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A huge wrap-around sofa covered in royal blue velvet faced the large entertainment unit which contained a television, video and sound system. There was a large grey granite-topped bar in one corner which doubled as a kitchenette. Besides the small built-in fridge, there was a long counter against the wall behind, carrying all sorts of cooking equipment from a microwave to a kettle and a toaster. Spacious under-counter cupboards carried a supply of drinks, glasses. crockery, cutlery, coffee, tea, biscuits and baby foods.
Nick assumed there was another. larger kitchen downstairs—he hadn’t looked around down there properly yet. But for now this one sufficed his and Rory’s needs. If Linda didn’t come home by dinner time he might have to go down and see what other food supplies were in stock. But he figured she would be home long before then since she was planning a dinner party tonight.
Another glance at his watch showed three-thirty. Time for that shower, he thought, and headed for the bathroom.
Nick had a tendency to sing in the shower. Opera. mostly. Or one of those old Mario Lanza numbers the good sisters had fed him on during his growing-up years. Especially the religious ones.
He had a good tenor voice too, and launched into one of his favourites while he soaped and shampooed. He entirely forgot about Rory, and was still in full voice when he snapped off the water and heard the baby’s cries.
The next line of his song was immediately replaced by an expletive which would have made both Sister Augustine and Mario Lanza blush. Nick swiftly wrung out his dripping hair, wrapped a navy blue bath sheet around his hips and strode from the steam-filled room.
‘Keep your nappy on!’ he called out as he reached for the doorknob to Rory’s room. Once again, Rory shut up the second Nick appeared in the doorway.
Nick halted, his big hands finding his hips. His mock glare was accompanied by glittering black eyes. ‘I have a feeling you need some discipline, young man. I’ve a good mind to leave you there while I go and get dressed.’
When Rory gave him one of those glorious grins of his, Nick relented. ‘You’re worse than even the most beautiful woman,’ he said, shaking his head as he came forward to scoop the child up again. ‘I just can’t say no to you. Come on; you can watch me make myself respectable for your mother.’
Once settled on Nick’s hip, Rory immediately picked up a wet lock of Nick’s hair and stuffed it in his mouth, sucking on it as if he were dying of thirst.
‘Oh, so it’s a drink you’d be wantin’, is it?’ Nick teased in an Irish accent as he made his way from the room. ‘It wasn’t more of me fine singin’?’
He came through the doorway and was about to turn right to go down to the family room when something at the top of the stairs caught his eye.
His head jerked round to encounter a woman with eyes like steel daggers bearing down on him with a very heavy-looking brass lamp base in both her hands, raised up over her right shoulder like a fairway wood about to claim a divot or two. In Nick’s head.
‘Hey!’ Nick shouted, and jumped back out of her way.
She stopped bearing down, but not the glaring. And that lamp remained threateningly raised. ‘You’d better have a damned good explanation of what you’re doing with my baby,’ she warned in gravelly tones. ‘Or you’re dead meat, mister!’
Nick almost smiled. The mother tigress was coming to the defence of her cub, regardless of the odds. Didn’t she know she wouldn’t have stood a chance against him if he really had been a bad man intent on murder and mayhem? He was six feet four inches tall, weighed over one hundred kilos and had black belts in karate and judo. She looked about five-four and could weigh no more than fifty kilos.
But, of course, she didn’t know that, he realised wryly. Neither did she care. She would fight to the death for her child.
Nick warmed to her immediately. No surprise, really. He’d known from the first moment he’d spoken to her on the phone that he’d like Dave’s spirited sister.
‘I’m waiting,’ she snarled.
Nick suppressed another smile of admiration. ‘I’m Nick,’ he said. ‘You know. Dave’s friend who came to mow your lawn?’
Her fierce expression didn’t relax for a second. ‘In that case, what are you doing inside, half-naked and holding my baby?’ she demanded to know. ‘And where the hell is Madge?’
‘Madge fell down the stairs. She might have broken her hip. She’s in hospital.’
‘Oh, no!’ Her fierce face finally fell. The lamp base was lowered and she just stood there, looking shattered. Her head drooped, and she began shaking it from side to side.
It gave Nick the opportunity to look her over without appearing to be rudely staring.
She would be a really striking woman if she ever took some trouble with her appearance. As it was, she was wearing no make-up and her honey-brown hair was scraped back from her face and twisted into a knot so tight that not a single hair would dare to escape. But nothing could disguise the fine features in her face.
Her figure was another matter. Although obviously slim, it was impossible to gauge her shape, hidden as it was in severely tailored navy trousers, a plain white shirt and an oversized navy linen jacket.
If she’d been trying for a feminist look, then she’d almost succeeded. Nick itched to take her hair down and get those hideous trousers off her.
Suddenly, her quite lovely blue eyes snapped up to glower at him once more. ‘And just when did this all happen?’ she demanded to know.
Nick shrugged. Rory had stopped sucking his hair and was looking at his mother, but he was making no indication that he wanted to go to her. He seemed very happy where he was.
‘A little over an hour ago. After I’d finished doing the lawn, Rory here was crying his head off. When he didn’t stop, I came inside to check and found Madge at the bottom of the stairs. She’d fainted after her fall. But she came round.’
‘Why didn’t you call me at the office?’ Linda continued accusingly. ‘Madge knows my number.’
‘I tried. It was engaged. In fact, I’ve tried on and off ever since but it’s always engaged.’
‘Sue!’ Linda spat, practically stamping her foot at the same time. ‘She thinks that phone’s her own personal social line. I’ll have something to say to her when I get in to work on Monday.’
She glared at him again with furious blue eyes. Nick wasn’t sure if they were for him or the hapless Sue. ‘That doesn’t explain why you’ve got no clothes on,’ she persisted, all the while looking him up and down with decided disapproval.
Nick was beginning to feel a tad irritated, despite understanding her reaction. ‘I was taking a shower,’ he explained in level tones. ‘And I was going to shave.’
She stared at the two-day growth on his chin, then at his hair, which, uncombed and wet, probably looked as wild as the rest of him.
‘Is that your motorbike in the front yard?’ she quizzed.
‘Yeah. Why?’
‘And you’re a friend of Dave’s?’ she asked sceptically.
He could see the way her mind was working, and didn’t like it one bit. His earlier admiration for her took a nosedive. Nothing turned Nick off a woman quicker than her looking down her nose at him.
‘Why shouldn’t I be?’ he countered icily. ‘You got something against blokes who ride bikes? Yeah, I see you have. Pity. Don’t worry, honey, it’s not contagious. Here. Take your kid. Thank God he’s still at that age where his parent’s prejudices don’t affect his judgement.’
Nick took an angry step towards her, holding Rory out at arm’s length. Rory immediately started to cry. His mother reached to take him when something happened which stopped the two grown-ups in midstream.
The navy towel which had been roughly slung around Nick’s hips slipped its moorings and slithered to the grey carpet, leaving him standing there in all his natural glory.
CHAPTER FOUR
NICK froze, embarrassment consuming him. He had an awful feeling it would also shortly consume his natural glory. Linda’s wide-eyed staring at his private parts unnerved him totally, especially when he realised they weren’t shrinking. Just the opposite, in fact.
If only she would stop looking at him like that!
But she didn’t. She kept on looking and he kept on growing. Swiftly. Startlingly.
Nick clenched his teeth down hard in his jaw, shoved Rory into his mother’s arms, then bent to sweep the towel up from the carpet. Rewrapping his loins proved somewhat difficult when he found that his hands were shaking.
Anger combined with frustration at this totally alien clumsiness. What in God’s name was the matter with him? Fancy letting some female reduce him to this!
‘If you’ve finished gawking,’ he snapped, ‘I’ll go get dressed and be on my way.’
Scowling, he whirled round and stalked back down the hallway and into the bathroom, banging the door behind him. A shave was now off the agenda. He was simply not capable of holding a razor to his throat. He was too angry, both with himself and with her.
‘Mug,’ he muttered as he began dragging on his clothes. ‘Serves you right for playing good Samaritan in the wrong town. City girls don’t know how to be grateful, only suspicious. And they have no sense of decorum!’
His anger had cooled somewhat by the time he was fully dressed; the sight of his reflection in the vanity mirror brought a rueful smile to his face. If Madam Linda thought he looked dangerous semi-naked, then wait till she got a load of him like this!
His clean top was black and body-hugging as opposed to his earlier simple white T-shirt. It looked wicked above his tight black jeans, the sleeveless style emphasising the bulging muscles in his arms.
Normally, Nick despised people who judged by appearances, but even he might not have invited the character staring at him in the mirror home for dinner. All that was missing were some tattoos to complete the picture of primitive masculine aggressiveness. An earring or two would not have gone astray as well. Even without those added touches, he could appreciate that he was still far removed from the sort of man a classy woman like Linda would normally associate with.
Not really wanting to scare her half to death, he combed his hair neatly back from his face then dragged his leather jacket on to cover his possibly menacing body. Though, damn it all, she hadn’t found a certain part of it menacing a minute or two ago. She’d ogled him like a woman starved of sex.
Which she probably was, came the interesting and provocative realisation. A woman living alone with her baby... Her long-time lover dead... Nothing sexual in her life nowadays but memories.
Hard to live on memories, Nick knew. Eventually, no matter how much you told yourself you would never look at another member of the opposite sex—let alone want them—the day invariably dawned when you did.
Linda was a young woman. Young and healthy and presumably heterosexual. Had she looked at him just now and wanted him?
Nick decided he didn’t want to know. Dave would kill him if he touched his precious sister. Hoisting his rucksack over his shoulder, he swung round and reached for the doorknob.
Linda paced the family room, trying to quieten the purple-faced Rory—not to mention her own whirling thoughts. Her face was still flaming from those ghastly moments when she hadn’t been able to drag her eyes away from Nick’s naked body, her gaze remaining riveted to his blatantly male appendages which had nowhere to hide and which had responded shamelessly to her ogling.
No, not shamelessly. Nick had obviously been annoyed and embarrassed by his involuntary arousal, whereas she was the one who’d been shameless. She’d been fascinated then excited by the sheer speed and power of his erection. He’d looked like an animal, standing there stark naked with his legs apart. A beautiful, big male animal.
The female animal in her had been stirred, then challenged by the sight of his obviously unwilling desire. And for a split second she’d wanted him as she’d wanted no other man—not even Gordon. Her mind had burned with the image of her going up to him and touching him; of her doing more than just touching ; of her leading him right to the edge till he lost all control and took her where they were, right there in the hallway.
Rory had somehow disappeared from the scene in her head and she’d imagined Nick dragging her back up and stripping her roughly before pinning her naked and panting up against the wall. He’d imprisoned her hands above her head and prised her legs apart with his before manoeuvring himself into her by then frantic flesh.
He’d moved powerfully within her with deep, voluptuous thrusts, lifting her up onto her toes and propelling her into a previously unknown world where reality receded and she was nothing but a body, searching blindly for release.
Love had nothing to do with her feelings. It wasn’t tenderness she sought but passion. And pleasure. Oh, yes, pleasure; a wild, selfish, sweet pleasure which would blot out everything, everything but the feel and smell of him taking her up against a hard, cold wall and making her moan as she had never moaned before.
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