Billionaire Unexpected~Jax -J. S. Scott Page 0,49

hand.

My heart started to dance as I realized how instinctive it was for Jax to reach out for me the second we were together. It wasn’t like I really needed him to hold my hand anymore.

Or maybe…it’s just gotten to be a habit.

“Whenever you are,” I told him with a smile. “I just want to thank Riley for inviting me, and for dinner.”

“Let’s go find her then,” Jax suggested as his eyes roamed over me with a hint of possessiveness I’d never seen before. “I think she’s yakking with Seth and Cooper.”

As we followed Hudson and Taylor into the house, Taylor turned around and gave me an I-saw-the-way-he-looked-at-you wink.

Maybe it hadn’t meant a damn thing, but my heart was racing, because I’d finally seen the way he looked at me, too.

Jax

I waited as Harlow said goodbye to my sister, Cooper, and Seth.

Hudson and Taylor had slipped out before we had, and I really regretted not grabbing my older brother so we could have a private conversation.

I needed somebody to knock some sense into my head, and it had better happen soon.

One smile from Harlow had been all it took to get my dick as hard as a rock on the patio, and it still wasn’t deflating.

Yeah, I’d had some respite when Hudson, Cooper, Seth, and I had retreated to Seth’s office to let the ladies have their girl time. Unfortunately, it hadn’t been nearly long enough.

I’d started watching Harlow at the beginning of the evening, and I hadn’t been able to stop following her every move since.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t always been attracted to her, but suddenly, it was like someone had flicked the switch on a light inside of Harlow. The way she moved, the way she talked, the way she seemed completely at peace inside her own body…all of it was fucking fascinating.

Her warmth and natural charm had won my sister over almost immediately, and Riley was a little cautious most of the time.

Hell, even Cooper had been reasonably nice to her. Well, as nice as his ornery ass could get these days.

I rubbed the tight muscles at the back of my neck, feeling edgy as hell.

Every damn technique I’d been using for almost a month to keep Harlow in the friend zone didn’t seem to be working tonight.

Maybe because she didn’t really need me as a support system anymore.

She was smiling.

She was relaxed.

She was confident.

She was perfectly capable of doing almost anything on her own.

And she was back into her old routines.

This was the real Harlow, and she was fucking captivating.

Honestly, I knew none of this change was exactly sudden. Harlow had made progress every single day for nearly a month. More than likely, it was me who had suddenly changed and not her.

My biggest defense had always been Harlow’s vulnerability, and the fact that I was her advisor. What kind of asshole would hit on a woman when she was down? Not me. Not when she needed me to be there for her, and help her get back on her feet.

Because things had happened slowly, it had been easy to ignore that every single day, Harlow had gotten closer to finding her independence again. She’d inched away from me until I really couldn’t see the woman who’d been so crippled with fear and anxiety that she never left her apartment.

It wasn’t that things weren’t going exactly the way I’d hoped, and even faster than I’d anticipated. After the random nightmare that Harlow had experienced about Mark, she hadn’t had another one of those, either.

I wasn’t going to bullshit myself into believing she was never going to feel some residual effects from being a hostage. Nor was she even close to finished with her treatment.

But holy fuck! She was obviously taking her life back, and she wasn’t going to need an advisor anymore. That fact was suddenly giving my mind and body other ideas about what roles I could play in this woman’s life. Unfortunately, almost all of them should remain off-limits for now.

Still, my mind had been going there all evening, off-limits or not.

Problem was that I couldn’t rein those thoughts in anymore. It was like the door had burst open, releasing every salacious fantasy I’d ever had about Harlow, and there was no possible way to slam it closed again.

At one point during dinner, I’d gotten so engrossed in thought while I was staring at Harlow that Cooper had elbowed me and said, “Give it a rest, man. You’re going to freak her out