Geoffrey rushed to her side and searched her face. Her eyes were closed. His heart plummeted. “Oh, Maria. Darling, are you okay? Are you okay?”

She lay there on the floor as still as death. Terrified that she was seriously hurt, he gingerly touched her shoulder. “Maria. Maria, wake up.” He touched her face and lowered his ear to her lips, praying she was still breathing.

She was, but the fact that she was unconscious alarmed him more with each passing millisecond. He was so panicked he felt as if he were going to pass out. Geoffrey began to talk to himself. “Get yourself together. You’ve got to help her. She needs help.” He rose to his feet, reluctant to leave her. Should he pick her up? Should he-

Over his screaming loud panic, he heard a moan. He stared down at Maria. Had she made that sound, or had he? Biting his tongue, he listened and heard the sound again. Sinking beside her, he watched as her brow furrowed in pain.

His heart wrenched. Oh, no, she couldn’t be in pain. He couldn’t let that happen. “Maria, what hurts? Tell me what hurts.”

She moaned again, and her eyes fluttered open. “My head.” She winced. “Oh, my head.”

“Anything else?” he asked, desperate to help her. “I need to carry you to the house so we can get you proper medical attention.”

She frowned. “I don’t need a doctor,” she said and shook her head. She stopped suddenly, wincing. “I’ll be okay if I keep my head still.”

He could see she was downplaying her injury. “A visit to a doctor is imperative,” he said and slid one of his arms underneath her back.

Her eyes flashed open. “You’re not going to try to carry me, are you?”

Surprised at the note of fear in her voice, he paused a half beat. “Of course I’m going to carry you. You can’t walk the entire way. Don’t worry. I’ll carry you back to the house and then take you to a doc-”

She shook her head and winced again. “You can’t carry me.” She made a sound of exasperation. “I’m too big for you.”

Geoffrey sighed. She couldn’t be concerned about her weight. “That’s ridiculous. You have a perfectly luscious body.” He tugged gently to pick her up.

“Geoffrey,” she said, her eyes wide with alarm. “You’re too small. You’ll drop me.”

Geoffrey stared at her in disbelief. He’d thought she was self-conscious about her size. Instead she was criticizing his. Male pride rushed through every pore. “I am not too small,” he said, the words feeling as if they were shooting through his teeth like bullets from a machine gun. “I would be quite happy to show you just how small I’m not,” he continued, fuming. “And I will not drop you.”

Adrenaline and indignation roaring through him, he pulled her into his arms and stood. Stomping toward the house, he felt a feral growl shoot up his throat from somewhere deep in his belly.

“Geoffrey!” Maria’s eyes rounded in surprise. She was clearly shocked, however, no more than he. If he wasn’t wrong, he thought he spotted a glint of admiration in her dark eyes. If he wasn’t imagining things, she was looking at him differently.

He cleared his throat to keep from growling again. “So you see I’m perfectly capable of carrying you. You are not too large, and I am not too small.”

Five hours later, Maria lay in bed, with Geoffrey bobbing up and down every three minutes checking to make sure she was okay. In other circumstances, it would have driven her crazy to be stuck in bed, with someone fussing over her. If there was one thing Maria detested, it was feeling helpless. She would do anything to avoid it.

“I’m still breathing,” she said, feeling just a hint of Geoffrey’s breath on her cheek. “I fell in the tack room. I climbed on some boxes-”

“Which you’ll never do again,” he prompted with an edge to his voice. “You’ve nearly scared the life out of everyone.”

“You nearly scared the life out of everyone, carrying me to the house, yelling for help like I was bleeding to death.” She met his gaze, and a wave of tenderness washed over her, leaving her in a momentary state of shock.

Geoffrey studied her. “You look odd,” he said. “Are you in pain? You must tell me if you have any unusual symptoms.”

Symptoms like crushing over a pretty Englishman whose social status was stratospheres above her own. Not that social status had ever meant anything to Maria. But Geoffrey was different. So polite, yet urgent. So very passionate. How could she not be a little interested in the man? He’d written music inspired by her. She could tell he wanted her, and she couldn’t deny wondering what he was like as a lover.

“I’m fine,” she said quietly and reached for the orange juice on her bed stand.

“I’ll get that.” Geoffrey beat her to the chase and lifted the glass toward her, adjusting the straw.

She took a sip and looked into his eyes. “This is really unnecessary. I’m not sick. I’m not really hurt. You’re pampering me when I don’t need it.”

“That’s a matter of opinion,” he said in that snooty uppercrust voice he used on very rare occasions. “More?”

She shook her head.

“Besides, from my point of view, it looks like you could do with some pampering. I may not be all that good at it, but I’d like to give it a try.”

Another rush of warmth coursed through her. The man was getting to her. She’d always made a point of enjoying men on her own terms but never, ever putting herself in a position of weakness. She’d been in that weak place when she’d lived with her father, and she had the scars to show for it.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like something else to eat? Or another pillow?” he asked. “How can I pamper the woman who works twenty-five hours a day?”

Her lips twitched. “There are only twenty-four hours in a day, and I sleep every night.”

“Hmmph. Could have fooled me. What can I do for you?”

She fought a rush of self-consciousness and decided to splurge. After all, Geoffrey was a delicious splurge. She knew he was the kind of man who would come around only once in a woman’s life, and soon enough, he would be gone. The knowledge cast a shadow over her enjoyment, so she pushed it aside. “I’d like you to read to me.”

He blinked. “Read to you.” He hesitated a moment. “Are you saying you can’t re-”

She laughed. “I can read. I just enjoy the sound of your voice.”

“Really?” he said, his voice breaking slightly. He cleared his throat. “Really,” he repeated in a deeper voice.

“Really,” she said. “It’s so-”

“English,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, unable to prevent a smile. “And it’s kinda sexy, too.”

His gaze latched on to hers, and she saw the desire flame. “You make it bloody difficult for this poor Englishman to keep his equilibrium.”

She looked at his hand balled into a fist of tension and lifted hers to cover his. “Are you complaining?”

“Is your goal to torture me? Do you enjoy making me sweat?”

She laughed and couldn’t keep a dozen wicked thoughts from her mind. “That’s for another night. Right now I just want you to read.”

“I think we missed late checkout,” Jackson said as he slid his fingers down Lori’s bare arm. Her skin was so pale and so soft that the sight and texture fascinated him. Her hair was a tousled mass of blonde waves, her eyes closed, and her mouth deliciously swollen and tempting. At the moment she was wrapped in a sheet, but he knew what was underneath. They’d spent the night in a blur of mind-blowing sex and catnaps that enabled them to rest long enough to go at each other again.

This amazing, effervescent, scorching-hot woman was his wife. The reality knocked him sideways again. The desire to take her again, to mark her as his, scared the hell out of him.

Even though they were lawfully wed, he shouldn’t feel this way about her. After all, it was temporary and it was business.

He felt a twinge at that last thought. Their business relationship had been blown to smithereens. He paused in stroking her bare skin.

“Don’t stop,” she said, lifting her arm so he would continue.

He smiled at her artless response. “I almost thought you were asleep.”

She shook her head.

“You know we’re paying for two rooms at the Bellagio when we’re only staying in one,” he said.

Her lips curved in a secret smile, and her eyes opened to slits of blue. “I saw how much you won at that blackjack table. You can afford it.”

Shaking his head, he slid his hand down to her bottom and lightly pinched her through the sheet.

“Hey!” Her eyes flew open. “What are you doing?”

“Pinching the princess,” he said without an ounce of remorse.

She met his gaze and slid her hand over his arm and tugged him closer. “Are you in a big rush to leave?”

His chest squeezed tight at her touch. “I could stay another night,” he said in a voice that sounded a little rough to his own ears.

“That’s nice to hear,” she said. “I hope it won’t be too much of a chore.”

“No chore,” he said. “But I almost feel like I should have trained for this.”

She gave a low laugh, and her eyes swept downward. “Did you ever think about what it would be like if you got married?”

“Maybe a few times,” he said. “But I’ve been wrapped up tight with school and my job for a long time.”

“No time for a wife,” she said, meeting his gaze.

“That’s right.”

“But when you did think about it, what were your thoughts?”

“I don’t know. That it would be nice to go to bed every night with the same woman. Nice to wake up with someone who wanted to be in my life and who I wanted to be with me. We could go places together, do things.”

“Like what?”

He shrugged. “Camping. Football games.”

She fell silent for several seconds, then blinked. “Camping?” she echoed, grimacing.

He chuckled. “Hey, that’s the male fantasy. I also thought it would be nice to come home to a hot meal and a hotter wife.”

“With a cook and housekeeper, anything is possible.”

He lifted his hand to her sassy mouth. “Okay, princess, what about you? Did you ever think about getting married? If you did, then what did you imagine?”

“I imagined going on adventures,” she said. “To Paris or Italy or New York City. Or a Caribbean island. I imagined spending holidays with my husband, with my sisters and brother.” She sighed. “And I imagined hot sex,” she said. “Lots of it.”

Jackson nearly choked over his shock at her bluntness. He cleared his throat. “I guess I can understand that, since you didn’t get a lot of opportunities to-” He didn’t want to finish that thought. It didn’t feel right.

“Get laid,” she said for him.

The woman was full of surprises. He lifted his hand to push a strand of hair from her face. “When we first talked about you getting married, you said you didn’t think you would want to have sex. Why did you change your mind?”

She slipped her hands over his shoulders and chest, then down his arms to his wrists. “Because I wanted to be with you,” she said. “And it seemed extra stupid not to be with you if we were married.”

“Why me?” he asked, craving her touch. “Why not some other guy?”

She bit her lip. “I don’t know. I just-”

“Just what?” he asked, feeling desire ooze through him again.

“I wanted to be with you. What about you? Why me?”

“Besides the fact that you’re beautiful and sexy?” he asked.

She beamed. “You really think so?”

“Every man really thinks so,” he growled and tugged her against him. He hated the sheet, but he craved her mouth beneath his. He kissed her, savoring her lips, and she responded, cranking up his arousal another few notches.

“I wasn’t asking about every man,” she said. “I was asking about you. Does that mean you like me a little bit?”

“Yeah,” he said, his heart turning an odd flip as he pushed down the sheet. “A little bit.”

“Can I be on top this time?”

He hesitated, feeling himself grow harder. “Top?”

“Yeah. I’ve never done that-”

If Lori wanted to be adventurous, then he definitely wanted to accommodate her. He immediately rolled onto his back, pulling her on top of him. The view was divine. Her hair shimmered over her shoulders, and her breasts swayed inches from his mouth.

“I’m ready when you are,” he said.

Leaning forward, she braced her hands on his shoulders and positioned herself over him, pausing a few beats. Jackson held his breath and reined in the urge to plunge her down over him.

Mounting him, she enveloped his shaft, millimeter by wet, silky millimeter. When she had finally taken all of him, she took a little breath and whispered, “Wow.”

He gave a rough chuckle. “Yeah. Wow.”

She leaned down and took his mouth in a French kiss at the same time she undulated with him inside her. “I think I could like this,” she said, her breasts pressed against his chest.