by Dani Collins
“What did you come in here for, full of such extravagant compliments? Keep that up and you’ll see how much I resemble her when it comes to...” she tilted him her mother’s infamous man-eater smile “...encouraging male admiration.”
Something fierce and dangerous flashed in his Nordic blue eyes before he strolled forward on predatory feet. “I’m quite aware of how much you encourage it. I’ve seen you lay on the charm time and again. Why? Are you really as insecure as she was?”
His disparagement didn’t allow her for one minute to think his attitude stemmed from jealousy or possessiveness.
Yanking the scarf off her neck with a burn of her nape and a cloud of painfully familiar sandalwood, Rowan replaced it on the hook beside the mirror. “How am I supposed to know what I am when I’ve always been told who to speak to, where to go and how to act?”
She moved away from him, angry and hurt that he was judging her and, yes, insecure. How could she develop an identity if her ability to make decisions had so rarely been tested?
“When Mum sent me to Paris I thought I’d finally be able to make more of my own choices, but it didn’t work out that way. That was partly my fault, of course. The more I put into dance, the more I wanted to succeed to prove to myself I could. It’s not easy to walk away from that much investment. It’s like gambling. I kept thinking the next production would be the one that put me on the front of the stage, not the back. Mum would finally be happy and I’d be free to strike out then.” She hitched her shoulder, lashed by how nascent and unrealistic that dream had been.
“And when you finally did have the chance you drank your face off and scared yourself,” he said, from where he’d stayed behind her.
“I did,” she agreed with a chuckle of defeated acknowledgment, elbows sharp in her palms and shoulder blades aching with tension. “The grief and guilt didn’t help with that.” She sighed, still ashamed of the way she’d behaved, but she had to move past it. She was determined to.
She pivoted to offer him a laissez-faire smile.
“So now I’m back at ground zero—the only place where I sometimes had moments of feeling like I knew who I was and what I wanted. I’m hoping for inspiration, but it eludes me. You’re a worldly man. Give me advice on what to do with my life.”
Rowan’s expansion on the picture of a life hemmed in by her mother’s dominating personality disturbed Nic. It was such a different upbringing from the fortunate one he’d judged it to be. To keep from dwelling on the struggles that pulled far more empathy out of him than he was comfortable with, he focused on her oblique request, touring his father’s suite to see if his idea was feasible.
The rooms sprawling from the southwestern turret of the house were befitting of a billionaire media mogul— expansive and masculine, yet with enough womanly touches to prove one had lived here with him. Nic briefly glanced in the walk-in closet, approving of its size, reassured by contents that were even more extravagant than he’d expected. He detoured out of interest to the well-appointed lounge, with its balcony overlooking the sea, noted the his and hers bathrooms and acknowledged the bed—big as the Titanic.
Rowan watched him with an inquisitive frown. “Have you never been in here before?”
“Never. You?”
“Loads,” she said with a careless shrug.
Dismissing a weary of course she had, he gave the framed portraits a final considering look. “I think you should sell your mother’s things and use the money to get a degree in something practical like business admin.”
Rowan’s love for her mother might be very much of the dutiful variety, and stained with resentment and angst, but she was appalled by Nic’s suggestion. “I can’t do that!” she protested.
Nic lifted his brows at her vehemence. “Why not?”
“Mum loved this table and that mirror... You can’t just tear down someone’s life and make it disappear.” Her lingering sense of duty to preserve Cassandra O’Brien’s mystique made her balk at the idea completely. “And business admin? Why don’t you suggest I become an accountant? Or something really exciting like an insurance actuary? Maybe there’s a library somewhere that needs its Dewey Decimal System overhauled?”
“Put it all in storage and wait tables, then.” A muscle tightened in Nic’s jaw, giving Rowan the crazy impression that she’d injured him. “I don’t know you any better than you know yourself,” he stated, in a comeback that returned very nicely any wounding she’d delivered. “Given what you just said, this is a decision best made by you, isn’t it?”
Nic took on his warrior stance, strong and mute. If he wasn’t the product of Thor and Athena she didn’t know what he was, all masculine power and superiority.
His confident presence called to the woman in her, but his subtext didn’t escape her. He wasn’t contradicting her need to move on, and his mention of disposing of her mother’s things reinforced his expectation that she’d do so.
Taking a surreptitious breath to ease the panicky constriction in her lungs, she nodded, mulling over what he’d said. “You’re right. I need to figure it out on my own. But there is one thing we should plan together.” She shoved aside the barbed wires curling around the tender walls of her heart to allow the statement out. “We need a memorial service.”
He jerked back his head in immediate refusal. “I don’t. Why would you?”
“Everyone does.” She hugged herself tighter.
“No. It’s a social convention that many subscribe to, particularly if they’re of a religious bent, but that doesn’t mean you and I have to buckle to it.”
“It’s not buckling! It offers closure.” He couldn’t really imagine she’d sign a piece of paper and that would be it, could he?
Rowan stared at his impermeable expression and got a sick, hollow feeling in her stomach. She was such an idiot. She had thought sleeping with him would change things. Change him. Soften his edges and make him feel...something.
Nic shook his head at Rowan’s stare of horrified objection, continually amazed by how sentimental she was. His inner core tightened protectively against that weakness. What was nostalgia but revisiting old pain?
“What did you have in mind? You and I reading poetry to each other over a marker on the lawn?” he asked.
“You don’t have to be like that about it!” Her sniff of affront was followed by a haughty set of her chin that made him feel about two inches tall. “I thought we’d say something nice to people who care about them in a chapel in Athens.”
“Oh, you want a party,” he said with sudden realization, disgusted with himself for beginning to credit her with more substance. “Why didn’t you say so? No.”
“It’s a service!” Rowan argued. “People need one. Aren’t you getting emails and phone calls? Their friends are asking for a chance to pay their respects.”
“Which they’ve done,” Nic insisted. If he had to field one more empty platitude or soupy look he’d drop himself from a plane into the sea. “There is absolutely no reason to drag it all into the limelight again—or is that your goal? Feeling a bit isolated here, Ro? Then leave.”
Well, that certainly told her how much he valued their time together! Rowan’s belligerent chin took his dismissal as a direct hit, pulling in and—she feared—crumpling before she steadied it.
“Is there really nothing in you that feels a need to say goodbye? Or are you only willing to give Olief as much time as he gave you?” It was a cruel thing to say. He’d spent hours on the search personally, and hiring teams of divers and pilots...
He didn’t remind her of all that. He only stared flatly at her. The silence stretched. His stance hardened and his jaw clenched.
Her belly quivered in apprehension.
“I said no.” He walked out.
* * *
Nic kept his distance for the next several days. If Row
an had lazed around underfoot he might have given her a piece of his mind, but she was actually doing as he’d told her to. She’d made a few trips to the other side of the island to fetch empty boxes. Garment bags had appeared with labels and markers. Every day, when she wasn’t leaving him a meal downstairs, she spent hours packing up the master bedroom.
If she had come to him he might have engaged, but he would not go looking for her. He was too proud. So proud it made his shoulders ache with hollow pressure. But the way she’d taken everything he’d told her and thrown it back in his face had been a blow. It was a perfect example of why he didn’t let people in. He didn’t want anyone to have the power to hurt him. If that meant he didn’t get the closeness—the sex and laughter and moments of basking in the light of a woman’s smile—so be it. Those were things he refused to crave anyway.
And if he had a curious tingling in his chest, almost like he was missing her—well, that was pure stupidity. She was right down the hall.
Or was she? He thought he heard a knock and clicked off his shaver.
“Nic?” She was in his lounge. Grabbing a towel off the rail, he hitched it around his hips and pulled the bathroom door inward.
Rowan was halfway around the sofa, heading toward the double doors that led into his bedroom. She started when he revealed himself, visibly taken aback to find him so close and fresh from the shower, but what did she expect at six-thirty in the morning?
She was in a short robe belted loosely over a torturously short babydoll nightgown. Her warm sleep scent, like almonds and tea, teased his nostrils. Despite going months without a woman on many occasions, he suddenly and acutely felt this recent abstinence.
A flustered blush colored her cheeks and she took a half step back, then held her ground within his reach even though he could tell she was discomfited.
Desire pulsed through him with increasing punches from his strengthening heart rate, reacting to her tousled hair and fresh-from-bed look. He wanted to heave her over his shoulder and carry her to his unmade sheets, but alongside his immediate lust was a pang of surprise at how exhausted she looked. Her eyes were green gems in bruised sockets, her skin thin and pale.
He wasn’t exactly sleeping well himself. Every day was a fight to incapacitate his sex drive with punishing workouts. Every night he woke to erotic dreams anyway, heavy and aching to go to her.
Funny how there was no satisfaction in knowing she was suffering too. He shifted his weight so his feet were braced wide, hopeful that his uncontrollable response to her wouldn’t become obvious.
“Yes?” he demanded.
She swallowed and ran a hand through her hair, reminding him how silky and thick it was, how good it had felt to grasp a handful of the luscious waves and kiss her until neither of them could breathe.
Her breath sucked in and she said in a rush, “I just heard the ferry horn. It’s coming now. I totally forgot they change the schedule on weekdays.”
His sex thoughts dissipated under something that made him pull inward with apprehension—even though he didn’t know why a change in the ferry schedule was such a crisis she had to burst in here, wringing her hands over it. “So?”
“That means I have to pack and leave now, unless you’re coming and want to make other arrangements to get us to the city by two.”
His brain stalled on pack and leave. The rest penetrated more slowly and didn’t make a lick of sense. “What?”
Rowan folded her arms across her chest in a move that was so defensive he instinctively knew he didn’t want to be enlightened. She spoke with exaggerated patience that annoyed him further.
“I thought I would have more time to reason with you, but I’ve just realized I don’t. I have to go now. Unless you’re willing to have the helicopter come and get us in a few hours? In that case we have all kinds of time to fight.”
“About...?” He tensed right down to the arches of his bare feet.
Her mouth pursed before she took a brave breath and stated, “The service.”
CHAPTER NINE
“WHAT? SERVICE?”
The way Nic chomped the words made Rowan tremble internally, but it was far too late to back down. She’d known as she set this up that the worst part would be now, when she told him—and there had been a lot of hard parts, not least of which had been finding the money. She’d put off telling him as long as she could, avoiding him, checking that he couldn’t overhear her calls. All the way along she’d known she’d need to set aside patience and temper to make him see she was doing the right thing.
Now, though, a mental clock ticked in her head. The ferry’s horn usually sounded when it reached the tip of the island. It took ages to empty and reload, so she had at least thirty or forty minutes to get to the marina, but she suspected that wouldn’t give her enough time to talk Nic around to her way of thinking.
There wasn’t enough time in the world for that. If only he wasn’t naked and looking like the biggest, angriest Viking ever to rip off his shirt and go berserk.
“I made it clear we weren’t holding a service.” That low, livid voice nearly made her knees collapse.
“We aren’t holding one, are we?” She spoke with admirable civility, keeping the quaver out of her voice. “I am. Courtesy demands I invite you. Could you make up your mind? I have to run if you’re not coming.”
“How could you?” His fingers curled as if he wanted to close them on her neck.
“Option two, then? We’re fighting.” Her temper caught like a cat’s claw. She might have kept her distance while she made the plans, aware that continuing their sexual relationship while going behind his back would make this betrayal worse, but he had completely ignored her for days! That hurt. “Or are you literally asking me how I did it? Because I don’t need your permission and I have resources.”
“Table dancing?” he derided.
“What else?” she taunted to hide the smart. “Of course in order to earn enough to pay for this big party I’m hosting I’ll have take off my clothes this time.”
Outrage arced from him like an electric bolt, making her jerk as he seemed to rise taller and loom over her. “That had better be a lie.”
“What’s it to you?” she cried, the words coming straight from the forsaken nights that had piled up in the last few days.
This was the hardest time of her life and he was making it harder with his hot and cold attitude, the exquisite peaks of pleasure he’d brought her to and the pit of dejection he’d left her in. Her incendiary anger carried her forward, resentful words charging off her tongue.
“What do you care if I sell myself on street corners and buy gold-plated urns? I’m just a girl you sleep with when you’re bored. I don’t rate so much as a good morning or a thanks for lunch or a kiss goodnight!”
An inferno of anger roared in his eyes. Wrong thing to fight about, she thought, but his rebuff pained her so deeply she couldn’t help herself.
“Maybe if you’d spoken to me I might have told you!” she rushed on, with a contentious lift of her chin, the burn of humiliation searing through her. “But you didn’t even invite me for a spin in one of the guest rooms. What’s the matter, Nic? Does sleeping with me make you hate me less?”
He caught her by the upper arms before she saw him move. “What do you want from me? Flowers? Romance? Caring? Prepare for disappointment. I’m not built that way. But if you’re missing the sex keep talking. I’ll accommodate you,” he warned.
She could have done a million things: said something cruel, sent her knee into his groin. She wasn’t scared by his threat, though. She was aroused. So was he. The hectic flush across his cheekbones, the unsteady rise and fall of his chest and the bulge of his towel filled her with euphoria.
He didn’t want to want her, though, and that made her mad. It gave her the power to strike back in the one way she
knew would completely undermine his control: she whipped off his towel and threw it to the floor.
“Really?” He backed her into the wall, incredulous.
“What are you going to do about it?” she taunted.
His fierce blue eyes never left hers as his hands shot to her waist, brushing open her robe before descending to her bare thighs in a rough caress. His hands climbed to her hips, bunching the hem of her short nightie over his wrists.
She gasped and jerked at his proprietorial touch, shamefully flooding with heated wetness. It had been days! His breath left him in a ragged laugh as he realized there were no panties to remove. He reached to cup her buttocks, sliding his palms to the backs of her thighs beneath the curve of her bottom, and lifted her.
She parted her legs in a practiced leap, arms reaching over his bunching shoulders to brace her weight on him. Something brazen and fierce was taking hold in her. A knot of anguished loneliness had been building in her and the only way to break it apart was with the hot penetration of her body by his.
She was completely ready for him, whether from her erotic dreams and constant fantasies or because sexual frustration had been at the heart of this fight in the first place. She didn’t know. Only knew that she was wet and needy. And when he embedded himself in her with one smooth thrust she cried out in primal fulfillment, locking her legs around his waist with frantic, brazen determination.
He swore and tried to gentle things. She wouldn’t let him. His fingers bit into the backs of her thighs as she engaged every well-trained muscle in her body and let her weight deepen his thrusts. Welling emotion was threatening to overflow in her. She wanted to absorb him completely and nipped at his mouth, holding the sides of his head as she sucked hard on his bottom lip.
He leaned them into the wall and pumped harder. Faster. Making her body clench around him stronger and tighter. The crescendo approached. She clasped him in greedy frenzy, determined to bring him over the edge with her as she felt the rushing expansion, both of them tipping, falling, flying...