“A drink?” He stood five paces away, with a remote control in his hand, not looking at me.
“Soda water, thank you.”
He dimmed the lighting and adjusted floor to ceiling automatic curtains that crept in to frame the picture window. With less light around me, I could now see a trail of moonlight across the harbor, like a creamy tail leading to the iconic arched bridge. That view alone would be worth a fortune.
“Who owns this home?” I had to ask.
“Shadow Secure.” He walked to a bar at the side of the room and came back a minute later without his jacket. He placed a drink on the low table in front of me and my attention was drawn to the swirling tattoo on his biceps. The muscles under it appeared to be bunched, but the lighting was low, and perhaps the shadows were deceiving. “We use it for temporary emergency placement of clients.”
“And the rest of the time it sits vacant?”
He sat at the opposite end of the four-seater lounge and met my gaze. “Is this important?”
I shook my head. “It seems a waste of resources—”
“The rich guy who owns the company lives here when he’s in town. Don’t you have holiday houses that you leave vacant?” He sounded annoyed to be discussing the wealthy and their proclivities.
“An apartment in Noosa.” I wanted to add that it had nowhere near the rental potential of this home, but if I continued to rub his nose in our financial differences, that wasn’t likely to calm him down.
“Then it’s exactly the same thing.” He took a swig of his drink, and if anything, I could feel his tension mounting.
“Well I’m glad to be here. With you,” I amended. “I feel safe.” Although I wasn’t sure how long we were staying, and how I’d cope without a change of clothes, toiletries or makeup. Still, those issues seemed inconsequential compared to the briefing I had to give Adele when she arrived. That would be traumatic for her, and I needed to work out the best way to deliver the news.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said quietly, and put down his glass.
I took a sip of my drink and placed it back on the low table. “What do you imagine I’m thinking?”
His voice was low, controlled. “That I shouldn’t be upset. That you’re alive, and that’s the main thing.”
I gazed at him steadily, at his stiff shoulders, at the challenge in his gaze, and I wondered if it was worthwhile fighting him on this. Maybe I should just let him have his anger and move past it.
But some rebellious part of me insisted on saying, “Actually, that was half an hour ago. I’ve moved on to thinking about Adele and how to tell her what I must about her brother and his debts.”
He frowned, and I could see that I’d deflected some of his attack, but he still said, “That will be difficult, but I’ve no doubt you’ll handle it graciously. You seem to manage people effortlessly.”
“And you don’t?”
His gaze grew very direct. “I had one job.” Each word emerged distinctly, and the spaces in between throbbed with anger.
I nodded. There was no arguing with that. “And you failed to protect me from being frightened. I know. Yet you are still in my employ. Do you know why that is?” I didn’t give him time to answer. “Having made that mistake, I’m confident you’ll work tirelessly to ensure you don’t make another.”
His dark expressive eyes showed me that his tirade had faltered, and I was pleased to have surprised him.
“I’m a businesswoman,” I stated clearly. “I know nothing of possible threat. So I trusted you to anticipate danger and protect me from it.”
His chest rose and fell, and in his reactions it was becoming clearer that he’d expected to beat his breast in self-recrimination while I assuaged his guilt.
He clearly didn’t know me as well as he thought.
I continued with. “I don’t have the experience to know if you could have anticipated that horrible situation, so I have no concept of the level of your failure. I only know that I don’t want to be in that situation again.”
“You won’t be.” He didn’t sound abashed. If anything, he sounded…territorial. “If I have to follow you into the ladies’ bathroom to ensure that you’re safe, I will. You’re not going to be alone for a second until this is over and you’re not touching food or drink until I do first.”
I straightened my shoulders. “Good.”
He nodded, and he seemed…lighter, which pleased me. Not only would he be able to do his job with more clarity, I suddenly realized that I felt happier when he was. Could that be friendship? I cared in that way about the girls and their emotions. Perhaps Nicholas really had slipped past my barrier of reserve into my inner circle.
I was thinking about that when he put down his drink and said, “I’m indecently turned on right now, and I didn’t expect that. But when you tell me off…” His gaze challenged me again. “I just want to kiss you and mess up that perfect lipstick.”
In a heartbeat I was breathless, and in the dimly lit room, the throb of arousal was almost audible. I could have said, I’m still married but I didn’t. I waited him out.
“Of course, I’m not doing anything about that, because the last time I got distracted by thinking about making love, you were terrorized. That’s not happening again.”
I nodded, as if I appreciated his resolve, but I was really wondering how he could push desire out of his head. Because I couldn’t. A hundred times a day I was reminded of being in his arms. The silk of a gown brushing my stomach reminded me of his fingers, the wind pushing hair up from my nape reminded me of his lips, the smell of toast reminded me of his skin.
But I said none of that. I wanted him protecting me. Anything else would come afterwards. So I redirected him back onto the topic we must both focus on. “Why didn’t you tell the police about what happened?”
He gazed at me for a long moment, as though weighing up what to say, but in the end, he asked a question. “Your previous response to a ransom demand for fifty million was to try and settle the debt, so am I right in guessing that you think twenty is reasonable?”
I frowned, and he pulled the coffee cup lid out of his pocket with the note taped to the top $20M tomorrow.
My stomach turned over, but I forced myself to concentrate. “They want the money tomorrow.”
“There’s more.” He pulled another piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it over. “This was in the tray, under the coffee cups.”
I scanned it quickly, seeing details of the initial debt and interest rate at the top, followed by a memorandum of release pending payment of twenty million dollars on tomorrows date. It had been signed, and appeared to be a legal document. It even had bank account details for the funds to be paid into.
I shook my head, unable to reconcile this professional settlement offer with the horrible decapitate mouse. “Why would they—”
“To frighten you,” he said baldly. “To unnerve me. To push your emotional buttons so you think with your heart and not your head.”
I took my time considering that. They had rattled me, but according to the ridiculous interest rate Marcus agreed to, his debt should be much more than twenty million by now. So I had to say, “If his creditor is willing to settle on that amount, I would certainly advise him to do it.”
“So in your eyes there’s nothing criminal about the loan? About the debt Marcus owes?”
I shook my head. “It appears to be a legitimate financial commitment that he didn’t fulfil. The emotional trauma I just suffered is criminal, but the debt itself is valid.”
“I thought so.” He was silent for a moment before he said, “I would gladly gut this creditor with a whaling harpoon for terrorizing you, but it looks like this is the only time he’s stepped over the line. So going after him now will only escalate the potential for violence.”
I had to agree. “Apart from threats, he just seems to want his money, and perhaps he only frightened me to clarify the urgency of his request.” I felt more comfortable analy
zing this in a logical manner.
Nicholas leant forward on the couch. “My instinct is to keep this in-house.” He paused for another moment, watching me carefully. “My advice is to convince Adele to hand over the money in return for written assurances that you won’t hear from these people again.” He nodded, almost to himself. “We do what you intended to do with that faux ransom demand—treat it as a business transaction.”
That, I understood, and it would be a relief to reframe this whole horrible episode into an unfortunate business arrangement, but I had to add, “Convincing Adele won’t be easy when I only have this paperwork to support their claim. If Marcus recovers quickly and can speak to her himself…”
Nicholas surprised me by straightening and holding out a hand. “That reminds me, give me your phone.”
I caught myself leaning away from him. “Why?”
“Because you trust me,” he replied and raised an eyebrow. It was almost banter, and I had a moment of satisfaction at realizing my approach to his self-recriminations had done the trick. He appeared to have let go of the majority of his angst.
But give up my phone? What if I wanted to leave? Or phone one of the girls?
“Louella,” he said softly, interrupting my litany of reasons to say no. “This isn’t going to work if you don’t trust me. Nothing will work if you don’t trust me.”
And suddenly this thing between us was difficult.
Desire, sex, even friendship I could navigate, but absolute trust? I hadn’t given that to Marcus and I’d been married to him for a decade. So I had to say, “You realize how vulnerable this makes me, in an unfamiliar house in a location I don’t know.”
He nodded and simply said, “But I’m here, and I’m not leaving your side.”
That was reassuring, but why would he want my phone? “Are you trying to protect me from that man?”
From where I sat I could see his expression harden. “I don’t want you hearing his voice. And I especially don’t want you to see him. So I’d rather he has to go through me.”
I could argue that the man didn’t have my number, but for all I knew he could find it out some way, so I simply reached into my handbag and handed it over. “But if one of the girls rings—”
“Of course.” He gazed at me steadily, in the way I’d come to rely on—the gaze that said You don’t need to worry about anything. I’ve thought of everything.
But was that true? Was I safe?
I certainly felt calm in that moment. Is this trust? The sensation was warm and…cherished. Nicholas was simply doing his job, but knowing he loved me added a dimension to the gesture that relaxed me more than was probably safe.
So much so, in fact, that I suddenly realized, “I’m hungry.” How long had it been since I’d eaten?
My impulsive comment was rewarded by one of his slow smiles that woke up my hormones and reminded me of how attractive he was—those very white teeth and his dark thick-lashed eyes. “Then you get to see me cook again.” He stood and nodded to the hallway so I followed him down to a shiny grey marble kitchen with stainless steel commercial cookware and fridges that somehow managed to look stylish and extremely serviceable.
He saw me looking around with raised eyebrows.
He shrugged. “The rich guy parties.” He brought a grey leather stool from the other side of breakfast bar into the kitchen, positioning it between the food preparation bench and the stovetop.
He obviously wanted to stand between me and the doorway, and as I slid onto the stool, I realized how much I liked his constant focus on my whereabouts. If it had been anyone else, it would have felt intrusive, but again I felt cherished. I knew this change in perspective was a result of what had happened between us in the last few hours, and for that reason I let it be.
He opened one side of the huge double-fridge. “You like Italian food.” It wasn’t a question, so he must have known enough about Betty’s schedule to see mushroom lasagna, pumpkin fettucine, and chicken and fennel risotto on her regular cooking list.
“Something light?” I suggested. I was hungry, but I’d also been through a lot—shock, fainting—I didn’t want to overload my stomach, particularly when Adele was due within the next few hours and more emotional upheaval was on the cards.
“Zuppa,” he said. “Bread and bacon?”
I nodded, smiling at his enthusiasm.
Growing up, my mother’s cook had often made bread soup. It was a classic Italian meal with lots of vegetables and day old bread. A good way to ‘clear out the bottom of the fridge’ she’d often told me, as if she expected that I should know about such housekeeping matters, when in reality, I’d simply gone on to have my own housekeeper and cook when I’d married.
“I do love food,” I admitted, not even sure why I was telling him that. “But I don’t cook.”
He turned away from the fridge with a bundle of vegetables and shrugged. “I like it. There’s a process in peeling and chopping. It slows down my mind.”
“So it’s Zen?”
I watched him, side on, sorting carrots and zucchini, trying to hide a smile.
“What?”
He shook his head and slanted me a very sexy glance. “You’re in my kitchen watching me cook. It’s turning me on.”
“I see.” It wasn’t his kitchen, but I took his point. It wasn’t my kitchen, so it was more intimate, less work-related.
His smile grew wry. “You say I see when you don’t know what to think.”
Actually, I was embarrassed, and I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as if I was deliberately trying to arouse him, but in the last twenty-four hours he’d clearly felt more open about expressing his feelings.
Which raised the questions of why I shouldn’t? I should. So I forced myself to say, “I like it too. I like watching you…do things.”
He was watching me as I said that, and seemed to catch his breath. “Okay. That conjured up a whole string of fantasies that are better left alone. For now,” he added softly, and cast me another under-his-eyelashes glance before he went back to peeling carrots.
So that was enough sharing from me. I kept my mouth closed and watched him peel and fry and simmer and season. Within ten minutes my mouth was watering because the smells in the kitchen were amazing.
In between stirring and smiling at me, he went back and forth to our two phones which he’d placed on the opposite benchtop, clearly on silent so I couldn’t hear what messages came in, or guess at who he was texting.
One such trip caused him to frown and glance up at me.
I immediately went on alert. “What’s happening?”
He said nothing for a long ten seconds, then, “Gisel’s on the way from the airport with Adele. ETA is thirty minutes.”
“Why are you frowning.”
It took him another couple of seconds to add, “Gisel said she’s beautiful. I’m hoping she doesn’t hound me to find out about her, the way she’s been hounding me to find out if Lizzie is still with Sieu.”
I frowned back. “Seriously?”
He shrugged. “She’s got a crush on Lizzie. Or at least, I thought she did. But it appears that your sister-in-law distracted her.”
“But she’ll behave professionally?”
He raised an eyebrow. “She wouldn’t be in the team if she couldn’t. These asides are just to annoy me. Neither Lizzie nor Adele would have a clue that she’s attracted to them. We don’t work that way.”
He hadn’t said it to wound me but it still stung, so I said, “Is that why I didn’t know about you?”
He nodded, but there was something solemn in his gaze now, and I wondered if I’d embarrassed him.
“I’ve never had to hide my feelings like that before,” he admitted. “And it was hard. But the fact that you barely looked at me made it easier.” He seemed suddenly tense, and the banter of a few moments ago was completely gone. Was he upset with me for being unobservant back then?
In the interest of honest disclosure, I said, “The girls told
me they’d seen something in the way you looked at me. They suspected, but,” I shook my head. “I told them they were wrong.”
“They were right.” He put the phone down and walked over to me, at my height where I sat on the stool. Then with no warning at all, he drove his fingers into my hair and kissed me hard, and I had a split second of wondering what had brought this on before I realized I didn’t care.
I kissed him back, winding my arms around his neck, thrilling at the hot, hard masculinity of his touch, the way his fingers cradled my scalp while his kiss scoured any resistance I might have managed. Everywhere his skin contacted mine felt alive with burning hunger.
So when he pulled back, still holding my head and said, “You. Me. Now,” I was so overwhelmed by my own arousal throbbing around my body, I didn’t think about anything else.
I said, “Yes.”
Chapter Fourteen
He swept me up into his arms and I clung his neck, dizzying myself with the scent of his skin as he carried me, nuzzling up behind his ear and loving the rumbling growl from low in his chest as he carried me downstairs to a library.
There had been barriers before, up and down, confusing me, but this I understood. Raw need made me tremble and tingle and sigh against his skin. Wanting more. Wanting everything.
He stepped up to a bookcase and pressed something inside it that I couldn’t see. It created a loud click and the whole bookcase swung in, revealing a hidden room behind it, more opulent than the upstairs rooms, but still predominated grey toned. He carried me in and put me down onto a plush rug, between a bed swathed in silver linen and cushions, another grey marble bathroom, and a frighteningly modern chrome desk with various screens on the wall above it.
My addled brain took several seconds to grasp the fact that the screens were showing interior views of the house. This was a panic room, and Nicholas was locking us in, closing the vault-like door behind us, swinging shut various handles to lock it. Then the stark overhead lighting dimmed, casting a blue-gray wash across the room.
In that moment I didn’t care where we were, because he turned back and pulled me into his arms, kissing me with all the banked up tension we’d both been carrying for days. And there was something about the deliciously mysterious taste of his mouth that made my knees weak and my whole body wake up to desire, even before his questing tongue slid against mine, confident of his ability to make me moan.
Husband Heel (Husband Series Book 3) Page 18