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For the first time he examined the fact that he hadn’t been able to let anyone close since his father had died.
Intellectually, he knew what his real problem was, or had been. He had known it the moment he saw the love letters and birth certificate hidden in Katherine Lyon’s photo album.
Because he and his father had been so close, no matter how hard he’d tried he hadn’t been able to disconnect and move on. He’d stayed locked in a stubborn mind-set of grief and denial. The last thing he had wanted was to immerse himself in another relationship.
His mother and his sisters had probed and poked at his inability to “open up.” The words dysfunction and avoidance had figured largely in those conversations.
Nick had stepped around the whole issue. Maybe it was a male thing, but he figured that when he felt like becoming involved in a relationship, he would.
But something had changed in him in the instant he had discovered the possibility that Stefano Messena hadn’t cheated on or betrayed anyone.
Emotion had grabbed at his stomach, his chest, powerful enough that for long seconds he hadn’t been able to breathe.
His fingers tightened on the birth certificate.
Grimly he allowed himself to remember that night. The time spent waiting for the ambulance, even though he’d known it had been too late. The hurt and anger that had gripped him at the way his father had died.
He knew now that his father had just been unlucky. The heavy rain had made the road slippery. He’d probably been driving so late because he wanted to get home.
Home to the wife and family he loved.
He slipped the birth certificate and the photograph back into the briefcase. The moment felt oddly symbolic.
Nick didn’t personally care about the ring, which, in any case, rightfully belonged to Michael Ambrosi. He had what he wanted: he had his father back.
When they landed in Sydney the press was waiting in the arrivals lounge.
Nick groaned and put on his game face.
Kyle grinned. “Want me to take point?”
“Just promise not to speak.”
“Name, rank and serial number only. Scout’s honor.”
“That would have meant more about an hour ago on the flight.”
The questions, all centered on Elena, were predictable. Nick’s reactions were not.
Instead of staying doggedly neutral, cold anger gripped him every time a journalist directed another intrusive or smutty question at him.
By the time he reached the taxi rank he was close to decking a couple of the tabloid hacks.
When they reached the Atraeus offices thirty minutes later, his normally nonexistent temper had cooled. But his lack of control pointed up a change in himself he hadn’t expected.
Usually when he walked away from a liaison he felt detached, his focus firmly on his next work project.
Right at that moment, he was having trouble concentrating on anything but Elena.
What she was doing and how she was feeling about him was coming close to obsessing him.
The thought that she might actually get a tattoo or, worse, go back to the mysterious Robert, suddenly seemed a far more riveting issue than the resort package that would take his business portfolio to a new level.
As they stepped into an elevator, Nick took out his cell and put through a call to his PA, instigating a security check on Corrado. And, more importantly, requesting a full rundown on all of Corrado’s business interests and a photo.
He hung up as the elevator doors opened up on the floor occupied by the Atraeus offices.
Constantine Atraeus, who was dealing with the negotiation himself, walked out and shook hands.
Constantine was both family and a friend. In his early thirties, he was incredibly wealthy, with a reputation for getting what he wanted. Although the powerful business persona was offset by a gorgeous, fascinatingly opinionated wife, Sienna, and now a cute young daughter.
Minutes later, with the deal on the table, Nick should have been over the moon. Instead, he found it difficult to focus. Kyle kept sending him questioning glances because it was taking him so long to read the paperwork.
A slim brunette with silky dark hair strolled into the room. Constantine’s new legal brief. Apparently the last one had bitten the dust because he had tried to put a prenup on Sienna Atraeus. Sienna had seen him to the door, personally.
Nick forced himself to finish the clause he was reading, even though he knew he was going to have to go over it again because he hadn’t understood a word.
The problem, he realized, was the legal brief. For a searing moment he had thought she was Elena, even though a second glance confirmed that she didn’t look like Elena at all.
His gaze narrowed as he tracked her departure. His pulse was racing, his heart pounding as his inability to concentrate became clear.
He wanted Elena.
He wanted her back, in his arms and in his bed, which was a problem given that he had walked out on her that morning for the second time. If she ever spoke to him again, that in itself would be a miracle.
It had been difficult enough getting her to trust him the last time. The process had been slow and laborious. From the first phone call, it had taken weeks.
She had stood him up, refused his calls and done everything in her power to avoid him. He had managed to get close to her only through the good luck that his brother had gotten married to Elena’s best friend.
If he wanted Elena back, he was going to have to engineer a situation that would give him the time he needed to convince her to give him another chance.
Two of his Atraeus cousins had employed kidnapping as a method of securing that quality time, although Nick didn’t seriously think a kidnap situation would repair the rift with Elena. Both Constantine and Lucas had had long-standing relationships with their chosen brides, with the added bonus that love had been a powerful factor in each relationship.
It was a factor Nick could not rely on. He was certain that after a second one-night stand, Elena would no longer view him as a relationship prospect.
For a split second disorientation gripped him. He could kick himself for the mistake he’d made. He’d had Elena back in his arms, and then let her go.
He had further complicated the situation by leaving the field clear for Corrado.
If he wanted Elena back he was going to have to move fast. Normal dating strategies wouldn’t work; he was going to have to use the kind of logic he employed with business strategies.
With this new deal they would have a vital link in common: the Atraeus Group. He wouldn’t exactly be her boss, but it would bring her into his orbit.
He’d had two chances with Elena and had blown them both.
He didn’t know if he could create a third, but he had an edge he could exploit.
Try as she might, Elena couldn’t hide the fact that she couldn’t resist him.
Nine
Master of Seduction Meets His Match.
Elena stared in horror at the tabloid coverage of the wedding. She hadn’t read many of the words; it was the image of the bride and groom that riveted her attention.
Someone had made a terrible mistake. A photo of her and Nick on the steps had been used instead of one of Gemma and Gabriel. The black-and-white print made her bridesmaid’s dress look pale enough to be a bridal gown, and Nick looked the part with his morning suit. The shower of confetti and rice added the final touch.
There was nothing either scandalous or libelous about the brief article. If the photograph had been the correct one, it would have been perfectly nice, if boring, coverage of a high-end society wedding.
Acute embarrassment gripped her as she imagined the moment Nick saw the article and the photo, which portrayed the exact opposite of what he had wanted.
As wonderful as the night had been, something had gone wrong. They had been finished the moment Nick had walked out of the bedroom without a backward look.
She hadn’t tried to cling to him, but that didn’t alter the fact that watching Nick walk away a second time had hurt.
Or that in a single night she had been willing to sacrifice almost every part of her life to be with him, if only he had truly wanted her.
Elena snapped the paper closed. She could not be a victim again. She had changed her external appearance and now she needed to work hard at changing her actual life.
First up, she would take the new corporate position Constantine Atraeus had suggested she consider. With her executive PA skills, the psychology papers she had done at university and her recent experience of health and beauty spas, she was uniquely suited to reinvigorate the Atraeus spas.
She would be an executive, which suited her.
She was tired of catering to the whims of the megawealthy Atraeus bosses, who had appreciated her skills but who never really noticed her as a person.
A hum of excited possibility gave the future a rosy glow. She would probably need her own personal assistant, although that was a leap.
Two brief calls later, and her life was officially transformed.
Zane wasn’t happy, since he had just gotten used to her taking care of every possible detail of his working day and travel arrangements. However, he was pragmatic. Since Elena had lost weight, his fiancée, Lilah, hadn’t been entirely happy with her as a PA, much as she liked Elena. It was nothing personal, it was just that Lilah had a protective streak when it came to Zane.
“She might relax more after the wedding,” Zane explained.
Elena hung up, a little dazed. She would never have believed it, but apparently she was now too pretty to be a PA.
She walked across to her hotel mirror and stared at her reflection. She looked pale and washed-out, but if Zane Atraeus said she was too pretty, then she was too pretty.
Nick had said she was beautiful.
She could feel herself melting inside at the memory of the way he had said those words, the deep timbre of his voice.
Jaw firming, she banished a memory that could only be termed needy and self-destructive.
Instead of going weak at the knees at any little hint of male appreciation from Nick, she needed to form an action plan. She needed rules.
Rule number one had to be: Do not get sucked back into Nick Messena’s bed.
Rule number two was a repeat of the first.
She would make the rest up as she went along.
Critically, she studied the suit she was wearing. It was pink. She was over pink. The suit was also too feminine, too pretty.
She needed to edit her wardrobe and get rid of the ruffles and lace, anything that might possibly hint that she had once been a pushover.
From now on, red was going to be her favorite color.
She would also make a note to encourage Robert a little more. If she was in a proper relationship, it stood to reason that she would not be so vulnerable to a wolf like Nick Messena.
One month later, Elena opened her eyes as pads soaked in some delicately perfumed, astringent solution were removed from her now-refreshed eyes.
Yasmin, the head beauty therapist at the Atraeus Spa she had spent the past three weeks overhauling, smiled at her. “You can sit up now, and I’ll start your nails. Can’t have you looking anything less than perfectly groomed for your date. What was his name again?”
“Robert.”
There was a small, polite silence. “Sounds like a ball of fire.”
“He’s steady and reliable. He’s an accountant.”
Yasmin wrinkled her pretty nose. “I’ve never dated one of those.”
Elena reflected on the string of very pleasant dates she’d had with Robert. “He has a nice sense of humor.”
Yasmin gave her a soothing smile as she selected a bottle of orchid-red nail polish and held it up. “That’s important.”
Elena nodded her approval of a color that normally she wouldn’t have gone near. But with her transformation, suddenly reds and scarlets seemed to be her colors. Idly, she wondered what Nick would think of the nail polish.
She frowned and banished the thought.
Yasmin picked up one of Elena’s hands and set to work on her cuticles. “So, tell me, what does Robert look like?”
Elena shifted her mind away from its stubborn propensity to dwell on Nick, and forced herself to concentrate on Robert. “He has green eyes and dark blond hair—”
Yasmin set one hand down and picked the other up. “Sounds a little like Nick Messena.”
Except that Robert didn’t have quite that piercing shade of green to his eyes, or the hot gold streaks in his hair. “Superficially.”
“Well, if he looks anything like Nick Messena, he’s got to be sexy.”
“I wouldn’t say Robert was sexy…exactly.”
“What then?”
Elena watched as Yasmin perfectly and precisely painted a nail. “He’s…nice. Clean-cut and extremely well-groomed. Medium build. He’s definitely not pushy or ruthless.”
Every attribute was the exact opposite of Nick’s casual, hunky, killer charm. She had checked weeks ago before she had made the decision for a first date with Robert. After all, what was the point of repeating her mistake? She wanted a man who would be good for her. A man who would commit.
Yasmin painted another nail. “He sounds close to perfect.”
“If there was a textbook definition for the perfect date, Robert would be it.”
“Talking about perfect men, I saw a photo of Nick Messena in a magazine the other day.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe how hot he is. That broken nose… It shouldn’t look good, but it is to die for.”
Elena’s jaw tightened against a fierce surge of jealousy. Swallowing, she tried to put a lid on the kind of primitive, unreasoning emotion that made her want to find the magazine Yasmin had been mooning over and confiscate it.
Jealousy meant she hadn’t quite gotten Messena out of her system. It meant she still cared. “Why is it that a broken nose makes a guy more attractive?”
“Because he fights. Perfect men look like they’re fresh out of the wrapper. Untried under pressure.” She grinned. “I must admit, I like a guy who doesn’t mind getting sweaty.”
Elena blinked at the sudden image of Nick years ago when she’d walked past a construction site and glimpsed him with his shirt off, covered in dust and grease smears, a hard hat on his head. “I think we should talk about something else.”
“Sure.” Yasmin sent her a patient you’re-the-client look.
The following day, after another pleasant date with Robert during which she had partnered him to one of his company dinners, Elena was packed and ready to fly back to New Zealand. She would spend a couple of days in Auckland, then travel on to Dolphin Bay where she was poised to add a new level of service to the resort business: a pamper weekend that included a relationship seminar she had designed herself.
Her stomach tightened a little as the taxi driver put her luggage into the trunk. Just because she was on her way back to Dolphin Bay didn’t mean she would run into Nick. Chances were, he wouldn’t even be in the country.
And even if he was, she had successfully avoided him for years. She could avoid him again.
He would get Elena back; it was just a matter of time.
Despite the fact that she had hung up on him again.
Broodingly, Nick placed his phone on the gleaming mahogany surface of his desk.
Not a good sign.
A familiar surge of frustration tightened every muscle in his body as he rose from his office chair, ignoring the cup of coffee steaming gently on his desk. Prowling to the French doors, he looked out over Dolphin Bay.
A heat haze hung on the horizon, melding sea and sky. Closer in, a small number of expensive yachts and launches floated on moorings, including his own yacht, Saraband.
Stepping out on the patio, he looked down over his new domain. He now owned a 51-percent share of the resort chain. It was a new turn in his business plan, but one that made sense with his close ties to the Atraeus family and their meshing interests.
Gripping the gleaming chrome rail, he surveyed the terraced levels of the resort complex. His eye was naturally drawn to gleaming turquoise pools below dotted with swimmers and fringed with cooling palms. Though it was the peaked roof of the villa in the adjacent curve of the bay that held his attention.
A hot flash of the night he’d spent with Elena blotted out the lavish tropical scene. The heat of the memory was followed by a replay of the hollow sensation that had gripped him when he had walked out of the villa just before sunrise.
His mother and his two sisters had read him the riot act about his dating regime a number of times.
He now no longer had the excuse of his father’s so-called betrayal. As one of his sisters had pointed out, he was out of excuses. It was time he confronted his own reluctance to surrender to a relationship.
A tap on his office door jerked him out of his reverie. The door popped opened. Jenna, his new ultra-efficient PA, waved the file he had requested and placed it on his desk.
As he stepped back into the office, she sent him one of the bright, professional smiles that had begun to put his teeth on edge.
She paused at the door, her expression open and confident. “A group of us are going into town for lunch. You’re welcome to join us if you’d like.”
Nick dragged his gaze from the lure of the file, which he’d been waiting on. Absently he turned down the offer. Jenna was five-ten, slim and curvy in all the right places. He would have to be stone-cold dead not to notice that she was gorgeous in a quirky, cute way that would obsess a lot of men.
Although not him.
He should find her attractive. A couple of months ago, he would have. The red-haired receptionist in the lobby was also pretty, and a couple of the waitresses in the resort restaurant were stunning. The place was overrun with beautiful, available women, if only he was interested.
Opening the file, he began to skim read. Zane had given him a heads-up that a pamper weekend the Dolphin Bay Resort was scheduled to run in the next few days was Elena’s pet project.
He was aware that she had quit her job as a PA and was now heading up a new department, developing the lucrative spa side of the resort business. The pamper weekend and seminar, designed for burned-out career women, was a pilot program she had designed and was entitled What Women Really Want: How to Get the Best Out of Your Life and Relationships.
His door opened again, but this time it was his twin sisters, Sophie and Francesca, who were home for a week’s holiday.
They were identical twins, both gorgeous and outgoing with dark hair and dark eyes. Sophie tended to be calm and deceptively slow-moving with a legendary obsession with shoes, while Francesca was more flamboyant with a definite edge to her character.
Sophie, sleek in white jeans and a white tank, smiled. “We’ve come to take you out to lunch.”
Francesca, looking exotic in a dress that was a rich shade of turquoise, made a beeline for his desk and perched on the edge, swinging one elegantly clad foot. “Mom’s worried about you.” She leaned over and filched his coffee. “Apparently you’ve gone cold turkey on dating for three months, and you’re not sailing, either. She thinks you’re sickening for something.”
With the ease of long practice, he retrieved his coffee. “You’ll have to try another tack. First of all, Mom isn’t likely to worry when I’m doing exactly what she wants by not dating. And I’ve gone without dating for longer periods than three months before.”
Sophie circled his desk and dropped into his chair. “When you were building your business and didn’t have time for the fairer sex.”
“News flash,” Nick growled. “I’m still building the business.”
Sophie picked up the file he’d dropped on the desk when he’d rescued his coffee and idly perused it. “But you have slowed down. Haven’t you got some hotshot executive shark cutting deals and intimidating all of your subcontractors?”
Nick controlled the urge to remove the file from Sophie’s grasp. “I’ve got a team of sharks. Ben Sabin is one of them.”
Sophie looked arrested. “But you knew who I was talking about.”
Nick frowned at Sophie’s response to Ben Sabin, who had a reputation for being as tough on relationships as he was troubleshooting his jobs. He made a mental note to have a word with Sabin and make sure that he understood that Nick’s sisters, both of them, were off-limits.
Francesca pushed off the edge of the desk, the movement impatient but graceful. “So what’s up? Mom thinks you’ve fallen for someone and it isn’t working out.”
Nick dragged at his tie, suddenly feeling harassed and on edge. He should be used to the inquisition. His family was large and gregarious. They poked and pried into each other’s lives, not because they were curious but because they genuinely cared.
As prying as his mother and his sisters could be, in an odd way he usually loved that they hassled him. He knew that if he ever got seriously messed with by a woman, they would be as territorial as a pack of wolves protecting their young.
Sophie frowned at the file. “Elena Lyon? Didn’t you used to date her?”
Francesca’s gaze sharpened. She strolled around the desk and peered at the file. “It was a blind date, only Nick wasn’t blind. He set it up.”
Nick frowned. “How do you know this stuff?”
Francesca looked surprised. “I used to study with Tara Smith who waited tables at the Dolphin Bay Coffee Shop. She overheard you telling Smale to find someone else to date and that if you ever heard he was trying to date Elena Lyon again, the next conversation would be outside, on the sidewalk.” Francesca smiled. “Pretty sure that’s verbatim. Tara’s now a qualified accountant—she doesn’t make mistakes.”
Nick felt like pounding his head on the solid mahogany door of his office, but that would be a sign of weakness—something he couldn’t afford around his sisters.
A small frown pleated Sophie’s brow. “Elena was Gemma’s bridesmaid, the girl in the picture when the tabloids mistakenly put the wrong photo in the paper.”
Francesca went oddly still. “That would be the series of photos that fooled everyone into thinking Nick had gotten married.”
There was a heavy silence as if a conclusion that only women could achieve had just been reached.
Sophie’s expression morphed back to calm and serene. Nick groaned inside. He didn’t know how they had connected the dots, but both of his twin sisters now knew exactly how interested he was in Elena Lyon.
Nick controlled another powerful urge to retrieve the file. If he did that, the inquisition would worsen.
Sophie turned another page, brow pleated, reminding him of nothing so much as a very glamorous, earnest female version of Sherlock Holmes. “Elena was the maid of honor at Gabriel’s wedding.” There was a significant pause. “Now she’s coming back to Dolphin Bay for a weekend.”
Francesca’s gaze snapped to his. “Did she plan this?”
Nick’s brows jerked together at the implication that Elena was scheming to trap him, when as of ten minutes ago she was still refusing to take his calls. “There is nothing planned about it. She doesn’t know I’m here.”
That was a mistake.
Nick pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to think, but something about the twin’s double act interfered with normal brain function.