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That was the kind of flawed thinking that had seen her climbing into bed with him in the first place. “That still didn’t make it all right to sleep with me when you had no intention of ever following up.”
A hint of color rimmed Nick’s cheekbones. “No, it didn’t. If you’ll recall, I did apologize.”
Her jaw tightened. As if it had all been a gigantic mistake. “So why, exactly, did you finish with Tiffany?”
She shouldn’t have the slightest interest. Nick Messena meant nothing to her—absolutely nothing—but suddenly she desperately needed to know.
He dragged long, tanned fingers through his hair, his expression just a little bad-tempered and terminally, broodingly sexy. “How would I know why?” he growled. “Men don’t know that stuff. It ended, like it always does.”
She blinked at his statement that his relationships always ended. For reasons she didn’t want to go into, there was something profoundly depressing in that thought.
She stared at his wide mouth and the fuller bottom lip, which was decorated with a small, jagged scar. She couldn’t remember the scar being there six years ago. It suggested he had since been involved in a fight.
Probably a brawl on one of his construction sites.
Against all good sense, the heady tension she had so far failed to defuse tightened another notch. Feeling, as she was, unsettled by memories of the past, distinctly vulnerable and on edge from the blast of Nick’s potent sexuality, it was not a good idea to imagine Nick Messena in warrior mode.
She dragged her gaze from his mouth and the vivid memory of what it had felt like to be kissed by Nick. “Maybe you go about things in the wrong way?”
He stared at her, transfixed. “How, exactly, should I ‘go about’ things?”
She took a deep breath and tried to ignore the piercing power of his gaze. “Conversation is not a bad starter.” That had been something that had been distinctly lacking in their night together.
“I talk.”
The gravelly irritation in his voice, the way his gaze lingered on her mouth, made her suddenly intensely aware that he, too, was remembering that night.
She could feel her cheeks warming all over again that she had actually offered Nick advice about improving his relationships. Advice had so far failed to be her forte, despite the psychology classes she had passed.
The heat that rose off the sidewalk and floated in the air seemed to increase in intensity, opening up every pore. Perspiration trickled down the groove of her spine and between her breasts. She longed to shrug out of the overlarge jacket, but she would rather die of heatstroke than take off one item of clothing in Nick’s presence. “Women need more than sex. They need to be appreciated and...liked.”
They needed to be loved.
He glanced down the street as if he was looking for someone. “I like women.”
A muscular black four-wheel-drive vehicle braked to a halt in a restricted parking zone a few steps away; a horn blared. Nick lifted a hand at the driver. “That’s my Jeep. If you want, I can give you a ride.”
The words, the unconscious innuendo, sent another small, sensual dart through her. Climb into a vehicle with tinted windows with Nick Messena? Never again. “I don’t need a ride.”
His mouth quirked. “Just like you don’t need my apartment or, I’m guessing, anything else I’ve got to offer.”
Reaching out a finger, he gently relocated her glasses, which had once again slipped, back onto the bridge of her nose. “Why do you wear these things?”
She blinked at the small, intimate gesture. “You know I’m shortsighted.”
“You should get contacts.”
“Why?” But the moment she asked the question she realized what had prompted the suggestion. Fiery outrage poured through her. “So I can get a man?”
He frowned. “That wasn’t what I meant, but last I heard there’s nothing wrong with that...yet.”
Her chin jerked up another notch. “I’m curious, what else should I change? My clothes? My shoes? How about my hair?”
“Don’t change the shoes,” he said on a soft growl. “Your hair is fine. It’s gorgeous.” He touched a loose strand with one finger. “I just don’t like whatever it is you do with it.”
Elena tried not to respond to the ripple of sensation that flowed out from that small touch, or to love it that he thought her hair was gorgeous. It would take more than a bit of judicious flattery to change the fact that she was hurt—and now more than a little bit mad. “It’s called a French pleat.” She drew a swift breath. “What else is wrong?”
He muttered something short and indistinct that she didn’t quite catch. “There’s no point asking me this stuff. I’m not exactly an expert.”
“Meaning that I need expert help.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “How did we get onto this? It’s starting to remind me of a conversation with my sisters. And before you say it, no, I can categorically say I have never thought of you as a sister.”
His gaze, as it once again dropped to her mouth, carried the same fascinated gleam she had noticed in Cutler’s office. Her breath stopped in her throat at the heart-pounding thought that he was actually considering kissing her. Despite all of her deficiencies.
A horn blast from a delivery vehicle that wanted the restricted parking place jerked her attention away from the tough line of Nick’s jaw.
A split second later the passenger door of the Jeep popped open. Nick ignored the waiting vehicle. “Damn, I did hurt you,” he said softly.
Elena tried to suppress a small stab of panic that, after six years of stoically burying the past, she had clearly lost control to the point that she had revealed her vulnerability to Nick.
Pinning a bright smile on her face, she attempted to smooth out the moment by checking her watch, as if she was in a hurry. “It was a blind date. Everyone knows they never turn out.”
“It wasn’t a blind date for me.”
The flat tone of Nick’s voice jerked her gaze back to his.
Nick’s expression was oddly taut. “Six years ago I happened to overhear that a friend of yours had organized a blind date for you with Geoffrey Smale. I told Smale to get lost and took his place. I knew you were the girl I was taking out, and I slept with you for one reason—because I liked you.”
* * *
Broodingly, Nick climbed into the passenger-side seat of the Jeep. He shot an apologetic glance at his younger brother, Kyle, as he fastened his seat belt.
Kyle, who had a military background and a wholly unexpected genius for financial investment, accelerated away from the curb. “She looked familiar. New girl?”
“No.” Yes.
Nick frowned at the surge of desire that that thought initiated. The kind of edgy tension he hadn’t felt in a very long time—six long years to be exact. “That’s Elena Lyon, from Dolphin Bay. She works for the Atraeus Group.”
Kyle’s expression cleared as he stopped for a set of lights. “Elena. That explains it. Zane’s PA. And Katherine’s niece.” He sent Nick an assessing look. “Didn’t think she would be your type.”
Nick found himself frowning at the blunt message. Kyle knew he was the one who had found their father’s car, which had slid off the road in bad weather, then rolled.
His stomach tightened on a raft of memories. Memories that had faded with time, but that were still edged with grief and guilt.
If he hadn’t been in bed with Elena, captivated by the same irresistible obsession that had been at the heart of his father’s supposed betrayal, with another Lyon woman, he might have reached the crash site in time to make a difference.
The coroner’s report had claimed that both his father and Katherine had survived the impact for a time. If he had left Elena at her door that night and driven home, there was a slim possibility he might have saved them.
Nick stared broodingly at the line of traffic backed up for a set of lights. Kyle was right. He shouldn’t be thinking about Elena.
The trouble was, lately, after the discovery of a diary and the stunning possibility that his father had not been having an affair with Katherine, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Elena. “So...what is my type?”
Kyle looked wary. “Uh—they’re usually blonde.”
With long legs and confidence to burn. The exact opposite of Elena, with her dark eyes, her vulnerability and enticing, sultry curves.
Feeling in need of air, Nick activated the electric window. “I don’t always date blondes.”
“Hey, I won’t judge you.”
Although, for a while, it had been blondes or nothing, because dating dark-haired girls had cut too close to the bone. For a couple of years the memory of his night with Elena had been too viscerally tied into his grief and the gnawing guilt that he had failed to save his father.
Kyle sent him the kind of neutral, male look that said he’d noted Nick’s interest in Elena, but wasn’t going to probe any further. It was the kind of unspoken acceptance that short-circuited the need for a conversation, and which suited Nick.
His feelings for Elena were clear-cut enough. He wanted her back in his bed, but he wasn’t prepared to think beyond that point.
Kyle turned into the underground parking building of the Messena building. “Any success locating the ring?”
Nick unfastened his seat belt as Kyle pulled into a space. “I’ve been asked that question a lot lately.”
By his mother, his older brother, Gabriel and a selection of great-aunts and -uncles who were concerned about the loss of an important heirloom piece. Last but not least, the insurance assessor who, while engaged in a revaluing exercise, had discovered the ring was missing.
Climbing out of the Jeep, Nick slammed the door. “I’m beginning to feel like Frodo Baggins.”
Kyle extracted his briefcase, locked the vehicle and tossed him the keys. “If that’s the little guy off Lord of the Rings, he had prettier eyes.”
“He also had friends who helped him.”
Kyle grinned good-naturedly. “Cool. Just don’t expect me to be one of them. My detective skills are zero. ”
Nick tapped in the security PIN to access the elevator. “Anyone ever tell you you’re irritating?”
“My last blonde girlfriend.”
Nick hit the floor number that would take them to Gabriel’s suite of offices and a discussion about diversifying his business interests. “I don’t recall your last girlfriend.”
Of all the Messena clan, Kyle was the quietest and the hardest to read. Maybe because of his time in Special Forces, or the fact that he had lost his wife and child to the horror of a terror attack, he had grown to be perceptibly different to them all.
“That was because I was on an overseas posting.”
“She was foreign?”
“No. A military brat.”
“What happened?”
He shrugged, his expression cagey. “We both moved on.”
Nick studied Kyle’s clean profile. With his obdurate jaw and the short, crisp cut of his hair, even in a sleek business suit he still managed to look dangerous. “So it wasn’t serious.”
“No.”
Kyle’s clear-cut indifference about his last casual relationship struck an odd chord with Nick. Kyle had cared about his wife and child, to the point that he hadn’t cared about anyone since.
Nick hadn’t lost a wife and child, not even close, but it was also true that for years, ever since their father had died, and the night with Elena, he had not been able to form a relationship.
The elevator doors slid open. Moving on automatic pilot, Nick strolled with Kyle through the familiar, hushed and expensive interior of the bank.
Normally, his social life was neatly compartmentalized and didn’t impinge on the long hours he worked. But lately his social life had ground to a halt.
Dispassionately he examined the intensity of his focus on Elena, which, according to his PA, had made him irritable and terminally bad-tempered. He had considered dating, but every time he picked up the phone he found himself replacing it without making the call.
The blunt fact was that finding out that the past was not set in stone had been like opening up a Pandora’s box. In that moment a raft of thoughts and emotions had hit him like a kick in the chest. Among them the stubborn, visceral need to reclaim Elena.
He couldn’t fathom the need, and despite every effort, he hadn’t been able to reason it away. It was just there.
The thought of making love with Elena made every muscle in his body tighten. The response, in itself, was singular. Usually when he finished a relationship it was over, his approach to dating and sex as cut-and-dried as his approach to contracting and completing a business deal.
But for some reason those few hours with Elena had stuck in his mind. Maybe the explanation was simply that what they’d shared had been over almost before it had begun. There hadn’t been a cooling-off period when the usual frustrations over his commitment to his business kicked in.
But as much as he wanted Elena, bed would have to wait. His first priority had to be to obtain answers and closure. Although every time he got close to Elena the concept of closure crashed and burned.
Despite the buttoned-down clothing and schoolmarm hair, there had always been something irresistibly, tantalizingly sensual about Elena. She had probably noticed he’d been having trouble keeping his hands off her.
It was no wonder she had practically run from him in Cutler’s office.
* * *
Nick had liked her.
A surge of delighted warmth shimmered through Elena as she strolled through a small park.
Six years ago Nick had cared enough to step in and protect her from a date that would have been uncomfortable, at best. More probably it would have ended in an embarrassing struggle, because Geoffrey Smale had a reputation for not taking no for an answer.
Feeling distinctly unsettled and on edge at this new view of the past, Elena made a beeline for the nearest park bench and sat down.
For six years she had been mad at Nick. Now she didn’t know quite what to feel, except that, lurking beneath all of the confusion, being discarded by him all those years ago still hurt.
The problem was that as a teenager she’d had a thing for him. Summers spent in Dolphin Bay, visiting her aunt and watching a bronzed, muscular Nick surfing, had definitely contributed to the fascination.
Walking away from the night they’d spent together would have been easier if he had been a complete stranger, but he hadn’t been. Because of her summers with her aunt at the original Lyon homestead on the beach, and because of Katherine’s work for his family as a housekeeper, Elena had felt connected to Nick.
Too restless to sit, she checked her watch and strolled back in the direction of the Atraeus Hotel, where she was staying.
As she approached a set of exclusive boutiques a glass door swung open, and a sleek woman wearing a kingfisher-blue dress that showed off her perfect golden tan stepped out onto the street.
The door closed on a waft of some gorgeous perfume, and in the process Elena’s reflection—that of a slightly overweight woman dressed in a plain dress and jacket, and wearing glasses—flashed back at her.
Even her handbag looked heavy and just a little boring. The only things that looked right were her shoes, which were pretty but didn’t really go with the rest of her outfit.
Not just a victim, a fashion victim.
Nick’s words came back to haunt her.
He didn’t like her glasses or the way she did her hair. He hadn’t mentioned her clothes, but she was seeing them through his eyes, and she was ready to admit that they were just as clunky, just as boring as the glasses and her hair.
As much as she resented his opinion, he was right. Something had to change. She had to change.
She could no longer immerse herself in work and avoid the fact that another birthday had just flown by. She was twenty-eight. Two more years and she would be thirty.
If she wasn’t careful she would be thirty and alone.
Or she could change her life so that she would be thirty and immersed in a passionate love relationship.
Feeling electrified, as if she was standing on the edge of a precipice, about to take a perilous leap into the unknown, she studied the elegant writing on the glass frontage of the store. A tingling sense of fate taking a hand gripped her.
It wasn’t a store, exactly. It was a very exclusive and expensive health and beauty spa. The kind of place she was routinely around because her employer, the Atraeus Group, numbered a few very high-quality spa facilities among its resort properties. Of course, she had never personally utilized any of those spa facilities.
But that was the old Elena.
Her jaw firmed. She had made a decision to change. By the time she was finished, she would be, if not as pretty, at least as sleek and stylish and confident as the woman in the blue dress.
The idea gained momentum. She would no longer allow herself to feel inadequate and excluded, which would mean inner as well as outward change.
She could walk in those doors now if she wanted. She had the money. After years of saving her very good salary, she had more than enough to pay for a makeover.
Feeling a little dizzy at the notion that she didn’t have to stay as she was, that she had the power to change herself, she stepped up to the exquisite white-and-gold portal. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door wide and stepped inside.
* * *
After an initial hour-long consultation with a stylist called Giorgio, during which he had casually ticked almost every box on the interview form he had used, Elena signed on for every treatment recommended.
First up was weight loss and detox, which included a week in a secluded health spa. That was followed by a comprehensive fitness program and an introduction to her new personal trainer. A series of beauty and pamper treatments, and a comprehensive hair, makeup and wardrobe makeover completed her program.
The initial week at their spa facility would cost a staggering amount, but she was desperate.
According to Giorgio she wasn’t desperate; she was worth it.
Elena wasn’t about to split hairs. As long as the spa could carry out its promise and transform her, she was happy to pay.
Her heart sped up at the changes she was about to make. Hope flooded her.
The next time she saw Nick Messena, things would be different. She would be different.
Three
One month later, Nick Messena watched, green gaze cool, as Elena Lyon walked with measured elegance down the aisle toward him, every step precisely, perfectly timed with the beat of the Wedding March.
Mellow afternoon sunlight poured through stained glass windows, illuminating the startling changes she had made, from her long, stylishly cut, midnight-dark hair to the tips of her outrageously sexy pink high heels. Her bridesmaid’s dress, a sophisticated confection of pink lace and silk that he privately thought was just a little too revealing, clung to lush, gentle curves and a mouthwateringly tiny waist.
As the bride reached the altar, Elena’s gaze rested briefly on Kyle who was Gabriel’s groomsman, then locked with his. With grim satisfaction, he noted that she hadn’t realized he had changed roles with Kyle and taken over as Gabriel’s best man. If she had, he was certain she would have very quickly and efficiently organized someone else to take her place as maid of honor.
Dragging her gaze free, Elena briskly took charge of the flower girl, Gabriel and Gemma’s daughter Sanchia, who had just finished tossing rose petals. Nick’s brows jerked together as he took stock of some of the changes he had barely had time to register at the prewedding dinner the previous evening. For the first time he noticed a tiny, discreet sparkle to one side of Elena’s delicate nose. A piercing.
Every muscle in his body tightened at the small, exotic touch. His elusive ex-lover had lost weight, cut her hair and ditched the dull, shapeless clothing she had worn like a uniform. In the space of a few weeks, Elena had morphed from softly curved, bespectacled and repressively buttoned-down, into an exotically hot and sensuous swan.
Jaw clamped, Nick transferred his attention to the bride, Gemma O’Neill, as she stood beside his brother.
As the ceremony proceeded, Elena kept her attention fixed on the priest. Fascinated by her intention to utterly ignore him, Nick took the opportunity to study the newly sculpted contours of Elena’s cheekbones, her shell-like lobes decorated with pink pearls and tiny pink jewels.
The sexily ruffled haircut seemed to sum up the changes Elena had made: less, but a whole lot more.
As Nick handed the ring to Gabriel, Elena’s dark gaze clashed with his for a pulse-pounding moment. The starry, romantic softness he glimpsed died an instant death, replaced by the familiar professional blandness that made his jaw tighten.
The cool neutrality was distinctly at odds with the way Elena had used to look at him. It was light-years away from the ingenuous passion that had burned him from the inside out when they had made love.
A delicate, sophisticated perfume wafted around him. The tantalizing scent, like Elena’s designer wardrobe, her new, sleek body shape and the ultramodern haircut—all clearly the product of a ruthless makeover artist—set him even more sensually on edge.
Gabriel turned to take the hand of the woman he had pledged to marry.
A flash of Elena’s pink dress, as she bent down to whisper something to Sanchia, drew Nick’s gaze, along with another tempting flash of cleavage.
With a brisk elegance that underlined the fact that the old Elena was long gone, she repositioned Sanchia next to Gemma. Nick clamped down on his impatience as the ceremony proceeded at a snail’s pace.
Elena had been avoiding him for the past twenty-four hours, ever since she had arrived in Dolphin Bay. The one time he had managed to get her alone—last night to discuss meeting at the beach villa—she had successfully stonewalled him. Now his temper was on a slow burn. Whether she liked it or not, they would conclude their business this weekend.
Distantly, he registered that Gabriel was kissing his new bride. With grim patience, Nick waited out the signing of the register in the small, adjacent vestry.
As Gabriel swung his small daughter up into his arms, Elena’s gaze, unexpectedly misty and soft, connected with his again, long enough for him to register two salient facts. The contact lenses with which she had replaced her trademark glasses were not the regular, transparent type. They were a dark chocolate brown that completely obliterated the usual, cheerful golden brown of her irises.
More importantly, despite her cool control and her efforts to pretend that he didn’t exist, he was aware in that moment that for Elena, he very palpably did exist.
Every muscle in his body tightened at the knowledge that despite her refusals to meet with him, despite the fact that every time they did meet they ended up arguing, Elena still wanted him.
With an effort of will, Nick kept his expression neutral as he signed as a witness to the ceremony. In a few minutes he would walk down the aisle with Elena on his arm. It was the window of opportunity he had planned for when he had arranged to change places with Kyle.
Negotiation was not his best talent; that was Gabriel’s forte. Nick was more suited to the blunt, laconic cadences of construction sites. A world of black and white, where “yes” meant yes and “no” meant no and not some murky, frustrating shade in between.
As the music swelled and Elena looped her arm through his, the issue of retrieving an heirloom ring and unraveling the mystery of his father’s link with Elena’s aunt faded.
With Elena’s delicately enticing perfume filling his nostrils again, Nick acknowledged that the only “yes” he really wanted from Elena was the one she had given him six years ago.
* * *
Elena steeled herself against the tiny electrical charge that coursed through her as she settled her palm lightly on Nick’s arm.