of the morning she was hard to miss, but even in a crowd he figured she’d stand out.
Especially with those legs.
Long and slim, they seemed go on forever. Jasper “Jax” Jacks cocked his head and
watched her approach, finding it took some effort to close his mouth and not drool, but
he managed...if for no other reason than because he wanted to finish looking her over
before she reached him.
The black dress she had on was sleeveless and stopped just above her knees. It clung to
the slim lines of her body like a second skin. As she moved, the garment glittered, but
the sequins decorating it spoke of glamour not glitz. The matching scarf draped around
her neck added a touch of class not flash.
Straightening next to the motorcycle he was working on, Jax held his breath. In the
streetlight she appeared to be a shimmering shadow. And, if he had been drinking, he
probably would have sworn she was a ghost. But he hadn't touched a drop all night, and
she wasn't gliding. She was walking...on heals that were at least three inches high, but
she didn't wobble once. She just took one step after another with a simple grace that
made him want to lick his lips, and the urge grew stronger as she got closer.
Her dark hair was swept up back and away from her face. Her dark eyes dancing in the
moonlight. Her bare, smooth arms were adorned with only the simplest of bracelets. But
the ornamentation didn’t come cheap. Nor did the earrings glistening in a tasteful
waterfall beside her face. The rocks weren’t crystal. They were the real thing, and so
was she. No hooker on the wrong road, he was looking at a blue-blooded socialite who’d
lost her way.
He frowned. She was out and alone on the wrong end of the city. But how? And shy?
When Brenda stopped before him, she found little in his appearance or manner that
reassured or inspired confidence. His jaw was lined with a scraggly growth of whiskers,
his jeans were dirty and the white T-shirt he wore under a battered leather jacket was
smeared with grease. His facial features were drawn into a scowl. But she found his
whole appearance and whole demeanor dangerous, she couldn't afford to run. He was
her only hope. She lifted her chin in defiance of her fear and his steady stare.
“Lost?”
The question was sharp, clipped, and Brenda stiffened, refusing to be intimidated. “Not
exactly.”
“Out for a walk, then?” the man suggested, a grin slowly cutting through his half-grown
beard and brightening his gaze.
“Just looking for a phone booth,” she assured him, crossing her arms in front of her and
leveling her most withering glance his way.
“Uh-huh,” he said wiping his hands on the rag he’d been holding. He glanced up and
down the street. “Not one around here.”
“I noticed.” At once she sighed, paced a few steps away and sat on a slab of dirty
pavement without giving a second thought to her dress. “This has been the most rotten
day of my whole life.”
“Fight with your boyfriend?”
Realizing he must have seen the Jaguar come tearing down the road, she shook her head.
“He’s not a boyfriend. He’s just a friend. A family friend.”
“You make it sound like a curse.”
“Sometimes it is.” She tapped her foot impatiently on the ground. “Have you ever felt
that everything you do is for somebody else besides you? That your life is being planned
and no matter how much you hate it, there’s nothing you can do to stop it from
happening?"
His eyes seemed to bore into her, but for the moment Brenda didn’t notice. She forgot all
about him as she pushed to her feet to stalk away, only to come back again with short
angry steps. Stopping to stare at the night around her, she didn’t see the street she was
standing on, either. Instead she saw her day.
Her Friday had begun at the office of the family business where she occupied space but
where she had little authority and where, too often, her own opinion carried no weight.
That afternoon she’d lost a secretary due to her own ability to protect the young woman
from the predatory advances of one of the company officers, Michael Sonny Corinthos,
who was her father's “adopted” son and someone who could do no wrong...at least as far
as everyone but her was concerned.
Gritting her teeth, she remembered again the condescending tone, the shaking head of
her father, who dismissed her complaints about Sonny's behavior as groundless. The
blame had been dumped on her secretary, who was labeled as a troublemaker.
Brenda’s eyes narrowed. It infuriated her that she hadn’t been able to make her father
see he was wrong, that she hadn’t been able to make her father see he was wrong, that
she hadn’t been able to better defend an employee who had depended on her. And it
aggravated her feelings of frustration overall.
She was tired of being treated as little more than a figurehead, of being accepted as the
boss’s daughter rather than as a contributing partner. She was fed up with her family’s
attempts to manipulate her into a marriage that would take her out of the office and into
the world of volunteering and charity that consumed her mother’s life.
“If someone’s punching your buttons, why don’t you stop them?”
The unexpected question snapped Brenda back to the present and the man
before her. “That’s easy for you to say.”
“No, its easier said then done,” he returned. “If you run into a roadblock on the way to
the store, what do you do? Go home and wait until it’s taken away, or do you find a way
around it?
“I would hardly equate that with shopping.”
“Why not? Maybe we don’t always pay cash for what we want, but we do pay, don’t
we?”
With emotion, with time, with commitment. She frowned.
“What were you and your family’s ‘friend’ arguing about?”
She shrugged and watched him bend to pile tools back into one of the leather saddlebags
strapped across the back of the bike. “I don’t know. Something. Nothing. Everything.”
She sighed. “I guess I don’t care for his attitude. He’s just like them. He expects me to
be what he wants me to be instead of what I am?”
“And what is it that they expect you to be?”
She snorted. “A lady, one who listens and doesn’t talk, who has opinions, but keeps
them to herself. One who has absolutely no ambition.”
Jax looked up from where he stood by the cycle. “At least they got the lady part right.”
She laughed and cocked her head as she met his gaze. “How can you be so sure?”
“There are some things I’m never wrong about.”
Suddenly bre
