The memory of Rowan’s uninhibited response wasn’t as easy to leave behind. At one point she’d kissed her way down his body and murmured, “May I? I’ve always wondered …” He’d disbelieved she was that inexperienced, but the amateur way she’d learned to please him had told him this too was her first time and had nearly undone him.
He glanced at his knuckles, going white where he gripped the arm of his chair. He ought to be working, not reliving Rowan’s teasing him beyond bearing before lifting to ride his hips until she was sobbing with rapture.
His laptop hummed with yet another string of emails hitting his inbox, but he wasn’t having much luck being productive and he needed to be. The conglomerate of multimedia interests that Olief had amassed during his lifetime was a demanding operation. If Nic hadn’t had this to consume him for the last year, the fruitless search for Olief’s plane and its survivors might have driven him to madness.
Lately he’d taken more of his own direction, but he couldn’t do it properly until Olief was declared dead and the will was read. Uncertainty hovered around him like the buzz of a mosquito as he considered what it might reveal. He liked running things. He wanted to continue to do so. And if it turned out Olief had not named him as his heir …
Nic turned away from the thought, telling himself to be prepared for anything—even that. But it would sting. In the meantime he drew a salary as the interim president by keeping the place running and solvent. He ought to be doing that, not frittering away his time between brooding over things he couldn’t change and schoolboy fantasies about Rowan’s breasts filling his hands.
Hunger of every kind gripped him. The kind that made him reach to adjust himself in the confines of his jeans and the kind that growled in his empty stomach.
A thought flitted through his mind of taking Rowan down to the ferry landing for a meal. But they weren’t dating. He didn’t know what they were doing, he acknowledged with a hard scrape of his hand down his face.
Impatient, he flung open the door and was greeted by the surprising scent of … Whatever it was, it smelled delicious. He followed it downstairs.
Rowan hadn’t expected her return to Rosedale to be like this. When she’d made the decision to come she’d imagined having the house to herself, perhaps sharing a few light meals with Anna, but mostly taking stock of her life and figuring out her next steps.
She was doing a little of that—or perhaps it was more accurate to say she was absorbing the fact that she was going to have to do some really hard thinking on that front since Nic had cut off her income. Her mind didn’t want to pin itself to those sorts of thoughts, though. It was too busy trying to make sense of the passionate affair she’d started with the one man she’d always believed out of reach. She had never imagined this could really happen. Nevertheless, she and Nic had spent hours reading each other like braille text, with his masculine groans of passion filling the air as often as her cries of delight.
Excitement flushed through her as she recalled drawing those sounds from him. At the same time she had to keep reminding herself it was a temporary arrangement. Perhaps he’d given her orgasms at an exponential rate to his own, maybe he’d even admitted that she had always had an effect on him, but he’d been the first to leave. She bit her lip, preferring the pain of her teeth over the insecure ache his leaving had caused. Waking with him would have been reassuring. Sweet, even.
“What are you making?”
She squeaked in startlement and almost dropped the whole spice jar into the pot. One glance over her shoulder flashed a million sensual memories through her mind. Her palms began to sweat and she could barely hold the wooden spoon to stir the sauce when she turned back to the stove. Hopefully he’d blame the steam off the pan for the dampness around her hairline.
“Braised beef and roasted vegetables,” she answered.
He came to peer over her shoulder, hands settling on her waist. His nearness made her fingers even more nerveless. “Ambitious. Spaghetti would have been fine.”
“Oh, you know what they say about the way to a man’s heart.”
His hands dropped from her waist and she felt a frigid blast move into the space he’d occupied as he moved away.
She made herself laugh, because the alternative was to let his reaction pierce her to the bone. “Apparently we both need to work on taking a joke.” She stepped away to reach for her ice water with lemon, using it to ease the constriction in her throat. “The truth is I know my way around a kitchen quite well. One of Mum’s nearest and dearests was a French chef. He taught me to put on an evening that allowed Mum to portray the lifestyle to which she aspired.” Rowan licked that delicate wording off her cold lips. “So I have one more useless skill in my bag of tricks. I brought in that Bordeaux, if you want a glass.” She nodded at the bottle.
“Why is it useless?” He found the bottle opener and cut the wax off the cork.
“Because I don’t like cooking to order, and I’m not certified.”
He pondered that as he poured a glass and brought out a second one.
“No, thanks,” she said to forestall him.
“You don’t want any?”
“There’s a difference between wanting and needing. I would like a glass. I’m sure it’s very nice—look at the year—but I’d rather refuse and prove I don’t need it.”
“You really did a number on yourself after leaving school, didn’t you?”
“You haven’t said anything I haven’t said to myself,” she assured him with a wan smile, recollecting the morning she’d woken with gaps in her memory and a reflection that reminded her too much of her father. It had been a bit of a relief to find her virginity intact, actually.
Turning away from his penetrating look, she removed a tray of hors d’oeuvres from the refrigerator. “To tide you over?” she invited.
He offered a whistle of appreciation at the array of tiny pastries, some topped with caviar and hot relish, all arranged between bites of cheese and colorful olives. Rowan quietly glowed under his approval, pleased she could wow him in this way at least.
“You’ve never had a problem with alcohol, have you?” She realized she’d never seen him drunk and that it was probably one of the things that attracted her most about him. He epitomized the self-possessed social drinker. “Even with all those horrible things you saw as a correspondent?”
“I don’t like inhibiting my ability to control myself or any given situation.”
“Oh, there’s a surprise!” she said on a bubble of mirth. “You must have given your mother a lot of grief with that attitude.” She stole his glass of wine long enough to tilt a splash into the sauce before she stirred it and began plating their meals.
His silence brought her head up.
“I’m sorry—is your mother alive?” she asked with a skip of compunction. “I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine,” he dismissed. “Yes, she is. And I don’t believe I was a problem for her until her husband realized I wasn’t his. That’s when I was sent to boarding school. I didn’t see her after that.”
Rowan
