A Wish Upon Jasmine Read Online Free PDF Page A

of his hands on her, that intent absorption on his face as they stroked down her body, and she set the vial down. “You’ve got to stop doing that,” she said.
    One eyebrow went up. If ever a man had been born to raise one eyebrow it was Damien Rosier. Except his eyes were so…not hard, on her. So searching and intent, and so deceptively not hard in that hard, controlled face. The color of his eyes was just criminally misleading.
    “Doing what?” Damien said coolly.
    “Nothing.” She shoved the bottle away from her. And bit her tongue on the urge to say, I wish I had a… and see what happened.
    I wish you would kiss me. I wish I hadn’t seen you with that supermodel the next day. Or on all those celeb websites with other models and actresses. I wish I was someone different, the kind of person who could wrap someone like you around my little finger.
    I wish you were my happiness, the way I thought you were that night.
    I wish that so bad.
    Damn you.
    “You’re in my shop,” she said. Mine. My space. Not yours. This is one thing I’m going to keep.
    His lips took on that lethal line that made them seem so sensual she wanted to take every Disney film and beat it to death to teach that damn company not to make a girl dream of Prince Charming. “Do you really want to push that right now? I can guarantee you that I can get a court to revert this property back to my family.”
    Oh, yeah, of course. Just as her father said— everything had to belong to the Rosiers. She put her hands on her hips. “Then why don’t you?”
    He turned and moved restlessly through the workshop, his strides slicing too quickly to the end of the room where he paused like a race car on a short street with no outlet. He pivoted back. “I’m not looking forward to hiring a psychiatrist as an expert witness to my aunt’s dementia.”
    “She has dementia?” Jess asked uneasily. That would explain this gift, at least. Maybe, like that night she wished her very own dark-haired prince to her, the shop was just an illusion of happiness that she’d have to give back.
    “No,” Damien said. “Thus the reluctance.” Something brooding and dark shifted over his face. He shoved his hands into his pockets.
    “Wow,” Jess said wonderingly. “You’d actually hesitate to groundlessly call a family member’s sanity into question just to get what you want?” She was intensely proud of her light, ironic tone. Yes, see? I am tough and cynical, too. I’m the kind of woman who can handle a hook-up just fine and never fall into any trap of dreaming for more.
    A slicing, dangerous glance. His hands closed into fists in his pockets.
    “Don’t let it get out,” Jess said. “It would ruin your reputation.”
    “Don’t let it get out that you play with almond and jasmine oil like a kid at Christmas,” Damien retorted. “It would ruin yours.”
    Their gazes locked. Jess fought down the sick sensation in her stomach. She could handle this. She could. Maybe she’d go buy a bottle of her own Spoiled Brat and spray it into the air every time he came near her, to prove that she was not the girl who’d worn a flowing romantic dress to a perfume launch party and believed, right up until she got there, that she was as pretty as a princess.
    Damien’s hands flexed in his pockets. “Jess—”
    She turned toward one of the work counters, pretending to organize bottles. “I suppose if you do decide to go after me and destroy me, I’ll know. Once it’s too late for me to do anything about it, of course.”
    He gazed at her. A little muscle started to tick in his jaw. “I didn’t know it was your company. Jess.”
    “I didn’t know you were a Rosier. Damien.”
    He shifted away again, gazing at old dusty bottles on a shelf, their labels peeling. “I know.”
    “What?”
    “I know you didn’t know who I was. It was…obvious.”
    She stared at him, not understanding how it could have been obvious or what that hint of brooding around his mouth