“Pride can be a killer. I didn’t want it to destroy every last thing I held dear.”
Nicole nodded. Hadn’t her father spoken along the same lines? She said as much to Nate.
He nodded gently. “You know, I want to see him if he’s agreeable. We have a lot to talk about.”
“I think he’d like that. I told him today about you. I was sure he was going to tell me that he’d be quite happy to carry on the competition between Wilson Wines and Jackson Importers indefinitely, but this latest illness has changed him, too. It’s altered his perspective on things.”
She paused for a moment, reflecting on the things her father had said, then reminded herself she was here for a reason. “What’s the third reason?” Nicole pushed.
“The third reason? You already know that one.”
She looked at him, puzzled. She already knew? When she said nothing, Nate continued.
“I love you.”
“That’s it?” She felt her skepticism rise.
“Yeah, that’s it,” he said with a deprecating chuckle. “Although I never quite expected to get that response.”
“That’s not what I mean—” she started to protest, but he cut her off.
“Nicole, I knew that after what I’d put you through, for you to believe that I love you would take an action on my part to prove it, beyond any shadow of a doubt. And I was already working at a disadvantage, because of the mistakes I’d made in our relationship. When I asked you to marry me on the beach out here, when I thought you were carrying my baby, I was prepared to do whatever I could to protect you and provide for you and our child, but I know I went about it all wrong. You have to understand. I grew up illegitimate. Sure, I know that wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to me and I certainly wasn’t the only kid in class from a single-parent family—but I wanted more for my child than I had.”
He got up and began to pace the room, shoving his hands through his hair and sending it into disarray before pushing them deep into the pockets of his trousers. Nicole could see the outlines of his fists through the fine wool of his pants, could sense the tension in every line of his body.
“Go on,” she urged softly. “Tell me the rest.”
He stood where he was, staring out the window toward the dark shoreline, to where the moon and stars lit the foam of the waves that curled and raced inexorably onto the sand.
“I wanted to ensure that my child never wanted for anything the way I wanted, but at the same time I wanted him or her to know they were loved. You see, even though we struggled, even though I had to put up with the bullying at school because I was different—because my mother was seen shopping at the local thrift store or because one of the boys’ mothers delivered our food parcels while doing her bit for the community—through all that I always knew I was loved. Always. I will never be an absentee father to my children. I will be a part of their lives and I will be there when they need me.”
Nate turned and faced Nicole again. “That’s the way I love, Nicole. With everything I am. It’s the way I love you. I asked you to marry me without even fully understanding just how much a man could love a woman, but I learned that, and more, when you left me. You’re everything to me and I knew that I had to prove that to you, even if it meant letting go of everything I’d always believed while I was growing up.
“That’s it. I love you. Pure and simple.”
Nicole sat there, stunned. What he’d just told her was anything but pure and simple. It showed the depths of the man before her. The man she’d rejected and who hadn’t given up.
This wasn’t the same person who’d calculatedly brought her back here on that fateful night just over a month ago, a man who was prepared to blackmail her over an illicit weekend of wild pleasure just to hurt her father. He’d changed. The old Nate would never have dreamed of combining their two businesses together to form one perfectly strong whole.
This was a man who loved her. Truly loved her. And she’d changed, too, into someone who wasn’t afraid to love him back. She pushed herself to her feet and moved to stand in front of him.
“I believe you,” she whispered, her voice shaking with the depth of her own love for him. A love she could finally acknowledge to both herself and to Nate. She raised one hand and cupped his cheek. “I love you, too.”
The sound he made was part human and part something else. He turned his face into her hand, pressing his lips against her palm.
“It’s more than I deserve,” he said brokenly.
“We deserve each other. We’re neither of us perfect, but together, maybe we can cancel out the bad and be nothing but good. Love me, Nate. Love me forever.”
“You can count on it.”
He pulled his hands from his pockets and swooped her up into his arms, carrying her to the bedroom where they’d already created so many special memories. This time they undressed one another slowly, painstakingly—taking their time to kiss and caress every part of each other as they bared skin. As if it was their first time—a voyage of discovery.
When neither of them could wait any longer, Nate covered her body with his own, pausing only to reach for a condom. Nicole stayed his hand.
“No condom,” she said. “I want whatever naturally comes next in our lives and I don’t want any more barriers between us.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, his body rigid beneath her hands as she stroked his buttocks with a featherlight touch and then traced her fingers up the muscles that bracketed his spine. She relished the strength of him, loved that he was all hers.
“Certain,” she whispered as she lifted her mouth to his, claiming his lips in a kiss that imbued everything she felt at that moment, and when he slid inside her she knew she’d made the right decision. Nothing had ever felt as good as this contact between them, heat to heat, nothing but him and her.
Nate started to move and she met him, stroke for stroke, her cries of pleasure intensifying as he pushed them over the edge of sanity and into another realm where only the two of them existed.
Afterward, they lay still locked together as one. As their breathing slowed and returned to something approaching normal, Nicole lifted a hand and traced the outline of Nate’s face. He had never been more precious to her than he was at this moment.
“Do you think we’d have ended up like this without our parents’ falling out?”
Nate smiled. “Who knows? I’d like to think so. I know there’s no one out there in this world for me, but you.”
She snuggled against him. “Why do you think she did it?”
“She?”
“My mother. Why do you think she lied to my father for all those years? She drove a wedge between everyone without a second thought.”
“You know that for sure?”
“Dad didn’t tell me all of it, but he did say that her lie was responsible for what happened.”
Nate shifted onto his back, pulling Nicole with him. “I suspected she instigated it all. I couldn’t imagine anyone else but her having that power over them. Maybe she resented the time Charles put into the business—who knows—but it’s no wonder he reacted the way he did to what he perceived as the ultimate betrayal from his best friend.”
“But for her to have let it go on this long…I just don’t understand it. Why would she do that?”
Nate closed his arms around Nicole and held her tight against him, making a silent vow that nothing would ever separate them again. “She was obviously a very unhappy woman. I’m sorry she never got to have what we have, but we can’t let her spoil it for us, either.”
Nate pressed a kiss to the top of Nicole’s head. “I’m so sorry for everything I did to you, Nicole. I kidded myself that if I gave you everything I thought you wanted that you’d be happy to stay with me. I should have realized you deserve
d so much more.”
“Good thing you got it right this time, then, hmm?” Nicole murmured as she shifted and raised herself above him. “Because I’m going to expect a whole lot of this loving.”
“I think I’m man enough for the job.” He smiled from beneath her, his body hardening inside her as she rocked gently against him. He gripped her hips with his hands, stilling her motion and his eyes grew serious. “Nicole, I mean it, though. Can you forgive what I did to you?”
“Of course I can, Nate. I already have. We both did things we regret.”
“There’s one thing I’ll never regret,” he said, continuing to hold her still. “And that’s meeting you. You taught me to open my eyes and to love with all my heart. No conditions, no strings. You will marry me, won’t you?”
“Yes,” she replied. “I love you, Nate Hunter Jackson, and I will marry you.”
“That’s good,” he replied, “because I’d hate to have to kidnap you all over again.”
She laughed, her inner muscles tightening around him as she did so. She’d never felt this happy, or this complete before in her life. She belonged with him, as he did with her. All the security, love and recognition she’d craved all her life lay here with this incredibly special man. Their road together hadn’t been smooth so far, but nothing worthwhile in life came easily. She knew that to the very depths of her soul. She also knew she loved him, and that her future would be all the better for having him at her side.
* * * * *
For Love or Money
Elizabeth Bevarly
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
One
Dinah’s fingers convulsed on the telephone. For once in her life, luck seemed to be on her side. Maybe moving to San Francisco hadn’t been such a bad idea, after all.
The lottery ticket she was holding in her hand had come to her attention while sorting through all those as-yet-unpacked boxes that had been stacked in her spare room since moving from Atlanta three months before.
In hindsight she supposed it would have made sense to call about the tickets before she’d left Georgia—after all, some of them had been months old when she moved. But it had never really occurred to her that one of them might have been a winning combination. Who ever really thought they’d win the lottery?
Still, she must have some deeply buried optimistic streak if she’d packed the tickets along with the other nonessential odds and ends from her kitchen, instead of tossing them out. That same streak must have caused her to call the toll-free number to double check—just in case—instead of throwing the tickets into the garbage with all the obsolete business cards and expired coupons amid which they’d been mingling.
Funny, her being a closet optimist, Dinah thought. Her family did, after all, carry the infamous Curse of the Meades.
“So how many of the numbers did I get right?” she asked the Georgia Lottery representative on the other end of the line. Her fingers trembled now as she threaded them through her straight, pale blond bangs.
If she’d gotten three of the six, she’d won enough to treat herself to a nice dinner, she thought. That might be nice. She could take Marcus. And if she’d matched four numbers, she might just cover a month’s rent, which would be really nice. And if she’d matched five—which she dared not even wish for, because that would be asking too much—Dinah could clear a few thousand dollars. Oh, what a luxury that would be. She crossed her fingers as she waited to hear.
From nearly a continent away, the woman from the Georgia Lottery told her, “No, Ms. Meade, you don’t understand. I mean you picked some winning numbers. All the winning numbers. You’ve just made yourself a cool five million dollars.”
Thunk.
It took Dinah a moment to realize it was the phone that had made the sound as it hit the floor and not her head. Though she had landed on her fanny when her knees buckled beneath her. Five million dollars? she repeated to herself. Five million dollars?
Five Million Dollars!
“Yes, ma’am. Five million dollars.”
Only when she heard the fuzzy reply did Dinah realize she must have shrieked that last one out loud. Even so, the voice reassuring her seemed to be coming from a million miles away. Or, at the very least, three feet away, because that was how far the cordless phone had skittered when it slipped from Dinah’s fingers.
Hastily, she scrambled across the kitchen floor on her hands and knees and jerked the phone back up to her ear.
“Are you sure?” she asked the woman. She repeated the numbers again for verification.
“That’s the winning combination,” the woman assured her. “We thought you’d never come forward.”
Dinah recalled her bad habit of buying tickets and magnetting them to the fridge, then forgetting about them. Thank goodness her move had made her check the tickets!
“But as long as you’re at lottery headquarters in Atlanta by closing on Monday,” the woman said, “you’ll collect your money with no problem.”
Dinah halted mid-vow. Monday. That was only three days away. And Georgia was…well, more than three days away. At least it was if she drove the distance alone by car or took a train. It would be even longer by bus. But those were her only travel options. No way was she getting on an airplane.
“I’ll be there,” she reiterated firmly.
She scribbled down the instructions, then hung up the phone. Holy moly. She was a millionaire. Or, at least, she would be. In three days. If she made it back to Georgia in time. And, of course, she would make it back to Georgia in time.
She hoped.
A millionaire, she thought again, still numb from the news. She had to tell someone. She had to call someone. She had to shout it to the world. She had to—
A familiar sound out in the hallway caught her attention then, and hastily, she unbolted her back door and jerked it open wide. And when she did, her across-the-hall neighbor, Marcus Harrod, jumped about a foot in the air.
As he always did when returning home from work, he looked like a walking/talking advertisement from GQ, wearing a flawless charcoal suit, crisp white dress shirt and expertly knotted and discreetly printed Hermès tie.
Dinah bit back a wistful sigh when she noted how perfectly his attire complemented his silky black hair and luminous blue eyes. He smelled marvelous, looked fabulous, made her little heart go pitter-patter, pitter-patter, pitter-patter. Too bad he wasn’t her type. Or more correctly, too bad she wasn’t his type.
Damn. All of the good ones were taken. Or else all the good ones were gay.
When he saw that it was Dinah, Marcus fell back against his own door and expelled a gasp of relief. “Jeez, Dinah. I hate it when you do that. You nearly gave me a coronary.”
“Marcus!” she cried, ignoring his condition. “I have got the most unbelievable news to tell you!”
“Okay, Dinah, let me get this straight.”
Marcus Harrod tipped the bottle of single-malt Scotch over a cut crystal tumbler and tried to digest everything his across-the-hall neighbor—and the object of most of his sexual fantasies these days—had just told him.
But instead of processing her news about winning the lottery, all he could do was think about how incredibly sexy she looked. Even in ragged jeans and slouchy yellow sweatshirt, with her blond hair bound haphazardly atop her head in something vaguely resembling a ponytail. If you disregarded all those straggly pieces framing her face. Although even those straggly pieces were awfully sexy. Made a man want to lift a hand and skim it oh-so-slowly over her—
“I know it’s hard to believe,” she said, interrupting what had promised to be a damne
d nice fantasy. She paced restlessly from one side of his living room to the other, her sock-clad feet silent on the expansive, expensive Aubusson.
“But it’s true. It’s true!” she cried again, pivoting around to smile at him. “I won the lottery, Marcus! I’m rich! I’m rich! I’m rich!”
“You’ll be rich,” he reminded her. “On Monday.”
“Right,” she agreed, sobering. Some. For a second or two.
Then she started bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, her smile dazzling. She paced to the other side of the room, perched herself on the edge of an exquisite Chippendale chair for a nanosecond, then shot up and started pacing again.
“You have to help me, Marcus,” she told him as she passed by him quickly enough to create a breeze.
“I’ll help you,” he promised. “First by fixing you a double Stoli, straight up. I think you could use it.”
She spun around with enough force to send a less grounded individual spinning right out of the room. “No, no, no, no, no. Not necessary,” she told him. “I’m intoxicated enough as it is.”
He feigned disappointment. “What? You started happy hour without me? That’s not like you, Dinah.”
She smiled at his mention of their usual Friday evening ritual. Dinah worked at home as a freelance writer, so she invariably heard Marcus return home from his architectural firm every day. Over the past three months, it had become their custom to spend every Friday after work enjoying cocktails and conversation together. It had become even more customary for the two of them to have dinner together at one or the other’s apartment a couple of times a week.
They’d struck up a nice friendship within days of her moving into the building. It was just too damned bad she wasn’t interested in him romantically. But she’d never shown any sign that she returned his very profound interest in her, so he hadn’t pressed the issue. Not that he could understand for a minute why she wouldn’t be interested in him. He’d never had that problem with women before. Ah, well. It wasn’t his to question why. But it was his to keep his fantasies about Dinah to himself.
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