Page 20 of Modern Romance January 2025 5-8

Pointing out he’d been directly or indirectly responsible for each of those incidents felt churlish, especially when in every single one he’dsavedher.

The thought was bracing enough to silence her, to take the chair he held out for her, to ignore his piercing stare as she accepted the pile of food he placed before her one minute later.

Half an hour.

She could do it.

Then all she had to do was get through the next half hour.

Then the next.

Sweet heaven...

‘Are you kidding me?’

It was both irritatingly reassuring and unsettling to hear her husky voice had returned to normal after listening to her fight to catch her breath last night.

Was that the reason he’d sat in the chair next to his bed until sunrise, then, feeling that taunting compulsion, had allowed himself to be pulled to his own bed to sleep that puzzling but satisfying half hour before the demons had roused him?

Jario ignored the questions, his gaze riveted to her sparkling eyes as she glared at him one moment longer before redirecting her affront to the floor of his dressing room.

‘This is what you want me to do? Colour-code and pair up your socks? There must be over two hundred pairs here. Who even needs that many socks?’ Did she know her sexy mouth pouted just a tiny bit when she was riled?

He turned away as his body jolted to life. ‘Me. And that’s your first task. Your second is to pack away the left side of my closet. You’ll be informed of what comes next when you’re done.’

She glared harder. ‘Where’s Ripley? Shouldn’t I be doing something to assist him?’

Good question.

He was fast approaching chagrined levels for the way he couldn’t seem to distance himself from this woman. ‘He’s busy with other duties. Are you objecting to yours, Willow?’ Chalk up another objection to how much he liked her name on his tongue.

She spiked another glare at the socks, sparking unwanted amusement at her naked loathing of the task. ‘Guess it’s better than scrubbing,’ she begrudgingly offered. Then she slowly, defiantly, sank to her knees.

He didn’t want to consider why the thought of her in his bedroom made his blood sing faster through his veins.

Hell, he wasn’t going to think about Willow Chatterton or what the sight of her on her knees did to him.Not at allfor the next several hours. Not when he had two urgent deals to close.

Yet, a ludicrously wasted half hour later, Jario tossed his stylus on the table. His concentration was shot to hell.

He was going insane. He was sure of it.

He should’ve sent her off to the opposite side of his yacht. Where he couldn’t see her. Smell her. Be reminded of that pulse of horror when he’d seen her choking, panic building in her eyes.

‘Hijo de—’He bit off the curse as his gaze wandered back to the screen showing his dressing room.

He should head to the lower deck to his wave-powered swimming pool, where the only views were of the endless ocean, work out until he was too exhausted to think. But even as the thought teased him, his eyes remained on the screen.

She’d dealt with his socks in record time and was almost halfway through rearranging a closet that didn’t need it. Watching her touch his things, sometimes bringing his suits close to her body as she moved them, Jario shifted in his seat, the heat she’d ignited in him that first night when he hadn’t known her true identity, mocking his every effort to douse it.

It felt like some cruel cosmic joke for him to bethisattracted to his enemy’s daughter, but he wasn’t laughing. There would be no amusement while the man responsible for his father’s not being here—and the stunning daughter whose motives remained unclear—remained unpunished.

And yes, it stuck in his craw that she was hard-working and diligent.

But watching her standing on his bed, her arm risen high above her head to reach the light fixture with her feather duster, the movement showing a few inches of golden skin, was the last straw.

With a growl drawn deep from a place he didn’t want to examine too closely, he launched from his desk, flames he told himself were born of irritation heating his blood as he headed for the last place he needed to go.

‘Enough of that. Time for a break.’