Boy, the puzzle of Jackson Nixon, but, most of all, Jinx herself.
She interested him more than any of those other things!
‘Lunch is ready,’ he told her.
She shot him an impatient glance, but was obviously very aware of her father waiting for them at the end of the hallway.
‘Jinx…?’ Nik prompted.
‘Fine,’ she snapped. ‘But you and I will definitely talk later,’ she muttered so that only he could hear.
There were much pleasanter things he could think of to do with Jinx than talking, but if that was all that was on offer at the moment—and he was pretty sure that it was!—then he would take what he could get.
‘I’ll look forward to it,’ he assured her huskily, raising innocent brows as she looked up at him with brief suspicion before following her father through to the back of the house.
The three of them had lunch outside sitting at a table under a sun umbrella in the well-maintained back garden—a garden that was, thankfully, completely closed in by a six-foot-high fence. Nik knew better than most exactly how tenacious reporters could be once on the scent of a story—they were quite capable of looking through windows and over fences in order to get what they wanted. And they obviously hadn’t given up on Jinx yet…
Despite the fact that Jinx obviously wished him well away from here, that her father’s conversation lacked the intelligence he was so well known for, Nik enjoyed the next hour spent in their company.
He saw a gentler side of Jinx as she conversed with her father, that gentleness obviously a calming influence on the older man as he took childish pleasure in her company. Not that Nik had ever found Jinx to be an aggressive person; it was just that she was usually so on the defensive when he was around that this softer side was a revelation to him.
Everything about Juliet India Nixon was a revelation to him, the attraction he felt towards her like nothing he had ever felt before. And it seemed to be getting more intense the longer he was around her, rather than diminishing as it usually did when he spent too much time in one woman’s company.
He loved to watch the elegance of her slender hands as she ate, or pushed the coppery swathe of her hair back from her cheeks. The gentle curves of her body, curves he longed to touch. The way a little dimple appeared in one cheek when she smiled at her father—not at Nik, because she hadn’t smiled at him once all the way through the meal!
Not that her father seemed to have noticed any strain between Jinx and Nik, just enjoying their company completely oblivious of the tension between them.
‘Time for your nap, Daddy,’ Jinx told her father as Mrs Holt came to clear away the remains of the meal.
Jack Nixon rose slowly to his feet. ‘Never get old, Nik,’ he warned ruefully even as he followed the housekeeper back into the house. ‘The man becomes the child again!’
Nik’s gaze was speculative as he watched the other man enter the house. That last comment had been quite an intelligent observation for a man who seemed totally unaware of his surroundings most of the time, let alone anything else.
‘There are the occasional flashes of—of his old self, shall we say?’ Jinx said, obviously having watched Nik watching her father. ‘But unfortunately they don’t usually last for long,’ she added sadly.
Nik frowned; Jinx was too beautiful, too lovely a person, to be sad. Surely something could be done…? ‘Has he seen anyone? A specialist, something like that?’ he asked—and as quickly wished that he hadn’t as Jinx stiffened resentfully.
‘He had several months in a nursing home, after the initial shock,’ she finally answered distantly. ‘But, quite honestly, it did no good. He’s better off at home, anyway.’
Nik nodded. ‘Mrs Holt watches out for him when you have to go out?’
‘Yes. Nik, I really think that you should go now. The reporter and her friend have probably given up by now and gone home—’
‘Doubtful,’ he dismissed from experience. ‘What was the “initial shock”, Jinx?’ he queried astutely, knowing by the way she became even more coldly aloof that he had touched on a subject she would rather not talk about.
But if he were to help either of these people—and he really thought that he must—he had to know what trauma Jackson Nixon had suffered.
The same trauma that had also helped to create the fiercely private woman Jinx was now…?
CHAPTER NINE
JINX stared at him, unsure of what to say in answer to that particular question. On the one hand, the less Nik Prince knew about her or her family, the better she was sure it would be. But if she stood any chance of making him go away—and staying away!—then she knew she had to at least tell him some of what had happened eighteen months ago.
She drew in a ragged breath. ‘Come through to my father’s study with me—oh, yes, he has a study,’ she confirmed heavily as Nik raised surprised brows. ‘Not that he’s ever used this one.’ She sighed. ‘But I still brought everything with me when we moved six months ago.’
Just in case, she had been telling herself this last eighteen months. Just in case her father made some sort of miraculous recovery and decided to finish the book on the Jacobite uprising that he had been working on when—When—
‘This way.’ She led the way further down the hallway, opening the door at the end and ushering Nik inside.
‘Study’ was probably rather a complimentary way of describing the room that they entered. The shelved walls, and most of the floor space, were covered in books, both for reading and reference, and the desk was awash with papers and framed photographs.
It was one of the latter that Jinx picked up and handed to Nik, at the same time keeping her gaxe deliberately averted from his.
She knew exactly what he would see in the photograph: a family sitting on a blanket eating a picnic beside a river, all of them smiling happily into the camera.
Her mother. Her father. Her brother. Herself.
Just a normal family snapshot.
Except that it wasn’t the whole picture…
‘Where are your mother and brother now?’ Nik asked with that astuteness Jinx had come to expect of him.
‘They died eighteen months ago,’ she answered flatly. ‘In case you’re interested, my mother’s maiden name was Watson,’ she added dryly.
Nik continued to look at her, his stillness letting her know he expected her to add something to that remark. But what could she say? Her mother and Jamie were both dead. There was nothing else to say.
‘The shock was too much for my father,’ she added abruptly when she couldn’t stand that expectant silence a moment longer. ‘I—he’s been like this—’ she raised her hands helplessly ‘—ever since.’
Nik gave the photograph another long look before replacing it back on the desktop. ‘Wasn’t that just a little selfish of him? After all,
