by Romancing the Crown Series (13-in-1 bundle) (v1. 0) (lit)
On second thought, there was that wonderful underlying soap smell that was so Nick, and now it was mixed with a healthy, athletic dose of masculine sweat. And there was his warm breath against her hair and the brush of his whiskery jaw against the side of her face, not to mention the oh-so-marvelous, warm, and suddenly safe feeling of simply being in this man's arms.
For one lovely second, Sarah allowed herself not only to savor it, but to wish for more. Much, much more.
"Cara," he said softly, his lips against her hair. "Are you all right, Sarah?"
"Mmm."
"Are you all right?" he asked again.
"Mmm."
Oh, lord. She sounded as if she were about to start that awful mewing again, so Sarah cleared her throat and said,' "You should probably put me down now, Nick."
He simply looked at her then, his face just inches away from hers, and his expression was so sad and so adorable. As deeply disappointed as a little kid who'd just been told that Christmas had been cancelled. As dejected as a knight in shining armor who'd just discovered he'd rescued the wrong damsel in distress.
And when it suddenly dawned on Sarah that Sir Dominic Chiara really was a genuine, twenty-four-karat, card-carrying knight, she burst out laughing.
"Nick, put me down," she managed to say.
"Are you sure you're all right?"
"I'm positive."
Still holding her, he frowned. "What's so funny? And who was that maniac and why was he chasing you?"
"That was Bruno, and he..."
Sarah stopped giggling as she remembered why she'd been running toward the house in the first place. She'd been rushing to tell Nick what she'd learned about Leo and the murder of Desmond Caruso.
"Okay. Put me down now. I mean it," she said in all seriousness. "I've got something really important to tell you."
"And you believe this guy? This Bruno?" Nick asked as he poured a finger of brandy into a snifter. It was pretty early in the day for a drink, but he wasn't on call and it wasn't every day a man discovered that his son might be a witness to an unsolved murder.
"Yes, I do," Sarah said. She was nestled in a corner of the sofa in the living room with her legs curled up beneath her. "He has absolutely no reason to lie about this, Nick. In fact, just telling the truth could get old Bruno in plenty of hot water. Not just with Estella and her father, but with the authorities, as well. It would've been in his best interest not to tell me anything at all, you know."
Nick sipped the brandy as he lowered himself onto the sofa beside her, nodding but still not entirely convinced about what Sarah had told him.
"Why are you so skeptical?" she asked him, clearly reading the expression on his face.
"Well, in the first place, I have a rather hard time picturing Desmond Caruso spending any time at all with a child, someone who couldn't benefit him financially or socially. The man wasn't exactly what you'd call a Pied Piper." He gave his brandy a quick swirl before adding, "Viper was more like it, actually."
"Well, Leo's an adorable little kid. Maybe Desmond wasn't quite the snake you thought he was."
Nick shrugged. In addition to his skepticism about the murdered man, he might also have added his own disappointment that his son apparently hadn't trusted him enough to come forward with the truth about seeing Desmond dead. Of course, he hadn't actually asked Leo, had he? He'd asked the nanny instead, and hadn't for a moment considered that Estella might be lying to him.
When would he ever learn? Nick gazed into the swirling liqueur in the snifter as he warmed it in his palm, reminding himself that, after Lara had deceived him by hiding her illness, he'd vowed never to trust a woman again. He hadn't been too successful in carrying out that vow. He'd believed the nanny implicitly, hadn't he?
Hell, he even believed what Sarah was telling him right now. But this was Sarah. He didn't think she had a deceitful bone in her entire, and quite lovely, body.
"If it's true," he said, "what do we do? About getting Leo to speak, I mean."
"I'm not sure yet. If this all began with Estella ordering Leo not to talk, then the ideal solution, of course, would be to arrange for Estella to simply tell Leo that it's okay to talk now. Voila." She snapped her fingers. "All cured!"
Nick sighed. "If only it were as simple as that."
"When is he coming home from Disneyland? Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow afternoon," he said. "Which reminds me. I need to call the dreaded Davis-Finches to find out what time their flight arrives."
"Well, that gives us a little more than twenty-four hours to come up with some sort of plan. It'll work, Nick. I'm sure of it. And probably pretty quickly, too, now that we know the reason for his silence. In fact, I should probably get in touch with the dreaded Sophia at the palace to arrange my flight home."
While Nick went to place a call to his in-laws in Paris, Sarah stayed in her corner of the sofa, staring off into space, absently chewing on a fingernail. She was thinking about her flight back to San Francisco. For somebody who hadn't wanted to come to Montebello in the first place, she was suddenly and strangely depressed by the mere idea of leaving.
This wasn't good, she thought. This wasn't good at all. As a psychologist, she was quick to identify mood changes and emotional swings in others, but she rarely, if ever, suffered such extremes herself. She was reliably even-tempered. Good old Sarah Sunshine. That's who she was. That's who she'd always been. Now, all of a sudden, she felt like Temperamental Tess.
Going back to San Francisco meant returning to her patients at the clinic, which pleased her, but it also meant going back to Warren Dill. It meant making wedding plans. Worse—Sarah rolled her eyes— it meant actually having to marry him at some point.
Going back to San Francisco meant she wouldn't be here to carry out Leo's therapy or to oversee the person who did. Not that she'd mentioned it to Nick yet, but identifying the cause of Leo's problem was just the beginning, after all. There would still be a great deal of work to do to ensure that there was no emotional fallout or long-term damage from what the little boy had seen. Plus they still didn't know if he'd only seen the body, or if he'd indeed witnessed the crime. That would make an enormous difference in his treatment.
And then there was Nick.
She could hear his voice in the kitchen right now as he spoke with Leo's grandmother, and she marveled that in just a week's time that voice had become so familiar to her, so soothing and at the same time so exciting. His English was flawless, but there was always that sensuous Italian undertone, a slight Continental cadence in every sentence that Nick spoke. She loved listening to him.
Funny. Sarah couldn't for the life of her recall Warren's voice right now. Wait. That wasn't quite true. She could hear the way he always answered his phone. Hallo. He never said hello for some odd reason. It was always a quick, nasal, irritating Hallo.
Oh, God. Did she really plan to wake up every morning for the rest of her life to have the man on the other side of the bed turn to her and say Hallo? The mere thought of hearing that horrible greeting 365 days a year for years on end sent a shiver down her spine.
Of course, she wasn't marrying Warren because she was enamoured of his voice or because she was wildly in love with him. She was marrying him specifically because she wasn't wildly in love with him. That was the plan, and she'd actually been pretty proud of herself for coming up with it and for choosing a life's companion with her head rather than her heart.
The same heart, as a matter of fact, that began to go from zero to sixty in the blink of any eye now that she saw Nick coming back into the living room, moving with a masculine grace that made it impossible for her to take her eyes off him.
He was carrying the phone, and when he held it out to her, he said, "It's the King. For you."
"Me?" Sarah was torn. Part of her felt like genuflecting as she took the receiver. Most of her felt like saying "Not now. Tell His Majesty I'll call him back." Lucky for her, good manners prevailed over lust.
Lucky for her, too
, King Marcus kept the conversation brief. She updated him on Leo's progress, sounding a lot more optimistic than she felt.
"I spoke to your father in San Francisco this morning," the king said. "He said to tell you all is well."
"That's good."
"I won't keep you, Sarah dear. If there's anything you need from the palace, please contact Albert, my private secretary. Signorina Strezzi is no longer with us. Some unfortunate brouhaha over Nick's bronze medal. I don't know the details."
Sarah almost laughed. Arrivederci Sophia.
After she broke the connection, she looked back at Nick.
If he weren't so damned handsome... If his almost black eyes didn't shine whenever he looked at her... If his mouth didn't do that marvelous little half hitch just before he grinned... If he were stupid and insensitive, instead of brilliant and kind...
If he hadn't scooped her up from the grass earlier today and somehow made her feel safer than she'd ever felt before in her entire life... Because how well she knew that feeling so safe was simply an illusion. She'd seen her brother, Elliot, safe and happy that way only to have his life ripped apart when his wife and child were killed. She was sure the same thing would happen one sad day in the future when the first of her parents passed away, leaving the other one distraught and in emotional ruins.
It had happened to Nick when his wife died.
And Sarah had vowed that it would never happen to her.
Never.
That sort of pain, that magnitude of loss and grief, just wasn't worth the risk.
Only now...
Nobody should look as good in ratty gray sweats as he did in a tuxedo. Nobody should tamper with the rhythms of her heart, making her feel like a prime candidate for a pacemaker.
"They're sending Leo home by himself tomorrow," Nick said, settling onto the sofa. "Roger's been called back to London for a meeting or something."
"All by himself?" she asked. "Is that a good idea?"
"I offered to come to Paris in the morning to get him, but they've hired the female concierge at their hotel to accompany him. She and Leo have struck up a friendship, I gather, and it's a short flight. He'll arrive at two o'clock."
"I'd like to go with you to the airport tomorrow," she said. "Not just to welcome Leo back, but I could probably pick up a ticket there for my flight home. There's really no need to bother anyone at the palace about it."
She sounded casual enough, but the thought of leaving Montebello almost made her sick. No. Not leaving Montebello. It was the thought of leaving Nick.
He reached out to touch her cheek. "Cara, what is it? What's wrong? You look so sad."
There was such concern in his expression as he gazed at her, and Sarah could have sworn that Nick's dark eyes were now glossy with tears. It was nearly impossible not to throw her arms around him and kiss him.
"Nothing's wrong. Nothing. Really."
She sighed, unwound her legs and got up from the sofa, anxious to put a bit of distance between herself and temptation, and at the same time wanting to curl up on Nick's lap and begin purring like a kitten and beg him not to let her go.
But before she could step away, Nick stood up, too, and caught her in his arms.
"Oh, don't," she said, only in some bizarre way when the caution came out of her mouth, it sounded more like an invitation.
"Don't what?" he whispered. "This?" He moved one hand upward, warmly, slowly, curling his fingers around her neck, sending a shock wave of longing through her whole body.
"Or this?"
The arm that still circled her waist drew her even closer against him. Sarah could almost feel her temperature go up a few degrees while her senses began to reel from the nearness of his mouth and the warm brandied fragrance of his breath and the solid heat of his chest, which she could feel through the fabric of his gray sweats, and the hard heat of him pressing against her a bit further down.
"Or this?"
He kissed one corner of her mouth, and then the other side. In between, he gently teased the seam of her lips with his tongue.
"Or this?" he whispered just before he covered her mouth with his own.
In that moment, something in Sarah broke. Some wall came tumbling down. Or maybe, since her head didn't seem to be functional anymore, her heart had finally gained control.
As her mouth opened to accept Nick's kiss, it felt as if the rest of her opened, as well.
Suddenly, with Nick, she was prepared to take the risk. Ready to leap and to believe his strong arms would be there to catch her.
Without breaking their kiss, those strong arms swept her up and Sarah held on for dear life.
Chapter 14
"Sarah. My sweet darling Sarah."
Nick grazed the palm of his hand over her smooth, warm flank. After they'd made love, she had sighed luxuriously, rolled onto her side and nestled into him like a spoon, with her lovely, luscious rump tucked into his groin.
"The next time, my love," he whispered into her warm hair, "we'll go for endurance rather than intensity."
She sighed again, a sated, deeply satisfied sound. "There's a lot to be said for intensity."
"Amen to that."
He wasn't sure if it had been Sarah herself, or the electric culmination of five years of celibacy, or a heart-stopping combination of both, but Nick Chiara had never before experienced a sexual climax in every single cell of his body. From the soles of his feet to the top of his head, his entire body had exploded a moment ago, leaving him temporarily blind and deaf and absolutely dumbstruck.
"You cried out something in Italian, Nick," Sarah murmured. "What was it?"
He hadn't the vaguest idea. "Begging for mercy, probably," he answered only half in jest. He was an experienced man, but in all his experience no woman had ever matched him thrust for thrust the way Sarah did. No woman had ever fit him so perfectly or sheathed him like a glove. No one had ever pushed him over the edge the way this woman just had.
When his fingers stilled on her hip, Sarah reached for his hand and drew it around to her breast.
"I was actually hoping it wouldn't be good between us, Nick," she said. "I was even hoping I'd be disappointed. Completely and totally turned off." She laughed softly. "I was hoping you'd have horrible warts all over your body and gross hair all over your back and a teeny, weenie..."
Hard again, he thrust against the soft cleavage of her backside. Her voice drifted off in a soft moan.
"Sorry to disappoint you, love," he murmured.
Sarah shifted her weight beneath his arm, and rolled back to face him. Her cheeks were still flushed and her chin a little chafed from his beard. Her green eyes were glistening almost playfully, while a slow smile spread across her mouth and she reached a hand down between their bodies to find him, to caress him.
"Disappoint me again, Nick," she breathed. "Now."
They missed lunch and dinner, and finally— around eight that evening, ravenous for more than each other—Sarah and Nick reluctantly got out of bed and into the shower, where their slick, soapy bodies couldn't help but collide once again as warm water beat down on them.
"You're an animal," Sarah had said, laughing as water cascaded over her shoulders.
"What kind?" he asked.
"My kind."
It was nearly midnight when they finally put on robes and went to the kitchen for something to eat.
"You're about to discover, Sir Dominic, that not only am I great in bed, but I also make the world's best grilled cheese sandwich." Sarah spoke as she pulled cheese and butter and a jar of Dijon mustard from the refrigerator.
She kept marveling at the fact that, rather than being exhausted by hours of lovemaking, her energy level felt boundless. It was as if she were breathing pure oxygen.
And it wasn't just the sex!
As much as they'd made love, she and Nick had spent at least an equal amount of time talking about anything and everything. Like children on a sleep-over, sharing secrets. Like two people in a lifeboat, sharing h
opes and dreams. They'd spoken about Leo, Lady Satherwaite, her parents, pets they'd both had decades ago, favorite foods, worst fears, recurrent dreams and silly jokes.
It was as if they were trying to catch up on a lifetime of knowing each other in a single night. More than that, it was as if their hearts and their souls had always belonged to each other, and now their minds and their bodies were simply catching up.
Now, standing at the kitchen counter, buttering slices of bread while Nick poured orange juice for them, Sarah felt so alive and so damned happy, she could hardly keep her feet upon the floor.
"This is insane," she said, almost to herself. "People don't fall in love and make lifetime decisions in a few hours. Do they?"
"Apparently they do, darling." Nick handed her a glass of orange juice, then clinked his glass against hers in a toast. "If this isn't love, Sarah, I don't know what else it could be."
He lifted her hair and kissed the back of her neck, whispering endearments in Italian. Sarah didn't need to know the language to know he'd just told her he loved her. It wasn't the first time tonight that he'd proclaimed it in English and Italian both.
"I think we ought to slow down, Nick," she said. "Don't you?"
Sarah took a thoughtful sip from her glass, wondering whether she actually wanted him to agree with her or ached for him to tell her that slowing down was terrible idea while he dragged her back to the bedroom. When he didn't answer, she wasn't sure he'd even heard her, so she asked again.
"What do you think, Nick? Maybe we're rushing way too fast. Maybe... Oh, I don't know. We really ought to be using our heads here. Maybe I should go home for a few weeks and see if we both still feel the same after a little time. That would be the sane thing to do. The reasonable thing. Don't you agree?"
When Nick still failed to respond, Sarah looked over her shoulder to see him sitting at the table. A dark look of caution had suddenly come over his handsome face.
"I'll still feel the same," he said. "Tomorrow. Next week. Next year."
"Yes, but..."
"I want you, Sarah. In my bed. In my life. In my heart."