Free Surreptitious (London) by Danielle Breeze Page A

could hear the amusement in his voice. Damn man had an answer for everything and that was beyond annoying!
     
    “Urgh, you...you’re so...so bloody infuriating. I’m hanging up now.” Before I put the phone down I heard him laugh and utter “Later baby girl”. How a man could be so completely breathtaking and so utterly exasperating at the same time was beyond me.
     
    I crashed onto my couch, clicked on the TV and was waiting for Harper to arrive for girls’ night when it hit me that he’d done it on purpose. That asshole was winding me up on purpose!! I laughed at the audacity of it and shook my head smiling. Crazy man. I grabbed my phone again and dialled his number.
     
    “Twice in one day! I really am a lucky man today. How can I help you Miss Corsi?” I hated that stupid smug tone.
     
    “You did it on purpose!”
     
    “Ah...did...what on purpose?”
     
    “Broke into my home, but left a gift, so that I’d be pissed that you broke in, but couldn’t be as pissed because you’d done it to leave me something. Am I right?” I could hear the smile in his voice when he answered me with another non-answer.
     
    “That’s quite an imagination you have there, baby girl! It took you all of...what...ten minutes to figure me out? Seems I’m going to have to up my game.”
     
    “I don’t want to play games with you! I don’t want to do anything with you!”
     
    “Okay if that’s true, let me ask you something. When you seen the flowers, read the note and I called you. Did you smile?” I stayed silent because I had smiled and I hated that!
     
    “Did you laugh?” Again I remained silent. He waited for a response for about five seconds before saying
     
    “Then my job is done. Hold on baby girl because this ride is about to get a lot more fun. Later.”
     
    And then he hung up on me!! He hung up on me!! But again, I found myself laughing at his cheek. Crazy man. About twenty minutes later, Harper turned up with a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates and we settled in on the sofa for girls’ night.
     
    At some point in the evening, Harper turned to me and said out of the blue...
     
    “I like him ya know...I know you’ve got your rules and whatever... and I love you chick, but you can’t really believe you’re going to stay single for the rest of your life can you?” I didn’t have to ask who ‘him’ was because I knew who she was talking about and I just threw her a look over her comments because yes, I really did believe I would stay single forever but I’d known Jax less than two days and he was already started to push through my shield. I really didn’t want this to happen because I was scared, shit scared actually, of what could be found underneath.
     
    As I was pondering the thought, it occurred to me that his games were working because deep down, deep deep down, I wanted them to. I couldn’t think of a way to make him stop, but I needed him to because it was the only way I’d stay in one piece when he was finished with me. I bit my bottom lip and came up with a plan.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter ten
     
    Taylor
    A week later and I was walking home from university with a shit load of work that needed doing over the following two days and no bloody idea how to get it all done in time seeing as I’d seriously slacked off my schedule. This was down to the fact that every day when I’d arrived home this week I’d walked into my apartment to find a different gift on my coffee table. This then lead to what started as five minute conversations with Jax over the phone, but these soon escalated to the point at which last night, I spent over an hour talking to him about acceptable behaviour in regards to people’s homes!
    The day after my flowers he left me a bottle of rosé wine that was not my usual brand, but a hell of a lot nicer. The following day he left me a copy of the instructions on how