“I’m not investigating you, Deidre. Don’t be so melodramatic,” he mumbled, exasperated.
“What else should I call it? You’ve admitted you’re here to determine if I’m the type of person who would coerce a sick, vulnerable man into giving me all his money.”
He sighed. “I’m here to understand you—and this whole situation—better. Linc’s impulsive actions don’t make much sense to me, given what I know of his character. He was an astute, methodical businessman. In order for me to get comfortable with the change, I need to get the lay of the land, so to speak. Linc’s request for me to get to know you has nothing to do with my concerns about the will. It’s a completely separate issue.” He turned toward the fire, clutching at the edge of the mantel with both hands.
“I still think it’s strange for you to stay in Harbor Town.”
“Just as strange as Lincoln giving half the control of his entire company to a woman who probably can’t even interpret a basic financial statement?” he wondered, giving her a steely sidelong glance.
Her spine stiffened. “Do you know what I think? I think it bothers you that Lincoln liked me so much.”
“Why should it bother me that he was so taken by you? I suspect many men are,” he said, holding her stare.
Her heart skipped a beat. She wasn’t sure whether to interpret his comment as an insult or a compliment. “Maybe it bothers you because you’re used to being the only one who had Lincoln’s complete affection and trust.”
He made a scoffing sound. “Linc gave his trust to many people, Deidre. Some of the officers of DuBois Enterprises thought he gave it a little too freely for their liking.”
“As in my case, I suppose.”
“Yes … and one other notable case,” he said quietly. She frowned, confused by his reference. He dropped one hand and stepped toward her, so that only a half a foot separated them. She held her ground and hoped he didn’t notice her pulse throbbing at her throat.
“It’s not an inevitability that we have to be enemies,” he said.
“It’s not inevitable that we have to be friends, either,” she said, staring at his chest.
“We might be friends, Deidre. Lincoln thought we could be, anyway.”
“You haven’t decided yet if I’m worthy of the title though yet, have you?”
Despite her cool sarcasm, his nearness made her blood race. Something about his voice affected her for some reason, especially when he said her name. When she’d first heard him speak, she would have taken his accent for typical Midwestern—blunt, clipped, no-nonsense. Every once in a while though, a slight twang would slide into the syllables, a glimmer of something that reminded her of horses grazing in the high desert of the American West, the stark, rugged mountains and clean alpine air that surrounded The Pines.
“Deidre?”
“Yes?” she asked uneasily, meeting his stare.
“I never got a chance to tell you I was sorry about Linc’s passing. Whether or not you’re his daughter, I don’t know, but no one could spend night and day with a person for months like you did and not be affected by the loss. Lincoln was certainly affected by you.”
“Did he tell you that?” She longed to hear his answer, to know every tiny morsel of information about the man who had been in her life for such a fleeting time.
Nick hesitated for a moment. “Yes,” he finally admitted. “But he didn’t have to. He couldn’t take his eyes off you when you were in the room with him.”
She smiled shakily, both warmed and saddened by his words.
“We hardly ever spoke privately while we were at Tahoe, so I also never got a chance to thank you for insisting Linc be taken back to the hospital for diagnostic testing. You were right in thinking something didn’t match up with his presentation and the diagnosis of multiple strokes. Because of your recommendation, we found out Linc’s dysfunction wasn’t just from his strokes. He had a brain tumor. You were right about that all along.”
The surge of grief that went through her gave her the strength she needed to face the fire, breaking his magnetic stare. She lifted her chin. “I guess you were always too busy being suspicious that I’m a conniving opportunist to thank me at The Pines.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. Maybe you’re right,” he conceded slowly. She glanced over at him in surprise. “Having Lincoln inform me that he had a daughter shook me up a bit. I’ve been trying to make sense of things, and I can see why you take me for a rude, single-minded jerk. Why don’t you turn the tables on me? Ask me anything you like.”
For a second, she just stared at him silently before she directed her gaze to the flames.
“How did you meet Lincoln?” she asked.
“I was paired up with him in a Big Brother program when I was eight years old. Who knows where I would have ended up if that hadn’t happened? Prison, most likely. Let’s see,” he paused, his gaze focused elsewhere as he delved into his memories. “I would have been in my sixth foster home placement in two years when I first met Linc. That summer, he hired me as his stable boy. I worked for him, in one capacity or another, for the next thirty years of my life, the only exception being when I was on active duty with the air force.”
Her gaze lingered on his lips for two heartbeats. It was a firm mouth. She could imagine him giving brisk orders with it … easily picture every instruction being followed to a T.
It was also a sensual mouth. She could just as easily imagine women following his every demand in the bedroom. A flicker of annoyance went through her at the thought, but so did a flash of heat.
“Where did you serve while you were in the military?”
“I moved around. Turkey, Iraq—Operation Southern Watch. I did a stint in Sierra Leone.”
“Were you involved in Operation Silver Anvil?” she asked, referring to the European Joint Operations Task Force that evacuated hundreds of people out of Sierra Leone by plane after a bloody military coup d’état.
“Yeah.”
She gave him a swift, assessing glance. “Are you a pilot?”
He nodded once. “Still am, for private purposes. I own a Cessna that I use to get around the country for business. I flew it here, actually. I’m renting hangar space over at Tulip City Airport.”
She smiled. She should have known. He matched the profile of an air force pilot perfectly: handsome, cocky, amazingly sure of himself. His raised brows told her he’d noticed her smug expression. She hurried to change the subject.
“What happened to your parents?”
“They were killed in a car accident when I was six.”
Her head swung around. “That’s horrible. I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “Unlike most people, I know you really do understand just how terrible it was.”
