by Fiona Brand
Satisfaction eased some of his tension. He didn’t need another property, and with its links to his father’s past he shouldn’t want this one. His offer to Elena had been a tactic, pure and simple, a sweetener to give him the opening he needed to research the past.
Although, once he had decided to make the purchase, the desire to own the property had taken on a life of its own.
On thinking it through, he had decided that his motives were impractical and self-centered. In buying the villa he hoped to somehow soothe over the past and cement a link with Elena.
Whichever way he looked at it, the whole concept was flawed. It presupposed that he wanted a relationship.
The second he brought the Jeep to a halt, Elena sent him a bright professional smile and unfastened her seat belt. “Let’s get this over and done with.”
With crisp movements, she opened her door and stepped out onto the drive.
Jaw tightening at the unsubtle hint that, far from being irresistibly attracted, Elena couldn’t wait to get rid of him, Nick locked the Jeep.
He padded behind Elena, studying the smooth walls glowing a soft, inviting honey, the palms and lush plantings.
Elena was being difficult about the property, but he was certain he could bring her around. With the deal he was negotiating to buy a majority share in the Dolphin Bay Resort, in partnership with the Atraeus Group, it made sense to add the property to the resort’s portfolio.
As Elena unlocked the front door, the sense of stepping back in time was so powerful that he almost reached out to pull her close. It was a blunt reminder that almost everything about a liaison with Elena had been wrong from the beginning, and six years on, nothing had changed.
The tabloids exaggerated his love life. Mostly he just dated because he liked female company and he liked to relax. If he wanted to take things further, it was a considered move with nothing left to chance, including the possibility that he might be drawn into any kind of commitment.
With Elena the situation had always been frustratingly different; she was different. For a start, she had never set out to attract him.
Six years ago he had muscled in on her blind date because he had overheard a conversation in a café and gotten annoyed that her friend had set her up with a guy who could quite possibly be dangerous.
But, if he was honest, that had only been an excuse. Elena had been on the periphery of his life for years. She was obviously naive and tantalizingly sweet, and the idea that some other guy could date Elena and maybe make love to her had quite simply ticked him off.
She had been a virgin.
The moment he had logged that fact was still burned indelibly into his mind.
The maelstrom of emotions that had hit him had been fierce, but tempered by caution. At that point he’d had no room in his life for a relationship. His business had come first—he had been traveling constantly and working crazy hours. Elena had needed love, commitment, marriage, and he hadn’t been in a position to offer her any of those things.
The accident and his father’s death had slammed the lid on any further contact, but years later the pull of the attraction was just as powerful, just as frustrating.
Despite applying his usual logic—that no matter how hot the sex, a committed relationship didn’t fit with his life—he still wanted Elena.
The fact that Elena wanted him despite all of the barriers she kept throwing up made every muscle in his body tighten. They were going to make love. He knew it, and he was certain, at some underlying level, so did she.
And now he was beginning to wonder if one night was going to be enough.
* * *
Elena stepped inside the villa and flicked on the hall light. Nick, tall and broad-shouldered behind her, instantly made the airy hall seem claustrophobic and cramped, triggering a vivid set of memories.
Nick closing the door six years ago and pulling her into his arms. The long passionate kiss, as if he couldn’t get enough of her....
Elena’s stomach tightened at the vivid replay. With one brisk step she reached the next series of light switches and flicked every one of them.
They didn’t require that much light, since the boxes they needed to search were in the attic. She didn’t care. With tension zinging through her, and Nick making no bones about the fact that he wouldn’t be averse to repeating their one night together, she wasn’t taking any risks.
The blazing lights illuminated the small sunroom to the left, the larger sitting room to the right and the stairs directly ahead.
Sending Nick a smile she was aware was overbright and strained, she started up the stairs. “Help yourself to a drink in the kitchen. I’ll change and be right back.”
There were four bedrooms upstairs. The doors to each were open, allowing air to circulate. Elena stepped inside the master bedroom she had claimed as her own. A room her aunt had refused to use and which was, incidentally, the same room she and Nick had shared six years ago.
With white walls and dramatic, midnight-dark floorboards, the bedroom was decorated in the typical Medinian style, with a four-poster dominating. Once a starkly romantic but empty testament to her aunt’s lost love, Elena had worked hard to inject a little warmth.
Now, with its lush, piled cushions and rich pomegranate-red coverlet picked out in gold, the bed glowed like a warm, exotic nest. A lavish slice of paradise in an otherwise very simply furnished house.
Closing the door behind her, she began working on the line of silk-covered buttons that fastened the pink dress, her fingers fumbling in their haste.
As she hung the lavish cascade of silk and lace in her closet, her reflection, captured by an antique oval mirror on a stand, distracted her. In pink lingerie and high heels, her hair falling in soft waves around her face, jewels gleaming at her lobes and her navel, she looked like nothing so much as a high-priced courtesan.
Not a good thought to have when she was committed to spending the next two hours with Nick.
Dragging her gaze from an image she was still struggling to adjust to, she pulled on a summer dress in a rich shade of red.
Unfortunately the thin straps revealed the butterfly transfer on her shoulder. Maybe it was ridiculous, but she didn’t want Nick to see the full extent of the fake tattoo. With all of the changes she had made, the addition of a tattoo now seemed like overkill and just a little desperate.
Unfastening the gorgeous pink heels, she slipped on a pair of comfortable red sandals that made the best of her spray-on tan, shrugged into a thin, black cardigan and walked downstairs.
When she entered the sitting room, she saw Nick’s jacket tossed over the back of a chair. The French doors that led out to the garden were open, warm light spilling out onto a small patio.
As she flicked on another lamp, Nick stepped in out of the darkness, the scents of salt and sea flowing in with him. He half turned, locking the door behind him, and the simple, intimate motion of closing out the night made her heart squeeze tight.
With his jaw dark and stubbled, his shirt open at the throat, he looked rumpled and sexy and heartbreakingly like the young man she had used to daydream about on the beach.
Although the instant his cool, green gaze connected with hers that impression evaporated. “Are you ready?”
“Absolutely. This way.” She started back up the stairs, her heart thumping faster as she registered Nick’s tread behind her.
As she passed her bedroom, she noted that in her rush to get downstairs she had forgotten to close the door. The full weight of her decision to invite the only man she had a passionate past with to the scene of her seduction, hit home.
If she had been thinking straight she would have asked someone to come with them. A third person would have canceled out the tension and the angst.
Relieved when Nick didn’t appear to notice her room or the exotic
makeover she’d given the bed, she ascended another small flight of stairs. Pushing the door open into a small, airless attic, she switched on the light. Nick ducked underneath the low lintel and stepped inside.
He stared at the conglomeration of old furniture, trunks and boxes. “Did Katherine ever throw anything away?”
“Not that I’ve noticed. I suppose that if the ring is anywhere on the property, it’ll be here.”
As always when she thought of her aunt, Elena felt a sentimental softness and warmth. She knew Katherine had adored all of her nieces and nephews, but she and Elena had shared a special bond. She had often thought that had been because Katherine hadn’t had children of her own.
Feeling stifled by the stale air and oppressive heat, Elena walked to one end of the room to open a window. The sound of a corresponding click and a cooling flow of air told her that Nick had opened the window at the other end.
“Where do we start?” Nick picked up an ancient book, a dusty tome on Medinian history.
“Everything on that side of the room has been searched and sorted.” She indicated a stack of trunks. “This is where we need to start.”
“Cool. Sea trunks.” Nick bent down to study one of the old leather trunks with their distinctive Medinian labeling. “When did these come out?”
“Probably in 1944. That’s when the Lyon family immigrated to New Zealand.”
“During the war, about the same time my family landed. I wonder if they traveled on the same ship.”
“It’s possible,” Elena muttered. “Although, since your family owned the ships it was unlikely they would have socialized.”
Nick flipped a trunk open. Another wave of dust rose in the air. “Let me get this right. My grandparents would have traveled first-class so they wouldn’t have spoken to your relatives?”
Still feeling overheated, Elena ignored her longing to discard her cardigan. “The Lyons were market gardeners and domestic servants. They would have been on the lower decks.”
With a muffled imprecation, Nick shrugged out of his tightly fitted waistcoat. Tossing it over the back of a chair, he unfastened another button on his shirt, revealing more brown, tanned skin.
Dragging her gaze from the way the shirt clung across his chest, Elena concentrated on her trunk, which was filled with yellowed, fragile magazines and newspapers.
Nick, by some painful coincidence, had opened a trunk filled with ancient women’s foundation garments. He held up a pair of king-size knickers in heavy, serviceable cotton. “And the fact that some of them settled here in Dolphin Bay was just a coincidence, right?”
The tension sawing at her nerves morphed into annoyance. She had never paid any particular attention to her family’s history of settlement, especially since her parents lived in Auckland. But now that Nick was pointing it out, the link seemed obvious. “Okay, so maybe they did meet.”
Nick extracted a corset that appeared to rely on a network of small steel girders to control the hefty curves of one of her ancestors. “It was a little more than that. Pretty sure Katherine’s grandparents worked for mine.”
Elena vowed to burn the trunk, contents and all, at the earliest possible moment. “I suppose they could have been offered jobs.”
He closed the lid on the evidence that past Lyon women had been sturdy, buxom specimens and pulled the lid off a tea chest. “So, maybe the Messena family aren’t all monsters.”
Feeling increasingly overheated and smothered by the cardigan, Elena discreetly undid the buttons and let it flap open. The neckline of her dress was scooped, revealing a hint of cleavage, but she would have to live with that. “I didn’t say you were. Aunt Katherine liked working for your family.”
The echoing silence that greeted her quiet comment, was a reminder of the cold rift that still existed between their families—the abyss that separated their lifestyles— and made her mood plummet.
Although she was fiercely glad she had ruined the camaraderie that had been building. Stuck in the confined space with Nick, the past linking them at every turn, she had needed the reminder.
Elena opened the trunk nearest her. A cloud of dust made her nose itch and her eyes feel even more irritated. She blinked to ease the burning sensation.
Too late to wish she’d taken the time to remove her colored contacts before she’d rejoined Nick.
Nick dumped an ancient bedpan, which looked like it had come out of the ark, on the floor. When she glanced at him, he caught her eye and lifted a brow, and the cool tension evaporated.
Suddenly irrationally happy, Elena tried to concentrate on her trunk, which appeared to be filled with items that might be found in a torturer’s toolbox. She held up a pair of shackles that looked like restraints of some kind.
“Know what you’re thinking.” Nick grinned as he straightened, ducking his head to avoid the sloping ceiling. “They’re not bondage.” He closed the box of books he’d finished sorting through. “They’re a piece of Medinian kitchen equipment, designed to hang hams in the pantry. We’ve got a set at home.”
Elena replaced the shackles and tried not to melt at Nick’s easy grin. She couldn’t afford to slip back into the old addictive attraction. With just minutes to go before he was out of her life, now was not the time to soften.
She glanced at her watch, although her eyes were now watering enough that she had difficulty reading the dial.
“Are those contacts bothering you?”
“They’re driving me nuts. I’ll take them out when I go downstairs.”
Once Nick was gone.
Nick closed the lid on the box with a snap that echoed through the night.
There was a moment of heavy silence in which the tension that coiled between them pulled almost suffocatingly tight.
“Damn,” he said softly. “Why are you so intent on resisting me?”
Seven
The words seemed to reverberate through the room.
Elena glared at Nick. “What I don’t get is why you want me?”
“I’ve wanted you for six years.”
“I’ve barely seen you in six years.”
Nick frowned as a gust of wind hit the side of the house. “I’ve been busy.”
Building up a fortune and dating a long line of beautiful girls who never seemed to hold his interest for long...and avoiding her like the plague because she would have reminded him of that night.
And in that moment Elena acknowledged a truth she had been avoiding for weeks.
Now, just when she was on the point of getting free and clear, and at absolutely the wrong time—while they were alone together—it dawned on her that Nick was just as fatally attracted as she.
Outside it had started to rain, large droplets exploding on the roof.
Elena rubbed at her eyes, which was exactly the wrong thing to do, as one of the contacts dropped out. Muttering beneath her breath, she began to search, although with the dim lighting and with both eyes stinging, she didn’t expect to find it.
Sound exploded as the rain turned tropically heavy. Moist air swirled through the open window.
She was suddenly aware that Nick was close beside her.
“Sit down, before the other one drops out.”
“No. I need to find the lens, although it’s probably lost forever.” Added to that, her eyes were still watering, which meant her mascara was running.
Swiping at the damp skin beneath her eyes, Elena continued to search the dusty floorboards.
Something glittered, but when she reached for it, it turned out to be a loose bead. At that moment the wind gusted, flinging the window wide. Jumping to her feet, she grabbed at the latch and jammed it closed.
A corresponding bang informed her that Nick had closed the other window. As she double-checked the latch, Nick loomed behind her, reflecte
d in the glass.
“Don’t you ever listen?” The low, impatient timbre of his voice cut through the heavy drumming on the roof. His hands closed around her arms, burning through the thin, damp cotton of her cardigan. “You need to sit down.”
Obediently, Elena sat on an ancient chair. Nick crouched in front of her, but even so he loomed large, his shoulders broad, his bronzed skin gleaming through the transparent dampness of his shirt. The piercing lightness of his eyes pinned her. “Hold still while I get the other lens out for you.”
Elena inhaled, her nostrils filling with his heat and scent. Her stomach clenched on the now-familiar jolt of sensual tension. “I don’t need help. All I need is a few minutes in the bathroom—”
Cupping her jaw with one large hand, he peered into her eyes. “And some drops.”
Nick was close enough that she could study the translucence of his irises, the intriguing scar on his nose to her heart’s content. “How would you know?” But she was suddenly close enough to see.
“I’ve worn contacts for years. Hold still.”
As Nick bent close, his breath mingled with hers. She swallowed and tried not to remember the softness and heat of the kiss they’d shared on the steps of the church.
With a deft movement he secured the second contact on the tip of his forefinger.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a small container of eyedrops and a tiny lens case. Setting the drops on the top of a nearby trunk he placed the lens gently in the case and snapped it closed.
Before he could bulldoze her into letting him put the drops in, Elena picked up the small plastic bottle and inserted a droplet of the cooling solution in each eye. The relief was instant. Blinking, she waited for her vision to clear.
Nick pressed the folded handkerchief she had given him earlier in the day into her hand. “It’s almost clean.”
“Thank you.” Elena dabbed in the corners and beneath both eyes, then, feeling self-conscious, peeled out of the damp cardigan. “What else have you got in those pockets?”