Nicole secured the door and went through to the kitchen to put on the kettle. Maybe a cup of chamomile tea would make the difference tonight and help her to sleep. She stiffened as she heard the sound of a car’s tires rolling along the gravel driveway that led to the house. No one knew she was here but Anna, and she wouldn’t have come without calling Nicole first.
The walls of the cottage were thin and she could hear a heavy measured tread come toward the house. A tread that seemed to hesitate on the wooden steps that led to the front door before she heard a solid one-two-three knock on the peeling painted surface.
Her heart hammering in her chest, she moved closer to the front door.
“Nicole, it’s me, Nate.”
How had he found her? More to the point, now that he had, what was she going to do?
“Nicole, please. I’m not here to hurt you or to argue with you. I just want to talk.”
She hesitated a moment before reaching a trembling hand to the lock at the door and swinging the door open. Shock hit her when she saw him illuminated beneath the bare bulb that lit the front porch. As much as she tried to harden her heart against him, she couldn’t help but be concerned at his appearance. He looked as if he hadn’t slept or eaten properly in days. Probably much as she looked herself. Except when she looked at him all she wanted to do was comfort him.
She fought against the urge to hold her arms out to him, to offer him respite from the demons that had obviously ridden him this week. Demons that might be similar to those she’d been wrestling with herself—unsuccessfully, too, if her instinctive reaction to him was any indicator. She took a deep breath and forced her hands to stay at her sides.
“You’d better come in,” she said stiffly, standing aside and gesturing toward the open-plan living room/kitchen.
The place was basic. One bedroom, one bathroom and everything else all there for anyone to see. The property’s saving graces had been its proximity to the beach and a modern lock-up garage where she’d stowed the Mercedes.
“Can I get you a warm drink?”
She didn’t want to offer him any alcohol before sending him back on his way again, especially not looking the way he did right now. The last thing she wanted to be responsible for was him having an accident.
“No, thanks,” he said, his voice ragged. “How are you, really?”
She poured boiling water over the tea bag in her cup and then took it over to one of the chairs in the lounge. Nate sat down on the sofa opposite.
“I’m okay. Look, I don’t know why you’re here but you won’t change my mind. I meant what I said in my message.”
Nate reached inside his jacket pocket and took out a flat case. A case she recognized with dread. He tried to hand it over to her and when she didn’t take it—she couldn’t risk touching him—he placed it on the scarred coffee table between them. She could see her refusal to take the case had surprised him, perhaps even hurt him.
She looked at the case, lying there, inert on the tabletop. So seemingly nondescript, yet so potentially damaging at the same time.
“It’s yours,” he said.
“What? A copy?”
“The only copy,” he said, lifting his face so his eyes met hers. “I couldn’t send it to your father—I couldn’t do that to you, Nicole. I want you to know that. I could never hurt you like that. I know I threatened to, more than once. But even if I hadn’t fallen in love with you I couldn’t have abused your trust of me that way.”
A fist clenched tight around her heart. Had she heard him right? Or was this just another ploy to get her back where he wanted her?
“You seemed pretty determined. Why should I believe you’ve changed your mind now?”
The voice that came from her mouth didn’t sound like her at all. It was harsh, unforgiving.
He hung his head. “I don’t deserve for you to believe me but I hope that you can find your way clear to understand where I’m coming from.” He lifted his head again, his eyes filled with anguish. “I know I’ve been a total monster. I should have told you from the beginning who I was. I should have left you in the bar that night. But I couldn’t. Even then I was compelled to be with you. I wanted you and I had to have you.”
Nicole gripped her mug tight, mindless to the heat that stung her fingers. Just hearing him say the words about wanting her had her body beginning to light up in response. The old familiar coil of desire tightening deep inside her, craving his touch. Craving him.
“And once you had me, you used me,” she said bitterly.
“I’m sorry. I know it sounds trite and empty and worthless, but please believe me. I am so sorry I treated you that way. If I had the chance again I would do everything differently.”
And so would she, Nicole thought. For a start she wouldn’t have left the house that night. Wouldn’t have stormed away and wouldn’t have lost herself in the one man who could hurt her more than any other. The man she’d fallen painfully in love with. Her heart beat faster in her chest as she acknowledged the painful truth for what it was. Hopeless. She couldn’t trust him. He was a master at manipulation, he’d borne a grudge against her father for most of his life. How could she even begin to believe his words were anything more than another tool to control her?
“Is that everything?” she asked coolly. She held her body so rigid that she was afraid she’d shatter into a million pieces if he so much as reached across the table and touched her.
“No, it’s not everything. I could spend the rest of my life telling you how much I regret treating you so badly and it would never be long enough. I love you, Nicole. I’m ashamed that I had to lose you to admit it to myself, but there you have it. On the beach that day I asked you to marry me. I’d fooled myself into thinking it was for the baby’s sake, and hurt you by asking you for all the wrong reasons when I should have just asked you for you. Will you give me another chance? Let me make it up to you. Let me love you the way you deserve to be loved.”
Nicole shook her head. It was a slight movement but Nate saw it and recognized it for what it was. He tried one more time.
“Please, don’t make your mind up right now. Give it a few more days. Come back to the city, come back to me. Let’s try again and this time I promise I’ll get it right.”
“No,” she said, feeling as if her heart would break with verbalizing that one syllable. “I can’t, Nate. I can’t trust you not to hurt me like that again. Me or my family. I just can’t.” And she couldn’t trust herself, either. She loved him too much. If she went back, if she let herself be with him again, she’d find herself falling back into his plans, for better or for worse. And she wasn’t going to do that again.
Nate looked at her for a full minute, her words hanging in the air between them like an impenetrable shield. Then, slowly he nodded and rose from the sofa. She didn’t move as he crossed the room and moved down the short hall toward the front door. It wasn’t until she heard the snick of the lock as the door reseated in its frame behind him, that the shudders began to rack her body and the sobs rose from deep within.
He was gone. She’d sent him away. It was what she wanted, wasn’t it?
Nate walked to his car wrapped in a blanket of numbness. She’d refused him. It was his worst-case scenario come to living, breathing, painful, life. He settled behind the wheel of the Maserati, and switched the wipers on only to turn them off again as they scraped across the dry windscreen. It was only then he realized the moisture he felt on his face had not been from any rain outside, but from his own tears.
He started the car and eased it up the driveway, away from the house, away from Nicole, swiping at his cheeks and eyes as he did so. He felt as if he was leaving his soul behind, as if he was just a shell now. An empty shell. She’d completed him and he hadn’t even had the good sense to know it or appreciate it until it was t
oo late.
At the top of the driveway he looked back, hoping against hope that she might be silhouetted in the doorway, that she might beckon to him to come back. If she did, then together they could find a way to work past the damage he’d wrought. Instead, he saw the outside light extinguish, and with it his last remaining hope.
He blinked hard. He’d lost her. He’d abused her trust, he’d threatened her family. He had gotten exactly what he deserved.
Nate turned the car onto the winding road that would eventually lead him back to State Highway One, back to Auckland. Back to a life lived alone with his grand, empty plans for revenge.
His eyes burned in their sockets by the time he crossed the Auckland Harbor Bridge and turned off toward the Viaduct Basin. Weariness dragged at his body as he let himself into the apartment, a place that felt empty without Nicole inside. As exhausted as he was, sleep was the last thing on his mind. Somehow he had to find a way to convince Nicole she could trust him and that his love for her was real. There had to be a way, there just had to be, because he couldn’t imagine the rest of his life without her by his side.
It simply wasn’t an option.
Thirteen
Nate straightened from his car outside the Wilson family home. He hadn’t slept all night and was running on pure adrenaline right now. He hammered at the front door and stood back in the portico waiting for someone to respond.
It took a while but eventually the door swung open to reveal Judd Wilson dressed in pajama bottoms and a robe. His hair was rumpled, as if he’d run his fingers through it in an attempt to tidy it before answering the door.
“Good grief, man, have you any idea what time it is?” he grumbled at Nate.
“Look, I know it’s early but I had to talk to you. This is too important to wait.”
“You’d better come in, then.” Judd gave him a hard look. “Have you seen yourself this morning?”
Nate grimaced in response. He knew he looked about as rough as he felt. He hadn’t shaved or combed his hair and he was still in the clothing he’d worn last night.
“Judd? Who is it?” Anna’s voice came from the top of the staircase.
“It’s Nate Hunter.”
“And Nicole? Is she all right?”
Anna came down the stairs, a dressing gown wrapped about her and tied with a sash at her waist.
“Nicole was fine when I left her,” Nate ground out. “She doesn’t want a bar of me but I’m hoping that we can change that, together.”
Judd and Anna exchanged a look before Judd spoke. “You need to fight your own battles, Hunter. My sister is responsible for her own choices.”
“I know, but I have a proposal I think you might find worth listening to. Something that will benefit you and Wilson Wines, and that just might show Nicole how much I care.”
“Sounds like something best done on a full stomach with a decent cup of coffee inside you,” Anna said. “Judd?”
“Sure, come through to the kitchen,” Judd agreed.
“We gave our house staff the weekend off, so I hope you don’t mind if things are a little more basic than we can usually offer,” Anna said as she pushed open the swing doors that led into the spacious modernized kitchen.
“Food is the least of my worries,” Nate said, lowering himself into one of the kitchen chairs and pulling a sheaf of papers from his coat pocket. “Please don’t go to any bother on my account.”
As Anna began to make coffee, Nate started to outline his plan. Judd remained silent through most of it, only stopping Nate every now and then to ask him to clarify one point or another. By the time Anna slid plates of French toast and bacon in front of them both, and topped up their coffees, he was wrapping up.
“So, to sum it all up, I suggest that we amalgamate Jackson Importers and Wilson Wines and go forward as one powerful entity for the future, rather than two companies, which are absorbed in competing with one another. It’s how it was meant to be all along, it’s up to us to make it that way again.”
“Why?” Judd asked. “I mean, the idea is definitely worth exploring, but why now?”
“Because I don’t see why we should continue to be victims of our fathers’ falling out.”
“Your fathers?” Anna asked. “You’re—?”
“Yes, I’m Thomas Jackson’s son.”
Judd leaned back in his chair and gave Nate a hard look. “You’re certain you want to do this?”
“I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life,” Nate said emphatically.
“You realize I can’t do anything without discussing this with my father and with Nicole.”
“I understand that. If possible, I’d like to be there when you talk to your father. I think it’s time that the past be firmly put to bed. That all the bitterness be dissolved once and for all. It’s hurt too many people for too long. It has to stop.”
Nicole missed Nate with an ache that went painfully deep. Nights were fractured with dreams of him, days were filled with trying to forget him. But try as she might, she failed miserably. If only they could have met under normal circumstances, without the stupid feud between their families. If only she could trust that he loved her for herself and not out of some twisted sense of revenge. A person didn’t let go of that much animosity easily.
She’d thought that getting away from him, getting away from the city would help. But it hadn’t helped a bit. If anything it had only served to magnify her feelings for him. Without anything else to distract her, he was all she could think about. Especially after he told her he loved her—and she’d had to send him away.
Maybe she should get a dog, she pondered as she sat on the deck outside the cottage in the watery sunshine and watched a local resident throwing a stick for his dog on the beach. Even as she considered it she knew it couldn’t replace the hole in her heart loving Nate had left. Loving him? How could she love him? He’d virtually kidnapped her, had held her against her will, had forced her to work with him instead of where she rightfully belonged. She made a mental note to look up Stockholm syndrome as soon as she could access a computer. She had to find some reason for this irrational attachment to the man.
But was it so irrational? Their attraction that night at the bar had been mutual and instant. Fierce. At least it had been on her side. His? Well, the jury was still out on that one. He’d been following an agenda, hadn’t he?
Seeing him last night was tough. Had their circumstances been any different, had he not been so bent on revenge for what her father had done, she’d have dragged him to the tiny bedroom and laid him bare upon the covers of the double bed and taken her time in punishing him slowly for his behavior.
Her body flushed with heat at the thought. Heat that was rapidly diminished by the cool breeze coming in off the ocean. Exercise, she needed exercise. Anything to wear her out and distract her from her thoughts. She grabbed her puffy jacket from inside the cottage and pulled on a pair of sneakers before heading north up the beach. The wind had risen by the time she reached the end and started to walk back, bringing with it the scent of rain.
By the time she got to the cottage the rain was driving across the sand. She hastened inside, taking her jacket off in the tiny bathroom and hanging it over the shower rail to dry. Making her way to the kitchen, she put on the kettle for a warming cup of tea, as she did so she noticed her phone flashing that she had a message.
Not just one message. Several. And several missed calls, as well. All of them from Anna. What could be so important on a Saturday morning? she wondered. She knew it wasn’t her father. He was making steady progress at the hospital and they were even talking about him coming home soon. Dialysis would be a major part of his future but at least he had a future. The messages were all the same—Anna asking Nicole to call her back right away. Her friend sounded excit
ed, but not upset, Nicole noted. She poured her cup of tea and took the cup and her phone over to the sofa where Nate had sat last night, the stuffing so worn that the imprint of his body was still there.
Before she could stop herself, Nicole reached a hand to where he’d been sitting, as if she could somehow sense the man in the impression he’d left behind. A particularly strong gust of wind drove against the beachside windows of the house, making her jump and shaking her from her reverie. She had a call to make. She didn’t need to be thinking about Nate. Not now, not ever.
Anna answered the phone on the first ring. “Nic, Judd needs to speak to you. Hold on and I’ll put him on.”
Judd’s warm deep voice filled her ear. “How’s it going?”
“It’s okay. The weather’s rubbish but aside from that I’m doing all right.” Ironic, she thought, one of the few conversations she should have with her brother and it should be about the weather.
“Glad to hear it. Look, I’ll cut to the chase. I have some important Wilson Wines business to discuss with you but I don’t want to do it over the phone. Can you come into the office on Monday? I’d really rather do this face-to-face.”
Monday? She could do that. It wasn’t as if she had any other pressing social engagements on her calendar, she thought cynically.
“Sure, what time?”
“Let’s say eleven. That should give you plenty of time to get down here, shouldn’t it?”
“I’ll be there.”
Judd wasted no further time on any pleasantries, severing the call almost immediately after her confirmation. Well, it wasn’t as if they had a normal brother-sister relationship. They hadn’t ever had the chance. She wondered what it was he wanted to discuss. Hopefully it would have something to do with her coming back to Wilson Wines and reassuming her position there. Then, maybe, she could undo some of the damage she’d done with her work for Jackson Importers.
Monday morning rolled around slowly and Nicole was on the road earlier than she needed be. After another night plagued with dreams of Nate, she couldn’t wait to have something else to distract her. The traffic heading into Auckland was that and then some.
A Forbidden Affair Page 15
