Christmas at the Tycoon's Command

by Jennifer Hayward

  The woman flinched. Chloe drew in a breath. Who was she? And why was Nico being so rude to her?

  The blonde shifted her attention to Chloe, as if seeking assistance. “I’m sorry.” She held out a perfectly manicured hand. “I’m Joelle Davis. Formerly Di Fiore. Nico’s—”

  “—mother,” Nico finished. “In the biological sense, anyway.”

  Chloe’s stomach dropped. His mother? All she’d ever known about Joelle Di Fiore was that she and Nico’s father had divorced before his death and Nico never, ever talked about her.

  “A pleasure,” she murmured, taking Joelle’s hand, because it seemed impolite not to.

  “As I said,” Nico repeated curtly, setting a hand on Chloe’s waist, “we were on our way out. You’ll have to excuse us.”

  “Nico.” There was no mistaking the appeal in his mother’s voice, the raw edge that slid across Chloe’s skin. “I hate the way we left things in New York. I don’t want it to be this way.” She shook her head and fixed her too-bright gaze on her son. “I’ve recognized my mistake. Can’t you at least acknowledge that?”

  “Bene,” he agreed, his voice utterly devoid of emotion. Fine. “I recognize you recognize you made a mistake. Can we go now?”

  Chloe gasped. Joelle’s blue eyes glistened. “Nico—”

  A tall, distinguished silver-haired man separated himself from the crowd and headed toward them. A stony look claimed Nico’s face. He pressed his palm to Chloe’s back. “If you’ll excuse us.”

  They left Joelle Davis standing in the crowd. Said good-night to the Buchanans. Nico didn’t say a word on the drive home, his face so closed Chloe didn’t dare open her mouth. She could feel the tension in him, coiled tight in his big body as he drove, his knuckles white as they clenched the steering wheel. It made her insides twist into a cold, hard knot.

  When they arrived at the house, Nico threw his car keys on the entrance table and wished her a good night.

  Chloe eyed him. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.” He flicked her a glance. “Go to bed, Chloe. You look exhausted.”

  * * *

  But she couldn’t sleep. Her beautiful bedroom with its elegant four-poster bed was heavenly, the book she’d brought with her entertaining, but as exhausted as she was, she was too wired to settle.

  She was worried about Nico. About the emotion he always held inside, her head spinning with curiosity about what had happened with his mother to evoke that kind of a reaction. Eventually, she slipped out of bed, put on her new white bikini and a cover-up dress and went downstairs. The house was in darkness, as was Nico’s office as she padded across the hardwood floors, but the pool area was lit with recessed lighting, tranquil and inviting under a clear, starry night.

  Nico must have gone to bed, she surmised, when she found the terrace deserted, too. It was still warm out, the air just the slightest bit cool on her skin as she took off her dress. A slight shiver moved through her as she descended the steps to the infinity pool with its magnificent view of the ocean. Still warm from the sun, the water was divine.

  The heady fragrance of a dozen tropical flowers scenting the air, ideas for a new perfume filled her head. She swam twenty lazy laps with only a cavalcade of stars as her witness. When she had tired herself out, her limbs heavy, body rejuvenated, she climbed out of the pool and reached for a towel on the rack. Stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of Nico sprawled in a lounge chair.

  Obscured by the shadows cast by the half wall that divided the pool and lounge area, a glass of what she assumed was whiskey dangling from his fingers, he looked disheveled in a way she’d never seen him before. His jacket and tie gone, the top few buttons of his shirt undone, his hair spiky and ruffled, he looked like he’d been there for a while.

  Her gaze shifted to the whiskey bottle beside the chair, a good dent taken out of it. Back up to his stormy gray gaze. He raked it down over her still-dripping body in the brief white bikini, a frank, appraising look so raw and uncensored, it rocked her back on her heels.

  Heat, wild heat, unraveled beneath her skin. Stained her cheeks. She’d always wondered what Nico unleashed looked like. If he ever unleashed himself. Now she knew.

  She wrapped the towel around herself, tucking it against her chest with trembling fingers. “I didn’t see you there.”

  “I figured.” Low, intense, his voice was sandpaper rough. “You couldn’t sleep?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sure you will now.”

  She ignored the unsubtle dismissal and walked over to him on legs that felt like jelly, whether from the swim or the intensity of his stare, she wasn’t quite sure. Up close, she could read the lust in his eyes, a stomach-curling need that shimmered through her insides. But there was also darker, angrier emotion. A combustibility, a volatility that burned there.

  “You’re angry with her,” she said quietly.

  He pointed a finger at her. “Bingo. You win the prize.”

  She swallowed hard. “You need to talk about it, Nico. It’s not healthy to hold everything inside.” When he simply continued to stare at her as if she hadn’t even spoken, she sighed and pushed a stray hair out of her face. “We used to talk. We used to be...friends.”

  His mouth twisted. “Can we just get one thing straight? We are not friends, Chloe. We were never friends.”

  She sank her teeth into her lip, the salty tang of blood staining her mouth. “What were we, then?”

  He took a contemplative sip of his whiskey. “I don’t think,” he said decisively, “that should be a point of discussion tonight.”

  “Fine,” she said calmly, more off balance by this barely censored version of Nico than she cared to admit. She sat down on the lounge chair next to him. “How about we talk about what happened tonight, then?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “What’s there to talk about?”

  “The fact that your mother desperately wants a relationship with you and you threw it in her face.”

  His eyes flashed. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Then tell me. This is clearly eating you up inside.”

  He rested his head back against the chair. Stared at her with those incendiary gray eyes. “She walked out on us when I was fifteen.”

  Chloe’s stomach contracted. Such a tough age to lose a mother. “Why did she leave?”

  An entirely unhumorous smile stretched his mouth. “Do you have all night?”

  “Yes.” She curled up on the chair and tucked her legs beneath her. He gave her a long look, then turned his head to stare out at the ocean. She thought he would shut her down then, but he started talking instead.

  “My mother met my father when he was a young stockbroker on Wall Street. She was a dance instructor from Brooklyn. She’d moved to New York from California to make it on Broadway. Then she got pregnant with me. She was bitter about it, had no interest in being a mother, but my father convinced her to have me. He desperately wanted kids. He started making a lot of money, and then she didn’t care so much because she loved to spend it.”

  “My father was best man at their wedding, wasn’t he?” Chloe asked, remembering the photos her father had shown her.

  Nico nodded. “Those were the good years. Lazzero and Santo came along. We got a big house, had the fancy cars, everything that came with the Wall Street lifestyle. Then Martino decided to leave and start Evolution. My father thought about it, decided he was wasting his talent on his firm and left to start his own company.”

  “A stock brokerage?”

  “No. One of his clients, a brilliant engineer, had developed a technology to block the effects of wireless fields when cell phones became popular—a tiny chip you could put on the back of your phone. It was revolutionary, had limitless potential, but the client didn’t have the money to bring it to market on his own. My father went into business with him—sank every dollar he had into it.”

  Chloe was completely intrigued. “It sounds ingenious.”

&
nbsp; “It was. Unfortunately, it took more time to take off than they had anticipated. A lot of wooing of big companies that move very slowly. My father started borrowing money to keep things afloat. Then a major company ordered thousands of units and they thought they’d made it. They secured another loan, went into large-scale production, only for the company to have second thoughts and the order fall through.”

  Her stomach dropped. “Oh, no.”

  His expression was grim. “It was the end. The death knell. They lost everything. We lost the house because my father had remortgaged it. The cars—all of it. My father started drinking, lapsed into a deep depression he never came out of.”

  “Why didn’t he ask my father for help?” she queried, perplexed. “To start over?”

  He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “He and Martino were the closest of friends, but they were also wildly competitive with one another. It was always who could execute the biggest deal, who could land the most beautiful woman. The rivalry continued when they started their own businesses. Except,” he allowed, “Martino became massively successful, while my father’s business failed.”

  “And he was too proud to ask for help.”

  He nodded. “He wouldn’t speak to Martino or any of the others when they called. Refused to take handouts. My parents’ marriage fell apart, and my mother moved back to California, where she’s from.”

  Chloe gave him a horrified look. “She just left you with your father like that?”

  His mouth twisted. “She said she hadn’t signed on for that kind of a life.”

  She pressed a hand to her cheek, an ache forming deep in her chest. “How did you survive?”

  “I left school and got a job. Went to classes at night. We lived in some pretty seedy places, but we made do.”

  And somehow, in the midst of it all, while he was taking care of his family, holding it all together, he had managed to get himself a scholarship to the university where he’d been completing his business degree when his father had died. Her father had reconnected with the boys at Leone’s funeral and taken them under his wing.

  She swallowed hard. It all made sense to her now. Nico’s intense sense of honor. The laser focus with which he’d conducted his life, the ruthless ambition she had accused him of. He’d had no choice. He’d had two brothers and a father to take care of.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “That must have been so difficult, Nico.”

  He shrugged, the ice in his glass crackling in the still night air. “My brothers and I have always said it made us who we are. That we wouldn’t be who we are were if not for what happened. So for that, I’m grateful.”

  But at what price? “Did you have any contact with your mother after she left?”

  He shook his head. “She said she wanted to start a new life—that she couldn’t do that with the baggage of her past along for the ride. She met and married Richard, the man you saw her with tonight, a year later.”

  Chloe drew in a breath. “I’m sure she didn’t mean that.”

  “She meant it,” he said flatly. “My father went to see her—to plead with her to come back. She sent him away. The next time we heard from her was five years ago in New York. She came to apologize—to make amends for her mistakes. None of us wanted anything to do with her.”

  Her heart hitched. How could a mother just walk out on her children like that? It was inconceivable to her. But if there was anything she knew from her own experience in life, it was that people didn’t always express what was deep inside themselves. They hid their hopes and fears. And maybe Nico’s mother had been afraid. Maybe she’d simply been unable to cope with the way her life had disintegrated around her.

  She wet her lips. “She seems to want to make amends, Nico. Can’t you forgive her?”

  “No,” he rumbled, making her jump with the force of his response. “She walked out on us, Chloe. She made her decisions. It is ancient history, and I’m at peace with it.”

  He looked anything but. There was so much emotion on his face it hurt to look at him. He’d just worked his way through a good portion of a bottle of Scotch—Nico, whom she’d never seen have more than a couple of drinks. And now she knew why.

  “Anger is not being at peace with it,” she pursued. “Maybe you need to listen to her. To find forgiveness to find that peace in yourself.”

  He lapsed into silence. Made it clear the conversation was over as he drained his glass. “Go to bed,” he said, without looking at her. “You’ve heard the whole sordid story now. No more to tell here.”

  “I’m not leaving you like this.”

  “I don’t want to talk, Chloe.”

  She leaned back on the chair, palms planted in the cushion. “Fine, we won’t talk.”

  He moved his gaze back to her. Hot, deliberate, it singed the curves of her breasts where the towel had fallen loose. “I don’t want company either. Not when we both know what a bad idea that is.”

  Her stomach tipped upside down, a tremor moving through her. “Why?” she queried huskily. “We’re consenting adults. You wanted to kiss me that night in my office during the perfume testing. I know you did.”

  He went still. “Which I didn’t,” he said harshly, eyes on hers, “because I knew the insanity that it was. Which it is, Chloe.”

  She knew he was right. Knew she should keep up her guard when it came to him. But the severe, taut lines of his face held her spellbound. The redoubtable control he prized so greatly. Everything about him that did it for her like no other man ever had.

  Did he still kiss the same way? As if he could do it all night? Would he make her turn to flame if he touched her again? Could she bear it if he never did?

  She hugged her arms tight around herself. Felt a chill move through her that had nothing to do with the cool night air. She’d been cold for so long, frozen for such an eternity, she didn’t remember what it felt like to be alive. To live in the moment. And suddenly she knew she couldn’t do it one second longer. She wasn’t going to leave him alone.

  She lifted her chin. Trained her gaze on his. “Maybe I know it’s crazy. Maybe I know I’m going to get burned. Maybe I haven’t felt alive in so long I don’t care.”

  A muscle jumped in his jaw. “You should care. I am not in the right headspace for this, Chloe.”

  But the heat in his smoky stare said otherwise. She was mesmerized by it as it melted her insides. By the chemical reaction that popped and fizzled between them. When she was in the lab, she manufactured reactions like this. With Nico, they were real. Out of her control. It made her pulse stutter, like she’d ingested some kind of dangerous drug.

  “Come over here, then,” he murmured, the hard lines of his face pure challenge. “If you’re so sure of what you want.”

  He expected the invitation to frighten her off. She could tell from the look on his face. And for a moment it did, freezing all coherent thought. She sucked in a breath, delivered necessary oxygen to her brain. Knew in that moment this was the only opening she was ever going to get with Nico. She either seized it or wondered “what if” forever.

  She shrugged her shoulders and let the towel fall to the chair. Got to her feet and walked over to him. He rested his head against the back of the chair and drank her in. Teeth buried in her lip, heart beating a jagged edge, she sat down on the inch of lounger beside him that was free. He was so gorgeous, so formidable in his disarray, sleeves rolled up to reveal corded, powerful forearms, heavy dark stubble dusting his jaw, her stomach went to dust.

  His formidable control held even as his eyes turned to flame. He wasn’t going to be the one to cross the line. It was going to be up to her to do it. And so she did, leaning forward and wrapping her fingers around his nape, absorbing the shift of tensile muscle and tendon beneath her fingertips as she brought her mouth down to his.

  He didn’t resist, but he didn’t move to meet the kiss either. She found his lips with hers. Hard, betraying none of that inherent sensuality that was so much a part of him, she tho
ught for a terrifying instant he was going to reject her. Then a soft curse escaped him, his arms clamped around her waist and he lifted her astride him, his hands cupping her bottom in his palms. She had just enough time to take a deep breath before he took her mouth in a hard, demanding kiss that slammed into her senses. Demanded everything.

  As if it would make her run. As if he wanted her to run.

  Instead, it made her skin burn. Her insides dissolve into liquid honey. The strong muscles in his neck flexed beneath her fingers as he angled his head to deepen the kiss. Took, until he seemed to be everywhere inside her, the taste of him dark and dangerous.

  A groan tore itself from his throat. He shifted his hands to cup her jaw and slicked his tongue over the seam of her lips to gain entry. She opened for him, helpless to resist his sensual onslaught. Gasped as he stroked and licked his way inside her mouth, his hands at her jaw holding her in place for his delectation. As if he wanted to taste every centimeter of her. Devour her.

  As intimate as the sexual act itself, more, the kiss made her stomach curl. She spread her palms against his chest, absorbing the latent strength that rested in every honed muscle. He tugged the clip from her hair and sent the heavy weight of it tumbling around her shoulders. Threaded his fingers through it and slowed the kiss down to a hot, languid seduction. The kind she remembered. The kind that went on forever.

  His mouth left hers. Chloe murmured a protest, but then his lips were busy on her jaw, and then her neck, inducing those same brain-melting sensations. She shivered as he slid his hands from her hair down to cup her breasts. Tested their weight. Stroked his thumbs over the hard peaks, pushed taut by the night air. The shockingly pleasurable caress through the thin material of her swimsuit sent a wave of heat to her core.

  “Nico,” she breathed.

  The tie of her bikini top gave way to the sharp tug of his fingers, and then there was only the delicious sensation of those strong, provocative hands on her bare flesh. The roll of her nipples between his fingers that made her moan deep in her throat. The heat of his ravenous gaze as he drank her in.