from the everyday world. Madeleine sank back against the cushions, that sense of rightness she’d experienced from the first with him flourishing more strongly than ever.
‘A little music, and we’re all set,’ he said, fiddling with the radio dials until he found a station playing light classics. He cocked a dark eyebrow her way, inquiringly. ‘This OK with you, Madeleine?’
‘Perfect,’ she said again, intoxicated by something more potent than the champagne.
The firelight danced over his face, blurring his features with shadows and masking him with a mystery tinged with a delicious edge of danger.
Dropping down beside her, he sprawled on one elbow and tapped the rim of his glass against hers. ‘Here’s hoping that dinner is edible.’
‘I’m not worried.’
He smiled engagingly. ‘Perhaps you should be. I’m not renowned for my cooking, but restaurants are a dime a dozen and I thought something like this—’ he gestured at the scene around them ‘—would be a change. Come to think of it, though, I don’t suppose it’s all that novel an experience for you, living so close to the shore. You probably average a beach picnic a week.’
‘When I was in junior high school, yes,’ she admitted. ‘My girlfriends would come out on the weekends during the summer months and we’d have wiener roasts and beach parties. But it wasn’t the beach that was the big attraction so much as the place next door.’
‘I can understand why,’ he said. ‘I find myself quite obsessed by the poor old relic, too.’
‘But it wasn’t always the way it is today.’ She shook her head, remembering how awed she and her crowd had been by the Tyler Resort. ‘Back then, it seemed the epitome of sophisticated elegance to us, a sort of for-bidden Shangri-La that never lost its fascination. I remember one time a whole gang of us went sneaking over there and swam in the outdoor pool.’
‘Did you get caught?’
‘No. There was some sort of costume ball being held and people were too busy having a good time inside to notice what was happening out.’
He laughed. ‘I bet you all had a pretty good time, too.’
‘Not really,’ she said, smiling at the memory. ‘We were too terrified by our own daring, tiptoeing through the bushes and slipping into the water without making a splash, and always looking over our shoulders to make sure no one saw us. The thrills came the next day when we regaled everyone else at school with what we’d done. I suppose if anyone had asked what we all wanted most from life at that time we’d probably have said, to be part of that glamorous segment of society that used to gather on the fringes of our very ordinary lives.’
‘They were probably very ordinary people, too.’
‘Not all of them. When my mother first came here, as a bride, some very well-known names and faces used to be seen at the lodge. Movie-stars, politicians, even minor royalty.’ She paused, recalling winter evenings when she’d been a little girl and the wind had screamed like a banshee around the farmhouse. She had used to cuddle up on the long sofa that flanked the living-room fireplace, and listen entranced as her mother talked about those grand old days. The resort might have sunk into dilapidation, but the tales of its former grandeur endured, untouched by time.
‘You’re looking very pensive all of a sudden,’ Nick said. ‘Does talking about the place stir up unhappy memories?’
‘It’s not the past that’s bothering me; it’s the future— at least, as far as the resort is concerned.’
‘How so?’
She shook her head. ‘Don’t get me started! You came here looking for peace and quiet, not to listen to me rambling on about my pet peeves and boring you to tears.’
‘I cannot imagine ever finding you boring, Madeleine,’ he said quietly.
She laughed. “Then you don’t have a very vivid imagination.’
‘On the contrary, at the moment it’s running wild.’ His voice was low and intimate, his gaze on her mouth so irresistibly sensual that her amusement withered and left her throat arid as a desert. ‘More to the point, though, is that I’m a good listener if you’ll give me half a chance.’ He emptied the last of the champagne into their glasses. ‘So, instead of worrying about boring me, why don’t you just tell me what it is that’s troubling you about the place next door?’
He could charm apples off trees with that voice, she decided, aware that she was falling more helplessly under his spell with each passing moment. ‘It’s nothing very exciting,’ she said lamely.
‘It doesn’t have to be,’ he assured her, his words stroking warmly over her skin. I’ve got all the excitement I can handle right now, just being with you and looking at you.’
A blush sprang to life in the pit of her stomach and spread to points south with embarrassing effect. ‘Um…thank you…I think…’ she managed, drawing her knees primly together and clasping her hands around them to keep them in place.
‘I’m waiting, Madeleine.’
And she was practically trembling! ‘The man who owns it doesn’t care about it,’ she babbled, rushing headlong into an explanation that she prayed made more sense to Nick than it did to her because, in all truth, she hardly knew what she was saying. ‘He hasn’t been near the place in years and he probably doesn’t care that it’s almost in ruins.’
To her relief, Nick turned away and reached into the cooler. ‘Has he said as much?’ he inquired, placing the steaks on the grill as he spoke.
‘He doesn’t have to. The fact that he’s neglected it for so long says it plainly enough,’ Madeleine replied, admiring Nick’s clean-cut profile in the sudden burst of light as the flames flared up around the meat. His face was a study in contrasts—a collage of aristocratic planes and angles drawn in gold against a dark background. He looked invincible, a warrior about to go to war, and she was reminded again of her first indelible impression of power and command.
‘You’re quite sure of that, are you?’
‘Hmm?’
‘The way you spoke just now,’ he explained, with a hint of impatience in his voice that took her aback somewhat. ‘As though you have it on very good authority that the reason he’s neglected the place is that he’s lost interest in it’
‘Oh…’ She really had to put an end to her absorption with Nick Hamilton’s looks. Not only was it embarrassing to discover she’d completely lost the thread of a conversation, it was also foolishly immature. It wasn’t a man’s appearance, it was what he was like on the inside that mattered—a lesson she thought she’d learned a long time ago. ‘Well, what other explanation could there be when you consider that old man Tyler didn’t even bother to pay the taxes on the place until he stood in danger of having it seized by the local council and auctioned off to cover the debt?’
Nick paused in the act of uncorking the dinner wine. ‘Old man Tyler?’
‘The owner.’
‘You know him?’
‘Not exactly. He lives in the
