get back to her own room fast, before she did something really stupid like reaching out one hand to trace the planes of those muscles of his.

He was just a step behind her and when they moved into the hall, he caught her arm. Heat shot from his touch to rocket through her body like an explosion battering off a series of walls. She was forced to lock her knees to keep from swaying into him. His eyes were dark, fathomless and when he spoke, she had to fight for focus.

“And just what have you read?”

“I think you know the answer to that,” she said, trying to tug her arm free of his grasp. “You’re practically the poster boy for fast jets and faster women. So you can understand how seeing you, being so gentle, so tender, with Mia like that, could throw me a little.”

He snorted. “You’ve got a narrow view on the world, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t.” She tried again to get free, but Jackson wasn’t ready to let her go just yet. He parted her robe and ran one hand up her arm. Even though the terry robe she wore wasn’t exactly sexy, seeing the curve of her breasts beneath the soft fabric was enough to make him hard and ready and way too eager. Despite the fact that she had the ability to seriously annoy him.

“Sure you do,” he said with a sneer. “You read some one-sided articles about me and decide that I’m what? Some rampaging guy, only interested in what he can take out of life?”

She stilled and chewed on her bottom lip. He’d like to help with that, but he resisted.

“Do you think the tabloids would be interested in doing a story on me babysitting my nieces? No,” he answered for her. “They want sensationalism because that’s what people like you want to read.”

Her eyes, a dark, passion-filled blue, widened. “People like me?”

“Not fun being judged, is it?” he countered. “Yes, people like you. People who see a headline about me on a grocery store paper and assume you know me.” He bent down, until their gazes were on the same level and his mouth was just a breath away from hers. “I’m not that guy, Casey. There’s more to me than that, just as I assume there’s more to you than the woman who seduced me just to get a DNA sample.”

She tried to pull away again, but wasn’t successful. Jackson stared down into her eyes and felt the tug of the attraction between them arc like a downed power line, sparks flying, hissing, through the air.