“Nikolas,” she said. “What a surprise. Did you come to place a mint on my pillow?”
“I—” He broke off. How could this one woman reduce him to strangled syllables? “I haven’t seen you all day.” Great—that sounded as if he’d been looking for her. “So I came to check on you and to ask if there’s anything you need,” he said, trying to recover. “We…parted awkwardly last night and I regret that.”
“Why, thank you. How gentlemanly. Entrez-vous, Nick. Care for a drink?”
“No, thank you.” He stood stiffly outside the door, feeling that it was inappropriate for him to enter, given her state of undress.
“Come in. If you need an excuse, the door to the veranda is giving me trouble.” Something dark and reckless shone in her eyes, and it made him wary. However, he stepped into her room.
The plum cotton gypsy skirt lay tossed over a chair and the olive camisole hung from one of the drawer pulls on the dresser. Her gold bangles winked from the desktop. Just what he needed. An unbidden image of Helena walking around the room in only her panties.
Seeing her in the robe was torture enough. The broad shawl collar sat low on her shoulders, exposing too much soft, delicate skin, showcasing those collarbones he’d liked to trace with his fingers when she was eighteen and he was twenty-one.
Nick averted his gaze and went straight to the veranda door, examining the lock. It was indeed stiff, but then so was he, which was humiliating. As if he were a pubescent boy with no self-control. He pretended to fiddle with the lock and looked instead at the vast expanse of blue water, willing his problem to go away.
She stood right behind him, though, and when she turned off the music he could hear her soft breathing. “Why, Nick?”
Slowly he turned to face her. She’d drained most of the wine in her glass and the reckless quality he’d noticed had deepened. It appeared in the curve of her lips and in the tilt of her head.
“Why?” she repeated. “Why did you leave me like that, fifteen years ago?”
He said nothing.
“You came by to see if I needed anything?”
Nick nodded.
“Well, what I need is to know. Right now. What did I do wrong that you couldn’t even give me a kiss goodbye?”
“I did kiss you,” he said quietly. He had, as she lay there sleeping, her hair spread in a dark tangle across the stark white pillow. He’d kissed those soft lips, the side of her jaw, both eyelids and even her forehead. Then he’d kissed her lips again, clenching the gold ring in his pocket. The one set with the tiniest, most pathetic diamond that a woman like Helena Stamos would ever see.
And he’d picked up his miserable, patched canvas duffel and left the room quickly, before he broke down and cried like a child.
Nick didn’t really care to remember the scene, and he didn’t want to explain it to her. But Helena stood there in front of him, poking around in the past.
“Oh, you did kiss me. I don’t remember. Was it good for you? Because it didn’t have much of an impact on me.”
“You were asleep,” he told her.
She came closer to him, too close. “Yes. And you crept out like the proverbial thief in the night. Did you ever think about me again, Nick?” She tilted her head back, gazing intently into his face, and the movement shifted the robe so that it slipped off one of her shoulders. Lord Almighty.
“Yes. I did think of you.” You have no idea how much. But his words came out sounding wooden.
“As a plaything from your past?” She moved within inches of him, her breasts almost touching the white fabric of his uniform. Nick could smell her, look into her dusky, inviting cleavage. God help me. His little problem returned, and this time she noticed.
Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run. She was a woman and he was a man. He closed his eyes. “I never thought of you as a plaything,” he said hoarsely.
The corners of her mouth quirked up in a peculiarly female smile. “Did you miss me, Nick?”
He nodded.
“Did you miss…this?”
His eyes flew open. She’d untied her robe and dropped it to the floor. Dear God in heaven.
He stared helplessly at the body he’d seen so often in his dreams over the years. She had soft, supple breasts with rosy-pink nipples, a trim waist, curvaceous hips and…if she didn’t put her robe back on immediately, he was going to get reacquainted with every inch of her.
Nick forced air back into his lungs and reached for her robe. “Put it back on,” he said, his tone harsh.
She ignored him and cupped her own breasts, raising them in an offering to him. “Touch them, Nick. You used to love them—”
“Helena, you’re drunk.” He threw the robe around her shoulders, holding it closed. Instead of seductive, she now looked forlorn, lost. Damaged.
She pulled away from him and threw the robe to the floor again. “Tell me you don’t like what you see.”
“Put. It. On,” he said through clenched teeth.
“I’ll put it on when you tell me how you could have been such a goddamned coward!” she said passionately. “To leave without a word. I was in love with you, Nick! In love!”
His temper started to rise.
“Did you have a girl on the side? Two? Or did you just tire of me?”
Fine. She wanted to know the truth? He’d spell it out for her. “I had a diamond ring in my pocket when I left you.” He practically ground the words out. “I was going to propose that very night.”
Her face drained of color and she stumbled backward to a chair, her eyes wide.
Nick picked up the robe again and threw it at her. “But you lied to me, Helena.”
“What? When?”
He strode over to where she sat and placed his hands flat on the table next to her chair. He leaned across it until he was inches from her face. “I asked you point blank whether you were related to Elias Stamos. You laughed it off. You dodged the question. ‘Stamos is a common name,’ you said. Remember?”
She looked away. A guilty flush climbed her cheeks.
“Yes, you remember,” he said flatly. He straightened and walked to the veranda door, turning his back on her. “How do you think it felt,” he said conversationally, “when I discovered that I, a deckhand on a freighter, was about to propose to the daughter of a billionaire? With a diamond no larger than the head of a pin?”
Silence greeted his words. A terrible, yawning, painful silence.
“How do you think it felt, Helena?” he repeated. Nick swung around with a savage energy.
Tears poured silently down her stricken face and he couldn’t bear the sight. He rushed to her, intending to take her into his arms, when she finally opened her mouth.
“I didn’t lie,” she said.
And those three words made him angrier than anything else. “You lied.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I avoided the question.” She wiped her streaming eyes on the robe, which she clutched to her nakedness.
He looked at her scathingly while a war escalated inside him. He wanted to comfort her, stop the tears, but he also wanted to shake her. “Semantics, Helena.”
“I wanted to know that you loved me for myself, and not for my money or my connections.”
She may as well have slapped him. She’d already questioned his integrity and his honor once. But twice? The professional calm of years threatened to completely abandon him, but Nick had learned to be disciplined. “Well, now you know.”
Helena sent him a single anguished glance. Her mouth trembled with emotion and probably too much wine. Then she collapsed, quietly weeping, onto the table.
Again, he found himself wanting to comfort her, and this time that instinct won out. He strode to the chair and picked her up bodily, cradling her in his arms. “Shh, agape mou. Shh, my love. It’s all right. It’s all right. Shh.”
He sat on the edge of the bed with her and kissed her forehead. He stroked her hair and murmured endearments to her until she quieted. He shifted her
onto the coverlet and went into the bathroom for a washcloth, which he wet with cold water.
Nick sat with Helena on the bed again and tilted up her chin with his finger. He gently wiped the tears from her cheeks while she sniffled and her eyes welled up again.
“I did lie,” she whispered.
That was all it took. “Yes, you did.” He forgave her instantly. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
“I’m so sorry, Nick.”
“Shh. It’s okay.”
“It’s not,” she insisted. “But I loved you so much that I couldn’t bear it if it wasn’t real. I felt I had to hide my identity, protect what we had at all costs….”
And in doing so, she’d destroyed it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
AS NICK HELD HER and rocked her and wiped away her tears, Helena wished all the layers of fabric between them would simply disappear. How ironic that all of the material was white: white terry robe, white captain’s uniform, white coverlet on the bed. The color of innocence, virgins and weddings. A sardonic chuckle escaped her—white was certainly not her color.
Scarlet’s my color. And rich purple. Dramatic, emerald-green. Blazing orange. Not white.
She eventually lost herself in her scattered thoughts and fell asleep cradled in Nick’s arms, her head on his chest. At some point he must have fallen asleep, too, but when she woke three hours later he was watching her, his gray eyes clouded like a London sky.
She looked into his face, marveling at how the years had changed him, and yet how familiar he still looked. The slight crinkles at the outside corners of his eyes only made him more handsome. Sun and time had etched deep grooves along the edges of his mouth, and his skin told the story of a life spent aboard ship.
But he was still the Nick she’d known and loved once; still the Nick who’d changed her from a girl to a woman.
She wanted to reach up and run her fingers along his strong jaw, but it was such a bad idea. Just as it was a bad idea for her to lie in his arms for hours. She was still stunned at his revelation—and now that the effects of the wine had worn off, embarrassed at her own behavior.
Another man might have taken her up on her offer, but Nick hadn’t taken advantage of her intoxication—even though he’d clearly been aroused. “An officer and a gentleman,” she whispered.
He laid a finger across her lips, then shifted so that she lay on her side and he could prop himself on his elbow. He continued to look into her eyes as if he sought the answers to some immutable truth.
“God help me,” he said huskily. And then he bent his head and kissed her.
A welcome shock; sudden electricity in her veins; a deep, wrenching desire—Helena felt all of these as she opened to him, welcomed him as he made love to her mouth.
He cupped her chin, traced her collarbone, trailed an index finger down from the hollow of her throat to the hollow between her breasts. This time it was Nick who parted her robe, and he did it not with recklessness, as she had, but with an exquisite sweetness, as if he were unwrapping a long-awaited gift.
She quivered under his hands, unsure of how far she should let this go, yet knowing that if she stopped him she might never forgive herself.
Then Nick did something unexpected. He pressed his cheek against her abdomen and simply looked up at her. “What do you want, agape mou?” His voice was still husky, not smooth and rich as it normally was.
“I want…” Her voice trembled. “I don’t want you to stop.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes, Nikolas. But this time it’s different. We’re adults, not starry-eyed kids. No promises are necessary, no words at all.”
Nick listened to her heartbeat and the tiny noises of her stomach and hesitated. He inhaled the scent of her and tried to think clearly, pushing aside the fog of desire and some primal, masculine urge to make her his, and his alone. It was sheer lunacy for them to do this, and for what? Some memories of the past? Unresolved feelings and a need for closure? For God’s sake, they lived in different countries and different social circles, separate worlds, really.
He also wasn’t sure he liked her terms—or non-terms. No promises…meaning no complications. Nothing meaningful or substantial. No pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. His mouth twisted.
Yet was there any other way for him and Helena Stamos to be together? A woman like her wasn’t going to marry the son of a fisherman. And it still troubled him that she’d deceived him, even if he understood it more now.
Do you want her? That’s the question. Now, in this moment?
Hell, yes.
Then admit it, Pappas. Your hands are tied.
“Nick? Really, this doesn’t have to be difficult. No promises. You don’t want any, and I’m too damaged to make them at the moment.”
Her words told him more than she intended to. They told him that the urge was there—she had feelings for him. Part of him was elated, part of him sad. He didn’t think he’d ever get married again. He’d hated the feeling of letting his wife down, watching the light dim in her eyes over the months and then simply turn off. They’d been wrong for each other, just as Helena and Ari had been. But what guaranteed that Helena and he would mesh any better? They’d spent half a summer together long ago.
“Nick?”
He looked down at her upturned face and slid his hand from the small of her back. He put a finger under her pixie chin and surprised himself by saying, “I never had difficulty making promises to you.”
“I don’t want them,” she said, her voice catching. “I’m done with unkept promises.”
His back went rigid. “I never made you a promise that I didn’t keep.”
“Relax, Nikolas. I’m not talking about you—I’m talking about me. I walked away from my wedding vows.”
“And I walked away from mine,” he said after a moment. “Do you think I’m proud of that?”
“I didn’t know you had married,” she said in a small voice. “But of course…”
“Yes. I was married for five years before she asked me for a divorce.”
“Why?”
He sighed and shrugged.
“Children?” she whispered.
He shook his head. Nick gently smoothed a few strands of hair from her face.
“Were you devastated? Still deeply in love with her?” Helena asked as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.
Again, he shook his head. “I didn’t love her the way…that I once loved you.”
Helena’s eyes widened. “I-I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“Did that break her heart?”
“Such a romantic you are. No, the truth is that she was much more interested in the big house that I bought her, on dry land, than she was in her dashing sea captain husband.”
He smoothed his hand over her skin, avoiding the apex of her thighs and her nipples, noting how the small buds tightened and hardened anyway.
“I wasn’t quite so dashing when forced to look after a house and walk a bad-tempered Yorkshire terrier.” He smiled a little sadly. “The truth? I’m not cut out to live on land. I’m happiest at sea or traveling. And Linnea—she couldn’t live aboard ship. Loathed it—the small rooms, the hotel feel of it. We didn’t have a happy marriage.”
“So…it’s better now. She’s happier? You’re happier?”
He nodded. “It’s better.”
“My father doesn’t believe in divorce.” Helena shivered in the cool air of the suite.
Nick ran his hands up and down her arms, trying to erase the goose bumps. “I didn’t think I believed in divorce, either. I don’t, in principle. I wouldn’t have been the one to end our marriage. But what was I to say when she asked for her freedom?”
“You would have stayed married and miserable?”
He shrugged. “Yes.”
“And what if you’d met someone else?”
He lifted an eyebrow, and grimaced. “I wouldn’t have. I was a married man.”
; “You have honor, Nick,” she said in a small voice. “I should never have doubted that.”
He said nothing, just caressed her jaw with the backs of his fingers.
“But if that’s true,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh, “then I have none.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Helena.”
“I left Ari. I made promises to him that I couldn’t keep.”
“You’re divorced now, right?”
She nodded.
“Then it’s done. You have to stop feeling guilty.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“No. I keep seeing Ari’s hurt expression, the puppy-dog eyes. I keep hearing my father’s voice. ‘You don’t walk away from a marriage, my daughter.’” She deepened her tones and did a credible imitation of Elias.
“Guilt is a useless emotion. Truly.”
“But it’s inescapable. It’s real….”
Nick leaned over her and cupped her face in his hands. “No, Helena. This is real.” And he touched his lips to hers again.
SHE’D NEVER BEEN ABLE to resist Nick’s kiss. He made her body come alive, her nerves sing, her mind soar. She’d had sex with a few other men—but with Nikolas it had always been making love. He initiated a glow deep in her subconscious, one that spread like warm honey throughout her whole body.
Helena curved her mouth to his and opened to him, thinking as she did so that she was crazy, but not caring. The chemistry between her and Nick was real and explosive enough to shove her hurt feelings aside for the moment.
He pulled her up to a sitting position and cradled her head in his big hands, deepening the kiss and stroking his fingers through her hair. He caressed her scalp, caught her earlobes between his thumbs and forefingers and gently rubbed them. It was sheer bliss, the way he had of making love to every inch of her.
He kissed her neck and shoulders, nibbled at the hollow of her throat and finally lifted her breasts in his warm palms.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, and grazed his lips over one. “They’re fuller.”
Karen Kendall - An Affair to Remember Page 7