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“Don’t you like having it in the cottage?” he asks, his deep voice floating over from the doorway and causing me to mistakenly glance up and locking eyes with him.
Light blue meets deep, deep brown.
“It’s a beautiful mirror.” I look back at the computer screen.
“That’s not what I asked.”
I groan internally as he walks into my office, around my desk to where I’m sitting, and leans back against it, crossing his legs at the ankle.
“It looks more like it belongs here. In the main house,” I explain.
“It did. It’s from my mother’s childhood bedroom.”
I stop typing and turn in my chair, giving him my full attention. His lip looks better today, but the bruising across his cheekbone is coming out more, and it’s bizarre, but it works for him. He has a classically handsome face—sharp, strong jawline, high cheekbones, straight nose. Eyes that look equally stunning when they’re either amused or stormy. And those blond strands that he pushes back from his face, but inevitably fall forward a few times a day and dust his forehead.
The bruise only makes him look sexier. Edgy. Protective.
He's what Casey would call a ‘hot as fuck, pretty, bad boy’.
“Your mother’s room?”
Dax never takes his eyes off me as he speaks. “What used to be. The entire house has changed as the business has grown. But the mirror was still here. She always said it was the one thing she missed.”
“Not your grandparents, then?” I laugh, stopping abruptly as a shadow passes over Dax’s features, his brows dropping low over his eyes.
“No, they fell out before I was born. Mom hadn’t spoken to them in years. Jasmin and I met them for the first time after they found out Mom had passed away.”
“Really?”
“Really.” He shrugs, crossing his arms over his chest as he continues to pin me with his gaze. “But that’s not a story for now. I want to know why you don’t like the mirror.”
“I never said I don’t like it.” I shuffle in my seat. He’s so close. His aftershave is calling for me to take a large inhale. He always smells so good. But the scent underneath is making my stomach flutter. It’s clean and fresh, and something else. Maybe it’s just him. He smelled like this yesterday when I was close to him. A scent that makes me think of lying together in clean sheets with bare skin when the sun is shining outside. Warm and masculine, and…sexy.
“I sent it to you because the cottage doesn’t have a big one. Jasmin likes a full length one when she’s getting dressed. I thought you might too.” His eyes drop over my white dress and to my bare legs.
I fight to keep my unwelcome shiver at his appraisal small and unnoticeable.
“And the note?”
He lifts his eyes from my legs. “You need to stop looking at yourself through these warped lenses you have in place. Your ex was an undeserving prick. Your brother’s accident wasn’t your fault. And neither was your dad dying,” he says without a shred of empathy in his tone.
Wow.
“I’m not trying to be an asshole, Rose.”
“Aren’t you?”
He doesn’t flinch. Instead, he looks directly at me like he can see things no one else can. Like he can read the hidden parts of me as if they are printed on my skin.Like tattoos.
“I understand what blame can do to you. I left Jasmin. It’s always been the two of us. Then I went and lost my head and got locked up. Away from her.”
I look into his eyes and the hint of vulnerability is there again, like the night he let me in the gates and told me I shouldn’t be alone in the dark. That he knows what men talk about.What they talk about in jail? What they did to be there in the first place?
“What was it like there?”
“In jail?”
I nod.
