thought had caused his earlier guffaw of amusement—didn’t mean she hadn’t done just that.
“Why are you here, Nick?”
Her question cut into Nick’s reverie, and he pretended to consider it as he strolled over to her bed, tested the mattress, sat and swung his legs up. He picked up her pillow and propped it between his head and the wall.
“Why am I here?” He regarded her bottom lip through half-closed eyes, and the low-grade buzz in his veins intensified. “I’m here to meet you…partner.”
Two
“Part-ner?” T.C.’s voice cracked midword, so the second syllable came out squeaky. She tried to control her trembling legs but failed miserably, and the nearest storage trunk came up to meet her backside with an audible thump, jolting Ug from her arms. “What do you mean by partner?” Her voice sounded as weak as her knees felt.
“Standard definition. Two persons, sharing equally.”
Oh, no. Joe, you didn’t. You couldn’t. You wouldn’t. “Sharing what…exactly?”
“This place.”
T.C. swallowed, ran her tongue around her dry mouth. “You’re saying Joe left me half of Yarra Park?”
“And everything on it, four-legged and otherwise. You have a problem with that?”
“Of course I do. It’s too much, too…” Her throat constricted around the words, and she had to stop, to swallow twice before she could continue. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t he say something? Why hasn’t anyone said anything?”
“There was a clause in the will…. Joe requested that I come here and tell you.”
That made about as much sense as the rest of it.
T.C. shook her head slowly. Oh, Joe, why did you do this? She jerked to her feet and must have walked to the window, because she found herself staring into the aluminum-framed square of night. She forced herself to look beyond her stunned senses, beyond the thick emotion that constricted her chest and blurred her vision.
Why?
Her boss had been a steady, almost ponderous, thinker—this couldn’t be some whim. He had also been devoted to his large family to such an extent that he had often lamented spoiling them with a too-easy lifestyle. Staring into the dark, she recalled their hostility the day of Joe’s funeral, and for the first time she understood where it had come from. She had been in that same place. She knew how it felt to be overlooked in favor of a virtual stranger. “I imagine your family has a problem with it,” she said slowly.
“You could say they’re less than thrilled with our little windfall.”
T.C. whirled around. “Don’t call it that! I didn’t expect anything. I don’t want anything.” She spread her arms wide in an imploring gesture. “Why did he do this, Nick?”
“Gee, I don’t know, Tamara. Some might assume it’s because you were very good at your job.”
Heat flooded T.C.’s cheeks, then ebbed just as rapidly. Surely he couldn’t mean what that suggestive drawl implied…could he? Stunned, she stared at him, taking in his laid-back posture, the mocking half grin, and the heat returned in a flash of red.
“Yesss!” The word came out a long, low hiss as she advanced on him. “I am very good at my job—that’s why Joe employed me—so I hope you’re not insinuating I earned this windfall doing anything besides training horses.” She reached down and wrenched the pillow from behind him, then seriously contemplated koshing him over the head with it.
“Hey, take it easy. I said some might assume.”
The some most likely encompassed the rest of Joe’s family but apparently didn’t include Nick—that was why he had been so taken aback when he learned her identity. What had he called her? A crazy little horse-training woman in pajamas and boots. The thought of anyone wanting to bed that must really have tickled him.
Not having to prove the nature of her relationship with Joe should have delighted T.C., so why did she feel so…slighted? Annoyed with her contrary feelings, she tossed the pillow aside. It didn’t matter what Nick Corelli thought of her; it mattered that he was lounging on her bed, treating Joe’s bequest with a complete lack of respect.
“What about your part in this, Nick? What did your family make of that?”
“They shared the rest of Joe’s fortune.” He shrugged negligently. “I guess I got the consolation prize.”
Hands on hips, she took a step forward and looked down on him with all the scorn that comment deserved. “You feel you deserved a prize?”
He tipped his head back against the bare concrete wall, eyes narrowed, expression no longer amused. “Meaning?”
“Meaning where were you when your father needed you? When your brother and sisters took turns sitting by his hospital bed for days on end? It was you he wanted there, Nick. You he asked for. And where were you? Oh, that’s right, you had some dinky mountain to ski!”
Slowly he unfolded his long frame and rose to his feet. His eyes glittered darkly, a muscle ticked at the corner of his mouth, and without conscious thought T.C. took a step back. But when he spoke his voice was cool and flat. “George told you that?”
She swallowed, nodded, wondered what nerve she had struck.
“Did he tell you how much effort he put into finding me? That he didn’t even bother leaving a message with my service?”
“He shouldn’t have had to find you.”
“I should have known Joe was sick…how?”
T.C. flushed. Joe hadn’t told a soul about his diagnosis. No one had guessed until it was too late.
“I’m sorry, Nick.” And because the words sounded totally inadequate, or maybe because the dark emotion in his eyes—the hurt, anger, regret—echoed somewhere deep within, she reached out and placed her hand on his arm.
“Yeah, well, it’s history now.” Nick shrugged off both her apology and the touch of her fingers. He didn’t need her awkward attempt at sympathy any more than he needed his own sense of frustration at what might have been. Both were pointless. Abruptly he swung around, away from the mix of compassion and confusion that gleamed in her eyes. He needed something else to focus his frustration on, and he found it right before his eyes in the stark concrete walls, the uncarpeted floor and make-do furniture, the clothes discarded atop packing trunks.
“Why are you living here?”
She shook her head slightly. “What do you mean?”
“George said you used to live in the house but you’d moved out, I assumed to somewhere off the farm. Why the hell would you move out of the house into this rat-hole?”
“I didn’t feel right staying in the house,” she said stiffly.
“Couldn’t you find anywhere better than this?”
“I
