knew she would be thinking about him—and not about Kyle Robbins—for some time to come.
But now she needed to get up and get dressed and go back to her own room—to her own life.
There, over the next days or weeks or months, she might discover the answer to what she’d been doing tonight.
Carefully Edie eased herself from beneath his arm, then slipped out of the bed, wincing as she began to move about and gather up her clothing. Muscles she never knew she had were reminding her of their existence now.
In the bathroom—thank heavens for some modern conveniences!—she put on a small light and dressed as quickly as she could, which wasn’t very as she had to slither into the dress since no one was available to button it up the back for her, and she could hardly saunter down the corridors of Mont Chamion castle with her dress hanging half open.
Fortunately it was still the middle of the night. Even the earliest risers would not be in the hallways just yet. But she had a plane to catch in a scant six hours.
So she slipped back out of the bathroom and started toward the door, then stopped. She couldn’t just leave—not without looking back. Not without one last memory.
So she crept back to the bed and stood over Nick’s sleeping form, drinking in the sight of him. He’d rolled onto his back now. The sheet barely covered the essentials, but she had indelible muscle memory of them—and the soreness to remind her for a while at least.
Now she memorized the rest of him—the broad, hair-roughened chest, the strong shoulders, the blade-sharp nose, the sensuous lips, the hard planes of his cheeks, the delicate black half-moon lashes and the tousled dark hair. She wished she could see his eyes—sometimes laughing, sometimes haunted—again. The mirror of his soul.
Tonight he had touched her soul as well as her body. He had given her back a part of herself that had died with Ben. She hoped she had given him something, too. She took her time, imprinting him in her mind’s eye now the way he had imprinted himself on her body during the night.
She looked. And looked. And then, because she couldn’t help herself, she bent and brushed a kiss over his mouth. His lips moved, sought hers. But when she pulled away, when he didn’t find her, his lips parted. He sighed.
Edie did, too. “Good night, Nick,” she whispered. “Thank you.” She allowed herself one last light touch on his bare shoulder. “I think.”
And then she turned and slipped silently out into the night.
The unexpected sound of the front doorbell of her mother’s Santa Barbara mansion startled her.
“Blast!” Edie shot a helpless glance in the direction of the living room, then turned a malevolent one on the computer screen she’d been staring at forever.
She was in the middle of making the latest of Rhiannon’s many plane reservations. She was almost to the last screen. If she stopped now, it would “time-out” and she would have to start over.
God knew, she probably would anyway. Rhiannon had been changing things almost daily for the past two months. Ever since she and Andrew had had their meltdown in Mont Chamion, even though they’d made up, Rhiannon had been edgy and wired, worried about whether Andrew would dump her one minute, and whether her career was over the next. She was constantly changing her priorities and her mind, and today’s rearranged schedule was just the latest indication of her turmoil.
It did not give Edie restful days, either. Fortunately Rhiannon was in the Bahamas shooting a music video today. If she hadn’t been, chances were good she’d have been perching on the edge of Edie’s desk talking a mile a minute, fretting about Andrew, and changing her mind even as Edie was rebooking her reservations. Now Edie glared at the hourglass, which still hung on the screen.
The doorbell rang again.
At its insistence, the dog, Roy, a gigantic Newfoundland—all black glossy fur and lolling red tongue—looked up with vague interest. As a pup he’d have been at the door already, barking like mad. Now at nine, he had a more casual approach to visitors. They had to be persistent or he wasn’t interested. He lay his head between his paws and closed his eyes again.
The doorbell chimed again. Emphatically. Twice.
Well, whoever they were, Roy would give them points for persistence. Ah, at last. The new screen finally appeared asking her to confirm the ticket purchase. Edie clicked. The hourglass reappeared. She waited.
And the doorbell rang. Once, twice. Three times now.
Not many people got as far as Mona Tremayne’s front door. Tucked away high in the mountains behind Santa Barbara, the acreage Mona had bought with Edie’s father, Joe, was far off the beaten path.
Everyone else had urged Mona to move after Joe died. The acreage was too big, they said. It had been Joe’s dream to have the cutting horse operation on rural Santa Barbara ranch land. But Mona had stayed true to that dream.
She and Joe had bought it not just for the horses, but because they’d wanted a place to get away to, a place where they could be themselves without coming face-to-face with the fanfare of Mona’s growing celebrity on an hourly basis. Of course it hadn’t had the present house on it then, only the now sadly decaying old adobe ranch house even farther from the road.
This house had come later, after Joe’s death. In her grief Mona wouldn’t leave the place they’d had together. But the crumbling old adobe was no place to be with two small children. Without Joe to keep things together, the roof would have fallen in on them at the very least. So Mona had had a new house built and a year later she and five-year-old Edie and nine-year-old Ronan had moved down the hill several hundred yards to what Ronan still called “Ma’s movie star house.”
It was big and lavishly decorated, parts of it definitely elegant enough for spur-of-the-moment entertaining of Hollywood moguls and the world’s rich and famous. At the same time it had eleven bedrooms, even more bathrooms, a butler’s pantry big enough for Edie’s twelve-year-old twin half brothers Dirk and Ruud to roller skate in, a swimming pool, tennis court and, oh yes, a doorbell.
This time whoever it was didn’t just ring it, they leaned on it. Long and hard and far too shrilly.
Annoyed, Edie was tempted not to answer it at all. But Mona’s “open house” policy extended to whomever among her hundreds of “close” friends turned up in the vicinity. Even when Mona was on the other side of the world, she—or, basically, Edie—welcomed all and sundry. The Tremayne hospitality was legendary, and Edie was quite happy to do it, though usually her mother warned her before guests were expected.
Now the hourglass gave way to a “confirmed” screen. Gratefully Edie punched a button to print Rhiannon’s itinerary, then, with Roy at her heels, she went to answer the bell—which was still ringing “All right! I hear you!” she shouted as she hurried down the hallway from her office at the back of the house, across the living room and grabbed the handle of the oversize dark oak door. “You can stop now!”
It stopped.
She jerked open the door. Her jaw dropped. Her fingers clenched on the door handle. She stared in disbelief. “Nick?”
