JUST ONE MORE NIGHT (14 page)

Although nothing was settled, she reminded herself. Nick was clearly still adjusting; they would be taking this one step at a time.

A familiar humming sound caught her attention. Nick’s phone was vibrating on the masculine work desk in the alcove. Moving quickly, she snatched up the phone and thumbed the Off button. The absolute last thing she wanted now was for Nick to wake up and shift straight into work mode, ending their interlude.

Holding her breath for long seconds, Elena listened hard, but the only sound she could hear was Nick’s slow, regular breathing, indicating that he was still deeply asleep.

She placed the phone carefully down beside a file, and froze when she saw her name on a sheet of paper that had slipped partway out of the folder.

Flipping the cover sheet open, she found a note from Constantine Atraeus, her boss, indicating that he was sending Nick materials he had requested.

The materials turned out to be her proposal for the seminar, the quiz she had devised
and a copy of the answer sheet.

Knees weak, Elena sat down in the swivel chair pulled up at the desk and spread the sheets out.

The tension that had started at Francesca and Sophie’s intrusive questioning, followed by Nick’s evasive behavior, coalesced into knowledge.

At some point, way before she had ever gotten to Dolphin Bay to run the seminar, Nick had filled out the quiz, marking every question with the correct answer.

The mystery behind Nick’s high score was solved.

He had cheated.

Fingers shaking with a fine tremor, she double-checked the folder in case she had missed something.

Such as a real, fumbled effort at the quiz. Anything that might indicate that Nick Messena had an actual beating heart and not an agenda that was as cold in the bedroom as it was in the boardroom.

There was one final piece of correspondence. It was a memo to the manager of the Dolphin Bay Resort, granting him a week’s leave covering the period of the seminar.

Clearing the way for seduction, because Nick had known how weak her defenses had been, that given long enough, she wouldn’t be able to resist him.

Setting the letter down, Elena walked back to the kitchen, replaced her glass on the counter and looked blindly out onto the patio with its lengthening shadows.

Her head was pounding and her chest was tight. Why had Nick done such a thing? And why with
her,
out of all the women he could choose?

In her heart of hearts she wanted it to be because, secretly, he had always been falling for her, that he was just as much a victim of the intense, magical chemistry that had held her in thrall as she had been.

But the weight of evidence didn’t add up to that conclusion. Three short flings with a man who was known for his tendency to go through women. A seminar Nick had maneuvered his way into, with her accommodation placed conveniently next door to his. The champagne and the carefully staged room, the scene set for seduction.

The fact that he had cheated on the quiz, as hurtful as that had been, was only the clincher.

A bubble of misery built in her chest. She had wondered what the invisible, unbreachable barrier was with Nick. Now she knew. It was his own well-established protection against intimacy.

The twins busting in now made perfect sense. They were his sisters; they knew exactly how he operated. They had been trying to protect her, trying to tell her that despite Nick’s pursuit of her, he didn’t intend to allow a relationship to grow. All he had wanted was the thrill of the chase, with the prize of a few passionate hours in bed.

She had stupidly ignored the twins and her own instincts, choosing to cling to a fantasy that she wanted, but which had no substance. In so doing, she had allowed Nick to succeed at the one thing she had vowed she wouldn’t allow.

He had made her fall in love with him all over again.

Fifteen

N
ick came out of sleep fast, drawn by the utter silence that seemed to hang over the apartment like a shroud and the taut sense that he had slept too long.

Instantly alert, he rolled out of the empty bed. The first thing he noticed as he pulled on his trousers was that Elena’s suitcase, which he had set down beside the dresser, was gone.

Stomach tight, he finished dressing, grabbed a fresh jacket from the wardrobe and found the Jeep keys. As he strode through the apartment he automatically took stock. Every trace that Elena had ever been there was gone.

The knowledge that something had gone badly wrong was confirmed by a copy of the quiz, and the incriminating answer sheet, placed side by side on a coffee table.

Too late to wish he’d told Elena what he’d done, or that he’d shoved the file in a drawer out of sight until he’d had the chance to come clean. But yesterday, after the showdown with the twins and Elena’s quiet statement that she was in love with him, he had been stunningly aware that it was decision time.

Either he committed to Elena or he lost her. But knowing that he should commit—more, that Elena needed him to commit—didn’t make it any easier to step over an invisible line he had carefully avoided for years.

Grabbing his phone, he stepped out of the apartment and took the elevator to the lobby. He speed-dialed Elena’s number. He didn’t expect her to pick up, and he was right.

When the elevator doors opened, he strode out of the building and was just in time to see a taxi pull away from the curb and disappear into traffic. He controlled the impulse to follow her in the Jeep.

He already knew her destination. Elena was smart and highly organized, and as a former Atraeus PA she had a lot of contacts in the travel industry. She would have booked a flight out of Auckland. He could try and stop her, but he wouldn’t succeed. She would be back in Sydney within hours.

Stomach coiling in panic he took the elevator back to his apartment and threw on clean clothes. Minutes later, he was in traffic. It was rush hour and took an agonizing hour to do the normal thirty-minute drive to the airport.

During that time he made a number of calls, but every time he came close to making a breakthrough and discovering what flight Elena had booked, he was stymied. Elena, it seemed, had invoked the Atraeus name and chartered a flight. Now, apparently, there was a code of silence.

He found himself considering the caliber of the woman who had started out as a PA, then turned herself into one of the Atraeus Group’s leading executives. It was just one more facet of Elena’s quiet determination to succeed.

Now she was leaving with the kind of quiet, unshakable efficiency that told him she wouldn’t be back, and he couldn’t blame her

He had made a mistake. It was the same mistake he had made twice before with Elena. He had been irresistibly attracted but had failed to be honest with her about where he was in the relationship stakes.

He had changed. The problem was that the process of change had been agonizingly slow and the urge to protect himself had become so ingrained that he’d closed down even when he’d wanted to open up.

The quiz had been a case in point. Instead of being up front with Elena,
exposing himself to vulnerability,
he had used his knowledge of the quiz to leverage the intimacy he wanted without exposing any emotions.

Now that very protective behavior had backfired, ensuring that he would lose the one woman he desperately needed in his life.

He picked up his phone and stabbed the redial. When Elena once again refused to pick up, he tossed the phone on the passenger-side seat and drove.

* * *

Nick stepped off the evening flight from Auckland to Sydney, carrying his briefcase.

He hadn’t brought luggage with him because he didn’t need to. He was in Sydney often enough that he owned a waterfront apartment just minutes from the city center.

Twenty minutes later, he paid the taxi fare and walked into his apartment. A quick call to the private detective he had hired earlier on in the day and he had the information he needed.

The tactic was ruthless but, as it turned out, necessary.

Elena had arrived on her flight and gone straight to her apartment. She had stayed in her apartment all afternoon, the curtains drawn. Twenty minutes ago, she had taken a taxi to an expensive restaurant where she was having dinner with Corrado.

Nick’s stomach hollowed out at the report. Corrado’s name was like a death knell.

He grabbed his car keys and strode to the front door. The mirrored glass on one wall threw his reflection back at him. His hair was ruffled, as if he’d run his fingers through it repeatedly, which he had. His jaw was covered with a dark five-o’clock shadow because he hadn’t stopped to shave, and somehow he had made the mistake of pulling on a mauve T-shirt with his suit jacket. The T-shirt was great for the beach; it looked a little alternative for downtown Sydney after five.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, he cruised past the restaurant, the black Ferrari almost veering into oncoming traffic as he saw Elena and Corrado occupying a table by the window overlooking the street.

Jaw clenching at the blaring horns, he searched for a parking space and couldn’t find one. Eventually he found a spot in an adjoining street and walked back in the direction of the restaurant.

He was just in time to see a troop of violinists stationing themselves around Elena and Corrado and a waiter arriving with a silver bucket of champagne.

His heart slammed in his chest. Corrado was proposing.

Something inside him snapped. He was pretty sure it was his heart. In that moment he knew with utter clarity that he loved Elena. He had loved her for years. There was no other explanation for his inability to forget her and move on.

Too late to wish that he could have found the courage to tell Elena that.

His family had termed his behavior a dysfunction caused by the supposed betrayal of his father, but they were wrong.

The situation with his father had definitely skewed things for Nick. He had walked away from a lot of emotions he wanted no part of, but that still hadn’t stopped him falling for Elena.

He had been hurt, but his dysfunction hadn’t been his inability to fall in love, just his objection to
being
in love.

Dazed at the discovery that he had found the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with
six years ago
and had somehow missed that fact, Nick walked up to the table and curtly asked the violinists to leave.

The music sawed to a stop as Elena shot to her feet, knocking over the flute that had just been filled with champagne. “What are you doing here?”

“Following you. I hired a private detective.”

Elena blinked, her eyes oddly bright, her cheeks pale. “Why would you do that?”

“Because there’s something I need to tell you—”

“Messena. I thought I recognized you.” Corrado pushed to his feet, an annoyed expression on his face.

Doggedly, Nick ignored him, keeping his gaze on Elena. “We didn’t get to talk, either last night or this morning, and we needed to.”

He didn’t need to shoot a look at Corrado to know that he had heard and understood that they had clearly spent the night together. It wasn’t fair or ethical, but he was fighting for his life here.

Reaching into his jacket pocket, Nick pulled out the original copy of the quiz he had attempted without the answers and a letter he had written on the flight from Sydney, and handed both to Elena.

The quiz contained the raw, unadulterated truth about how bad he was at conducting a relationship. The letter contained the words he had never given her.

He didn’t know if they would be enough.

* * *

Elena took the crumpled copy of the quiz and the letter.

Breath hitched in her throat, she set the letter on the table and examined the quiz first.

She knew the answers by heart. A quick scan of the boxes Nick had marked gave him a score that was terminally low. It was the test she had expected from him, reflecting his blunt practicality and pressurized work schedule, the ruthless streak that had seen him forge a billion-dollar construction business in the space of a few years.

It was also, she realized, a chronicled list of the non–politically correct traits that attracted her profoundly. Alpha male traits that could be both exciting and annoying, and which Corrado, despite looking the part, didn’t have. “You cheated.”

The hurt of finding the sheet seared through her again. “I thought you used it to get me into bed.”

A woman from a neighboring table made an outraged sound. Elena ignored it, meeting Nick’s gaze squarely.

“I did cheat,” he said flatly. “I knew I wouldn’t stand a chance with you, otherwise. Things were not exactly going smoothly and the opportunity was there to get you into bed so we could have the time together we needed. I took it.”

Elena held her breath. “Why did you want time together, exactly?”

There was a small vibrating silence. “The same reason I arranged to be in Dolphin Bay during your seminar. I wanted what we should have had all along—a relationship.”

Fingers shaking just a little, she set the quiz down and picked up the letter. Written on thick blue parchment, it looked old-fashioned but was definitely new and addressed to her.

Holding her breath, she carefully opened it and took the single sheet out. The writing was black and bold, the wording straightforward and very beautiful.

The flickering candles on the table shimmered, courtesy of the dampness in her eyes. Her throat closed up. It was a love letter.

Her fingers tightened on the page. Absurdly, she was shaking inside. She noticed that at some point Robert had left. It seemed oddly symptomatic of their short relationship that she hadn’t noticed. “What took you so long?”

“Fear and stupidity,” Nick said bluntly. “I’ve loved you for years.”

He took her hand and went down on one knee. There was a burst of applause; the violins started again.

Nick reached into his pocket again and drew out a small box from a well-known and extremely expensive jeweler. Elena’s heart pounded in her chest, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. After the black despair of the flight to Sydney, the situation was...unreal.

Nick extracted a ring, a gorgeous pale pink diamond solitaire that glittered and dazzled beneath the lights. “Elena Lyon, will you be my love and my wife?”

The words on the single page of romantic prose Nick had written, and which were now engraved on her heart, gave her the confidence she needed to hold out her left hand. “I will,” she said shakily. “Just so long as you promise to never let me go.”

“With all my heart.” Nick slid the ring onto the third finger of her left hand; the fit was perfect. “From this day forward and forever.”

He rose to his feet and pulled her into his arms, whispering, “Babe, I’m sorry I had to put you through this. If I could take it all back and start again, I would.”

“It doesn’t matter.” And suddenly it didn’t. She had been hurt—they had both been hurt—but the softness she loved was in his eyes, and suddenly loving Nick was no risk at all.