‘It’s not a short skirt,’ Lucy remarked, knowing his flaws.
‘No, it’s not,’ Jax agreed, wishing she hadn’t directed his attention to her pale slender thighs and knees because it only made him think about the sheer glory of parting them. Furiously conscious of his growing desire, Jax rocked forward, his lean, strong face taut, green eyes semi screened by his lashes.
‘You said you wanted to talk.’ Lucy widened her eyes suspiciously. ‘Was that a joke?’
‘No…’ Silence fell while Lucy munched through her third sandwich. ‘We have a dilemma and I have come up with a solution,’ he spelled out in a roughened undertone as the tip of her tongue chased a crumb from the corner of her mouth.
‘Bella isn’t a dilemma. She isn’t and never will be a problem,’ Lucy assured him quietly. ‘I’m not going to be difficult about you seeing her or anything like that.’
Jax breathed in deep, striving to make himself get to the point and bite the bullet. ‘If we married, we would be in a position to give Bella far more.’
Lucy put down her sandwich unfinished. ‘Married?’ she repeated in consternation. ‘But you don’t ever want to get married.’
‘I didn’t plan to have a child either,’ Jax reminded her. ‘But Bella is here now and that changes the whole picture. I want to give her what I didn’t have. A mother, a father and a settled home, all the security that only a traditional family structure can give her.’
Lucy was stunned because she had never dreamt that she would live to hear Jax admit a desire to embrace such conventional ideas. ‘Neither of us had that,’ she conceded unevenly. ‘But life isn’t perfect and that’s the way it is—’
‘But we can change that,’ Jax sliced in forcefully. ‘We don’t have to live apart when we could raise Bella together, as a married couple.’
Lucy blinked rapidly, her heart in her mouth, her feet flexing because nervous tension made her want to get up and walk round the room. ‘Together?’ she repeated in bewilderment.
‘We can get married and make a home for our daughter, the kind of home neither of us had the advantage of growing up in,’ Jax extended with unearthly calm.
‘I don’t know much about your background. Well, I know your parents divorced when you were young but—’
Jax stiffened. ‘You already know that my mother was unstable and not a reliable parent. Men came and went in her life. None of them ever stayed. She was too high maintenance. I don’t want our daughter to have to adapt to that kind of lifestyle.’
‘With respect,’ Lucy said uncomfortably, ‘I’m not a world-famous, gorgeous actress and I don’t think my lifestyle and your mother’s would have anything in common.’
Jax released his breath in a small hiss of frustration. ‘Do you really believe that your life is going to stay the same now that I know you are raising my daughter?’ he pressed in disbelief. ‘Do you honestly believe that you can go on working as a waitress and living with your father? Obviously I will take care of all your expenses now—’
‘No,’ Lucy broke in with a frown. ‘I don’t want that.’
‘But that’s what will happen whether you like it or not. Naturally I want my daughter to enjoy the same lifestyle that I enjoy myself and I can’t believe that you would deny her what she is entitled to receive. Bella is an Antonakos,’ Jax reminded her with pride.
‘Yes but…’ Lucy’s voice ran out of steam as she began to think about everything he had said.
He was asking her to marry him. Jax Antonakos was asking her to marry him, offering her the dream conclusion she had once secretly cherished and then buried deep two years earlier. For the space of several frantic minutes Lucy could only stare down into her tea and struggle to come to terms with a proposal she had never expected to receive. A home, two parents and a real family for Bella. That truly was the ultimate ideal for Lucy when it came to her daughter. Her mother had ended up alone raising Lucy and Lucy had ended up alone in the care system because the authorities had failed to trace Kreon. Sometimes she hated herself for making the same mistake with Bella and having to bring her up without a father.
‘Are you serious about this?’ Lucy asked breathlessly.
‘Of course,’ Jax asserted levelly.
‘But you never wanted to get married,’ Lucy reminded him helplessly.
‘And then Bella came along and turned everything upside down,’ Jax confessed with complete honesty. ‘This is no longer only about you and me. We have to think about our daughter and about what would make her happy.’
‘Unhappily married parents wouldn’t help,’ Lucy pointed out apologetically.
‘I see no reason why we shouldn’t make a go of it. Even sitting here having a serious conversation I can barely keep my hands off you,’ Jax admitted bluntly, his stunning green gaze glittering across her heart-shaped face and watching the flush of awareness slowly build there. ‘And if you’re honest, it’s the same for you.’
Lucy dragged her attention from his sleek, darkly beautiful features with the greatest difficulty. But trying to blank her mind, trying not to look at him was no use when the hunger inside her felt like an insidious virus that refused to die. And she knew what the cure was and that unnerved her. The only cure she knew was the wild, pounding plunge of his body into hers and the explosive release he would give her. And even that wasn’t a permanent fix, she thought shamefacedly. She had once craved him as she craved air to breathe. She set her tea down with a jarring crack on the coffee table, her hand trembling.
‘Look at me,’ Jax urged, breaking the smouldering silence.
And Lucy looked even though she knew she shouldn’t, desire clawing at her insides, awakening the yearning buried deep within her body. A ragged breath escaped her, her pulses racing. Her breasts ached but the biggest ache of all was between her legs, at the very heart of her where she was burning with need. That voracious need that hungered for his touch terrified her because it was so ready to rage out of control and sweep all restraint and all common sense before it.
‘We’re getting married as soon as it can be arranged,’ Jax decreed.
Her head flew up. ‘You can’t just—’
‘One of us needs to be decisive. You want to bury your head in the sand and run away from the responsibility.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘We do it for Bella. Together we make a family,’ Jax intoned.
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘Nothing worth having is ever easily acquired,’ Jax said drily. ‘Everything worthwhile I have ever achieved has come at a cost and there have always been sacrifices involved. Are you willing to make sacrifices for Bella’s benefit?’
Lucy leapt upright in frustration. ‘Jax! Stop trying to railroad me!’
‘In a couple of days the paparazzi will be on to us. I want to pre-empt them with a wedding, a big splashy wedding, which they won’t be expecting,’ he told her grimly. ‘They’ll be happy enough to settle for wedding photos.’
‘Do you really want to do this?’ Lucy whispered shakily.
‘I want you. I want my daughter. To give her what we both want, to give her what she deserves, we have to get married,’ Jax countered with measured cool. ‘I can handle that. Can you?’
And Lucy thought about that, really seriously thought about that even though her brain did not feel up to that challenge. Even when she had dreamt about marrying Jax two years earlier she had known it was only a dream because Jax had seen too many relationships break down to have any faith in the marriage bond. He had admitted that to her in Spain and afterwards he had seemed unnerved by what he had told her and he had cut their evening short.
‘We will fight,’ Jax forecast. ‘But we’re good at making up again.’