eighteen she’d known too little of men to understand that Nick had been caught up in the same powerful attraction—until he’d kissed her and she’d gone up in flames, for the first time understanding the force of explosive sexual hunger.
Shocked and afraid, she’d turned her back on it, because she’d been naïvely certain it meant nothing compared to her respect and affection for Glen. During her marriage she’d banished Nick from her mind, only to crash and burn in the powerful force-field of that elemental hunger after Glen’s death. The kiss after his funeral had begun as an attempt to comfort Nick—and ended when he’d pushed her aside and walked white-faced out of the house.
Nick hated himself for those endless moments in each other’s arms. Cat understood; his regard for the man who’d given him his chance in life meant that there was no possibility of any future for them.
Not then, not ever.
Still with her hand against his mouth, Nick said harshly, ‘Cat.’
He stood up, pulling her with him, and kissed her, and again it was like being spun into some alternative reality where the only thing that counted was Nick’s mouth and his hard body against her, and the mingled scents of coffee and the musk of arousal.
And then she was free, clutching her shaking arms around her, and he was watching her with a guarded face, no expression on it at all.
‘Damn you,’ he said sardonically, ‘you still kiss like a virgin.’
‘And you,’ she hurled back, ‘still kiss as though you know exactly what you’re doing, as though it’s part of some plan.’
‘It was never my plan to want you. At first I told myself that it was that patrician little face, those impeccable manners, that background. Not much money, but birth and breeding by the century.’ His smile was cynical. ‘An untouchable princess, irresistible to a boy from the streets.’
She said shakily, ‘That’s incredibly offensive.’
‘But true.’ He turned away, reached for the coffee cup and pushed it towards her. A muscle flicked in his jaw, and leashed tension prowled through him like a baulked tiger. ‘Drink up.’
Her heart cramped. Ignoring the coffee, she started to leave. ‘This is getting us nowhere; I’d better go.’
He shrugged. ‘If you want that money, you’d better stay.’
Cat hesitated, hating this, hating him, but eventually she sat down again. She’d made herself responsible for Juana and she’d stick it out whatever it cost in pride.
Nick said with scathing honesty, ‘Can you look me in the face and tell me you don’t want me?’ He waited, and when she remained stubbornly silent he finished, ‘And that you don’t hate being imprisoned by such a degrading desire? You resent it as much as I do.’
Cat’s fingers tightened around the mug of coffee; any denial would be a lie. She lifted the cup to her mouth and drank the liquid, longing for the caffeine to kick in. She could do with some artificial support.
Nick let the silence stretch on until she said stiffly, ‘Wanting is not enough.’
He laughed without humour. ‘It’s all we’ve got, Cat.’
Nothing had changed.
All they had in common was this driving sexual urge and money, she thought distastefully, trying to banish the image of Juana’s face from her mind, because the sex would be wonderful, and the money would give the child a future.
She watched the coffee swirl as she turned the cup back and forth. Scraps of thoughts jostled and pushed in her brain, coloured by emotion’s false hues, patternless and inchoate until one gained form, tantalising her into wondering if this was a chance to make Nick see her as she really was…
Seductive, alluring, the possibility filled her mind, banishing prosaic common sense.
Nick paced over to the window and stood staring out at the park, completely at home in the room he’d earned with determination and discipline and a huge expenditure of energy. From somewhere outside a horn tooted, followed almost immediately by the clear, liquid call of a thrush.
He said remotely, ‘I’d give you fidelity, but I’d expect it too.’
Did he know Glen had been unfaithful, the first time within a year of their marriage when she’d insisted on going to university? Glen hadn’t been a good loser.
Nick turned and looked at her, amber eyes missing nothing.
‘No,’ she said aloud, making up her mind in a flash of anger. She might have developed a taste for danger, but she was worth more than this! ‘I won’t have an affair with you, Nick, so that you can get me out of your system. I’m not some kind of disease you can inoculate yourself against. Yes, I want you, but I’m not going to sleep with you to scratch an itch that won’t go away. I can do without you. I’m making a good life for myself; I’m settled and contented—’
‘Contented!’ He came across and took the mug from her, setting it down on the table. ‘Contentment is for cows!’ Eyes narrowed and hard and bright, he touched her face, long fingers stroking her cheek, easing down the line of her throat. ‘You’re so lovely,’ he said, his voice dropping several notes, ‘and when you smile you light up the world. Smile for me, Cat.’
His words melted her defences like flames on ice. Although she fought it, the beginnings of a fugitive smile curled her lips.
‘And when you say my name,’ he murmured, drawing her closer, ‘it sounds like “I want you”. I like to hear you say it, like the way you look at me when you think I can’t see you…’
He bent his head until his mouth was a fraction away from hers and she could feel the words as he said them. ‘The tiny flutter in your throat drives me crazy, and so does the colour that stains your skin, the way those exotic eyes go heavy and smoky and seductive when you look at me….’
By then she was desperate for him, her body so keenly attuned to his voice, to the faint fragrance that was his alone, to the shimmering sexual aura surrounding them, that she couldn’t have refused the kiss.
Stark self-preservation clamped her eyes shut, and once she’d blocked out his face she could summon the energy to say hoarsely, ‘I will not prostitute myself, not even to help Juana.’
‘Why not? You prostituted yourself for your mother.’
Eyes flying open in shock, she whispered, ‘I did not!’ As his brows lifted she said lamely, ‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘If she hadn’t suffered from a heart complaint that meant she needed twenty-four-hour care, would you have married Glen?’ Nick’s voice was remote, his cloak of control pulled around him so that she could no longer guess at the emotions that lay beneath. He dropped his hand and stepped back, watching her with the merciless calculation of an enemy.
‘If your father hadn’t just died, leaving you penniless, would you have married Glen?’ he probed unsparingly. ‘You were alone and adrift, with a sick mother, no house, no job, and, thanks to some pretty antiquated ideas of child-rearing, no idea of how to find anything that would pay more than the most basic wage. When Glen came along like a slightly tarnished
