there’s more to that story,” she prodded him.
“Yeah, there is.” He picked up a flat stone, and tried skimming it. Three hops before it sank. He was out of practice. “I come from a long line of overachievers. My dad, mom, two brothers—everyone’s good with money, carved out a successful place in the business world. My dad used to say I had the strongest bent for turning a dime into a dollar—which he was proud of me for. I started investing when I was 14, had enough of a nest-egg to buy Strickland’s when I was 24. Of course the business was facing a Chapter Eleven, so anyone could have picked it up for a lick and a song. I was just so young and dumb I didn’t know what I was getting into. As it happened, though, by the time I sold it two years ago, the company had grown from a handful of employees to a staff of sixty and we were making money hand over fist.”
“This was a problem?” she asked wryly.
“For me, it was. I couldn’t control it. The drive. I was—maybe—catching four hours’ sleep a night. Had an ulcer that didn’t want to heal. Lost a woman I really cared for because I neglected her and the relationship both. And the real bug was, my degree was in architecture but all I was doing was management. Maybe I had a talent for the money side of things, but that wasn’t the point. I hated it. I got into architecture because my dream was to build, to create, to make things. I like studs and beams and fighting with contractors, not paperwork. But because the business was going so well, it was hard for me to see it was a personal dead-end road. I was running my life by my family’s expectations—trying to be someone I’m not. And getting nothing done that really mattered to me.”
For an instant her eyes glinted with a curious light. “I know what that’s like—trying to meet family expectations that don’t fit you any better than a round peg in a square hole. But anyway, you said you sold the business...”
“Yeah. And for a while I didn’t work. I bought a house here, got a boat, did some fishing and hiking and mountain climbing. I can’t say I needed the break so much. But I needed time to be more sure of myself, sure I wouldn’t get sucked into the family expectation thing again, sure about what I really wanted to do. And when I felt I had my ducks in a row, I sent out résumés—and took the job with you.”
She hesitated. “I can’t believe I didn’t guess your background long before this. You and I always bucked heads at work. Now, that makes more sense. You’re used to taking charge. You jump in to fix things. And when you do it better than me, it gets my dander up every time.”
“If you think that our bucking heads was about a power struggle, I’m telling you no. I don’t want your job, Nik. Never did. Personally I think that edginess between us comes from an entirely different source.”
“What?”
He thought the chemistry between them caused enough sexual friction to spontaneously combust a forest fire or two. But just then, he didn’t think Nicole was real open to hearing that. “We can talk about that another time. The reason I brought up all this stuff about my background was to prod your memory. Because I haven’t told you one thing you didn’t already know about me.”
She stopped dead, her expression a mirror of confusion. “No, I didn’t—”
“Yeah, you did. We talked about it the night of the Christmas party.” Maybe until that moment, he’d never completely believed her about not remembering. But he could see her swallow, see the way her eyes darted nervously to his face. Nik just wouldn’t be revealing that kind of vulnerability—or fear—if she’d recalled what happened. Slowly he said, “The others left just after midnight. I would have, too, only you and I started talking. Both of us. Not just me. You told me a bunch of personal things about yourself no different than—”
“Oh God. What’d I say?”
She’d told him no deep dark secrets. Mitch only wished she had. If he understood better what made her tick, he’d feel a lot more secure knowing how to handle this whole situation now. “You never said anything you need to worry about. I’m just trying to tell you how that night played out. I’d had a fair amount of champagne. So had you. I never planned to end up in your bed, Nik—hell, I’d have brought protection if I’d ever thought there was even a remote chance of that. We just started talking. And you’d never really talked with me before, not deep-type talk, and one kind of closeness led to another. I knew we’d been drinking, but I honestly didn’t think either of us had that much. As far as I understood, we were both fully aware of making a choice.”
Edgily she picked up a flat stone, skimmed it like he had. Hers bounced six times, which she didn’t even stop to appreciate. She was already looking at him again. “Mitch, it never crossed my mind to blame you. I already figured it was my fault.”
Frustration clawed through his pulse. He’d wanted her to understand that he’d never been a predatory wolf in the story, preying on a vulnerable woman who’d maybe sipped a little too much champagne. But he’d never intended to cop out on responsibility or for her to heap guilt on her own shoulders either. “Nicole, listen to me. Get that idea out of your mind. It wasn’t about fault. It was an unforgettable night. You were...incredible. Warm, giving, uninhibited. Wild. You went straight to my head. Champagne had nothing to do with it.”
Three
Hopefully Mitch couldn’t see the flush burning her cheeks in the darkness, but for that instant, Nicole couldn’t have answered him if her life depended on it. Wild? Surely he had her confused with another woman. Warm, uninhibited, incredible? She had no idea who he was describing, but it couldn’t possibly be her.
Her arms were already wrapped around her ribs, but she tucked them even tighter. For years she’d had her life on a clear track. She only colored between the lines. She obeyed the rules. She’d even decorated her house to express exactly the kind of woman she was—fussily neat, proper, on the formal side. She wasn’t remotely related to the selfish, irresponsible teenager she’d once been. Champagne or no champagne, she just couldn’t imagine throwing all that hard-won caution to the winds and being the kind of passionate cookie Mitch was describing.
She wasn’t passionate.
She wasn’t even an emotional woman. Actually, there were moments she thought she was turning into a downright tedious prig—but that was way better than flying through life barreling into impulsive, disastrous mistakes the way she used to.
The tide whooshed in and foamed around her feet, seeping into her sneakers. The water was icy, yet she didn’t move, fiercely willing the cold to shock her mind into remembering that darn night. Only nothing came. The night was a complete blank slate—except for the parts he’d filled in.
She stole a glance at Mitch, then quickly looked away. This was horrible. Suddenly she couldn’t look at him without thinking about sex. She’d never thought of him that way, not just because he was an employee, but because he was a blond beanpole. If a guy caught her eye, he invariably had darker coloring and some meat on his bones. Mitch was about five miles tall and all of it skinny.
Only now she kept noticing that there was nothing skinny about the breadth of his shoulders. And his basket-ball-player height made her think of an athlete’s rhythm and stamina. And once she thought back, he’d just never looked at her with those sky-blue eyes in a nice, innocuous, friendly way. It was always there. That gender edginess. She just never forgot for an instant that she was female, not around Mitch, and now all those little details were adding up to drive her crazy. She’d have given gold for even fragments of memory from the night of the Christmas party, yet that corner of her mind seemed as locked as a bank
