“Maybe you should.” T.C. watched his lips set in a firm line as he rocked back to face her. Their gazes locked and held for five long seconds, and the guarded vulnerability in his expression squeezed her heart. She stood with the breath backing up in her lungs while her eyes willed him to explain. These next few minutes held the key to understanding Nick—not the Nick of her preconceptions but the real Nick—and that key would likely open the door on a whole new set of feelings. Strangely, the thought didn’t scare her as much as it should have.
“You sure you want to hear this?” he asked.
“I need to hear it.”
He scrubbed a hand across his face. “Where to start.”
“The beginning’s usually a good place.”
“Not in my case.” His smile was grim, humorless. “I don’t even know much about my beginning. My mother was a hooker and an addict, or an addict and a hooker. Whatever. My father could have been anyone.”
His gaze held hers, and the expression in the depths of his eyes was as harsh as his words, daring her to flinch or to look away. She did neither—she simply prompted him to continue. “What happened to your mother?”
“She was a distant cousin of Joe’s, but they’d never met. They shared the same surname and that’s about it. Apparently she saw his picture on the cover of a magazine, did some research on their family connection and decided to try blackmail. Joe didn’t bite. A couple weeks later she OD’d. Joe’s number was in her things, and the authorities thought he might be next of kin.”
“So he took you in.”
“What else could he do?” He shrugged, the gesture tense and self-conscious, and so unlike Nick. Her stomach twisted painfully.
“He could have done nothing.” Except they both knew that wouldn’t have been an option for Joe. “How old were you?”
“Eight.”
She pictured a small bewildered child, wrenched from the familiar into a stranger’s world, and she wondered if that was the reason he didn’t get the concept of home. “That can’t have been easy,” she said slowly.
“It was easy enough on me. I got to eat regular meals and sleep in the same bed every night.” His harsh exhalation didn’t much resemble a laugh. “It was tough on Joe’s wife, though. She already had five kids.”
“I imagine she had plenty of help.”
His gaze was sharp, almost hard. “Yeah, she had a housekeeper and a cook, but I wasn’t talking about that.”
No. She could see that. He was talking about the emotional side, the impact of a new kid thrown into that head-strong, spoiled, Corelli brood. It would have been tough on all of them, but especially so on Nick. She felt that as a dull ache in her heart.
“Joe talked so much about you, yet he never mentioned this. Never hinted, not even in the letter. As far as he was concerned, you are his son—that’s why he talked about you so much. He was proud of you. He missed you. He loved you. He was your father, Nick.”
“Yeah, well, like you, I wished he was.”
He leaned back in his chair, his posture a negligent contrast to the tense lines of his face and the shadows that darkened his eyes. For a second she battled the urge to close the space between them, to wrap her arms around him and soothe away those shadows…but only for a second. Then she lost the battle. She went down on her knees, placed a gentle hand on his knee.
“He loved you as his son, Nick.”
A muscle twitched in his cheek. His gaze glittered with hard cynicism as it shifted from her face to her hand, then back again. “What’s this, Tamara? You can’t put your hand on me in honest desire but you can out of pity?”
She shook her head, but he was already getting to his feet, stepping around her.
“I don’t want your pity. That’s not why I told you.” He stopped at the door, blew out a harsh breath. “I don’t know why I told you.”
“It’s not about pity, Nick. It’s about understanding.”
“You think because I told you about my background you suddenly understand me?” His voice was as hard as his eyes, as uncompromising as his stance. “I’m the same man I was this afternoon. Nothing’s changed.”
But as he walked away, she told herself he was wrong.
He was still the same man, but everything else had changed now that she knew the boy he had been. Now she saw reasons for a man to search for his place in the world, to prove himself better than his background, to earn everything he owned on his own merits and not from the benevolence of his adoptive family.
She only hoped that knowledge would give her the courage to go to him and put her hand on him in honest desire.
Nine
Sixteen hours later Nick watched a dark blue BMW glide to a halt outside the stables. He knew who would own such a vehicle even before the driver stepped out, smoothed an imaginary wrinkle from his jacket, then did an exaggerated backstep away from Ug’s welcome.
On some other day Nick might have found that comical, but right now he wasn’t in the mood for funny. He wasn’t in the mood for visitors, either, especially unwelcome ones, although after Sophie’s phone call, her brother’s appearance wasn’t exactly unexpected.
He pushed his wheelbarrow into the next stall and pitched a fork into the straw bedding. When the hair on the back of his neck stood to attention, he knew he had company.
“Lost, bro?” he asked without looking up.
“I heard you found yourself some dirt to play around in, but I thought Sophie was referring to something else.”
Nick tightened his grip on the pitchfork. Told himself the reality of wrapping it around George’s puny neck wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying as the imagining. He dug deep under a pile of soiled straw, lifted and tossed it in one deft motion, then raised innocent brows when it overshot the barrow to land square on a pair of highly polished Italian loafers.
“Sorry about that.”
And in the silence that followed he realized he was sorry—not for sullying George’s shoe leather but for succumbing to the moment. It was a puerile response, and it hadn’t made him feel a whole lot better. Some, but not nearly enough.
George’s thin lips pursed in distaste. “Could we continue our discussion in the office?”
“What, exactly, are we discussing?”
“I know of a party who’s keen to buy into the horse business. He liked the sound of this place.”
“You remember our meeting, the day I arrived? Which part of ‘I don’t want your help’ didn’t you understand?”
A quick flush stained George’s skin. “I was approached by an associate of Joe’s who assumed I was the new owner. I saw a chance to help you out.”
“Well, thanks for driving all the way out here to help me out, bro, but I’m not looking for a buyer.”
“What do you mean?” George’s flush deepened to a dull red. “You live overseas. What would you want with a place here?”
None of your damned business. That was Nick’s instant response, the one he would have given a week ago. Back then he would have grinned to show he couldn’t care less, before he turned his back and sauntered away. But it seemed like his attitude had changed, probably because he had grown sick and tired of Tamara walking away instead of talking about whatever was bothering her. For the first time in fourteen years, he decided it was worth talking to George.
“Whether or not Sophie gave you my message, it bears repeating. I don’t want anything that belongs to you, and that includes what you refer to as your help.
“Yes, I do live overseas—I made that choice because it was easier on everyone and it suited me fine. I wanted to make my own life. I proved what I could do without Joe’s help and despite my background.”
Flushed and tight-lipped, George opened his mouth to interrupt, but Nick held up a hand.
“I’m almost done. Hear me out, okay? My decision to keep Yarra Park has nothing to do with you. None of my life has anything to do with you. Not anymore.”
“That’s not much of an attitude toward family
.”
“You want to talk about attitude to family?” Nick’s voice was as steel-sharp as the prongs on the pitchfork in his hand. “What about your efforts to contact me when Joe took ill? What about that solicitor’s letter after he died? He might not have been my blood father, but he brought me up as his son and as your brother. Don’t you think I deserved better?”
“You didn’t deserve anything—” George said spitefully as he inclined his head toward the manure-filled barrow. “Except where you are right now. What you’re doing here is a fitting job for you.”
“I suggest you get the hell out of here before I do something fitting with this pitchfork.”
“We both know you won’t risk that,” George sneered, but he edged out of Nick’s reach. “This time Joe isn’t here to stick up for you. This time I would press charges.”
“He never took sides. He did what was fair.”
“He might have tried, but we all know you were his favorite. That’s why he left you this place.”
“You got the Portsea house and the chairmanship and your share of the rest of it. Why are you so stuck on this one small thing?”
“Because it’s not a small thing—it’s the thing that mattered most!” The words erupted from George’s tight lips, as if the lid had been lifted on a pressure cooker of festering resentment.
“And you think that if I sell, it will make a difference to the way you feel? Hell, George, if I sent you Yarra Park in gift wrapping it wouldn’t make a lick of difference. You don’t know why Joe did it this way, and you can’t change the fact that he did. It simply is.”
He met the bitterness in George’s eyes, a bitterness he knew was burning the other man up from the inside out.
“Don’t you think it’s time you got over this jealousy thing? You’re thirty-four years old. You have a wife and a family, the home and the job you wanted. Isn’t it time you concentrated your energy on what you have instead of what you can’t have?”
George had no comeback. First time in his life, Nick thought, as he watched him turn on his heel and stalk away. He wasn’t sure if his message got through, wasn’t sure if it ever would, but at least he had tried.
He would have returned to his chore, except a sense of foreboding niggled at his gut. He put the tool aside and walked out to the front of the stables as the sleek dark sedan pulled to a stop halfway down the driveway.
Hell. Tamara and Jason were on their way back from the track, but only one horse stopped as George climbed out of his car. Nick’s shoulder muscles bunched and his hands curled into fists as he watched the short exchange, knowing that whatever George had to say wouldn’t be pleasant. It also didn’t take long. The car took off in a furious spurt of dust, while Tamara headed her horse to the barn at a sedate walk.
She swung out of the cart, seemingly unperturbed, but then she fumbled with the simple clasp on her helmet, cursed, and Nick noticed the tremor in her normally sure hands. He placed his on her shoulders, stilling her with gentle insistence.
“What did he say to you?”
“Nothing that bears repeating.”
“That bad, huh?” He slid his hands down her arms, back up again. “He left here looking for a whipping boy—you just happened to be convenient. Don’t take it personally.”
“He said you threatened him with a pitchfork. If I’d had one handy, I’d have done more than threaten.” Her eyes glittered with temper, and Nick felt relief radiate through his whole being. She wasn’t shaking with fear; she was shaking with rage.
“Yeah, well, as tempting as that sounds, it would have done more harm than good.”
T.C. snorted.
“I did hit him once, a long while ago. If Joe hadn’t interceded, he’d have charged me with assault.”
“I hope you hit him hard.”
“Flattened his nose, but it wasn’t nearly as satisfying as I’d thought it would be.” He rubbed his hands over her shoulders and down her arms again, smoothing her brittle temper as quickly as it had flared. “Plus it gave him something else to hate me for.”
Joe had told her his sons didn’t get along, but he had never told her why—whether something specific had caused a rift or if they simply clashed on everything. Hate was a strong word, but that was exactly what she had seen burning in George’s eyes when he stopped to hurl insults at her.
He took his hands from her arms, and T.C. immediately felt the loss of calm. She felt edgy and restive, as if she needed to run a few laps of the track. Returning to work wasn’t an option. She turned and called out to Jason, “Will you finish up here?” before swinging back to Nick. “You want to take a walk?”
“Are we going to get wet?” he asked, inclining his head toward the clouds gathering on the southern horizon.
“Not for hours yet.” She started walking and felt him beside her, matching his stride to hers. “Is getting Yarra Park one of the things George hates you for?” she wondered out loud.
“One of a long list. There’s a whole heap of paranoia going on in his head that I can’t begin to understand. He hated the attention I got when I first came to live with them, and I don’t think he ever got over it. The older we got, the worse his jealousy got.”
“What was he jealous of?”
“School reports, who made the football team, praise from Joe. Anything and everything.”
“You know, I can almost see his point of view.”
“Yeah?”
Feeling the curiosity in his gaze, she tilted her face to meet it. “Yeah. I have this picture forming of you two as teenagers. Nick, a couple of years younger but already bigger, stronger, better looking. I bet you made all the teams, got better grades, and every time George brought a girl home, she took one look at you and forgot big brother.”
She smiled, wanting to ease the moment, but Nick didn’t respond. And his words to Sophie came vividly to mind. I don’t want anything of his, especially his wife. Holy toledo. She moistened her dry mouth.
“This fight you had when you flattened his nose…was it over a girl?”
“Yes and no.” He paused long enough that she thought he wouldn’t continue. Their initial get-me-out-of-here strides had slowed to a bare stroll, and the mood felt as ominous as the gathering storm clouds.
“Emily had been going out with George for a while when she told him she had this thing for me. I don’t know if she really did, or if she just had some kind of agenda. I mean, I hardly even knew her—I’d met her a couple of times around the pool, but mostly I steered clear of George’s friends. Whatever it was…” He lifted one shoulder in a stiff gesture of dismissal. “…it brought on the fight that had been brewing for years.”
“Is that why you went away?”
“I would have gone anyway.”
They stopped at the boundary fence. T.C. watched Nick rest his arms on the top rail and squint off into the distance, maybe studying the gathering clouds, maybe lost in the past. And suddenly she was gripped by the same restlessness as she’d felt back in the barn. Walking hadn’t been enough. She blew out a swift breath. “I want to get out of here for a while. Will you take me on the bike?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Nowhere. Anywhere.” She laughed shortly. “You think we can race that storm?”
“Sounds dangerous,” he said, coming around to face her, close enough that she felt the heat of his body and the solid beat of his heart. Not the larger than life figure of Joe’s stories, but the real living, breathing Nick.
“Maybe I’m ready to take a few risks.”
His gaze narrowed on hers, causing her pulse to flutter with nerves. Then he grabbed hold of her hand and growled, “Let’s go,” and T.C. felt anticipation gallop unfettered all over her body. Yes, she felt reckless and wildly impetuous, but more than that, she felt truly and wonderfully alive.
If T.C. had been in charge of the Ducati she would have ridden it hard into the storm, such was her mood. But Nick headed north, away from the threatening clouds.
> At first the irregular acceleration as they twisted and turned through a tricky section of road honed her wildness to a sharp edge; then they hit the freeway, and the sonorous hum of the cruising engine smoothed those edges. She allowed herself to lean more deeply into the sheltering strength of Nick’s body, to slide her hands into his jacket pockets and to rest her head in the hollow between his shoulder blades, which had seemingly been made for that purpose.
Instantly her mood eased from a little crazy to a lot sane. At her very core she tingled with a heightened awareness, but layered over it like the warm folds of a comfy duvet was another sensation she hadn’t felt in a long time. She wrapped her arms more tightly around him and gave herself up to the feeling of absolute and total security.
They turned off the highway before they struck the border, tracking the Murray’s wide river valley into the high country. Eventually they stopped at a rustic pub where they dawdled over a counter lunch and traded stories with the chatty barman.
Every so often their gazes would meet with a flash of awareness, or their knees would brush as one or the other turned on their bar stool, and the brief connection would sizzle through her blood. She was past fighting it, past analyzing it, past worrying where it might end. She simply enjoyed it.
When custom picked up, the barman drifted off and they continued to talk, skimming easily from thought to thought. He was talking about Graeme when she recalled the reason he had looked up his old friend.
“You never did tell me what you found out when you went to Melbourne.”
“I found out Graeme owns a bike I covet.”
She rolled her eyes. Nick grinned. Her heart rolled over.
“Okay, I found out there’s nothing we can do until probate is finalized. It’s a pretty complex setup, so that could take a while.”
“What happens then?”
“Transmission papers are filed and the new title deed comes back in our names.”
It sounded so final, so binding. A sudden anxiety churned in her stomach. “I really don’t want that, Nick.”
Addicted to Nick Page 11
