The Night that Changed Everything (5 page)

She smiled, then lifted her gaze from the wood to look at him again. He felt her gaze assessing him. “You look like such a ‘modern’ man,” she said. “It’s hard to imagine you spending your days doing this.”

His mouth quirked. “Well, I don’t usually wear a suit to work.”

“How did you get into it? Kids usually say they want to be a fireman or a cowboy.”

“I wanted to be an architect.”

“Of old buildings?”

He shrugged. “I like them.”

“Have you ever designed a new building?”

“Once,” he said curtly, turning away.

There was a moment’s silence. Then, “I’m sorry,” Edie said.

Nick shot her a quick glance from beneath drawn down brows. She was leaning against one of the worktables, her gentle eyes on him, looking incongruous and desirable, both at the same time. “Sorry about what?” he said gruffly.

“Getting too close.”

His frown deepened. “Close to what?”

“You.” She smiled faintly. “Asking about how you came to do this. What you had designed,” she added.

He felt an edginess between his shoulder blades. “It’s not important.” He picked up a chisel and balanced it on his palm, stared at it, then abruptly set it down again to look at her.

She looked back, her brows lifted a little. “I would have said it was very important,” she countered quietly.

She would have been right.

Now Nick rubbed the back of his neck, kneaded the muscles, but they remained tense. “It was,” he said tonelessly. It had changed his life.

This time she didn’t ask. She didn’t pry. She simply waited.

Nick shoved his hands into his trouser pockets, rocked back on his heels, stared into the middle distance, not at Edie.

“I designed a house,” he said at last, unsure why the words were coming out of his mouth. He didn’t talk about the house. Had never talked about it with anyone. But now he found himself saying, “I was getting married. I built it for my fiancée.” He said the words almost defiantly.

Edie made a small sound. Otherwise she didn’t move, didn’t speak.

“It was supposed to be the perfect house,” he went on, his tone as harsh as his feelings. He’d intended it to be his gift to her. He’d wanted it to be perfect. As perfect as she was.

Amy had laughed at that. “Don’t be silly,” she’d said. “I’m far from perfect.”

But he’d thought she was. Absolutely perfect in every way. She was certainly perfect for him.

So he’d made her tell him everything she’d ever dreamed of having in a house—the expansive picture windows looking out across Long Island Sound, the winding staircase, the second-story balcony overlooking the naturally landscaped pool. The massive stone fireplace, the island-centered kitchen, the three upstairs bedrooms—a suite for them and one each for the children they would have—he was determined they would all be exactly as she wanted them.

“Her heart’s desire,” he said bitterly now.

“But it wasn’t?” Edie ventured softly.

He shrugged. “She didn’t care. Oh, she was delighted about the house, thought it was a great idea. But mostly she just wanted to get married. And I kept putting it off. I wanted the house finished. I wanted it all just right.”

Not because he didn’t want to marry her. He had. But he’d wanted to give her the very best he had to offer. He’d thought it was worth waiting for.

He’d been wrong.

The inadequacy of that house compared to the time he could
have had with her still gutted him. He ground his teeth, cracked his knuckles. Swallowed hard.

“What happened?” Edie asked quietly.

“She died.”

He said the words baldly. Forced himself to confront the mistake he’d made. He didn’t look at Edie. This wasn’t about her. It was about him. And Amy.

For a long moment Edie didn’t say anything, either. Nick wasn’t surprised. What, after all, was there to say?

He should have kept his own mouth shut. He couldn’t imagine what he’d been thinking, dragging out his private pain for a woman he’d known less than a couple of hours.

“Forget it,” he muttered. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“I asked.” She reached out, touched his arm. “I am so very sorry,” she told him.

A lot of people had said they were sorry. But Edie’s words didn’t sound like a platitude. He could hear the earnestness in her voice, and there was something so close to pain in her tone that it surprised him. He turned to look at her.

“You lost her,” Edie said, “and you lost your own future as well.”

“Yes.” It was something that no one else seemed to get. He wasn’t the one who had died, after all. He should just get on with his life. If they didn’t say it—and some did before many months had passed—he could see it in the way they looked at him, in the suggestions for dates, in the offers to set him up with eligible women.

“I understand,” she said.

He doubted it. “Thank you,” he said politely and looked away out the window.

“My husband died two years ago.”

Nick’s gaze snapped back, shocked, to meet hers. His “I’m sorry” felt as feeble and inadequate as a platitude now. “I didn’t know.”

“I don’t generally announce it,” Edie said lightly. Then she gave him a faint smile. “I don’t suppose you do, either.”

“No.” It had been, literally, years since he’d talked about Amy to anyone. Now he paused, considering. “That was why you were upset about Mona’s matchmaking?”

She thinks I need to start dating again.
Nick remembered Edie’s earlier words. Remembered wondering about the
again
. Now he knew.

She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.”

He understood. It made perfect sense. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t think she was looking at him. She was probably thinking about the husband she’d lost much more recently than he’d lost Amy.

And he was thinking about—her. About Edie.

He tried to think about her as someone’s wife. He wondered what had happened, didn’t feel as if he could ask.

She wasn’t that close to him. Three feet, maybe even four. But even without looking he could feel her presence. There seemed to be a hum of awareness between them. Or maybe it only went one way. However it went, Nick felt a connection. He wanted to soothe away her pain, make her forget.

But he knew better than anyone that you didn’t forget.

Now he heard her move, step away from the side of the table and he turned to face her again. She was smiling, but it was a faint smile. Sad, he thought. And why not? She had reason to be sad.

“I should go,” she said now. “I’ve intruded on you enough.”

But as she moved past him toward the door, he caught her arm. “Don’t,” he said. And when she looked up into his eyes, he said, “Stay.”

Just one word. Low, rough, but laced with an urgency that surprised him. The very word surprised him. The request. The command.

He didn’t know what to call it. Only knew he didn’t want her to leave.

Edie looked surprised, too. Her lips parted, but for a moment no words passed through them. She seemed to be weighing her answer, deciding how to respond. Finally she said lightly, “You’re not done with the tour yet?”

The question allowed them both to back off. Nick nodded. “You haven’t seen the tower.”

“The tower?” she echoed.

“I’ve been redoing the stairway up to the parapet, rebuilding the tower and the battlements. There’s a fantastic view. You should see it.” But he said wryly, “You’re not exactly dressed for it.” She was, of course, still in her stocking feet.

“I’ll risk it,” she said promptly.

“I’d carry you, but the passage is too narrow.”

“It’s all right. I can climb.”

“The stones are too rough. Hang on. I’ll get you something to wear on your feet.”

He strode down to his own room and came back moments later with a pair of his flip-flops. He grimaced. “They’re too big. But if you really want to do it, they’re better than nothing.”

“I really want to do it.”

So did he. He crouched down to put the flip-flops on her, then realized at the same time she did that she would have to shed her stockings first.

There was a moment’s pause. Edie’s toes curled, then a second or two later slowly straightened again. Nick’s mouth felt suddenly dry.

“Let me help you,” he offered, lifting his gaze to her face.

It was shadowed. Her expression was hard to read, but he saw her touch her tongue to her lips. Then she bit down on the lower one and, looking down at him, held perfectly still.

He took that for agreement. “Hang on,” he instructed her, and hoped to God he could do the same.

It was hardly the height of intimacy, sliding his fingers up beneath her dress to find the tops of her stockings or panty hose or whatever she was wearing.

On the other hand, it was pretty damned erotic. The stockings felt like real silk, smooth and warm against her legs, so fine that he was afraid his callused fingers would snag them.

So he proceeded slowly, trying to be careful, to move lightly. But the hint of firm flesh beneath that silken barrier was enticing. He loved to touch. He wanted to stroke as his hands snaked over her calves, past her knees, up her thighs. He could feel her legs tremble.

Fingers suddenly clutched his head, gripping his hair. He sucked in a breath. “S-sorry,” she muttered. Her fingers loosened their grip, then as his continued their journey, hers tightened again. They sent a shiver down his spine.

But that sensation was nothing compared to the shaft of desire that shot straight to his groin as the silk beneath his fingers turned to lace and then, an inch later, to warm bare skin.

Nick sucked air, then tried to steady his breathing, to be matter-of-fact. This wasn’t a seduction—unless he was the one being seduced.

Now he hooked his fingers inside the top of one stocking and drew it down, then slipped it off her foot. Then he skimmed his fingers back up the other leg. But knowing what he would encounter didn’t make it any easier to feign indifference.

He
wasn’t
indifferent. And when he stood up—provided he could manage to stand up—she would know it.

So he took his time, sliding her feet into the flip-flops, then picking up the stockings and folding them.

“I’ll do that.” Edie nearly snatched them out of his fumbling hands. Hers seemed to be full of thumbs as well. But at least her focus on them allowed Nick to wince his way to his feet and adjust his trousers so that his reaction was not immediately obvious.

He cleared his throat. “Right. We can go up this way.” He picked up the flashlight on the worktable and headed toward a door at the far end of the room. “Be careful.”

If she were being careful, Edie thought, she wouldn’t be here now. She’d be back in her room listening to the faint sounds of the orchestra through the open window while she read a book.

But she wasn’t. She was climbing a steep, winding, extremely narrow stone staircase behind a man who had just slid his hands up her legs. Her body was still tingling from the touch of his fingers. Her brain was still jangled from a hormone overload after over two years of complete disinterest. And her emotions were as unreliable as a teenager’s. She
should
be in bed with a book—preferably one that would bore her to sleep!

Instead here she was trying to keep her eye on the beam of the flashlight that Nick was aiming at the steps as he climbed. He had angled it so that she could see it playing against the stairs and the wall without having to watch it through his legs.

But she preferred to study his legs.

She tried not to—and that was when she stumbled.

“Oh!” She gasped as her foot slipped. She reached out to grab at the side of the wall as she felt her footing fail. But before she could grab anything, Nick had spun around and grabbed her.

He hauled her up against him so that she was sure he could hear the pounding of her heart. She could certainly hear it. Or maybe that was his.

“Are you all right?” he demanded. Then, without waiting for an answer, because surely he could feel that she was fine—after all that was her body pressed against his—he said, “This is insane. I never should have brought you up here.”

It might be insane, but climbing the stairs wasn’t what made it so.

“I’m all right,” Edie said. “Truly.”

He made a sound that implied he wasn’t convinced. If she lifted her face just a little, Edie thought her lips could probably brush his jawline. She couldn’t see, of course. Other than the flashlight, which was now behind her in the arm he had wrapped around her, there was no light at all. And yes, his heart was hammering, too.

“You’re sure?” He asked after a moment.

Edie nodded. She was right. The top of her head collided with his chin. “Sorry. Yes, I’m okay. I just slipped. Please, let’s go on.”

He didn’t immediately agree, but finally he said, “Okay. But you’re going ahead of me.” And he eased her up the narrow stairway so that she was in front of him. Then, keeping one arm around her, playing the flashlight on the steps just ahead of her, he climbed the steps directly behind her.

He was so close his knees brushed her calves, so close she could feel the warmth of his breath against her back. And his other hand, big and warm and callus-roughened, wrapped her fingers. She’d wondered about the calluses when they were dancing. She understood how he got them now.

She remembered the feel of them sliding up her legs and touching the bare skin of her thighs. She wondered how those hands would feel against more sensitive skin on her body.

Once more she stumbled. Nick tightened his grip. “Careful.”

“Yes,” Edie said, breathless and mortified, taking another step and then another. “I’m trying to be.”

Was she? Or was she actually being more reckless than she’d ever been in her life? She didn’t know the answer to that yet.

“One step at a time,” her grandma Tremayne always used to say. “You’ll get there that way.”

Edie supposed it was true. But it would have helped if she’d known where she was going.

“Here we are.” They had reached a heavy wooden door. Nick reached around her and pushed open, then drew her up and out onto the narrow walkway.

“Oh!” Edie stopped stock-still and simply stared at the sparkling kingdom spread at her feet.