She stepped into his arms.
Closing his eyes, Nick wrapped the robe around her body. It fell to her ankles, and he could have wrapped it around her twice. She struggled to push her arms into the sleeves, then fumbled for the sash at her waist.
When she turned to face him, the deep V of the robe plunged down between her breasts. He tugged the lapels together and pulled the sash tighter. Then he grabbed a towel and laid it over her shoulder. “Why don’t you dry your hair? I don’t… I don’t know how to do that.”
It was too intimate. Far more intimate than holding the robe while she got out of the shower.
She leaned forward and rubbed her hair. When she dropped the towel onto the floor, the strands were curly. He’d never seen her with curls. As his gaze slid down her face to her throat and that V of skin, he pulled the lapels tight again.
He steered her into the room, his hand at her back. Her skin was warm through the robe, and her feet were red from the hot water.
She stood in the middle of the room and stared out the window at the lights of Los Angeles. How would it feel to get that kind of phone call? He had no idea.
He opened the small refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of water. “Drink this,” he said. She’d cried so many tears, she was probably dehydrated.
She cracked off the cap and drank deeply. When she had drained the bottle, she walked to the hotel desk and opened her laptop.
By the time he reached her, she’d connected to the internet and was searching plane crash Barber County Colorado.
He took her hands away and held them in one of his, then closed the lid. “You don’t want to do that.”
“I need to know. I have to find out what happened.”
“Later. Not right now.”
He drew her slowly against him, bracing himself for the contact. For the feel of her body next to his. “They’re gone,” he said softly. “Nothing you can read or see is going to change that. Is it going to make you feel better to view the wreckage of their plane?”
At those words, she collapsed against him and began to sob again. He hesitated, then pulled her close. Her head fitted into the crook of his neck, and her tears dripped onto his shoulder. Her hair smelled like the hotel shampoo.
She curled her arms around his neck and sagged against him, crying. Ragged sounds of pain came from her throat, and he half carried, half led her to the bed. He sank down, pulling her onto his lap. She burrowed into him. “Stay, please,” she whispered.
“I’ll stay.” He brushed her damp hair away from her face and pulled it out of the neck of her robe. “I’ll stay as long as you want.”
Her white-clad body bowed with pain as she clung to him. He didn’t want to stay. He didn’t want to see her raw grief, her shock. His feet shifted restlessly on the floor and his hands fluttered helplessly. How the hell was he supposed to comfort her?
A number of the women he’d dated had called him heartless, and they were right. But even he couldn’t leave her alone, crying, in a hotel room two thousand miles from her home, back in Chicago.
Nick’s hand caught in her dark red curls as he stroked her head. Curly strands twined around his fingers like ivy searching for an anchor. She’d pressed her face against his shoulder, and her chest rose and fell with her sobs.
His mother had been gone for more than twenty years. He’d cried, too, when she’d disappeared, shortly after his twelfth birthday.
After he’d gone into the system, he hadn’t cried again. With a final sniffle, Sierra eased away from him and reached for the box of tissues on the nightstand. Her robe gaped open, and he caught a glimpse of her nipple, a dark shadow against her pale skin. It puckered as cool air washed over it.
Nick closed his eyes, but it was too late. He stirred beneath her. When she settled back against him and rubbed her cheek against his chest, he hardened.
“Are you…are you okay by yourself now?” he asked, desperate to leave.
“I’m sorry.” She jumped up and swayed on her feet. “You had plans tonight. I’m fine. Thank you.”
She clearly wasn’t fine. “I don’t have plans. I thought you’d want to be by yourself.”
She stared out the window again as her eyes swam with tears. “By myself. Yes.” Her voice was so soft he barely heard her. “I am.”
Feeling helpless, he awkwardly pulled her into an other hug. Her arms went around his neck and clung.
As he stroked her back, she pressed closer. He shut his eyes and tried to think about the specs for the building he was currently designing, the workshop he was leading tomorrow, the projects waiting for him back in Chicago. Nothing helped. His erection grew harder as it pressed into her abdomen.
Sierra stilled in his arms and lifted her head from his chest. “Nick?” She looked confused. Bewildered.
“I’m sorry, Sierra.” His face heated and he tried to set her away, but her arms tightened around his neck.
She stared at him for a long moment, then rose on tiptoe and pressed her mouth to his.
Her tears were salty on her lips, and her mouth trembled. He tried to stay perfectly still, but couldn’t help responding when she licked his lips.
He tried to keep the kiss gentle. Comforting instead of erotic. But she pressed her breasts against his chest, and a vision of her nipple filled his head.
Heat built between them, until she was clutching at his hair. She opened her mouth, and he tasted the wine she’d drunk at the reception.
“Stay with me, Nick,” she whispered.
“That would be a very bad idea.” He tried to put her away from him, but his hands wouldn’t let her go.
“I need to feel something besides pain. Besides loss. I need to know I’m alive.” She fused her mouth to his and kissed him with awkward urgency. Her body trembled again, but this time, it wasn’t with cold. “Stay,” she murmured against his lips.
“An honorable man would walk away, Sierra. Right now.” He’d been called a bastard more times than he could count, but even he had limits.
Without taking her mouth from his, she shook her head. “Please. I need… I need you. I need to feel.”
She pulled his shirt from his waistband and ran her hands up his back. Down to his hips. He groaned and framed her face with his hands. “You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said. His hands trembled on her skin. “You’re upset. Confused. You’ll regret this in the morning.”
“No regrets.” Her fingers fumbled with his belt. The bathrobe slipped down her arms, exposing her breasts, her abdomen. Her nipples were hard and tight, and her chest was flushed. When he heard the rasp of his belt as she pulled it off, he pushed the robe to the floor and stepped out of his slacks.
He trembled as he touched her, as she touched him. Without breaking their kiss, he reached for his wallet and fumbled for the condom he kept there. She wanted to forget, and he’d do that for her. He was good at making women forget.
When he eased her onto to the bed, she rose to meet him. When she shattered, he held her tightly as he joined her. When he drew away, she turned into his shoulder and fell asleep. Her tears burned like acid as they fell onto his skin.
SIERRA WOKE WHEN HER DOOR clicked shut. It was still dark—3:00 a.m. He was gone.
She remembered why he’d been here, and her heart clenched tight. Mom. Dad.
She curled into a ball beneath the duvet, staring at the shadows on the wall. Finally, she picked up the phone and called the airline.
“I have a family emergency. I need to go home.”
CHAPTER TWO
SIERRA STARED AT THE pink line down the center of the screen on the plastic stick, and her stomach churned. Dropping the stick, she bent over the toilet again and retched. But there was nothing left in her stomach.
She slid to the floor and leaned against the wall, dizzy and weak. The heat vent beneath her channeled warm air up her back, taking away the chill. The white stick lay next to her on the slate-tiled floor, the pink even brighter than the test she’d taken yesterday.
He’d worn a condom.
But the stick had turned pink three days in a row.
Her hand curled over her abdomen as she struggled to stand. She needed her mother. Her mom would have hugged her and told her it was going to be okay. That they would figure it out together.
Sierra turned on the shower and dropped her boxers and T-shirt on the floor. She’d have to figure this out on her own.
A half hour later, chewing on a cracker, she got on the El and watched as the skyscrapers in the Loop grew closer. The earbuds of her iPod played Billy Joel as the train swayed from side to side, and she closed her eyes to prevent the tears from falling. She and her dad had gone to his concert in Wrigley Field the summer before, the one with Elton John. Her dad had been so excited that she liked his music.
She yanked the buds out of her ear, turned off her iPod and stuffed it into her briefcase.
When she reached the Loop, she joined the throngs of people pouring into her building, and waited in line for an elevator. Ahead of her, a dark head was visible above the crowd. Nick. Even from the back, she knew it was him.
He stepped onto an elevator, his arm over the shoulder of a blonde woman in a business suit. She smiled up at him, sleek and feline, and Sierra looked away.
She’d seen Nick with a different woman the week before. She’d met her friend Callie for dinner, and Nick had walked past the restaurant with a stunning redhead. Two weeks before that, a different blonde had shown up at the firm, gone into his office and shut the door.
Sierra’s stomach churned as she waited for the elevator to close, then got on the next one. What if she really was pregnant? What if the test hadn’t been some sort of mistake?
If she was pregnant, Nick Boone, the ultimate player, was the father of her baby.
The crackers in her stomach were suddenly as heavy as bricks. He couldn’t commit to a woman for longer than a week or two. How could he have a child?
She pulled out her phone and texted Callie: Meet after work?
There was no sign of the blonde in the office. Nick’s door was open as Sierra walked past, and she couldn’t stop herself from glancing inside.
He looked up just as she did, and stilled for a moment. Then he smiled. “Good morning, Sierra.”
“Hey, Nick.” She smiled just as casually. Neither one of them had mentioned that night in Los Angeles. Nick had come to her parents’ funeral, along with everyone else from the office. He’d hugged her, being careful to tilt his body away from hers. And when she’d returned to work, he’d told her to take as much time off as she needed. Asked if there was anything the company could do for her.
During the conversation, he’d looked at her hands, her mouth, her throat. Everywhere but her eyes.
He clearly didn’t want to discuss the night in Los Angeles, which was fine with her. She wanted to bury everything about that night so deep in her memory that it would never resurface. But the pink line on the stick this morning made that impossible. What had happened that night was going to change the rest of her life.
And Nick’s.
NICK LISTENED TO THE sound of Sierra’s footsteps fading as she headed toward her office, then turned his attention to the papers on his desk. He didn’t see them, though. All he saw was Sierra in a white bathrobe, her wet hair curling over her shoulders, devastation in her eyes.
He’d revisited that night far too often. Called himself every name in the book for what he’d done.
Then relived it in his dreams.
When they talked or worked together, she was nothing but professional. But her guard was up. There was a stiffness in her shoulders that hadn’t been there before.
She hadn’t said one word to him about that night, though. Apparently, she wanted to pretend that the fumbling, awkward sex hadn’t happened.
That was exactly what he should do, too. He shouldn’t have touched her. The moment she’d leaned forward on his lap, he should have walked out of the room.
But he hadn’t.
And now he had to remember, every time he saw her.
The anguish in her eyes. The vulnerability. Her tears, soaking into his shirt.
The feel of her body beneath his.
The uncomfortable, impossible-to-shake guilt that had dogged him ever since.
Even worse, the selfish regret. By staying with her that night, he’d shut the door on any future relationship with her.
She’d fascinated him from the day she walked in for an interview. It had taken him about five minutes to know he would hire her.
Ten minutes to know he wanted her.
Fifteen to know she wasn’t the kind of woman he got involved with. He wanted a good time and no strings. She was all about the white picket fence and happily ever after. If he hadn’t known it before, it had slapped him in the face at her parents’ funeral.
The happy pictures of the three of them together were, for him, like snapshots of a puzzling, foreign civilization. Sierra and her parents had always been touching each other. Hugging. Smiling and laughing. Looking at those pictures, he found it impossible not to see the love they’d shared.
He didn’t do love. He didn’t even do strong like.
He didn’t get involved with women like Sierra.
Now, the best he could hope for was that the guilt would eventually fade. That they’d be easy with one another. Friendly. It would never be the same—it never was, once you got naked with a woman. He usually didn’t regret that, but he regretted it with Sierra.
His phone rang, and he grabbed it. He needed a distraction from his thoughts. “Yes, Janet?”
“Walker Barnes is here, Nick.”
“Great. Put him in the conference room and get him some coffee. I’ll be right there.”
He’d designed Barnes’s office space in the Loop. Now the CEO of GeekBoy was interested in a house. Nick had forgotten about the appointment, or he would have talked to Sierra already.
Her head was bent over her keyboard when he knocked on her door. She swiveled in her chair. “Nick. Come in.”
He’d surprised her. If he hadn’t, he never would have seen that momentary vulnerability in her eyes. She banished it almost immediately, but not quickly enough. For a moment, that night in Los Angeles hovered between them. Her dark red hair fell in a neat braid down her back, but he remembered the curls sliding between his fingers like ropes of silk. She wore a blue suit today with a plain blouse. But he remembered how she’d looked when that robe had fallen to the floor.
Clearing his throat, he dropped into the chair next to her desk. “Do you remember Walker Barnes? We designed the office space for his company, GeekBoy. You had just started with us.”
“I do remember that.” Her fingers uncurled from the mouse, relaxed. Had she thought he was going to bring up that night?
“He wants us to design a house for him. Since home design is becoming your specialty, do you want to take the lead on the preplanning conference?”
“I’d love to.” She drew a pad of paper out of a drawer. “What, in general, is he looking for? And when are we going to meet with him?”
“He’s here now, in the conference room.”
She grabbed a pencil and stood up. “Then let’s not keep him waiting.”
Nick waited for Sierra to precede him out the door, putting one hand lightly on her back. Her muscles tensed beneath his fingers, and he thought he heard her breath hitch. Then she stepped away and didn’t look back as she headed down the hall.
His admin stopped him on his way to the conference room. By the time he walked in, Sierra was sitting next to Barnes, talking to him. She was smiling unreservedly, as if she was delighted to renew his acquaintance. Sierra had never smiled at Nick that way.
As he got closer, he realized Barnes was telling her about a family vacation. Nick didn’t even know the guy was married, let alone had kids.
“Let’s get started,”
he said after shaking Barnes’s hand.
An hour later, as the elevator door closed on Walker Barnes, Nick said, “It sounded as if you and Barnes connected. That you really understood what he wanted.”
Sierra shrugged. “Some clients are like that, aren’t they? You see their vision immediately. Walker was easy to talk to. I’ll write up my notes for you.”
“No, don’t.” He shook his head, trying to shed his annoyance. She and Barnes had been so easy together. So natural. As if they’d been friends for years. “It’s your project.”
“Really?” Her eyes brightened for a moment, then she frowned. “Walker Barnes knows a lot of the big guns in Chicago. I thought you’d want to design the house yourself.”
“It’ll still be a Boone and Associates house. It’s time you tackled a high-profile project.”
“Thank you, Nick.” She glanced down at the notes she’d taken. “I’ll talk to Walker and find out when he wants me to take a look at the site. I’ll start working on the preliminary sketches after I’ve seen it.”
“He said his property was on the lake. Is he building on the North Shore?” Nick’s mind had wandered as he’d listened to Sierra and Barnes talk. He’d watched her fingers on the pencil as she took notes, studied her body language as she leaned toward their client.
“No.” She clutched the legal pad to her chest like a shield, and he remembered her parents had lived on the North Shore. She focused on her pad again, but he didn’t think she was reading her notes. “He’s building in a small town in Door County, a place called Otter Tail.”
“A summer home?”
“No. He lives up there now. He flies to Chicago when he has to.” She smiled. “He wants to hear the lake when he wakes up in the morning.”
She’d gotten all that from the few minutes she’d talked to him before Nick arrived? “You’re going to have to travel up there as the house is being built, you know. Is that all right? You’ll probably need several visits besides this preliminary one.”
“Of course.” She smiled a little too brightly. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”
As she walked back to her office, Nick watched her go. Maybe they needed to talk about that night, after all, so he could put it out of his mind and move on.
For Baby and Me Page 2
