by Dani Collins
Nic turned away from the thought, telling himself to be prepared for anything—even that. But it would sting. In the meantime he drew a salary as the interim president by keeping the place running and solvent. He ought to be doing that, not frittering away his time between brooding over things he couldn’t change and schoolboy fantasies about Rowan’s breasts filling his hands.
Hunger of every kind gripped him. The kind that made him reach to adjust himself in the confines of his jeans and the kind that growled in his empty stomach.
A thought flitted through his mind of taking Rowan down to the ferry landing for a meal. But they weren’t dating. He didn’t know what they were doing, he acknowledged with a hard scrape of his hand down his face.
Impatient, he flung open the door and was greeted by the surprising scent of... Whatever it was, it smelled delicious. He followed it downstairs.
* * *
Rowan hadn’t expected her return to Rosedale to be like this. When she’d made the decision to come she’d imagined having the house to herself, perhaps sharing a few light meals with Anna, but mostly taking stock of her life and figuring out her next steps.
She was doing a little of that—or perhaps it was more accurate to say she was absorbing the fact that she was going to have to do some really hard thinking on that front since Nic had cut off her income. Her mind didn’t want to pin itself to those sorts of thoughts, though. It was too busy trying to make sense of the passionate affair she’d started with the one man she’d always believed out of reach. She had never imagined this could really happen. Nevertheless, she and Nic had spent hours reading each other like braille text, with his masculine groans of passion filling the air as often as her cries of delight.
Excitement flushed through her as she recalled drawing those sounds from him. At the same time she had to keep reminding herself it was a temporary arrangement. Perhaps he’d given her orgasms at an exponential rate to his own, maybe he’d even admitted that she had always had an effect on him, but he’d been the first to leave. She bit her lip, preferring the pain of her teeth over the insecure ache his leaving had caused. Waking with him would have been reassuring. Sweet, even.
“What are you making?”
She squeaked in startlement and almost dropped the whole spice jar into the pot. One glance over her shoulder flashed a million sensual memories through her mind. Her palms began to sweat and she could barely hold the wooden spoon to stir the sauce when she turned back to the stove. Hopefully he’d blame the steam off the pan for the dampness around her hairline.
“Braised beef and roasted vegetables,” she answered.
He came to peer over her shoulder, hands settling on her waist. His nearness made her fingers even more nerveless. “Ambitious. Spaghetti would have been fine.”
“Oh, you know what they say about the way to a man’s heart.”
His hands dropped from her waist and she felt a frigid blast move into the space he’d occupied as he moved away.
She made herself laugh, because the alternative was to let his reaction pierce her to the bone. “Apparently we both need to work on taking a joke.” She stepped away to reach for her ice water with lemon, using it to ease the constriction in her throat. “The truth is I know my way around a kitchen quite well. One of Mum’s nearest and dearests was a French chef. He taught me to put on an evening that allowed Mum to portray the lifestyle to which she aspired.” Rowan licked that delicate wording off her cold lips. “So I have one more useless skill in my bag of tricks. I brought in that Bordeaux, if you want a glass.” She nodded at the bottle.
“Why is it useless?” He found the bottle opener and cut the wax off the cork.
“Because I don’t like cooking to order, and I’m not certified.”
He pondered that as he poured a glass and brought out a second one.
“No, thanks,” she said to forestall him.
“You don’t want any?”
“There’s a difference between wanting and needing. I would like a glass. I’m sure it’s very nice—look at the year—but I’d rather refuse and prove I don’t need it.”
“You really did a number on yourself after leaving school, didn’t you?”
“You haven’t said anything I haven’t said to myself,” she assured him with a wan smile, recollecting the morning she’d woken with gaps in her memory and a reflection that reminded her too much of her father. It had been a bit of a relief to find her virginity intact, actually.
Turning away from his penetrating look, she removed a tray of hors d’oeuvres from the refrigerator. “To tide you over?” she invited.
He offered a whistle of appreciation at the array of tiny pastries, some topped with caviar and hot relish, all arranged between bites of cheese and colorful olives. Rowan quietly glowed under his approval, pleased she could wow him in this way at least.
“You’ve never had a problem with alcohol, have you?” She realized she’d never seen him drunk and that it was probably one of the things that attracted her most about him. He epitomized the self-possessed social drinker. “Even with all those horrible things you saw as a correspondent?”
“I don’t like inhibiting my ability to control myself or any given situation.”
“Oh, there’s a surprise!” she said on a bubble of mirth. “You must have given your mother a lot of grief with that attitude.” She stole his glass of wine long enough to tilt a splash into the sauce before she stirred it and began plating their meals.
His silence brought her head up.
“I’m sorry—is your mother alive?” she asked with a skip of compunction. “I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine,” he dismissed. “Yes, she is. And I don’t believe I was a problem for her until her husband realized I wasn’t his. That’s when I was sent to boarding school. I didn’t see her after that.”
Rowan felt a little shock go through her. Her ears grasped for more, but he didn’t expound. With a little frown she concentrated on quickly fanning slices of beef like a tiny hand of cards on the plates. After arranging the vegetables in a colorful crescent around golden potato croquettes, she zig-zagged sauce across the meat, added an asparagus spear decoratively wrapped with prosciutto, dabbed mustard sauce and tiny slivers of cucumber onto it, then a final garnish of a few sprigs of watercress and a radish flower.
“The dining room is set. Can you get the door?”
He followed and held her chair before seating himself and giving his plate the admiration it deserved. “This looks as good as it smells.”
“Tuck in.” His appreciation suffused her in warmth, but she couldn’t shake the chill from what he’d revealed. As he picked up his cutlery, she ventured, “Nic, I can’t help asking... Are you saying your mother never came to see you at school?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE BEEF MELTED ON his tongue, prepared better than anything any chef he’d ever hired had managed. Nevertheless, it still might have been a slice of his own heart filetted onto the plate, given the way it stuck to the roof of his mouth.
He should have kept his mouth shut. His entire life had been shattered when the truth of his parentage had come to light. It was not something he talked about, and yet it had flowed out uncontrolled with only a sip of red wine to lubricate it. Because he was relaxed by sex? Because physical closeness had fooled him into feeling emotionally comfortable with Rowan?
What to do now? If he refused to speak of it she’d know it was something that still had the power to wring out his insides.
At the same time there was an angry part of him that wanted to take her view of Olief and shake it up, make her see he wasn’t a superhero. He was flawed. Or Nic was. He’d never figured that one out—whether it was his parents’ deficiency or his own.
“Who was she? I mean, how did Olief know her?”
Her curiosity
was not the lurid kind. He might have stood that. No, her brow wore a wrinkle of concern. She had never been ignored, so she didn’t understand how any child could be.
Again the deep fear that he was the problem pealed inside him.
“He didn’t know her. Not really,” he said, keeping his tone neutral. “She was an airline hostess. He said it happened as he was coming back from being away in some ugly place.”
“Do you think he did that often? Mum was always terrified he’d cheat on her because he’d cheated on his first wife, but— Wait. Don’t tell me.” Rowan held up a hand, face turning away. “It would kill me to hear that he did.”
“I have no idea,” Nic said flatly. “He didn’t have any other children. I’m quite sure of that. That was the reason he didn’t want his wife knowing about me. They tried their entire marriage to have a baby and she couldn’t conceive.”
The briefest flinch of anguish spasmed across her features, too quick for him to be sure he’d seen it before it dissolved in a frown of incomprehension. “But if he wanted children why didn’t he see you?”
“He was ashamed of me.”
Her eyes widened and her jaw slackened, but she quickly recovered, shaking her head. “You don’t know that.”
“He told me, Rowan. I asked him that exact question and that’s what he said.”
“He was ashamed of himself. If not, he should have been,” she said, with a quick flare of vehement temper.
Her anger, when Olief was like a god to her, surprised him, cracking into and touching an internal place he kept well protected. His breath backed up in his lungs.
“Why didn’t your mother do something? Insist he acknowledge you. Or did she? You said he paid for your education?” Rowan pressed.
“He paid for my schooling, yes.” Nic set two fingertips on the bottom of his wineglass, lining it up with precision against the subtle pattern in the tablecloth. Every word he released seemed to scald all the way up his esophagus. “She didn’t make a fuss because I was her shameful secret, too. She hadn’t told her husband that she was already pregnant when they married. When he found out she took what Olief was willing to give her—tuition at a boarding school so they could all pretend I didn’t exist.”
Rowan had a small appetite at the best of times, but it evaporated completely as she took in the chilling rejection Nic had suffered. He was very much contained within his aloof shell at the moment, his muscles a tense barrier that accentuated what a tough, strong man he’d become, but shades of baffled shame still lingered in his eyes.
Everything in her ached with the longing to rise and wrap her arms around him, to try and repair the damage done, but she was learning. This was why he was always on his guard. He’d been hurt—terribly. Rowan had no trouble believing Olief had wanted to shield his wife, but to hurt a child? His own son?
“How...?” She took a sip of water to clear her thickened throat. “How did the truth come out?” she asked numbly.
Nic pointed at his hair. “My mother and her husband are both Greek, both dark. Babies and toddlers might sometimes have blond hair, but by the time I was entering school and still a towhead, not to mention looking nothing like the man I thought of as my father, it was obvious a goose egg had been hatched with the ducks.”
Rowan dropped her cutlery, unable to fully comprehend what he was saying. “So he supported sending you away? After years of believing he was your father? What sort of relationship do you have with him now?”
“None. Once my mother admitted I wasn’t his he never spoke to me again.” Nic spoke without inflection, his delivery like a newscast.
“You can’t be serious.”
“He was a bastard. It was no loss to me.” He applied himself to his meal.
Rowan cast about for something solid to grasp on to as a painful sea of confusion swirled around her. “You can’t tell me that everyone who was supposed to be acting like a parent in your life just stuck you in some horrible boarding school like you were a criminal to be sent to prison.”
With eyes half-closed in a laconic, flinty stare, he took a deep swallow of wine. “I didn’t mind boarding school. I had the brains and the brawn that allowed a person to succeed there, and I realized quickly that I was on my own so I’d better seize the opportunity. What’s in this sauce besides wine? It’s very good.”
* * *
Rowan soaked in the tub, still reeling under the blows Nic had been dealt as a child. He’d barely said another word after his stunning revelations, only cleaned his plate and excused himself to work.
Rowan had almost let out a hysterical laugh as he’d walked away. She so recognized that remote, unreachable man. All those years when she’d heard him described as Olief’s estranged son she’d blamed Nic. Nic was the one who showed up at Olief’s invitation like he was doing Olief a favor. Nic was the one who never left so much as a spare toothbrush in the rooms set aside for him. Nic was the one who took off for hours in his black roadster, never saying where he was going or when he’d be back.
Olief had so much to answer for.
Rowan was angry with him. Furious. He’d broken something in Nic. The boy had needed his real father to step up when his supposed one had rejected him. Instead Olief’s disregard had made Nic incapable of trusting in human relationships. How could Olief have done it? Why?
With a pang, she faced that she’d never know—although she wouldn’t be surprised if it had something to do with the harsh mental toll Nic had mentioned with regard to being a foreign correspondent. Olief had been doing that sort of work then. Perhaps Olief simply hadn’t had anything to offer his son.
It still made Rowan ache to reach out to Nic and heal him in some way—not that she imagined he’d let her. If anything, he probably resented letting her draw so much out of him. That was why he’d locked himself in his office again.
Drying herself off, she brushed out her hair and wondered if she should go to him, not sure she could face being rebuffed if he shut her out.
With a yawn, she counted the hours of sleep she’d got last night—not many, as she’d tried to work out ways to talk Nic around to her views on Rosedale. She’d slept after their vigorous hours in bed, but not for long. Once she’d woken to find him gone she’d risen and started work in the kitchen. Now her soak in the tub had filled her with lethargy.
She set her head on her pillow for a moment and picked up her feet. She was a master at catnaps....
* * *
Nic nudged open the bedroom door and took in Sleeping Beauty, one hand tucked beneath her folded knees, the other curled under her chin like a child. Her hair was a tumbled mass, her lips a red bow, her face free of makeup and her breath soft. She was as innocent as they made them.
While he’d finally given in to the guilty tension swirling like a murky cloud through him and come searching for release. Base, masculine, primordial forgetfulness. His flesh responded to the nearness of hers with a predictable rush of readiness, blood flooding into his crotch so fast it hurt.
Her being asleep was a gift, he acknowledged with sour irony. He hated being so weak as to be unable to resist her. If her eyes opened and flashed at him he’d be lost. If she woke and rolled onto her back—
He bit back a groan and reached for the coverlet, folding it from the far side of the bed until it wafted gently over her. This was better. She was getting too far under his skin with her fancy meals and empathetic speeches. This was supposed to be about sex. That was how he’d rationalized it and it was the only way they could come together.
Rowan’s shock this evening perturbed him. She had ideals about family that were completely at odds with his own experience. It worried him, made him think that at some point she’d look to him to reflect some of those values and he simply didn’t have them.
Uncurling his tense fists, he moved stiffly to the door, reminding
himself that he might want to relieve sexual frustration with Rowan, but he didn’t need to. He didn’t need her.
He was on the beach, cold waves lapping at his knees, before he could draw a breath and begin to think clearly again.
* * *
Rowan’s confusion at waking with the coverlet dragged across her was too sensitive a topic to pick apart first thing in the morning—especially when a nameless agitation made her feel so aware, like her skin had been stroked by a velvet breeze all evening and then it had been too hot to sleep.
Yet it was another windy day of scudding clouds and intermittent rain.
Nic was locked in his office down the hall, not looking for her. Or rather he had come looking and then left without touching her, leaving her heart as skinned as her knee, tight and tender and itchy. Which was juvenile.
The only way to suffocate her sense of irrelevance was to face up to another heartache of equal anguish. She went into the master bedroom and spent a long time with a sleeve held to her cheek, a collar to her nose, whole gowns clutched to her chest.
“You’re a little old for dress-up, aren’t you?” Nic’s voice, rich and cool as ice cream, broke the silence an hour later, prompting a shiver of guilt and pleasure.
Rowan’s first instinct was to toss aside the scarf she was tying over her hair and throw herself at him. She made herself finish knotting it in the famed Cassandra O’Brien style, then faced him. “People always tell me I look like Mum and I say thank you. But is it a compliment?”
“She was very beautiful, and so are you—but not because you resemble her.”
Rowan blushed, but more because the admiration in his gaze was unabashedly sexual. She swallowed back the silly excited lump rising in her throat, trying to hold her wobbly smile steady as she loosened the scarf.