What Nick apparently wanted was to drive her insane.
His fingers moved back up her body again. She swallowed her desperation. Then he traced her ribs, swirled circles round her navel, then with his thumbs he caressed the juncture of her thighs. Edie bit her lip as his hands slid around beneath her to cup her buttocks. He lifted her, spread her, stroked her.
Edie nearly whimpered. “Now,” she urged him, reaching out to grasp his hips and draw him to her.
He came to her then, thrust into her with a desperation belied by his earlier slow, leisurely caresses. There was nothing casual or leisurely now. His need, like hers, was naked and urgent. His teeth clenched. The skin drew taut across his cheekbones. His breathing grew quick and hard as did his movement. And Edie moved to meet him, to join him. She dug her nails into his back just as he gave a hoarse cry, and they shattered together again.
This time there was no edge taken off. There were no edges at all—just bone-deep contentment, relaxation, a sense of serenity and well-being as Nick’s weight settled against her. He would have moved off. She held him where he was—wasn’t ready to let go. Not now. Not yet.
Their hearts were still hammering in unison. His sweat-dampened cheek rested against hers. Midnight shadow whiskers abraded her sensitive skin. Instinctively Edie turned her head toward them, pressed her lips to his cheek, breathed in the scent of him.
Slowly he turned his head, too, so that they lay facing each other, sharing the pillow, their noses nearly touching, their eyes open, watching each other silently.
There were no words. At least Edie couldn’t think of any. So she smiled. It said everything she couldn’t find words for.
Nick didn’t smile. He looked like a man who didn’t know what had hit him. That made Edie’s smile widen.
His eyelids flickered shut. He opened them again, seemed to focus on her once more. But within moments his eyes shut again, and this time they stayed shut. His breathing slowed and deepened.
He was asleep.
This time Edie didn’t sleep at all. Her breathing, like Nick’s, slowed and settled into a regular peaceful rhythm once more. But she felt no exhaustion now, no lassitude. She felt centered. Settled. Physically a little sore because she hadn’t done this sort of thing in a while. But on the whole she felt astonishingly good.
Great sex will do that for you, she thought, remembering similar feelings after she’d made love with Ben. But with Ben it hadn’t only been great sex. There had always been something more.
There had been a connection between them, the sense that together they made beautiful music, that together they created something greater than the two of them could on their own.
Could that happen with Nick, too?
The thought came from out of nowhere—or from some wellspring deep within. Edie didn’t know where. She knew only that even thinking such a thing was a mistake.
Nick didn’t want that. He’d made it absolutely, perfectly clear that he wasn’t interested. And she had agreed to that. She’d assured him—and herself—that she wasn’t interested in anything else, either.
She wasn’t. She hoped.
And if she was?
Well, Edie acknowledged, that was her problem.
Now she lay quietly and allowed her gaze to trace Nick’s sleeping features. He looked younger asleep, his hard features gentled. Was it the “great sex” that had softened them? Edie wondered. Or was it the great sex with her?
Had he felt the sense of connection, too?
Or—Edie forced herself to confront the possibility—was she just a lonely widow trying to rationalize a night of very uncharacteristic behavior?
She didn’t have the answer to those questions. All she knew is that she wouldn’t get those answers tonight. Maybe she never would.
But lying here was not helping. It was only making her want things she had no right to, with a man she didn’t really know.
Except a part of her thought she knew Nick Savas very well indeed.
He had showed her tonight that it was possible to find life after Ben. And she certainly knew she would be thinking about him—and not about Kyle Robbins—for some time to come.
But now she needed to get up and get dressed and go back to her own room—to her own life.
There, over the next days or weeks or months, she might discover the answer to what she’d been doing tonight.
Carefully Edie eased herself from beneath his arm, then slipped out of the bed, wincing as she began to move about and gather up her clothing. Muscles she never knew she had were reminding her of their existence now.
In the bathroom—thank heavens for some modern conveniences!—she put on a small light and dressed as quickly as she could, which wasn’t very as she had to slither into the dress since no one was available to button it up the back for her, and she could hardly saunter down the corridors of Mont Chamion castle with her dress hanging half open.
Fortunately it was still the middle of the night. Even the earliest risers would not be in the hallways just yet. But she had a plane to catch in a scant six hours.
So she slipped back out of the bathroom and started toward the door, then stopped. She couldn’t just leave—not without looking back. Not without one last memory.
So she crept back to the bed and stood over Nick’s sleeping form, drinking in the sight of him. He’d rolled onto his back now. The sheet barely covered the essentials, but she had indelible muscle memory of them—and the soreness to remind her for a while at least.
Now she memorized the rest of him—the broad, hair-roughened chest, the strong shoulders, the blade-sharp nose, the sensuous lips, the hard planes of his cheeks, the delicate black half-moon lashes and the tousled dark hair. She wished she could see his eyes—sometimes laughing, sometimes haunted—again. The mirror of his soul.
Tonight he had touched her soul as well as her body. He had given her back a part of herself that had died with Ben. She hoped she had given him something, too. She took her time, imprinting him in her mind’s eye now the way he had imprinted himself on her body during the night.
She looked. And looked. And then, because she couldn’t help herself, she bent and brushed a kiss over his mouth. His lips moved, sought hers. But when she pulled away, when he didn’t find her, his lips parted. He sighed.
Edie did, too. “Good night, Nick,” she whispered. “Thank you.” She allowed herself one last light touch on his bare shoulder. “I think.”
And then she turned and slipped silently out into the night.
CHAPTER FOUR
The unexpected sound of the front doorbell of her mother’s Santa Barbara mansion startled her.
“Blast!” Edie shot a helpless glance in the direction of the living room, then turned a malevolent one on the computer screen she’d been staring at forever.
She was in the middle of making the latest of Rhiannon’s many plane reservations. She was almost to the last screen. If she stopped now, it would “time-out” and she would have to start over.
God knew, she probably would anyway. Rhiannon had been changing things almost daily for the past two months. Ever since she and Andrew had had their meltdown in Mont Chamion, even though they’d made up, Rhiannon had been edgy and wired, worried about whether Andrew would dump her one minute, and whether her career was over the next. She was constantly changing her priorities and her mind, and today’s rearranged schedule was just the latest indication of her turmoil.
It did not give Edie restful days, either. Fortunately Rhiannon was in the Bahamas shooting a music video today. If she hadn’t been, chances were good she’d have been perching on the edge of Edie’s desk talking a mile a minute, fretting about Andrew, and changing her mind even as Edie was rebooking her reservations. Now Edie glared at the hourglass, which still hung on the screen.
The doorbell rang again.
At its insistence, the dog, Roy, a gigantic Newfoundland—all black glossy fur and lolling red tongue—looked up with vague interest. As a pup he�
�d have been at the door already, barking like mad. Now at nine, he had a more casual approach to visitors. They had to be persistent or he wasn’t interested. He lay his head between his paws and closed his eyes again.
The doorbell chimed again. Emphatically. Twice.
Well, whoever they were, Roy would give them points for persistence. Ah, at last. The new screen finally appeared asking her to confirm the ticket purchase. Edie clicked. The hourglass reappeared. She waited.
And the doorbell rang. Once, twice. Three times now.
Not many people got as far as Mona Tremayne’s front door. Tucked away high in the mountains behind Santa Barbara, the acreage Mona had bought with Edie’s father, Joe, was far off the beaten path.
Everyone else had urged Mona to move after Joe died. The acreage was too big, they said. It had been Joe’s dream to have the cutting horse operation on rural Santa Barbara ranch land. But Mona had stayed true to that dream.
She and Joe had bought it not just for the horses, but because they’d wanted a place to get away to, a place where they could be themselves without coming face-to-face with the fanfare of Mona’s growing celebrity on an hourly basis. Of course it hadn’t had the present house on it then, only the now sadly decaying old adobe ranch house even farther from the road.
This house had come later, after Joe’s death. In her grief Mona wouldn’t leave the place they’d had together. But the crumbling old adobe was no place to be with two small children. Without Joe to keep things together, the roof would have fallen in on them at the very least. So Mona had had a new house built and a year later she and five-year-old Edie and nine-year-old Ronan had moved down the hill several hundred yards to what Ronan still called “Ma’s movie star house.”
It was big and lavishly decorated, parts of it definitely elegant enough for spur-of-the-moment entertaining of Hollywood moguls and the world’s rich and famous. At the same time it had eleven bedrooms, even more bathrooms, a butler’s pantry big enough for Edie’s twelve-year-old twin half brothers Dirk and Ruud to roller skate in, a swimming pool, tennis court and, oh yes, a doorbell.
This time whoever it was didn’t just ring it, they leaned on it. Long and hard and far too shrilly.
Annoyed, Edie was tempted not to answer it at all. But Mona’s “open house” policy extended to whomever among her hundreds of “close” friends turned up in the vicinity. Even when Mona was on the other side of the world, she—or, basically, Edie—welcomed all and sundry. The Tremayne hospitality was legendary, and Edie was quite happy to do it, though usually her mother warned her before guests were expected.
Now the hourglass gave way to a “confirmed” screen. Gratefully Edie punched a button to print Rhiannon’s itinerary, then, with Roy at her heels, she went to answer the bell—which was still ringing “All right! I hear you!” she shouted as she hurried down the hallway from her office at the back of the house, across the living room and grabbed the handle of the oversize dark oak door. “You can stop now!”
It stopped.
She jerked open the door. Her jaw dropped. Her fingers clenched on the door handle. She stared in disbelief. “Nick?”
Because it was—Nick Savas in the flesh. As tall and gorgeous as she remembered. And as unexpected as—well, Edie couldn’t think of anything she had been anticipating less.
She clutched the door handle with one hand and Roy’s collar with the other, as if they would anchor her in a storm. And there was a storm—of emotions, of memories, of questions and answers that she’d put behind her because she’d never managed to sort them out.
Not that she hadn’t tried. For weeks after she’d got back home after the wedding in Mont Chamion she’d thought about that night—about the man she’d spent it with. She thought about what she’d done and tried to understand why.
As near as she could come to an explanation was that somehow that night he had awakened her.
After two and a half years of going through the motions of getting on with her life—and yet never really finding the spark that would make her recognize that she was alive and fully functional again on all levels—that night she had.
Something—and she never did put her finger on what—about Nick Savas had touched something elemental in her. In her most fanciful moments she thought it was what the prince’s kiss on Sleeping Beauty’s lips had done—brought her back to life.
It wasn’t Nick’s kiss that had done it for Edie. It wasn’t his lovemaking, either. It was simply him—his energy, his charm, his wit, his dazzling smile. And his eyes. His eyes were eloquent. They spoke to her without words. They laughed with her, they teased her. They bore witness to his suffering. They anguished with her about her own. They drew her in.
They woke her up.
The kisses, the lovemaking grew out of that. She thought maybe she’d gone to bed with him out of gratitude for her awakening. She was grateful. But it was more than that.
She’d felt a connection she couldn’t explain—as if he’d given her something that night and, in their lovemaking, she had given him something in return.
She’d tried over the past couple of months to articulate what. She hadn’t been able to. Not really. If he’d come after her, she might have been able to. But of course he hadn’t.
It had been a one-off, just as he’d said it would be.
So what was he doing here now?
His mobile mouth tilted into a conspiratorial smile and his eyes—those dark, sometimes laughing, sometimes brooding eyes—were just as intent as ever as they focused on her.
Once more Edie felt the connection she’d felt that night in Mont Chamion.
So whatever it was, it had lasted—for her at least—longer than one night. Edie felt her breath catch.
“What—What are you doing here?”
The Cinderella inside her wanted him to say he was here for her. The other sane sensible 99.9 percent of her brain told herself to get a grip. Things like that didn’t happen in real life. She wouldn’t want them to happen!
“Nice to see you, too,” Nick said amiably. Then he cocked his head and looked quizzically at her. “I don’t remember us parting on bad terms. Actually I don’t remember us parting at all. I woke up and you were gone.” Now his eyes accused her.
Edie felt her face warm, her fingers tightened on Roy’s collar. “You were asleep. I had a plane to catch.” She tried to sound matter-of-fact. In fact she knew she just sounded defensive. “Sorry,” she said after a moment. “It was …” She hesitated, trying to find the right word. “It was a lovely night.”
That was inadequate. But what else could she say? And the situation wasn’t one she’d ever been in before—or since.
He was still smiling at her, every bit as gorgeous as he had been that night, only this time in an easy California casual way. This Nick wore a pair of jeans, faded nearly white at the knees and thighs, a long sleeve sage-green oxford cloth shirt with the cuffs rolled half up his forearms and a pair of aviator sunglasses parked atop his midnight-black, wind-ruffled hair.
“It was,” Nick agreed. His gaze moved over her slowly, as if he were undressing her again now. Edie felt her whole body warm.
And then he said, “I’ve been talking with your mother.”
“My mother?” He was undressing her with his eyes and he’d been talking to her mother? Dear God, what had Mona done now?
“We were talking about an old adobe ranch house she’s got.”
Edie stared at him, feeling a total disconnect. “What?”
“She mentioned it when I met her in Mont Chamion,” Nick went on. “She said it was in need of work. So I told her I’d give her an evaluation.” He gave Edie an encouraging smile.
“Evaluation?” Edie echoed. He was here because he’d talked to her mother? It was business. It had nothing to do with her. She felt oddly deflated and off-kilter. She didn’t know quite what to say, but Nick was watching her, clearly waiting for her to say something.
Finally she said the only thing she could
think of. “Mona’s not here. She’s in Thailand.”
“I know. I talked to her yesterday.”
“Really?” Edie had talked to her mother yesterday as well, and Mona hadn’t said a single word! The name Nick Savas hadn’t crossed her lips. Nor had any mention of the adobe.
“We discussed renovations a couple of weeks ago,” Nick said. “But I didn’t know when I was going to be finished then. She said it didn’t matter, just to come on ahead whenever I got my last job done.” Nick spread his hands.
Pennies were slowly beginning to drop.
“Come ahead?” Edie echoed again, wondering if he thought it was strange that she couldn’t seem to form a thought he hadn’t already said. “For what?”
“The evaluation. Working on the house, if it warrants it.” He reached out a hand to the dog, letting Roy sniff to make sure he was a friend.
Edie wished that was all the assurance it took. She felt pole-axed. And betrayed. Obviously when dangling Kyle in front of her didn’t tempt Edie, she’d moved on to the man Edie had gone off with the night of the wedding.
Had she tracked Nick down and called him? Twisted his arm?
Edie was mortified beyond belief.
“You won’t want to bother with the adobe,” she said shortly now. “It’s not worth saving.”
That wasn’t true, of course. Or at least she hoped it wasn’t. She loved the old house where she’d lived as a small child. But that didn’t mean she wanted her mother to hire Nick Savas to restore it!
Unfortunately Roy seemed to have accepted him as a friend. He began to slowly wag his tail. Edie anchored him firmly with a hand on his collar. She ground her teeth, trying to keep a polite smile in place.
“She made it sound as if it had possibilities,” Nick said. “We won’t know until I look at it, though,” he added, as if to mollify her. “When I have, I told her I’d have a look and give her a call and talk to her about it. If it looks like a go, I’ll do up a plan and explanations, then submit it for approval. There may be historical commissions to talk to, people to get on board. We’ll cross those bridges as we come to them.” This was Nick the professional talking, detailing all the steps with easy confidence.
The Night that Changed Everything Page 7