Oddly, it was his complete indifference that alerted Lauren and made her study him sharply. His handsome face was composed, a neutral mask. Too composed, too unemotional, she thought. She didn't want to pry, but she was falling in love with this compelling, enigmatic, passionate man, and she desperately needed to understand him. Hesitantly she said, "Your mother didn't take you with her?"
The curtness of Nick's tone warned her that he was not pleased with the direction of the conversation, but he answered, "My mother was a wealthy, pampered Grosse Pointe debutante who met my father when he went to her family's house to repair some electrical wiring. Six weeks later she jilted her bland but wealthy fiancé, and she married my proud but penniless father instead. Apparently she regretted it almost immediately. My father insisted that she live on what he could make, and she hated him for that. Even after his business was doing better, she despised her life, and she despised him."
"Then why didn't she leave him?"
"According to my grandfather," Nick responded dryly, "there was one area where she found my father irresistible."
"Do you resemble your father?" Lauren asked impulsively.
"Almost exactly, I'm told. Why?"
"No reason," Lauren said. But she had a rueful feeling that she understood exactly how irresistible Nick's father must have been to his mother. "Go on with the story, please."
"There isn't much else to tell. The day after my father's funeral, she announced that she wanted to forget the squalid life she'd led, and she moved back to her parents' house in Grosse Pointe. Apparently I was part of what she wanted to forget, because she left me behind with my grandparents. Three months later she married her former fiancé and within a year she had another son—my half brother."
"But she did come to visit you, didn't she?"
"No."
Lauren was horrified at the idea of a mother abandoning her child and then living in luxury only a few miles away from him. Grosse Pointe was where the Whitworths lived, too, and it wasn't far from the neighborhood where Nick had grown up. "You mean you never saw her again after that?"
"I saw her occasionally, but only accidentally. One night she pulled into the gas station where I was working."
"What did she say?" Lauren breathed.
"She told me to check the oil," Nick replied imperturbably.
Despite his outward attitude of total indifference, Lauren couldn't believe that as a younger man he'd been so invulnerable. Surely having his own mother treat him as if he didn't exist must have hurt him terribly. "Is that all she said?" she asked tightly.
Unaware that Lauren was not sharing his ironic humor in the story, he said, "No—I think she asked me to check the air in her tires too."
Lauren had kept her voice neutral, but inwardly she felt ill. Tears stung her eyes, and she turned her face up to the purpling sky to hide them, pretending to watch the lacy clouds drifting over the moon.
"Lauren?" His voice sounded curt.
"Hmmmm?" she asked, staring steadfastly at the moon.
Leaning forward, he caught her chin and turned her face toward his. He looked at her brimming eyes in stunned disbelief. "You're crying!" he said incredulously.
Lauren waved a dismissing hand at him. "Don't pay any attention to that—I cry at movies too."
Nick burst out laughing and pulled her onto his lap. Lauren felt strangely maternal as she put her arm around him and soothingly stroked his thick dark hair. "I suppose," she said in a shaky voice, "that when you were growing up, your brother got all sorts of things that you could only dream of having.
New cars and everything."
Tipping her chin up, he smiled into her somber blue eyes. "I had wonderful grandparents, and I promise you that I don't have any emotional scars from what happened with my mother."
"Of course you do—anyone would! She walked out on you,
then
practically before your eyes lavished her attention on her next son…"
"Stop it," he teased, "or you'll have
me
in tears."
With quiet gravity Lauren said, "I was crying for the boy you were then, not for the man you are now. Despite everything that happened—no, because of it—you became a strong, independent man. Actually, the one to pity is your half brother."
Nick chuckled. "You're right—he's an ass."
Lauren ignored his humor. "What I meant was that you've succeeded on your own, without wealthy parents to help you. That makes you a bigger man than your half brother."
"Is
that
why I'm bigger?" he joked. "I always thought it was in my genes. You see, my father and grandfather were both tall…"
"Nick, I'm trying to be serious!"
"Sorry."
"When you were young, you must have dreamed of becoming as rich and successful as your mother's husband and her son."
"Richer," Nick confirmed.
"And more successful."
"So you went to college and got your engineering degree," Lauren concluded. "Then what did you do?"
"I wanted to start my own business, but I didn't have enough money."
"That's a shame," Lauren said sympathetically.
"That's also enough of my life history for now," he finished evasively. "We're almost home."
T
he warm closeness that had developed between them
as they sailed back was still enfolding them as they dined by lantern light on the cedar deck suspended out beyond the bluff.
"Don't bother," Nick said quietly when Lauren stood with the intention of clearing the china and crystal from the table. "The housekeeper will take care of it in the morning." He picked up a bottle of Grand Marnier and poured some liqueur into two fragile glasses. He handed her one, then leaned back in his chair. Raising his glass to his lips, he contemplated her over the rim.
Lauren rolled the stem of her glass between her fingers, trying to ignore the atmosphere of expectation that was hanging over them. Her time was running out; Nick had satisfied their physical hunger, and now he was lazily preparing to satisfy their sexual hunger. She could see it in the way his possessive gaze lingered on her delicate features as she sat across from him, and in his warmly intimate smile when he spoke to her.
She raised her glass and took a fortifying swallow of the orange-and-cognac drink. Any moment he would stand up and take her inside. She glanced up as he lit a cigarette. In the flickering glow of the lantern, his dark handsome features seemed shadowy and almost predatory. A chill that was part fright, part excitement danced up her spine.
"Are you cold?" he asked softly.
Lauren quickly shook her head, afraid that he would immediately suggest they go in. Then she realized he must have seen her shiver, and she added, "I mean I was a little chilly just then, but it's so lovely out here I can't bear to go in yet."
Several minutes later Nick stubbed out his cigarette and moved his chair back from the table. Lauren's heart lurched. She drained her glass and held it toward him. "I'd like a little more."
She saw a flicker of surprise in his expression, but he obligingly poured more Grand Marnier into both their glasses, then he lazed back in his chair again, openly watching her.
Lauren was too jumpy to either meet his gaze or endure it. She stood up, smiled shakily and walked over to the edge of the deck, gazing across the black lake at the lights twinkling in the hills. She wanted to please him always, and in all ways, but what if she failed tonight? Nick was so alarmingly virile and blatantly experienced that her virginity and inexperience might seem like a nuisance to him.
Nick's chair scraped against the wooden deck, and Lauren heard him approach, stopping right behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders and she jumped. "You're cold," he murmured, drawing her back against his chest and wrapping his arms around her for warmth. "Is that better?" he
asked,
his lips against her hair.
The imprint of his legs and thighs pressing against her seemed to rob Lauren of the power of speech. She nodded, and then she trembled uncontrollably.
"You're shivering." His hands shifted to her waist, and he turned her with gentle insistence toward the house. "Let's go inside where it's warm."
Lauren was so nervous that she didn't realize the sliding glass doors Nick led her to
were
not the ones that opened into the living room until she stepped inside and found herself in a luxurious bedroom decorated in shades of caramel, white and brown. She stopped in her tracks, her eyes on the huge king-size bed across the room. She heard Nick close the glass door with a final, deathlike thud, and her whole body tensed.
His arm slid around her waist from behind, drawing her rigid form against him. With his other hand he brushed away her heavy silken hair, exposing her neck. Lauren's breathing became shallow and rapid as his lips touched her nape,
then
drifted tantalizingly toward her ear, while his hands began moving lazily over her midriff, sliding upward.
"Nick," Lauren protested inanely, "I—I'm not at all tired yet."
"Good," he whispered, while his tongue sensuously traced the folds of her ear. "Because it's going to be hours before I let you go to sleep."
"What I meant was—" Lauren gasped as his tongue plunged deeply into her ear, sending warmth spreading through her limbs. Weakly, she leaned back against him and felt the bold evidence of his rising passion pressing against her. "What I meant," she clarified shakily, "was that I'm not ready for… for bed yet."
His deep voice acted on Lauren like an aphrodisiac. "I've waited an eternity for you, Lauren. Don't ask me to wait any longer."
The meaning Lauren read into those words banished her last doubts about how deeply he really felt about her, and about the rightness of what she was doing. She made no move to stop him when his hands slipped under her velour top, but when he removed it and turned her in his arms to face him, her heart was racing like a mad thing.
"Look at me," Nick coaxed softly.
Lauren tried to lift her eyes to his and couldn't. She swallowed convulsively.
Sliding both hands into the sides of her hair, Nick turned her face up to his, his mesmerizing gray eyes gazing deeply into hers. "We're going to do this together," he said quietly. Taking her hand, he placed it against the front of his shirt. "Unbutton my shirt," he urged gently. Somewhere in the chaotic turbulence that was her mind, Lauren realized that Nick apparently thought she was hesitating because her other less experienced lovers hadn't taught her the proper preliminaries for lovemaking, and that he was now trying to coach her.
Lauren's curly lashes flickered down, casting shadows on her flushed cheeks as she did his bidding with fingers made clumsy by a mixture of panic and joy. He deftly unhooked her lacy bra, and she slowly undid each of his buttons, unknowingly heightening his excitement by her slowness.
Her fingers moved of their own volition, pushing his shirt open, exposing his bronzed, muscular chest. He was so beautiful, and he was hers to touch, Lauren thought, so intoxicated with the knowledge that she scarcely noticed when he slipped her bra off her arms.
"Touch me," Nick ordered hoarsely.
She required no more urging and no more instruction. Guided by love and instinct, she slid her hands sensuously through the dark hairs of his chest, and leaned forward to kiss his hard, muscular flesh. A shudder ran the length of his body at the first brush of her lips, and his free hand sank into the soft hair at her nape, tilting her face up to his. For a moment he just gazed at her, his eyes smoldering with the desire he was holding back, and then he bent his head.
His lips were warm and exquisitely gentle at first, tasting and shaping hers. And then they slowly parted, and his tongue began to explore her mouth with a languorous hunger that drove Lauren mad with pleasure.
She arched against him, her hands gliding over his bare chest, and he lifted his head. His flaming gray eyes burned into hers, seeing his own desire reflected in their blue depths. He drew a labored breath, visibly trying to slow his passion, and lost the battle. "God, I want you!" he said fiercely, and his demanding lips crushed down on hers, his tongue parting her lips and driving into her mouth in a kiss that sent fire exploding through her body.
Lauren moaned, molding herself to his hardened thighs, and his hands moved over her, sliding up the sides of her breasts, her back, then lower, forcing her hips tighter to the throbbing heat of his swollen manhood.
The world tilted as he swept her up into his arms, his mouth devouring hers while he moved her onto the bed, following her down and covering her with his body.
His hands cupped her naked breasts, arousing her nipples into aching tightness before his lips closed on them. His lips came back to hers, and he opened her mouth hungrily with his own, his knowledgeable hands exploring and exciting and tormenting her, bathing her senses in a kaleidoscope of fiercely erotic pleasures that sent hot need pulsing through every nerve in Lauren's throbbing body.
He shifted on top of
her,
and something wild and fierce stirred deep within her, ready to welcome him. But the moment his knee wedged its way between her legs to spread them apart, Lauren's entire body jerked into rigid, involuntary alarm. "Nick!" she gasped, clamping her legs together. "Nick, wait I—"