by Emma Darcy
“I’d like to make them so.”
“Since when? Two minutes ago? The moment you decided to break in on my night out?”
“If the intention is sincere, the timing shouldn’t be relevant.”
She shook her head at this arrogant belief that her past experience with him and the years between then and now could simply be dismissed. “It’s a bit late to be showing interest in me, Quin, and quite frankly, I have none in you,” she stated bluntly.
“It shouldn’t ever be too late to make some amends on past mistakes,” he argued.
“Raking over dead ashes is hardly profitable,” she mocked.
“Amazing how often a live ember is found.”
He was just as aware as she was that the chemistry between them was still active. It had led her down a destructive path once and Nicole was determined it would not take her there again. “A spark of fool’s gold, Quin,” she strongly asserted.
“Not if it can be fanned into a flame. It’s a cold life without fire, Nicole.”
“I’m sure there are many warm hearths that would welcome you.”
“One burnt more brightly than any other. I’d like to find my way back to it.”
“Unfortunately I can’t provide you with a magic door. You’ll have to look elsewhere.” She waved her hand in conclusive farewell. “Hasta la vista.”
He nodded an acknowledgment of her dismissal, but there was no acceptance of defeat in his eyes as he answered, “Until we meet again.” A whimsical little smile was directed at Jade and Jules. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
“And fascinating to make yours,” Jade instantly replied, goggle-eyed over the encounter.
“Try Nick’s Knickers,” Jules advised. “Magic door every time.”
Quin laughed, saluting them both as he moved off, no doubt warming himself with the satisfaction of knowing he’d made a winning impression on her friends.
Nicole gritted her teeth. One favourable comment about him from either Jade or Jules and she’d explode. The duel of words with Quin had left her pumped up—typical of any exchange between them. He’d got to her. He always had, putting an electric charge under her skin. No other man had ever come close to affecting her as Quin did, but that didn’t mean he was good for her. No way! And something savage in her wanted him to taste defeat—taste it, know it, hate it as much as she had.
Both Jade and Jules were looking at her as though they were seeing an entirely different woman to the Nicole they were familiar with, eyes avid with curiosity but mouths firmly buttoned until she opened up. Which she was not about to do. The door was shut on Joaquin Luis Sola.
“There’s no going back,” she stated flatly. “I don’t live at that address anymore.”
“The one you shared with him?” Jade quickly speculated.
“It wasn’t a place of sharing. It was a place of possession. Always on his terms.”
“Bad place,” Jules muttered sympathetically.
Nicole nodded. “I live in a different space now.”
“Maybe you’ve made your current space too tight,” Jade posed seriously. “What if he no longer lives at that address, either? Time and timing—” she wriggled her fingers “—very tricky things. Shifting sands, different circumstances, revolving doors…how long ago was it when you and Quin were an item?”
Jade had not been in Australia then, but if Nicole pinpointed the time it would be like handing her friend a bone she would gnaw at with intolerable persistence. Jade was far too adept at putting two and two together.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said, shrugging as she stood up from the table. “Distance has not made the heart grow fonder so just let this one go. Okay? I’m off to the powder room.”
“Seems a terrible waste,” she heard Jade mutter in a disgruntled tone.
Nicole made good her escape, hoping the subject of Quin would not be revived when she returned. Even so, the fun had gone out of the evening. Just knowing he was here made her feel tense, her nerves prickling with the sense of a dangerous threat to the life she’d made without him.
She wished she could just walk away right now, but leaving the club would signal a vulnerability she didn’t want to reveal, not to Jade and Jules, and certainly not to Quin Sola. If he was watching, if he came after her…no, she had to act as though she was totally impervious to his presence.
The powder room provided a safe refuge though she could only take a brief respite there if she was not to give the impression of hiding. The place was crowded—a queue for toilet cubicles and a crush of women along the vanity bench; washing hands, repairing make-up, restoring hairstyles. Nicole joined the queue and tried to block memories of Quin from crawling through her mind by eavesdropping on others’ conversations. Ironically, not even here was she free of him.
“So how goes it with Quin Sola?”
The question came loud and clear through the babble of general chat, drawing Nicole’s startled gaze to a pretty brunette in red who was looking archly at a tall beautiful blonde, definitely out of the same mould as Paris Hilton, dressed in a second skin blue mini-dress and practising a sexy pout in the mirror.
“Oh, I don’t know that he’s worth having,” she drawled.
“Not worth having! The hottest trader in town? Everyone with any money is using his financial services company. The guy has made billions. And he’s an eye-candy hunk, as well.”
His company…billions…not the star player for an international bank anymore, Nicole realised. Somewhere along the past five years Quin must have moved to being his own man, no doubt accumulating far more personal wealth by working on his terms.
“Wow! Point me in his direction,” someone eagerly requested, triggering a cheerful chorus of “Me, too,” from other chance listeners.
The outburst was ignored.
“I really don’t need his money, Nina, and going to bed with a cold fish does not appeal,” the blonde said in a bored tone.
The brunette in red grinned. “You mean you made a move on him and he didn’t bite.”
Mistake, Nicole thought sardonically. Quin made the moves. He was programmed that way. The blonde shrugged as though she didn’t care, although her ego had to be suffering some damage. She was wrong about Quin’s coldness in bed but his decision-making was icily absolute, no melting around the edges when his mind was made up.
Until we meet again…
A convulsive shiver ran down Nicole’s spine as the thought struck her that Quin might have been cold to the blonde because he’d already fixed his sights on herself. What if he didn’t accept the rejection she’d just handed out? Five years ago she had fled to Europe to break all connection with him, but she couldn’t do that now. She could only hope he would change his mind about pursuing another meeting, leave her alone.
The woman behind her nudged her towards the most recently vacated toilet cubicle. Nicole hadn’t even realised she now headed the queue. Nor had she noticed the two women who’d been talking about Quin make their exit from the powder room but they were gone. She hurried forward and closed herself into the small private space, wishing she could close out all the worries whirling around her mind.
From what she’d heard, Quin could easily afford to lend her the money needed to keep the dance school afloat. He might even do it if he got what he wanted from her. If it was only sex…
Nicole shocked herself with the treacherous desire that had prompted that thought. It was so stupid to want Quin for anything. He’d stripped her of self-esteem once. To even dally with an idea that would give him the power to do it again, was just plain crazy.
But she would be using him this time…using him to meet her needs. A vengeful streak in her whispered this was a justifiable course. After all, Quin put a money value on everything. Why shouldn’t she?
A controlled situation could be set up—no intrusion on her real life. She wouldn’t be hurt by confusing sex with love again. Not with Quin. In fact, there was a lot of savage appeal in turning the tabl
The big question was…how much did Quin want her?
CHAPTER THREE
QUIN’S mind and body were firing on all cylinders, energised by the excitement of a challenging chase. He wasn’t about to let Nicole escape him this time. However many obstacles she put in his path, he was determined on getting past them, breaking down her resistance and making her his woman again.
What he needed now was some information—where she was working, how her daily schedule ran. It would be easy enough then to set up another chance meeting so he could reinforce the mutual attraction she was trying to deny, work on it, build the sparks into a flame that would burn up her opposition to any future together.
He caught sight of Tony watching him make his way back to the party. Quin had learnt in his four years of professional and personal association with him, very little escaped Tony Fisher’s notice. Whether it was taking care of legal matters or his keen observation of people, the man was invariably on the ball. He was short and rather stocky, but big with personality, aided by an infectious smile, wickedly merry brown eyes and a wild mop of chestnut curls framing his good-humoured face.
Having sidled around his boisterous guests, he caught Quin just before he joined them. “Trust you to pick out the expert in this crowd,” he remarked, nodding in Nicole’s direction.
For once, Quin wasn’t tuned to Tony’s wavelength. “Expert?” he queried.
“The dancing teacher,” Tony supplied, raising his eyebrows in arch surprise. “You’re slipping if you didn’t find that much out about her.”
Quin frowned. Tony wasn’t making sense. Nicole had been in banking before going overseas. Armed with a top level business degree, she’d worked her way up to the key division of sales, making the most of big investors’ money. One of the great things about their relationship had been her understanding of his work on the trading floor.
Though she could certainly dance like a professional—a natural at Latin American. Even so, Tony must have mistaken her for someone else. A woman with Nicole’s brain for clever commerce had to be earning big bucks somewhere in the workplace and that would not be in a school for dancing.
“I think you’ve got it wrong here, Tony,” he mocked his friend who prided himself on getting everything right.
One eyebrow lowered. The other was cocked higher. “Were you or were you not chatting up Nicole Ashton?”
Her name sent a shock wave up Quin’s spine. Alert signals shot along his nervous system. He eyed his friend very sharply, seeking urgent entry into his mind. “What do you know about her?”
Tony’s mouth formed a curious little smile. “Did she give you the flick?”
Quin tensed as he realised there was definitely some personal previous acquaintance here and he didn’t like it. Tony would be unaware of his own past relationship with Nicole. It was before his time, so the flick question couldn’t relate to that. Which meant it had to come from Tony’s own experience with her.
“You have a good reason for asking that?” he said coldly, hating the thought of his friend having intimate knowledge of Nicole.
“Oh, just that I failed to get anywhere with her beyond the dancing lessons I paid for,” he answered with a shrug. “That doesn’t happen very often. I might not have the pulling power of your physical assets, but when I set out to charm a woman, I usually win her.”
Quin knew that was true, which was why his gut had suddenly been in knots. “But you had no luck with Nicole Ashton,” he pressed.
“Not one flirtatious spark from her,” came the reassuring reply. “Always pleasant but her focus was fixed on feeling the dance, not feeling anything else. Not with me, anyway.”
Relief coursed through Quin. His mind lifted out of a storm of black possessiveness and honed in on getting information. “When was this, Tony?”
“Two years ago. You know me, Quin. I hate not being ahead of the game, and Latin American dancing was becoming popular. I took a month of lessons from her to get all the moves under my belt.”
“At a dancing school.”
“Yes.”
“Evening lessons?” He couldn’t believe it was Nicole’s day job.
Tony nodded. “Three times a week. Personal tuition, not a class. And all I ever found out about her was she helped run the school for her mother who owned it. Oh, and she’d won a lot of dancing competitions when she was a kid. Had photos and trophies on show to prove it. Like I said…an expert.”
She’d never told him this. But then, he’d never told her about his childhood, either. He’d wanted her to accept him as he was at the time—no probing into the past—and having cut off the subject of family several times, insisting that their backgrounds were totally irrelevant to how they felt together, Nicole had given up on trying to change his attitude.
“Where is this school?” he asked, wondering if Nicole had actually gone into business with her mother.
“Burwood.”
The suburb was reasonably close to the inner city where he lived and worked but far enough away for their paths to stay apart, given that Burwood was where she lived, as well as worked.
“So you didn’t even get that far with her,” Tony observed.
“I was just touching base, Tony, feeling for an opening.”
“Any crack of encouragement?”
“None. But that was only the initial foray.”
“From which you retreated in good order so you could take the fight to her again,” Tony dryly deduced.
Quin smiled at his shrewd reading of the situation. “I do not accept that all is lost.”
“Well, good luck, my friend. Nicole Ashton looks hot but she’s one cool lady.”
Not in bed, Quin thought.
“Ah, here’s Nina and Amber back from the powder room,” Tony announced, looking over Quin’s shoulder and holding out an inviting arm for Nina Salter-Smythe—his current love interest—to be gathered in to his side.
Quin swung around to greet the two women’s return, surreptitiously using the opportunity to glance back to where Nicole was seated, wanting to catch her looking at him, hoping for another chance to prove that her show of disinterest was not sustainable.
She wasn’t there.
His heart thumped with the shock of finding her place vacant.
Had she left the club, intent on doing another runner before he could catch her back?
His gaze jerked to her friends who still occupied the table. Jade Zilic and her partner, Jules, had their heads together as though plotting something. Surely they would have accompanied Nicole out, at least to see her into a taxi, if she had gone.
Quin told himself it didn’t matter, either way.
He had enough information to find her.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN Nicole emerged from the powder room, the dance floor was once again crowded, couples throwing themselves into the cha-cha with much energetic panache. This left an easy passage for her back to the table where Jade and Jules remained seated, watching the action.
“Got to say Quin Sola is a superb dancer,” Jade immediately commented, pointing to where he was partnering the brunette in red from the powder room. “Did you teach him, Nicole?”
She shook her head. “It’s natural to him. He once told me dancing is an expression of life in South America. He grew up with it.”
“Where in South America?” Jules asked, his curiosity piqued.
“I don’t know. He would never say.”
“Ah! A mysterious past,” Jade pounced, waggling her highly mobile eyebrows.
“Whatever…” Nicole waved dismissively. “He became an Australian citizen and left the past in the past. Now why don’t you two go and dance? I’m happy to sit this one out.”
She didn’t want to talk about Quin.
She needed more time alone to think about him.
Jade and Jules obligingly left her to it.
Sexual memories bombarded her mind as she watched him dance, his strong, muscular legs snapping out the cha-cha rhythm, his taut cheeky butt almost mesmerising in its matching action. Quin was a great dancer. Better than Jules. Best on the dance floor, in fact. Best at everything.
Except actually caring about someone, Nicole savagely reminded herself. The trick with Quin was to take what he offered of himself, enjoy it, and not care back. She simply hadn’t been capable of doing that when she’d been with him, caring too much about too many things and losing her own sense of self-worth because he hadn’t responded in kind.
She shouldn’t have measured herself by that.
The fault lay in Quin, not her.
Five years ago it had been a matter of survival to walk away from him and his lack of caring. Now she was facing a different issue of survival, based on the one commodity Quin apparently had in plenty. Since he put a money value on everything, she wondered how much he would give to warm himself at her hearth. Could she steel herself to shut out everything else and put the question to him?
If he said no…well, that was that, nothing lost, nothing gained.
If he said yes…since he’d more or less limited their previous relationship to the bedroom, it seemed logical he’d accept that same limitation again, so there should be no great risk in such an arrangement. In fact, satisfying the desire he was stirring up might do her a power of good. It was Quin who had caused the hole Jade perceived in Nicole’s love life. A short, sharp dose of him might cure the long hangover from having been his possession.
Control was the key.
She had to hold it, not let Quin take it over.
Could she do it?
Could she?
The dance ended.
She watched him escort the brunette in red off the dance floor. Jade and Jules were noisily approaching their table. Bold, enterprising Jade. She wouldn’t think twice about approaching Quin for help if she needed it from him. Striking deals were second nature to her. Seize the day, she’d say. Make it yours.
Nicole rose to her feet, standing firmly on her stiletto heels, moving forward with determined purpose. “I’m going to speak to Quin Sola,” she informed her friends in passing.
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