For the Love of Nick

by Jill Shalvis

  Her smile fell. “A secret?”

  “Please?”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  She let out a long sigh and gave in. “For you, okay. Just don’t make me keep it for long because this is just too good. Engaged! Imagine that.” Without warning, she turned and hugged Danielle. “I don’t know how you caught him, honey, but I’m so glad.”

  Well. Danielle stood there, feeling stupid, her arms fluttering uselessly behind Maureen for a moment before she awkwardly hugged her back.

  “Welcome to the family!” Maureen said with such warmth Danielle was overcome with regret and guilt, which only multiplied when Maureen went inside.

  “Fiancée?” she said to Nick in disbelief as they went to get Sadie out of the truck.

  “I couldn’t figure out how to tell her the truth and keep her out of it. She’d want to help.”

  “Oh.”

  “And you don’t want help.”

  “Right.” She needed to remember that.

  “It won’t be for long.”

  She needed to remember that, too. Promising herself that she would, she locked her weak knees together, wrapped Sadie’s leash around her wrist and started forward.

  DANIELLE MOVED to the window of the room she and Nick had been given and stared down at the steep, green rolling hills beyond, trying not to think.

  One room, one bed.

  Wondering how this had happened did her no good. Nick had happened to her. By now she’d expected to be on her own, fighting panic, certainly, but well on her way to a new life that included no one and nothing but herself and Sadie.

  But she hadn’t shaken Nick. Hadn’t been able to make herself do it, because hour by hour, minute by minute in his company, laughing, talking, running…it was all an experience she’d never forget. With each passing second, she knew it would only be harder to walk away in the end.

  And there would be an end, there was always an end.

  But the look on his face as he’d told Maureen they were going to get married… She knew it had only been a story he’d had to tell, but he’d looked so fierce, so protective, so…perfectly content to be claiming her as his.

  An act, she reminded herself and her racing heart. An act, and a very good one. Maureen and Clint had been warm and kind. Maureen had insisted she think of herself at home here, offering to share meals, and even her car if Danielle needed it.

  Which made her feel even worse. She was betraying their trust by not telling the truth, but she could not reveal the truth.

  “I’m sorry about the room situation.”

  She didn’t turn and look at him, the man who’d rescued her more than once now, the man who’d somehow wormed his way into her heart. “I thought you were visiting with your cousins.”

  “Just reinforcing the story.”

  “Ah, yes. The story.” She felt him come up right behind her, so close she could feel his breath in her hair.

  “Maureen knows me well,” he said. “She wouldn’t have bought me not sleeping with my fiancée.”

  Danielle swiveled to face him, their bodies not touching, and yet heat shimmered between them just the same.

  Did he feel it?

  She looked into his dark green eyes, heated and full of affection, and thought maybe he did. She forced a smile. “She sure did look surprised at the engagement part.”

  Nick’s mouth twisted into a wry grin. “Let’s just say I’ve never been one to…inspire commitment.”

  “I’m sure they’ll understand when you leave. We’ll tell them you have responsibilities to cover for your sisters, and that I—”

  “I’m not leaving, Danielle.”

  She swallowed hard. “Of course you’re leaving. You have to. You’ll go back, and I’ll just go up the highway to talk to the breeder I got Sadie from, and then…” Her mouth was so dry she couldn’t have swallowed to save her life. “And then I’m on my way.”

  “I want to go with you to the breeder.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “I know.” He set one hand on the sill behind her, surrounding her with his body. “You’re tough,” he said gently. “Resilient and strong. You can handle whatever comes your way, I’ve seen that. I get that.” His other hand slid into her hand. “I’m staying for me, not you. I want to know that it comes out all right for you in the end.”

  It rarely came out all right for her in the end, but this time…this time, she hoped, would be different.

  God, please, let it be different.

  He was looking at her in the way that made her insides tremble, and because she was weakening, she pushed away from him, nearly tripping over the sleeping Sadie.

  “How does she sleep like that?” he asked in amazement, looking down at the dog, flat on her back, four paws straight up in the air, mouth open, emitting a soft snore every few seconds. He stepped over the comatose thing and moved through the country-casual room, past the four-poster pine bed to Danielle. “So…when do we leave?”

  She searched his gaze, for what, she didn’t know. Pity? Regret? Anything that would make it easy for pride to flare, to shove him away.

  But he only smiled, patient as ever.

  “And after we do this last thing together?” she asked. “Then you’ll go? Back to your life?”

  “You’re in an awful hurry to get rid of me.”

  “You’ll go?”

  His smile slowly faded. “If you get your answers, I’ll go.”

  “Okay,” she said softly, grabbing her backpack. “Then now is as good a time as any.”

  LAURA LYN MILLER, of Miller Show Dogs, wasn’t home. There was a clipboard attached to her front door for visitors, and given the dates of the notes left for her, she hadn’t been home all week.

  “She’s at a show,” Danielle said in a neutral voice that didn’t come close to fooling Nick.

  She was despondent—he could hear it, he could see it—and for the first time in a very long time, he felt completely helpless.

  Because she wanted him to go, damn it, and get the hell out of her way.

  But he couldn’t walk away from her until he knew she was okay. That after only a handful of days he was afraid there was far more to it than that could be his own private hell.

  “All I need are her records,” Danielle said, still staring at the front door which wouldn’t be opening to her. “Proving I was in Sadie’s life from the beginning, with my own money. I paid for most of the vaccinations and food and everything else needed, and since Laura Lyn and I stayed in touch at shows, she could be a witness to that fact.”

  “She’ll be back.” Nick took her back to the truck. “And so will we.”

  Danielle was quiet until they were on the road, heading back to the inn. “She’ll be gone another week, if she’s on the show circuit that I think she’s on. And actually…”

  He wasn’t going to like this. “And actually?”

  “She’s not too far from here.”

  “But Ted might go there looking for you.”

  “It’s likely.” Voice tight, she stared out the window.

  “So we wait.”

  “I wait. You can’t just hang here for a week.”

  Right. He had a life.

  Cooper’s Corner came into view, the pretty little village that never failed to draw him in. Small, personal. Unique. Danielle drew him in, just as this place did, he thought, turning into Twin Oaks B&B.

  Danielle got out of the truck before he could come around. “I’m going to take Sadie for a walk in the woods.”

  Alone. That was crystal clear.

  Well, good. He’d practice being alone again, too. He watched her go, watched her hold on to Sadie’s leash as if the dog was all she had in the entire world.

  What about me, he wanted to call after her, but that was pathetic so he headed around to the back of the house, to where he could go be alone and mull. Maybe even talk to Maureen.

  He’d asked her to run Ted through the system, dis
creetly, without explaining why he’d asked such a thing. Nick hoped like hell she came up with something. Anything. If so, combined with the threatening e-mail, Danielle’s testimony on how he’d treated Sadie, and anything else he could find, it hopefully would be enough to turn things in Danielle’s favor.

  Danielle, who was currently walking away from him as fast as she could.

  On the back deck, which spread the entire length of the house, sat two young, bubbly, laughing women, whom he recognized as Maureen’s cleaning crew.

  They grinned at him. “On a break,” the redheaded one called out cheerfully, having unfastened all but one button of her sleeveless blouse so that she could tie it between her very generous breasts.

  The other had rolled her biking shorts up to nearly pornographic heights, and since she lay on her belly in a lounge, he had an unobstructed view of a very curvy, very nearly exposed bottom. From over her shoulder, she smiled. “Care to join us?”

  “Uh…” Definitely, there was something wrong with him that he hesitated, glanced back over his own shoulder for one last sight of Danielle.

  But she was long gone.

  And damn it, so was any libido he might have had.

  That it was possible for her to have so completely stolen all his lustful urges in such a short time was truly terrifying, and he turned back to the women, staring at their bodies, determined to get his own to react.

  Not a twinge.

  No getting around it. What he wanted, what he craved, was one slender, sweetly sexy, misty-eyed Danielle.

  Only problem was—and here was another first—she didn’t want him back.

  He knew he had decent looks. That wasn’t ego talking, but fact. He also knew he hadn’t been bad in bed. The way she’d clutched at him, staring into his eyes with sweet, sexy, wondrous surprise, as if no one had ever made her feel like that before, told him that.

  It hadn’t been his company, either, because no matter what she pretended, she liked him, he could see it in her eyes, taste it in her kiss.

  And whether she wanted to admit it or not, she trusted him. She’d trusted him with the truth, she’d trusted him to be with her. She’d trusted him to help her.

  She hadn’t let anyone else do any of those things.

  But she didn’t want to trust him. Didn’t want to let him in.

  And without that, they had nothing.

  Little Buxom Redhead wriggled on the lounge, getting herself comfortable while watching him from beneath lowered lashes to make sure he was catching it all.

  “Sorry, ladies,” he said, knowing he was truly certifiable. But the niggling in the back of his mind had turned to a full instinctive awareness of trouble, and his instincts were never wrong. Without another look at the women, he pivoted and followed Danielle.

  She wasn’t on the trail. She wasn’t in the gardens. She wasn’t anywhere.

  She was gone.

  13

  DANIELLE GAVE UP the walk in favor of a little ride. Maureen had been so kind, offering her anything she needed, and the fact that she’d taken advantage of that hospitality and borrowed her car felt like an overwhelming burden.

  But she still drove herself and Sadie to the dog show to find Laura Lyn.

  All the way there Danielle told herself she was doing the right thing, not involving Nick in this any further. He’d done enough, she owed him everything as it was, and…

  And who was she fooling?

  She’d needed—quite desperately it turned out—to remember what it was like to be on her own, without the incredible, dynamic presence of one Nick Cooper, the only man to ever have her fantasizing about what-ifs.

  What-ifs were fruitless. What-ifs were dangerous.

  She pulled up to the site of the dog show, taking a moment to look around at the controlled chaos with a sense of nostalgia. Trailers, campers and minivans dominated the parking lot. Two huge ring tents had been set up for the show itself, and surrounding those were the booths of various vendors selling everything from doggie sweaters to pooper-scoopers.

  The hustle and bustle of it, the friendly but stiff competitors, the general craziness had been Danielle’s life for so long. It felt like home, and yet oddly enough, also like a dream where she didn’t quite belong.

  Luckily, it didn’t take long to find Laura Lyn, who’d hired Danielle on several occasions to handle her extra dogs. After a quick hello hug, Danielle pulled back and said, “You don’t see me standing here.”

  “Okay.” Laura Lyn shifted her perpetual wad of gum from one cheek to the other. “I don’t see you standing here—stressed, exhausted and looking like crap. Does that have anything to do with the phone call I took from Ted several days ago?”

  Danielle’s stomach sank and she gripped Sadie’s leash with tense fingers. She looked around, but didn’t see him. “This was a bad idea.”

  “Was it?” Another careful shifting of the gum made Laura Lyn’s left cheek bulge. “Why?”

  Danielle stopped looking for Ted long enough to look into Laura Lyn’s eyes. “I need records.”

  “Ted said you might. And that I was to call him the moment I saw you.” She lifted a brow. “Hard to do that, as I’m not seeing you.”

  Danielle drew a careful breath. “Laura Lyn…”

  “Did you steal Sadie?”

  “More like put her in protective custody.”

  Laura Lyn blew a huge bubble. “Ah.”

  “I want to show the court that for all intents and purposes, Sadie is mine.”

  “To prove ownership.”

  “Right. Then she can stay with me.”

  “Because Ted broke up with you? Or because Sadie is the most amazing champion the breed has seen in decades?”

  So now the story was Ted had broken up with her. Terrific. That gave him even more sympathy in the eyes of the law. “No, not because of any of that.” Danielle looked into Laura Lyn’s eyes and willed her to understand. “But because Sadie needed to get away from Ted. So did I. Laura Lyn, I left him. I had good reasons, and now I need to prove Sadie doesn’t belong with him.” She drew a deep breath and gave it her best shot. “Can you help me do that?”

  “Danielle?”

  Both Danielle and Laura Lyn froze as Laura Lyn’s assistant, Gail Winters, came jogging up to them. “Imagine seeing you here,” she said to Danielle, with a wealth of speculation in her gaze.

  Gail was barely twenty, independently wealthy, gorgeous and far too glamorous for the dog life, but she’d proven herself a good assistant to Laura Lyn.

  All that, and she also fancied herself in love with Ted. Given the predatory way she was staring at Danielle, Gail had to know too much.

  Under the guise of moving out of the sun, Laura Lyn turned her back to Gail. Then she leaned close to Danielle. “Where should I send the records?”

  “That’s…complicated.”

  Laura Lyn looked at her for a long beat. “Gail?” she said over her shoulder. “Could you go brush Max? He’s next in the ring.”

  “But—”

  “Now, please, Gail.”

  Only when her assistant had reluctantly moved away did Laura Lyn speak again. “Complicated?”

  “I want to come get them.”

  “Coming to my place would be a bad idea, Danielle.”

  “Ted?”

  “I think so. How about I overnight the records to you when I get back in a few days?”

  Danielle hesitated, because that was a lot of trust, which she was short on at the moment.

  “I can have them to you by the end of the week,” Laura Lyn promised.

  The end of the week. Surely she could wait that long to start her new life. “The Twin Oaks B&B in Cooper’s Corner,” Danielle said softly.

  And hoped she hadn’t just made her biggest mistake yet.

  DANIELLE DROVE BACK to the inn. Inside, she could hear hammering, the whir of a saw…but saw no one as she climbed the stairs.

  Maybe she hadn’t been missed.

  As she entered he
r—their—room, she removed Sadie’s leash, giving the dog space to lie down.

  Then Danielle stood still and took her first real breath since she’d left. Maybe Nick had already gone, deciding she was far too much trouble for whatever weak link they had to a past. Maybe he was at this very moment thanking his lucky stars to have gotten rid of her so easily. Maybe he—

  “Hey there,” he said quietly, and she almost jerked right out of her skin.

  Twirling, she saw him, sitting in the chair by the window, legs stretched out in front of him, hands resting on his thighs.

  Relaxed and calm.

  Except for the sparks shooting out of his eyes.

  “I didn’t see you,” she said with a hand to her racing heart.

  “Yeah.” He pushed to a stand. “That’s a big problem for us.”

  He was not happy. In fact, he looked fairly furious.

  “Nick—”

  “You don’t see me.” He came close so that she could see that it wasn’t just anger in those eyes, but something else, something deeper. Fear. Concern. Tension.

  All caused by her.

  “First,” he said, pushing her hair from her face with a surprisingly gentle hand. “Are you all right?”

  Was she? Hard to tell with her nerves so highly strung. “Yes.”

  “Good.” He stared at her, then let out a disparaging breath. “Damn it. I’m so mad I forgot what the second thing was.”

  “Nick—”

  “You went to the dog show. Risked yourself. You did it alone because that’s the way you wanted it.”

  “I had to!” she cried. “Nick, I’m going crazy just waiting for things to happen to me. I can’t do it anymore. I’m taking control. I’m taking action. I need those records from Laura Lyn, and she’s promised to get them to me.”

  “There’s something I need, too, and I’m going to take it now.” Then he hauled her up to her toes and kissed her. It tasted of frustration and temper, but more than that, it tasted of affection and need. An intoxicating mix, as she began to understand something she’d missed before. Not some passing fancy, this. Not some vague attempt to bring back their high school days with a cheap thrill.