The Night that Changed Everything (11 page)

He didn’t need them. Didn’t want them.

And he didn’t want Edie Daley, either!

Well, he did. Carnally, at least, Nick admitted, he wanted her a hell of a lot. But that was all.

The desire was an itch he needed to scratch. So, he’d scratch it and it would be gone, and that would be that.

“W
HAT
do you mean she’s gone?” Edie demanded.

The Thai woman on the other end of the phone connection didn’t speak particularly good English, which gave Edie hope that she might have heard wrong. But when the woman repeated her words, the meaning was the same the second time around.

“Miz Tremayne go away for work. Not here.”

“But it’s barely light,” Edie protested. “What on earth time did she go?”

“She go last night.”

“Last night? But she didn’t mention anything yesterday.”

“Change of plan,” the woman said. She didn’t sound as if it was any big deal. Probably for her it wasn’t.

“When’s she coming back?”

“Don’t know. Three, four, five days maybe. They go to mountains.”

“Mountains?” That didn’t sound good. And they were going to be gone days? “But
I
need to talk to her.”

She was only calling the phone at the house Mona had rented because she had already tried Mona’s mobile phone half a dozen times. Each time it had gone directly to voice mail.

At first she’d thought her mother was simply avoiding her. But after two hours with no reply, she knew something else was going on. Mona was a stickler for returning messages. The only time she didn’t call back was when she was in the middle of a scene or completely out of range.

Obviously now she was out of range. But for
days?

“Where are the kids?” Edie asked. Ordinarily her mother would have sent for her to take care of them while she was gone. Surely she hadn’t just left them with the woman who cared for the house.

“They go, too.”

“Ah. Well, um, good.” At least Edie hoped that was good. There was no doubt that Mona loved her children. But she also had a career that demanded she put it first most of the time. Taking the twins and Grace with her this summer—without having Edie along to keep an eye on things—was something of a first.

“Did she even take her phone?”

“She take it,” the woman said. “But hard to get calls. You try,” she suggested cheerfully. “Maybe you be lucky.”

Luck, Edie could have told her mother’s housekeeper, was not on her side at the moment.

She thanked the woman, tried Mona’s number twice more, then gave up. There was no point in filling her mother’s in-box with messages she wouldn’t see until she got back to civilization. Besides, when she confronted Mona about her matchmaking, she intended to do it live and, if not face-to-face, then at least ear to ear.

She’d given Mona a piece of her mind after the Kyle Robbins incident at the wedding. She thought Mona had learned her lesson. Apparently not.

Still grumbling, Edie stared at the computer screen and tried to focus on the rest of the afternoon’s work. She had phone calls to return, some correspondence from Mona’s contracts lawyer to deal with and Rhiannon’s plane reservations to cancel and rebook. Surely she had plenty to keep her busy—enough so that she wouldn’t spend the rest of the afternoon thinking about Nick Savas.

Easier said than done. She got the reservations rebooked. She looked up the answers to the questions Mona’s contracts lawyer
wanted. She returned that call and several others. But all the while she did so, she had one ear cocked toward the door, expecting to hear it open, expecting the sound of footfalls heading toward the office.

Time passed. An hour. Two. By five-thirty he still hadn’t come. Perhaps he’d taken a look around, then simply left. When she closed up the office she actually walked out to the front room to look out the window to see if his car was still there.

Of course it was. He couldn’t have left without her knowing because he’d have had to come back for his bag. He’d already taken his duffel upstairs.

So did he expect her to simply sit in her office and wait for him?

Probably not, Edie admitted to herself. Probably he hadn’t given her a thought at all.

“And you should stop thinking about him,” she counseled herself.

So she did what she always did after work. She changed into her bathing suit, went out to the pool and dived in.

It was just past six when Nick got back to Mona’s house.

He had gone over every inch of the adobe, had walked around kicking the foundation, prying up floorboards, clambering onto the roof. He was grimy, filthy, sweaty and hot and he needed a shower. Bad.

Now he went around the house to go through the doors closest to the stairs so he wouldn’t track in dirt and dust. And so he could stop by Edie’s office. But before he got there, out of the corner of his eye he saw movement that caught his attention.

Beyond the bank of oleanders growing partway down the lawn, someone was in the pool.

Before his brain made a conscious decision, his feet were already heading across the lawn toward where Edie’s lithe form cut through the water as she did laps. Her stroke was smooth and even, but it wasn’t her stroke Nick was focused on. It was
her body, her mile-long legs, her tanned back—all that lovely golden skin he remembered so well.

If he’d needed a shower before, he needed one worse now. A long icy cold one.

Or, he thought, he could dive into the pool, take Edie into his arms and solve all his problems at once.

Not a difficult choice.

He had unbuttoned his shirt by the time he reached the terrazzo-tiled patio where the pool was. He opened the gate, tossed the shirt onto a chaise longue and was toeing off his shoes and tugging his undershirt over his head at the same time.

“You’re back.” Edie’s voice startled him.

Nick jerked the T-shirt the rest of the way off to see her, out of the pool now, coming toward him. She had a towel wrapped around her waist and she was rubbing her hair dry with another. He couldn’t see her legs anymore, but her bare midriff was enticement enough. As Nick watched, half a dozen droplets of water slid down her abdomen from beneath the top of her bathing suit.

He swallowed, staring as the drops disappeared into the towel knotted at her waist.

“So what do you think?”

“Think?” He wasn’t thinking. Not with his brain anyway.

“About what?” he asked dazedly. She had to have seen him coming. Why the hell hadn’t she stayed in the pool? Was she trying to avoid him? he wondered, nettled.

“About the house.” She lowered the towel from her hair and peered at him over the top of it “Time to raze it? Cut our losses?” She sounded almost hopeful.

Was she hoping? Surely not. He’d seen the wistful look on her face this afternoon. He’d watched her move from room to room, running her hands over the woodwork and the cabinets, touching those little pencil marks by the back door.

“No,” he said sharply, with more force than he intended. He moderated his tone. “No. It’s quite salvageable.”

“Really? And it should be?” Now she sounded surprised.

“It’s an interesting piece of vernacular architecture,” he said firmly. “Not all of a piece, of course. And not of huge historical significance,” he added honestly. “But the fact that it’s not a mansion, but a surviving example of small ranch architecture makes it worth restoring.”

Also true. To a point. From a purely historical significance standpoint, the old adobe ranch house was such a pastiche of different styles, periods, restorations, disastrous additions and bad workmanship that, as a bonafide professional historical restoration expert called on to choose which buildings were worth preserving and restoring, he ought to have been running in the other direction.

But he wasn’t.

He was standing here saying, “It can be salvaged,” with an absolutely straight face.

And he was rewarded by seeing her face light up. “I thought you’d say it wasn’t worth the trouble.”

It wasn’t. At least not solely on an architectural basis. But there were other reasons to restore things.

“It’s worth it,” he said.

She gave him an instant brilliant smile. But it faded quickly. “So what does that mean?” she asked, sounding almost wary now.

We make love right here on the chaise.
Of course he didn’t say that. He cleared his throat. “I put together a plan, talk it over with Mona, then get to work.”

“So, you’re … going to be staying a while?” She didn’t sound thrilled.

“Yes,” he said firmly.

Now she smiled again, but it still didn’t seem to reach her eyes. “Well, um, great. That’s just great.”

“You don’t want the house salvaged?”

Something flickered in her eyes. “No, I do. It’s—” she hesitated, then the smile appeared again “—it’s lovely.”

“Then why don’t I take you to dinner and we can celebrate?”

Edie blinked. She opened her mouth. But then she just stood there looking at him. No sound came out.

“Edie?” he prompted when seconds went by and she didn’t speak.

“Celebrate?” she echoed at last.

“Sure. We have a lot to celebrate. That the house is worth fixing. That I’m going to be here a while. That we’re both here,” he added pointedly and turned the full heat of his gaze on her. “I think that’s worth celebrating, don’t you?”

He saw her swallow. Then she bobbed her head a little jerkily and took a breath. “Yes. Of course.” Another breath, a brittle smile. “That would be nice.”

“Nice?” He cocked his head, regarding her from beneath hooded lids. “Nice?” he repeated, teasingly.

Edie shrugged awkwardly. Her smile stayed in place but it looked even more superficial. Nick was reminded of the smile she’d worn when she’d reappeared at his side at the reception, when she had taken him up on his offer of a tour of his renovations. There had been a tense edginess about her then, too.

Then she’d been avoiding the hundred-dollar-haircut man and her mother’s expectations. Was she nervous now? Uncertain? Wishing she could avoid him?

Nick scowled. Why would she feel that way? Didn’t she remember how good it had been between them? If she didn’t, he’d be happy to remind her.

“I need to get dressed,” she said now, and she began edging toward the gate.

“Not on my account.” He grinned.

A blush suffused every bit of Edie’s visible skin, telling him that she certainly hadn’t forgotten.

Even so, the look she gave him was pained. “If we’re going out to dinner, I need to shower and wash my hair.”

“We could get take-out, stay in, celebrate here.” He could
think of excellent ways to celebrate that wouldn’t require her dressing at all.

Edie shook her head. “No. If we’re going to stay here,” she said, “I have work to do.”

“Then we’re going out.”

“But—”

“Go take your shower and wash your hair, Edie Daley. Get dressed if you must,” he said. “I’ll swim and change and be at your place in an hour.”

All evening long it felt like a date.

Edie knew better, of course. Her mother had engineered the whole thing. But, knowing it didn’t entirely save her. The minute she had opened the door to Nick standing on her small front porch, it felt as if he were courting her.

Wishful thinking, she’d chastised herself even as she let him open the door of his car for her and, for a moment, brush his fingers over hers as she got in.

Though her fingers tingled with awareness, Edie tried to keep things pleasant and businesslike. That’s what it was, after all.

Business. It was like a mantra. She needed to keep the word going over and over in her head all the time—because the way he smiled at her, the way his eyes seemed to heat when his gaze met hers, the way, every time he refilled her glass of wine and handed it back to her, their fingers touched—all of it made her want more than she knew was really there.

It was a beautiful, cloudless California evening with the lightest of breezes, perfect for sitting at a table outside. The ambiance was casual, the food was fantastic and Nick was charming and flirtatious. She was sure he was like that with every woman he ever met, but telling herself that didn’t make her any less susceptible to him.

He was too easy to talk to, too gorgeous to look at. He answered her questions about the stave church in Norway and another project he was working on at a Scottish castle.

“And yet you came here?” she said. Mona’s powers of persuasion were legendary, but Edie was still surprised Nick had agreed, especially since he had to know she’d be here—and he didn’t “do” relationships.

Or did he? The thought was tantalizing.

He had awakened her, after all. Perhaps she had done the same for him.

Edie leaned in to study him more closely, as if an intent examination of his features would give her the answer to the question.

“I came here,” Nick agreed. He lounged back in his chair and regarded her from beneath hooded lids.

“Why?”

He blinked, as if her blunt question surprised him. But then he shrugged easily. “It’s what I do. And,” he added, one corner of his mouth quirking, “I like a challenge.”

And there it was again—the hum of awareness that seemed to arc between them.

Physical attraction? Oh, yes. Anything more? Edie couldn’t tell.

The noise of the dinner hour had abated and, as other diners left, their table, which was at the far end of the patio of the downtown Santa Barbara restaurant, became more isolated and intimate.

“Cup of coffee?” Nick murmured. He was watching her from beneath slightly lowered lids. A smile played at the corners of his mouth. Edie had no trouble remembering the taste of that mouth and the way his lips had felt pressed against hers.

It was time to go. Edie knew it. But going meant confronting the awareness sooner rather than later. And she wasn’t ready yet. She needed fortification. So she said yes to the cup of coffee. It was strong, black, a full-bodied Colombian roast. Meant to be savored. Meant, she suspected, to give her the stamina—and the caffeine—to stay up all night making love with him.

Which she would dearly love to do. Except …

She clutched the cup like a lifeline, stared into it, trying to find the words to say what she needed to say. Finally she lifted her gaze and met his. “We need to get something straight.”

At her tone one of Nick’s brows lifted. “Oh?”

She gave a jerky little dip of her head. Her fingers strangled the coffee mug as she plunged straight to the heart of the matter. “I’m not sleeping with you.”