by Robyn Donald
Straightening her shoulders, she said briefly, “When I got back to my room in the hotel there was an email from my fiancé telling me he’d found someone else.”
The base of Nick’s glass made a sharp little clink as he set it down on the nearest table. He strode towards her, his expression formidably angry. “An email?” he demanded incredulously.
Clutching her glass, she nodded, unable to articulate her tumbling thoughts.
Nick opened his mouth, then closed it again, biting back words she was glad she didn’t have to hear. He took her glass and set it down, then drew her towards him. On an uneven sigh Siena let herself relax into the strong arms enfolding her. Her forehead came to rest on a powerfully muscled shoulder as he stroked slowly across her back in soothing, potently comforting movements.
Siena dragged in several more ragged breaths and abandoned herself to the simple relief of being held.
In a cold, uncompromising voice he said, “Cry if you want to.”
“I don’t,” she said, blinking back ferocious tears. If she cried it would be because Nick was being so kind—in a brotherly way, of course, she reminded herself drearily.
Well, that was all right.
Still in that formidable tone he said, “It’s too early to say this, but anyone who would break off an engagement by email is someone you don’t need in your life.”
And when she stayed silent he added, “Not now and not ever.”
She nodded. “I know,” she muttered. “It’s all right. I’m not going to crack up.”
“I didn’t expect you to. Not you.”
Something melted deep inside her. The warmth of his embrace and the lithe power and strength of his support—entirely lacking in sensuality—gave her strength. Her taut muscles loosened, became freer, her breaths evening out so that the sobs she dreaded didn’t come to fruition.
Slowly—so slowly she had no idea what was happening—the wave of misery receded. Yet still she didn’t pull away, and Nick didn’t drop his arms.
At first without realising it, she began to respond to the soothing movement of his hand across her back. Her body stirred, sending secret, unsuspected signals that blossomed into a tantalising awareness, an insidious pleasure that sang through her in heady invitation.
A shiver of mixed anticipation and apprehension shocked her into pulling back. Instantly he released her and stepped away, examining her with the burnished gaze that successfully hid his thoughts.
Hot shame rushed through Siena. Rushing into speech she said, “Thanks.” And managed to sketch a smile. “You should have had sisters—you make a great brother.”
His brows lifted, and the smile he gave in return was sardonic. “Any time you need a fraternal shoulder, just let me know,” he said, drawling the words with an intonation that deepened her flush.
“I hope I never do again.” Her voice was pitched too high. Avoiding his glance, she picked up her wine glass.
Fine tremors shook her hand, and she hoped he couldn’t see the shimmer across the surface of the liquid when she lifted it to her lips. After the smallest of sips she set the glass back down again in case he’d noticed.
But he was looking at his watch. Immediately, as if he’d somehow summoned her, a woman appeared with a tray of small savouries. Nick introduced her as his housekeeper and when she’d gone he ordered, “Have something to eat. You’re as pale as a ghost.”
Obviously he hadn’t felt anything like that heady, sensuous connection. He probably hadn’t even realised what his closeness was doing to her.
Thank heavens. “Hadn’t you noticed I’m always pale?” she said crisply. “Although I prefer to think of myself as ethereally fair.”
His half-smile told her he knew what she was doing. “Ethereal? Not with devil-black curls and that smart mouth. I have to leave you—I’ll be no more than five minutes. When I come back I want to see several of those savouries eaten.”
Siena glowered balefully after him as he left the room, but although she wasn’t hungry the little mouthfuls of food looked delicious and smelt divine. Almost without thinking, she picked one up and nibbled, trying to sort out her thoughts and her odd reactions.
She was over Nick. Had been for years. She no longer even wanted to know why he’d made love to her with such wild tenderness, then left her with nothing more than an abrupt and angry statement that he’d lost his head and he was sorry.
As well as showing her how passionate she could be, Nick had hurt her—damaged her in a way she hadn’t understood or recognised until that moment. Unwittingly she must have vowed never to allow herself to feel so intensely again.
It had taken all her will, but she’d eventually managed to put him behind her and get on with her life. She’d met someone safe—someone she’d been sure would never cause her the pain Nick had.
She winced. Was that really why she’d chosen Adrian? Surely her love for him hadn’t been a mirage, desperately conjured by memories of the dark sorcerer who’d shown her passion and joy and then abandoned her to a world without either?
If so—if she’d let her misery at Nick’s rejection make the choice for her—perhaps Adrian had sensed it.
What weird power did Nick have that just being held in his sexless embrace roused a long-repressed hunger?
OK, so the day had flung a couple of nasty surprises at her—well, one shock and one disappointment—leaving her off-balance, stranded and short of money on the other side of the world from home. She’d been worried, but she’d have managed.
Then Nick had arrived. Being Nick, he’d taken over and.
And what?
In his aloofly controlled way he’d been protective and kind—clearly signalling that he was doing his duty to the couple who’d helped him when he was young and more vulnerable.
The soft sound of the door made her look up sharply. Her stomach dropped as Nick came in, black brows almost meeting across his nose.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
The frown smoothed out. “My question, I think. You look shell-shocked.”
“I’m fine,” she said automatically.
“And so am I.” He examined her face, then said with a touch of irony, “All right, I’ve just had a conversation with my PA that means I have to rearrange my schedule. It’s no big deal.”
Without preamble she said, “I used to resent you when I was a kid.”
He looked across at her, his brows slightly raised. “I know. You always wanted to come with us when your father and I went off to the various sports and games he introduced me to.”
“I must have been a brat.”
“Not exactly that,” he said dryly. “You were an uncompromising little thing, and very determined. I got used to thunderous frowns, black looks, pouting—”
“I never pouted!”
“You did, and very cutely. I didn’t blame you.”
“Generous of you,” she said with a wry smile. And because she’d always wondered, she asked, “How did you find yourself being Dad’s protégé?”
His expression tightened, but he spoke easily enough. “After my own father died I became hard to handle. My mother was desperate enough to contact an organisation that helped fatherless boys, one your father had volunteered for. We clicked.”
He stopped, then went on almost harshly, “I owe him an immense debt. When I decided to go out on my own in IT he couldn’t afford to back me financially, but he introduced me to people who could, and he gave me both intellectual and moral support.”
Very moved, she said, “That’s quite a tribute. But you did something for him too, you know. You were the son he never had.”
“I hope so,” he said, in a tone that came close to being dismissive, as if he’d said too much. “Dinner’s ready now if you are.”
Siena had been satisfied by the two small savouries she’d eaten, but the wine was making its effects felt. She felt disconnected, the raw shock of Adrian’s rejection lightly blanketed by a buzz in her head that told
her she needed food.
Stubbornly she forced herself to eat, but halfway through the main course she stopped, shivering, and the words she’d been trying to get out refused to come. Horrified, she froze.
“You’re probably still jet-lagged, and in shock,” Nick said abruptly, getting to his feet. “You can stay the night here.”
“No, I—”
He interrupted curtly, “You need rest. And you’re in no fit state to be on your own. I’ll get a bed made up for you and tomorrow morning we can discuss what you’ll do.”
“N-Nick, there’s no reason …” She said feebly, “I must have had too much wine.”
“I doubt if half a glass would have this effect on you,” he said, his tone edging towards boredom. “Siena, stop fighting it. You’ve had a rotten day. A decent sleep should help, but you’re not going back to that hotel. I want to make sure you’re all right.”
It would be so easy to give in to that masterful tone, to let Nick look after her, but she summoned her strength and said again, “No.”
“Then I’ll contact your parents and tell them you’re in trouble,” he said.
Siena stiffened, incredulity temporarily swamping her tiredness. “D-don’t you d-dare,” she stammered. “They’ve—they’ve been looking forward to this holiday for years. You wouldn’t really do that to them?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Of course I would,” he said coolly. “It’s exactly what they’d expect me to do.”
She couldn’t dispute that. Rallying, she challenged fiercely, “That would be betrayal.’’
“I fancy they’d think that not telling them would be the greater treachery.”
Searching his face, she felt her heart clamp when she saw no gentleness, no sign of compromise in the hard, angular features.
She attempted a laugh, only to find it ignominiously turning into something too close to a sob. “You mean you’ll tell on me,” she said, backing her caustic tone with the terminology of childhood to make her opinion of his threat clear.
“If you like to look at it that way, yes.” Nick waited, and when she stayed silent his eyes narrowed. “So?”
Abruptly she surrendered. “Damn you. All right,” she said unevenly.
“Wait here while I sort out a bed for you,” he ordered. “And eat something more.”
But the food tasted like cardboard, and when Siena tried to swallow she had to drink water to force it past the lump in her throat.
Nick’s return brought her head up. With a snap she said, “I hate feeling like this.”
He looked grimly amused. “Yes, I imagine you do. But you’ll get over it. You have too much energy—too much resilience and willpower—to let life keep you down for long. And sleep is a great healer.”
Being Nick, he was probably right, she thought drearily as she slid naked into the bed in one of the guest rooms. But right now she couldn’t summon a spark of resilience, or the willpower to shut out the mess she’d somehow managed to make of her life.
When her phone summoned her she ignored it, but it nagged at her until finally she switched on the lamp and picked it up.
It was her sister. Incredulously she read an email, a tumbling apology for something—what?
When she reached the end, she stared incredulously as the tiny screen. Gemma—and Adrian?
Gemma had tried to reach her at the hotel by phone, but there had been no answer. Siena recognised her sister’s desperation as she apologised for loving Adrian, saying she’d tried so hard not to—she’d go away, never see him again.
“I can’t …” Siena didn’t finish. Dry-eyed, she hunched back against the pillows, thoughts tumbling through her mind in chaotic freefall.
But eventually she dragged in a deep, painful breath and straightened up. The habit of caring for her emotional sister was too deeply engrained for her to leave Gemma in such turmoil.
It took her a tense half-hour to formulate some coherent reassurance, and she even managed to state that she was spending the night at Nick’s lovely house before signing off.
And then she lay still and rigid in the huge, opulent bed before falling into a mercifully deep sleep.
She dreamed—snatches of scenarios in which she was searching for someone, calling an unknown name as she stumbled through rainforest, impeded by clutching branches that seemed alive and evil. And all the time knowing that if she dared stop something dangerous would seize her and carry her off and she’d never again see the person she sought.
“Siena, wake up!”
Nick’s command splintered the dream into shards that disappeared like smoke in the wind. A hard hand on her shoulder shook her into consciousness, and when her eyes sprang open she saw his face, intent and close to hers. Her heart leapt in her chest.
“It’s all right,” he said, his voice softening a little, “you’re just dreaming. It’s over now.”
She shuddered, and to her horrified shock couldn’t hold back the hot tears. Muttering something savage beneath his breath, Nick sat down on the side of the bed and took her in his arms.
He held her as he had before, offering her the silent comfort of his strength and nearness, his presence. She fought back the tears, and as the dream faded she relaxed against the heat and power of his body, surrendering to the security of his heartbeat and his arms around her.
Slowly—so slowly she didn’t know exactly when the knowledge finally seeped into her brain—she realised that the male skin she’d wet with her tears was bare.
As she was. From breast to waist they were pressed together, skin against skin, so that she could feel the driving beat of his heart, the heavy thud of it almost as unsteady as hers.
Long-repressed memories surged back—memories of the night they’d spent together, the night Nick had introduced her to passion and taken her virginity.
She hadn’t known desire could transform into an elemental force—wild yet tender, sensuous and gentle, and then a whirlwind of untamed sensuality that stripped her of everything but the need to give and take, to join Nick in surrender to the consuming urgency of need.
And do you remember what happened afterwards …?
Valiantly she tried to take refuge in the secure armour of those bitter memories, but her traitor mind stayed fixed on their entwined heartbeats as the muscles of his shoulder tensed and flexed beneath her cheek.
Exultant, terrified, she knew she should pull away.
“I know I told you to cry before,” he said in a controlled voice, his voice vibrating inside his chest so that she could feel the words as well as hear them, “but I should have known you’d fling yourself into weeping as energetically as you do everything else.”
Siena dragged in a long, hiccupping breath. She was too close, too aware of a faint, evocative fragrance—the drifting vapour of some soap mingled with a darkly sensuous scent that was Nick’s alone, a disturbing male summons.
In the pit of her stomach that forbidden sensuousness uncoiled, spreading so swiftly she couldn’t contain it. It weakened her so that she didn’t want to pull away—no, couldn’t pull away …
This is Nick, she tried telling herself, but although the words circled through her brain, the drugging effect of being close to Nick remained. Nick, she thought feverishly, who left you alone and humiliated …
Adrian’s betrayal had little power over her now.
She looked up, meeting eyes of blazing, intent green. Her own widened, roaming the dark, arrogant features, and that frisson of reckless desire sizzled through her—velvet and fire, honey and spice, summoning a tide of voluptuous heat in every cell.
Nick’s eyes narrowed and his lashes drooped. As though he couldn’t stop himself, he bent his head and his mouth crushed hers. She stiffened, but almost immediately she gave up thinking, lashes fluttering down in dangerous surrender to his passion.
Until he broke the kiss and said harshly, “I don’t do comfort sex, Siena. If you want this, you have to understand who’s kissing you, who’ll be taking you. And ther
e won’t be anything comfortable and friendly about it.”
It took a second or two for his meaning to sink in. When it did, shame submerged her in a chilly deluge. Although the last thing she wanted was to see the contempt she heard in his voice, she dragged in a juddering, painful breath and opened her eyes, meeting a burnished, metallic gaze she couldn’t read.
“I can’t … No, I don’t want that,” she muttered, and pulled herself away, only to realise that this exposed her bare torso to his gaze.
Nick’s hooded gaze didn’t waver. Embarrassed, she grabbed at the sheet, but he was sitting on it.
He got up in one lithe movement, turning away so he didn’t see how desperately she retreated behind the fragile shield of fabric, so drugged by a bewildering mixture of emotions she couldn’t formulate any words that might sound sensible.
He was clad only in a pair of pyjama pants, and the sight of him—big, sleekly bronzed, powerful with a build that could only come from sheer strength—made her mouth go dry.
Siena swallowed, and said thinly, “I’m sorry. I don’t … I don’t know what came over me.”
His smile was sardonic. “It’s called proximity, and it’s pretty universal. It happened to us once before, remember?”
Oh, God, if only she could forget!
“Yes, I remember.” Ignoring the colour that suffused her skin, she met his eyes with dogged determination.
Before she could say anything he went on harshly, “I regret—intensely—my behaviour that night. I wish I’d handled it better so that we could have remained friends.”
Proximity? Friends?
The cool lack of emotion in his tone, in his choice of words, hit her like a shower of frigid water. Steadying her voice, she said, “Nick, it’s all right. D-don’t worry about it. It’s over now, in the past.”
After a moment’s hesitation she went on in a rush, “Gemma emailed me. It’s—she and Adrian are in love. She’s desperately miserable about the situation.”
He gave her a keen look. “So you want to go home and take care of her.”
“I want to get home as soon as I can,” she said shortly. “I’m sorry for weeping all over you. I haven’t had a nightmare since I was a kid.” Before she had time to think, she added with an attempt at lightness, “You needn’t be concerned that I’ll tell Portia what happened.”
