“She is doing wonderful. Her spirits are up and her vitals are good. The back leg was merely fractured, but she is in a cast. Although she is so lively, I doubt it would have stopped her if she had lost her leg at all.”
He spoke warmly of the animal, and Nadia knew that he cared for the small dog. She wished that she could have bounced back so easily from her own problem.
“She is under care at the Haven, as I’m sure you figured, but I have not placed her on the list for adoption just yet, and I won’t, if you want first dibs at her.” Cunning brown eyes zeroed in on her and Nadia knew that he had seen through her thin shell the other night, and today as well. He’d sensed something was wrong, and he knew that the small dog would take her mind off of that. She understood she needed the distraction of the dog, but how did he know that?
His hand stroked the arm of the chair, and Nadia was mesmerized by the slow touch of his finger against the grain of leather. Silently shaking her head, she thought about bringing home a dog. Her back yard was large and fenced in, there was ample room in her cottage just in case she wanted the dog inside, and it wasn’t like she didn’t have the means to take care of the animal.
Drake spoke, as if sensing her hesitation. “She will be fixed, if you are wondering what you would do with an unexpected litter of puppies. And she will be up to date on all of her shots when you pick her up.”
“You are a born salesman, you know that?” Nadia told him.
He shrugged his massive shoulders with a grin on his face, “Some things just come naturally.”
There were too many things that came naturally for Drake Thompson. Nadia took it as a fact of life that he was magnetic, driven, and extremely lucky when it came to women and business.
“Look,” he told her as he leaned forward in the chair, “we both know that you felt something for her, enough so that you made sure she would be okay, even while you were having your own problems.” He didn’t go into detail and when Nadia leveled a hard look at him, he just continued. “Don’t make me give her to someone else that I know won’t show her the love or affection that you will. She deserves a good life too.”
Nadia let his words pour over her. She heard and understood the hint. Her life was better than it ever had been. She was president of a large company, was more than covered on any money situation that might arise, but yet her personal life was a mess. Nadia knew he was trying to take her mind off what happened; she understood that, but she doubted any of it would work.
The truth was she needed that dog. If anything could help her through this rough patch, it would be that sweet bundle of fur. She had the time, didn’t she? Besides, didn’t she owe it to the dog?
“Okay. I’ll do it.”
When she caught the knowing gleam in his brown eyes, she didn’t feel as if he was playing upon her weakness for hurt animals. She felt that she was doing something good, something that she wanted to do for a change. And knowing that the adorable Border Collie would be hers to care for made her maternal instinct kick in. Now she would have something to help take her mind off of all the gossip and pain.
“Good. She needs you too, Nadia.”
She looked up, surprised at his words. Why she was surprised, she couldn’t say. Drake had always been a very astute man. For him to see beyond her tough front was nothing new. Ever since she was sixteen it had been a battle to keep her feelings hidden. Her adolescent crush turned into a burning, all consuming love for this man. She never deluded herself into thinking he would be hers. It was almost a rule of nature that he would never be tied down by any woman, much less her. The pain of seeing him with other women would never fade, especially when she knew that he didn’t think of her as someone desirable.
Heat drenched the backs of her eyes. She looked away, blinking furiously to clear the tears forming there. Clearing her throat she said, “Thank you for giving me the option to have her before anyone else.”
“Her name is Belle.”
Nadia resolutely kept her gaze on the papers she was trying to straighten on her desk. “Belle. It suits her.”
Quiet descended on the office, and for a moment Nadia felt relieved until he spoke. “Nadia…” when he said her name he placed emphasis on each syllable, and to her it sounded foreign and mysterious, which caused her heart to flutter, and hidden, forgotten parts of her anatomy to stand up and take notice. “Look at me.”
Please don’t make me.
She knew what would be in her eyes if she looked at him right now. Her feelings that she thought she’d hidden so well for the past week were at full brim. Being near him had always screwed with her inner balance somehow. She felt off kilter, lost and floundering.
“Nadia,” he murmured again to her, his drawl making the name seem longer. She focused her gaze on the intriguing opening of his shirt. There were two buttons open, exposing the dark, luscious tone of his skin. It was roped with tendons. His Adam’s apple bobbed. Her stomach fell to the floor as she finally brought her eyes to his.
Warm, rich colors swirled under dark lashes. His eyes weren’t merely brown. They were alive, bursting with life and some other fiery sentiment. It was the most unusual thing Nadia had ever seen. But she refused to look away. He held her there, suspended by her emotions and the raw, primal power she sensed in him. His eyes were beautiful, deep and mysterious. Barely hinting at the inner man she never thought she would see.
“Everything will be fine.”
His deep voice resonated in the room. The sound, the genuine amount of sincerity in that hypnotic drawl, caused her eyes to flood with tears. She could see that he understood, even if he hadn’t heard the full story. By some weird cosmic act he understood her broken trust, the horrifying rawness of her feelings. Amazingly enough, he never once said, ‘I told you so.’
Nadia sat there, floored by his level of understanding and shook her head in affirmation. She couldn’t speak. It seemed as if all sound was torn from her vocal cords, but looking into Drake’s soulful eyes, she realized it didn’t matter. He understood more than mere words, and that made the pain of not having him hit even deeper than before.
She watched, in a trance, as he stood up, tipped his head courteously in her direction then quietly left her office.
***
She broadcasted her emotions far too easily. And since they were out in the open, Drake had soaked up every bit of sensation she had let slip.
His Druid senses picked up on them easily in her office, but sometimes it was harder. There was no way for him to ignore them. Her nerves were all over the place today, and it made her emotions harder to hold back.
There were determining factors to reading someone. If you were close to that person, emotions and feelings got in the way. The process was easier if you didn’t know the person you were trying to decipher.
Drake closed the door to his work truck and started it up. A rock station blared to life, but he ignored it, focusing instead on the light green eyes that he had seen minutes ago. Within seconds, the emotions he knew she was so good at hiding, were apparent to him. Nadia had always been intensely personal and private, but even with that she still couldn’t block the way she felt. Drake knew that even if he wasn’t a Druid, he would have still been able to see the abject pain in her eyes.
Drake felt more than a little protective of her. With her small stature and delicate build, he always felt territorial, as if she were too young and naïve to get along without him. The past few years had proved him wrong. He watched her move up from assistant, to president of the Browning Corporation. And she handled it with grace and aplomb. But even through all that, especially after taking the head job little more than a year ago, Drake could still sense the underlying emotions she was trying to conceal.
This afternoon’s episode was proof that she needed something, something relaxing, something to make her slow down a bit. Drake couldn’t even remember the last time he’d seen her laugh, since seeing her out in Texas society was about as close as he’d been to her rec
ently.
As both his personal and business life were chock full of charity work and invites to exclusive gala’s and events, it was a given that he would see her often. Drake knew that it was all business to Nadia. Every event, every society function, was overtime for her. She never enjoyed the functions, and Drake knew part of that reason was Donavan.
Donavan Hamilton became a slug the minute Linda passed, as if sensing that maybe the new protégé would be a bit more willing to slough off some of her money to a suave businessman with loads of charm. Drake admitted to himself, Donavan knew business. As the manager for a firm of accountants, he had a pristine business reputation. But it was his personal financial situation that caused him to scent out the richest woman in the area and try to freeload. His gambling addiction was only one vice that needed to be reined in.
Nadia allowed herself to become embroiled in a fantasy world of Donavan’s making. She had allowed him to help her, and if there were any business problems, she went to Donavan.
That was a bitter pill for Drake to swallow. But he knew it was because of him that she allowed herself to be pulled in Donavan’s direction, because she didn’t want him to think she was leaning on him too heavily, as she’d done so in the past. That knowledge hurt him; it still did. But he knew then, and still did now, that it was better this way. Although, Drake was damn happy to know that she now realized exactly what kind of man Donavan was. Drake knew for certain Donavan would be nothing but history, if he wasn’t already.
At that thought, a pleased smile crossed his face.
***
After dropping off menu suggestions and decoration ideas at her organizers house, Nadia was finally on her way home. She had a fairly large charity event at the end of the month that was draining what was left of her creative energy. When she pulled up in her driveway, she almost drooled at the sight of her front door.
She needed a damn vacation.
It wasn’t like her staff couldn’t handle everything if she decided to take one. They were more than capable of doing what needed to be done. It was her, Nadia reasoned, that was hesitating. She couldn’t get past the thought that if she stayed home she might just lose her mind.
Glimpses of Donavan and Suzanne kept flashing through her mind. She had known better than to let herself fall for him. But he was charming, handsome, and so knowledgeable with business. And with Nadia desperately trying to show Drake that she was okay in this new job, Donavan had been the answer to her prayers. Seems like her plan to make Drake realize a few things was coming back to bite her on the ass.
She should have known better than to think things would ever run smoothly again.
After checking her emails one last time, she sent a reminder to Amy to be ready to shoot tomorrow morning with Franco at eight sharp. After a quick shower, Nadia sat down in her recliner and waited for the loneliness to set in. Nighttime was always the worst.
Even though Donavan had been the answer to her prayers, he was sometimes a smug bastard. In comparison sharing a few intimate moments with him hadn’t made half a spark light up inside of her like it did when she just looked at Drake.
It went against everything she wanted. Inviting someone that she knew she didn’t fully trust into her life and into her heart. But it was easier to handle that, than it was to get her heart stomped on every time she turned around. Nadia kept up the pretense of being around Donavan simply out of necessity. Even with all of his faults, he was a charming, funny man who for a brief time kept her mind from wandering to Drake.
She thought back to her parents. Neither having any family, they had both been lonely and alone when they met. That changed after moving to Texas from Louisiana. Within weeks her father, Matt, found a good paying accounting job, and her mother, Anna, found one working for a local department store. Friends soon followed. Nadia, an only child, had been raised with strict morals and values. She knew from watching both of her parents hold down jobs that she would never be a spoiled little rich girl like the ones she met at school. She had been a young, shy and very mature girl for her age. There had only been one person that made her feel gauche, naïve, and so ungainly that she wanted to hide beneath something whenever she met him, and that was Drake Thompson.
A smile caught at the edges of her mouth as she thought back to those early days. Her parents had been alive and happy, and she was too young to notice anything about men. There were many company picnics, days to visit the animals, and even more days when she would show up after school to meet with her father. Of course for Nadia, the big deal was watching for Drake. By the time she reached her sixteenth year, she could manage to say more than a few words to the large Texan without blushing and tripping over sentences. She knew, by then, what those sidelong glances and crooked grins did to female hearts and bodies. It was a dream of hers that when she got old enough, she would make Drake realize she was a woman, and after that, everything would fall into place.
The death of her parents changed all of her dreams. The funeral was taken care of with a small amount of insurance money that her parents managed to keep up with, but every other necessity was covered by Drake. The tall, sometimes brooding, and eerily perceptive Texan had stepped in whenever Nadia felt her world falling apart. Sitting beside him in the funeral home and the large church service had been a soothing balm to her young, bruised heart.
The days after the funeral, Drake had been her everything. When the state of Texas had sent her to stay with an older couple in a foster home, Drake brought her there. When she called him every week to say how she was doing, per his instructions, he listened with avid interest. When Drake called her for her seventeenth birthday and invited her out to eat, Nadia felt her young heart start to beat with renewed fervor-until Drake picked her up and Nadia noticed he wasn’t alone.
That day she realized something. Though she was seventeen, and a budding woman, Drake would never see her as what she dreamed. He would never see her long, flowing black hair, her light green eyes, and small, slightly curved, short frame as anything sexy and beautiful. She would never be able to compete with model tall and waspishly thin women that he paraded around with, especially after he told her that she would never add up. Why would Nadia want to anyway? They giggled like school girls and grasped at his body as if he were a precious temptation that they couldn’t help but want. The one that he’d brought that night was a new one, but Nadia knew that she would join the long list of women that Drake discarded with amazing speed.
After that night, Nadia no longer called Drake. She no longer waited upon his arrival of a visit as if it was the highlight of her week. She did her damndest to ensure that when she did see him, she didn’t stare like some lovesick teenager. Instead, she coolly held a conversation with him and did not respond to his teasing ways.
She became driven, and after getting a job as assistant to secretary of the president of a large company at eighteen, Nadia almost forgot Drake.
That hadn’t stopped her from dreaming, wishing, that one day his feelings toward her might change. Of course, the reality was, Drake would never stoop to dating her or even see her as someone desirable. By the time Linda had passed on, and Nadia inherited everything, she gave up her secret desires. She would never have Drake. Her body would always want him, her mind would fall asleep with thoughts of him, but the real her would never have the experience of being his woman.
At the first society function, where Nadia was acknowledged as the new president of Browning Inc., Drake was in attendance. When Donavan Hamilton asked for a dance, Nadia felt the slow tingle, and body warming charge of Drake’s presence close by, but she ignored it and accepted that dance from Donavan, even admitting to herself that the small part inside of her that lusted after Drake wanted him to be jealous by that snub. Now, little more than a year later, Nadia was starting to believe God didn’t want her to be happy.
Sitting in her quiet home it was easy to think that, especially with that snub from a year ago still haunting her. She had known that furt
her enticing Donavan into some semblance of a relationship would cause the hordes of society members to think that was exactly what she wanted.
That couldn’t be farther from the truth. She was cold, and abnormally indifferent to men. The only man that caused any kind of reaction in her was the one that she had been trying to get away from for the past ten years. Of course, no one in Texas society knew that, nor would they.
She’d latched onto Donavan for her sanity. She knew that with her new title, money and prestige, she would have many questions, and need some direction. The board had helped, but Nadia had known early on that she would need a confidante, someone she could pester when she needed help. It had been easier to let Donavan latch onto her, rather than call upon the one man who caused her insides to light up like a fourth of July firework display.
Now her confidante was gone, but thankfully, she had a year’s worth of experiences under her belt. She was pretty sure she could handle anything now, especially with the horror of last week still fresh on her mind. No way in hell would that happen to her again.
Now comfortably snug under her comforter, with small slices of moonlight creasing through her blinds, Nadia allowed herself to finally relax. Thoughts of Donavan, and of how she put herself into this mess, didn’t stick, neither did thoughts of Drake, and of how downright sexy he had been this afternoon in her office. Her breathing deepened, her body molded to the soft, pillow top mattress, and soon the blessed peace of sleep had pulled her under.
Chapter 3
“Ms. Morales, it is so nice to see you tonight.”
Nadia gave Mrs. Penelope Harris a sugary sweet smile, ignored the hidden meaning behind that statement, and replied, “You too, Mrs. Harris. I hope you find the evening to be extremely entertaining.” Then she deftly maneuvered herself away from the Harris’s and the other barracuda’s that were filing in around her. The only thing she wanted now was to hide in the ladies room until this whole farce was over. Of course that wasn’t an option, but Nadia couldn’t squelch the ‘want to’ that formed in her stomach.
Her Druid Desire (The Amber Druid Series) Page 3