by Gayle Kasper
His reply didn’t reassure her.
He grew silent then, withdrawing into his thoughts. She wanted to ask him more about himself, about his mother, the father he hadn’t mentioned, but she somehow sensed that this was an area where her probing questions wouldn’t be welcome.
She dragged her gaze away from him and turned it on the passing scenery, the bleached landscape, the struggling vegetation, the dust devils kicking up here and there across the desert floor.
That was what she felt like inside—a dust devil, whirling madly around. Emotionally. Nick had reached into her heart and touched her on some level she hadn’t been fully aware of. She wasn’t sure she should respond. Feeling anything for Nick Killian could be dangerous.
“They’re miniature tornadoes,” Nick said, seeing Fiona studying the strange desert phenomenon. They’d always intrigued him and he’d even done a project for a science fair when he was in school, analyzing then recreating the activity.
“The kind that can’t hurt you, I hope,” she replied.
“They won’t hurt you, Fiona.” Nick turned his gaze back to the road ahead. He didn’t know where he was headed; he was just driving. Eating up miles.
He and Fiona were supposed to be plotting the demise of their relatives’ wedding plans, but the wedding seemed fated to take place, despite any attempt on their part to delay it.
Maybe he should just enjoy the day with Fiona. She’d be out of his life soon enough.
Yes, he would enjoy the day with her, come what may.
Then suddenly he knew where he wanted to take her. “There’s a place I want you to see,” he said. “It’s only a short drive from here. Are you game?”
Fiona didn’t know what she was promising, but she nodded. “I’m game.”
A lizard ran across her feet and Fiona squealed. But despite a few unwanted denizens the town offered, she was delighted they’d come.
Surprise, Nevada. A place time forgot.
A page out of the Old West.
The ghost town seemed lost in the desert. As different from the bright lights of Las Vegas as anything could get.
Feeling like she was on some kind of busman’s holiday, she stepped into a dusty antique shop and soaked up the atmosphere. Her eyes couldn’t take everything in fast enough. She gripped Nick’s arm, her fingers tightening around his biceps, as if for support.
“Oh, Nick, you knew I’d enjoy this.”
Nick smiled. The name of the town, Surprise, couldn’t begin to compare with the look of surprise shining in Fiona’s eyes when they’d reached their destination. It had been an expression he would remember long after she’d gone back to Boston, an expression he would cherish.
“Go on,” he said. “Look around.”
Fiona released his arm and went to peer into a locked glass case, full of artifacts and treasures from a bygone era. “The inhabitants lived well,” she said.
“The gold they mined around here made people millionaires overnight,” Nick replied, and leaned in next to her to see what it was that had caught her eye.
“Then just like that, their wealth was gone again,” she said sadly, remembering what she’d learned in history class years before.
She was looking at bits and pieces of people’s lives, at dreams gone bust. In a twinkling. It made her want to reach out and hold on to life with both hands and never let go.
It was a feeling she often got when she acquired a prized antique for her shop, but it struck her even more strongly out here in the desert. Perhaps because she felt she was losing her father.
Perhaps because of Nick, a man she’d be walking away from in a few short days, a man she’d probably only see again occasionally when the two families met at Christmas or Thanksgiving.
Nick saw something flit across Fiona’s face and wondered what she was thinking about, but then her eyes brightened again as she moved on to a display of old dishes. He watched as she fingered a goblet, traced the gilt edge on a fancy plate.
He picked up a dusty purple bottle of dubious value and held it up to the light, wondering what anyone saw in all this junk.
What Fiona saw in it.
Shards of light filtered through the bottle, fanning out in prisms of purplish hues. Kinda pretty, he thought, but then so were sunsets.
So was sunlight shining through Fiona’s fiery hair.
He set the bottle down with an unceremonious thunk. If anyone had told him a few short days ago that he’d be wandering through an antique store and musing about sunsets and a woman with tempting red hair that he’d only just met, he’d have laughed.
Raucously.
Still, the alluring sight of her bending over to touch a filigree trinket propelled him across the room. He slid in next to her and fitted his hand to the curve of her firm derriere just below her waist. The flowery fragrance of her special perfume sent him into a spiral of desire. Unadulterated want.
He’d never known another woman who could turn him on with just a look, a smile, a twist of her body, the way Fiona could. She glanced up then, her green eyes wide and expectant, and straightened to her full height. His hand slipped to a less intimate position at her waist.
She still held the trinket in her hand, a gilt bauble with old gemstones set in it—gemstones as glittery as the lights shining in her eyes at that moment.
“What do you have there?” he asked, hoping his voice didn’t betray the turmoil inside him.
“Oh, Nick, it’s a lady’s jewelry box. Old, delicate, tiny. I thought it was brass when I first saw it, but it’s gold.” Her hand touched it reverently.
The piece was ornate, a remnant of better times, when gold ran like a river through this desert, Nick thought. And he wanted Fiona to have it. Because she admired it. Because it brought a smile to her lips just gazing at it. And her smile was something he couldn’t seem to get enough of lately.
She whirled around in a sweeping gesture. “I’d like to buy all this and ship it back to my shop. Each antique is so unusual, at least compared with what I find in New England. It would sell well.”
“Including the jewelry box?”
She fingered a curlicue on the top of it. “This I wouldn’t sell.” She set it down gingerly.
While she was busy trying to figure out how an old miner’s sluice worked, Nick slipped the clerk the money for the tiny jewelry box and hoped Fiona didn’t return for another glance at it and find it missing.
Buying the antique bauble for her felt good. Strangely good.
He didn’t want to ponder why.
“Let’s stop at the Gold Slipper for a cool drink,” he said when she’d checked out every nook and cranny of her third antique shop in a single block.
When they were seated in the red-and-gilt room off the lobby of the old town’s restored hotel, sipping icy lemonades, he set the small filigree box in front of her. “For you,” he said simply.
Her eyes widened. “You … you bought it?”
“I wanted you to have it.”
“But …” Her gaze diverted from the small jeweled square to his face. “Oh, Nick, I—I can’t accept this. It’s too valuable.”
“It was too valuable to leave there for someone else to buy, Fiona, someone who wouldn’t appreciate it the way you would.”
“That’s not fair, Nick. To put it that way.” A way he knew would get to her, appeal to her sentimental side. How had he known that was her weakness? She often bought antiques she knew she couldn’t afford—and would never want to resell—just because she couldn’t bear to have them go to some grasping dealer.
She ran the tip of one finger gently over the box, knowing this was one time she should be strong. She and Nick were two people who’d been brought together by a strange quirk of fate, nothing else. And to accept such a gift implied more.
She drew her eyes from the small trinket and looked up at him, her lips ready with a firm no, but he was smiling, a pleased-as-punch grin, and she couldn’t do it.
Nick was a puzzle to her. One m
oment he was as tough as an old miner’s boot, and the next he was—She decided not to finish that thought. It would be better to think of him as a tough miner’s boot than someone warm and—Skip that thought, too.
She was beginning to care entirely too much about Nick Killian. And that was not good. She’d only known him a few days. And in another few days she’d be out of his life, back in her own world.
For now she would accept his gift graciously. And perhaps later she could find a way to repay him. “Thank you. I know just the spot in my apartment where this will go.”
“Ah, where?”
“I have this big rosewood four-poster, something I bought to resell then couldn’t bring myself to part with. I’m going to set this on the night table beside it.”
“Beside your bed?”
“Yes.”
Why did the word bed falling from Nick’s lips sound so intimate? Fiona swallowed hard and glanced away from the heat she saw in his eyes. It had been an innocent remark, but now it seemed far from that.
Nick glimpsed the sudden rise of color in Fiona’s cheeks. He wanted to see them heat like that in the throes of passion. He wanted to make love to her in that big four-poster, her flame-red hair spilled across the pillow. Wild love. Slow, thorough love.
A pulse point beat in her neck and he wanted to lean in close and kiss it. He wanted to sample every inch of her skin, taste its silken heat.
Damn, what was this woman doing to him?
He didn’t even know himself anymore. She had him acting erratically, rambling through old stores, perusing purple bottles, and wanting to know every little thing about her life.
“So, where do you find stuff like big rosewood four-posters?” he asked. He’d rather ask what she wore at night when she slipped between its covers, but decided it was better that he didn’t know. “Do you prowl around old dusty shops, go to sales, what?”
“I keep my eye open for any possibility,” she said. “I scour the newspapers for estate sales. I go on buying jaunts through every tiny burg within a hundred-mile radius of Boston. Sometimes I travel farther afield, wherever I get the whiff of a good sale.”
“Like a bloodhound?”
She laughed and Nick loved the sound. It trickled up from her throat, more beautiful than the ripple of water purling over smooth stones in a brook.
“It takes a lot of hours to find the special things my customers will want, restore them to their original beauty, whether wood or pewter or brass, and still keep shop hours.”
“What do you do with your spare time?” He wondered what filled it, who filled it.
“What spare time? I trek around the countryside on Sundays and Mondays. At night I polish and stain. Tuesdays through Saturdays I’m busy with customers, if I’m lucky.”
He took her hand and turned it over, looking for calluses. A few had tried to mar the softness of her palms. He traced the edge of one gently with his fingertip, then lifted her hand and kissed the spot.
Her hand softened under the press of his lips, and when he glanced up into her face, he saw her eyes had dilated perceptibly. A small smile curved at her mouth and the pink blush on her cheeks turned a pretty rose.
He was glad he could affect her like that. “Why don’t you take on a partner?”
It took her a moment to speak, as if she needed to gather her wits. Or maybe her voice. “A partner?” There was a slight trembling to her words. “My shop’s small and struggling. There’s hardly enough income for one person. Maybe in another year or two I could hire an assistant, at least part-time.”
“You love your work, don’t you?” He didn’t release her hand, just stroked it absently, tracing the tinge of a faint blue vein under her alabaster skin.
Her voice trembled again. “I must be boring you.”
“Not at all. I want to hear more. What you do for fun, what you do for … love.”
Her eyes widened, then narrowed slyly. “If that’s your unsubtle way of asking if there’s a man in my life, there isn’t one at present.”
That was what he was asking—and the answer pleased him enormously. He couldn’t stop the smile that revealed his pleasure.
“There was someone once,” she continued. “Someone I thought I knew, then found out I didn’t. Fortunately before I married him.”
“Is that why you believe in being cautious?”
She withdrew her hand from his and dropped it into her lap, her gaze lowered. He much preferred to feel her looking at him, caressing his face in that way she was unaware of.
She nodded. “I thought love could happen overnight, but … it doesn’t. At least if it does, it doesn’t last.”
“That’s why you want your father to wait rather than jump into a marriage with Auntie?”
Her eyes raised. They were solemn and wide. And sad.
“What happened, Fiona? With this man you thought you knew?” Nick hated the bastard. Would string him up by some tender part of his anatomy if he could. For what he’d done to her.
Fiona drew in a ragged breath. She hadn’t thought about Adam in a long time, hadn’t wanted to, yet she supposed Nick was right, her experience with Adam had made her cautious. It was why she didn’t believe in love at first sight, not for her father and Winnie, and certainly not for herself.
Love at first sight was merely lust in disguise, the purely physical attraction she felt for Nick being a prime example. Still, she’d never felt anything this strong, this overwhelming, this powerful with Adam. With any man. And she wasn’t sure how to gird herself against it.
“It was a long time ago, Nick. I was very young. It doesn’t matter now, anyway.”
“Are you sure, Fiona?”
“I’m sure.”
She didn’t want to tell Nick what a little fool she’d been, that she’d misread Adam so completely, so stupidly. That she hadn’t recognized sooner that the man didn’t have a faithful bone in his body, that he’d come on to some of her friends, that he’d even had a reckless affair with one of them.
It had been painful for her when she’d learned of his betrayal, but now it was merely embarrassing. She’d refused to suffer that pain for long, had refused to waste the emotion on a man who wasn’t worth her time or energy.
But she knew Nick was right, the lesson she’d learned affected her today, colored her world, her belief system.
She didn’t want Nick’s sympathy, didn’t need him charging up on his white steed to save her from some old hurt, from some man who’d wronged her. “Come on, Nick, let’s go and watch the street entertainers.”
SIX
“Hurry, we’re going to be late.”
Nick raced through the airport, Fiona panting along behind him. She didn’t want to do this, she didn’t want to meet Camille. If the woman was on this flight as Nick expected her to be, the wedding would be on again all too soon.
But Nick wasn’t offering her much choice. His long legs carried him down the concourse. She had to hurry to keep up.
Part of her was still back in Surprise, back in the idyll of their afternoon together. She didn’t want to be dragged back into the present—and the set of worries she’d temporarily put aside.
The plane was already discharging its passengers by the time they reached the gate area. Nick grabbed her hand and searched the crowd for a glimpse of his cousin.
“Maybe she didn’t make the flight. Maybe she missed her connection in New York,” Fiona said.
It was a hopeful wish, she knew, but a wish that would only put off the inevitable. Camille would be on this flight, or the next, if she missed this one.
“There she is.”
“Where?”
Nick didn’t answer, only boomed, “Camille!”
Fiona’s gaze threaded through the crowd to see which one of the milling passengers he was calling to. And then she saw her, recognizing her immediately from the picture on Nick’s desk.
“Nick!” Camille had spotted him, too, and waved.
Camille seemed to hav
e stepped out of another era. Fiona smiled at the aura of the perennial flower child she projected in her loosely flowing skirts and her Birkenstocks.
Her hair—long, dark tresses—trailed down to the curve of her derriere. Three travel-battered duffels hung from one thin shoulder. Other than the hint of a little jet lag, she had a lively face, full of emotion and feeling.
And Fiona knew she liked her.
It would be hard not to like Camille.
“Am I too late?” Camille asked, wrapping her arms around Nick in a giant hug. “Did they do it, did they have the wedding without me?”
“No, they didn’t,” Nick assured her. “You wanted them to wait, and they did.”
She sighed in relief, then turned her smile on Fiona. “Hello, sister,” she said in a greeting that caught Fiona a little off guard.
Sisters? That’s exactly what this wedding would make them, Fiona realized with a start. But Camille’s warmth was undeniable.
“Hello, Camille,” she said, then they hugged like they were already family.
Nick shouldered his cousin’s bags. “Is this all or do we need to stop by baggage claim?”
“This is it.”
Camille linked one arm through Nick’s, the other through Fiona’s, smiling first at one then the other.
Their walk to the parking garage where Nick had left the car led them past the very baggage carousel where Fiona’s misadventure had begun. Had it been only a few short days ago?
“You were smart to carry your own bags,” Nick said. “These things are rough on them.” He indicated the spinning silver monster that had nearly mulched his wicked pieces of underwear. “Remind me to tell you about it, cuz.”
“Oh? Is this something I should know about?” Camille was instantly curious.
He exchanged a look with Fiona, one only the two of them could share.
“Let’s just say Nick had an intimate encounter with the thing,” Fiona remarked.
“I want to hear about this,” Camille said, intrigued.
But the story would have to wait. Nick escorted the two women into the garage and Auntie’s Mercedes parked nearby. Winnie and Walter had wanted to be part of the welcoming committee, too, but Nick couldn’t be sure Walter wouldn’t insist on driving. He’d left the pair at Auntie’s, blowing up bright “welcome home” balloons for Camille.
