JUST ONE MORE NIGHT (5 page)

The question, as if he had every right to expect an answer, made her world tilt again.

She had speculated before, but now she
knew.

Nick was jealous.

Five

E
lena dragged her gaze from Nick’s and looked out past the pool and the palms to the ocean. Anything to stop the crazy pull of attraction and the dangerous knowledge that Nick really did want her.

The fact that he had been attracted to her before she had lost weight—that he actually liked her simply for who she was—was bad enough. But his brooding temper, as if the one night they had shared had somehow given him rights, was an undertow she wasn’t sure she could resist.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but Robert doesn’t care for piercings.”

He definitely didn’t know about the one she had gotten in her navel, or the pretty jeweled studs she had bought to go with her new selection of bikinis.

“So you didn’t get the piercings for him.”

The under note of satisfaction in Nick’s voice, as if she had gotten the piercings for him, ruffled her even further. “I didn’t get the piercings for
anyone.
”

But even as she said the words, her heart plummeted. She had tried to convince herself that the piercings were just a part of the process of change, a signpost that declared that she wasn’t thirty—yet. But the stark reality was that she had gotten them because they were pretty and sexy and practically screamed that she was available. She had gotten them for Nick.

“You haven’t slept with Corrado.”

Annoyed at the way Nick had dismissed Robert, Elena stepped farther out onto the patio, neatly evading his gaze. “That’s none of your business. Robert’s a nice man.” He was safe and controllable, as different from Nick as a tame tabby from a prowling tiger. “He’s definitely not fixated on piercings.”

“Ouch. That puts me in my place.” Nick dragged at his tie. Strolling to the wrought iron railing that enclosed part of the patio, he pulled the tie off altogether, folded it and shoved it into his pocket.

Drawn to join him, even though she knew it was a mistake, Elena averted her gaze from the slice of brown flesh revealed by the buttons he had unfastened.

The balmy evening seemed to get hotter as she became aware that Nick was studying the studs in her ear and the tiny glimpse of the butterfly transfer. “I’m guessing from the pink earring that there’s a pink jewel in your navel?”

The accuracy of his guess made her stiffen. The old adage “give him an inch and he’ll take a mile” came back to haunt her. “You shouldn’t flirt with me.”

“Why not? It makes a change from arguing, and after tonight we may never see each other again.”

Elena froze. The attraction that shimmered through her, keeping her breathless and on edge, winked out. She stared at the strong line of his jaw, the sexy hollows of his cheekbones, aware that, somehow, she had been silly enough, vulnerable enough, to allow Nick to slide through her defenses. To start buying into the notion that just because he found her attractive it meant
he
had changed.

The day Nick Messena changed his stripes she would grow wings and fly.

Lifting her chin, she met his gaze squarely. “
If
you find the ring.” The instant the words were out, she wished she could recall them. They had sounded needy, as if she was looking for a way to hang on to him.

Nick glanced out over the pool, the sun turning the tawny streaks in his dark hair molten. “You make it sound like a quest. I’m not that romantic.”

No, his focus was always relentlessly practical, which was what made him so successful in business.

Swallowing a sudden ache in her throat, Elena did what she should have done in the first place: she turned on her heel and walked back to the reception. As she strolled, Nick’s presence behind her made her tense. By the time she reached her table he was close enough that he held her chair as she sat down.

He dropped into the seat beside her and poured ice water into her glass before filling his own.

Elena picked up the glass. The nice manners, which would have been soothing in another man, unsettled her even further. “If Aunt Katherine did receive the ring, then I guess all the gossip was true.”

Nick sat back in his seat. “I don’t want it to be true, either,” he said quietly.

For a split second she was caught and held by the somberness of his expression.

A set of memories from her summers on the beach at Dolphin Bay flickered, of Nick yachting with his father. It had usually been just the two of them, sailing, making repairs and cleaning the boat after a day out.

One thing had always been very obvious: that Nick had loved his father. Suddenly, his real agenda was very clear to Elena. He wasn’t just searching for a valuable heirloom. He was doing something much more important: he was trying to make sense of the past. “You don’t want to find the ring, do you?”

“Not if it meant an affair.”

“You think they weren’t having an affair?”

“I’m hoping there’s another reason they spent time together.”

Her stomach tightened at the knowledge that Nick was trying to clear his father, a process that would also clear her aunt. That despite his reputation there were depths to Nick that were honorable and true and
likable.

That she and Nick shared something in common.

Elena watched as Nick drank, the muscles of his throat working smoothly. At that moment Gemma signaled to her.

Relieved at the interruption, Elena rose from her seat. She felt unsettled, electrified. Every time she thought she had Nick figured out, something changed, the ground shifting under her feet.

After a quick hug, Gemma stepped back. Almost instantly, she tossed the bouquet. Surprised, Elena caught the fragrant, trailing bunch of white roses, orchids and orange blossom.

Feeling embattled, she dipped her head and inhaled the delicious fragrance. Her throat closed up. After years of brisk practicality as a PA, she was on the verge of losing control and crying on the spot because she realized just how much she wanted what Gemma had: a happy ending with a man who truly, honorably loved her. “You should have given it to someone else.”

Gemma frowned. “No way. You’re my best friend and, just look at you, you’re gorgeous. Men will be falling all over you.” She gave her another hug. “I won’t be happy until you’re married. Who’s that guy you’re seeing in Sydney?”

Elena carefully avoided Gemma’s gaze on the pretext that she was examining the faintly crushed flowers. “Robert.”

Gemma grinned and hooked her arm through Gabriel’s, snuggling into his side. “Then marry him. But only if you’re in love.”

Elena forced a smile. “Great idea. First he has to propose.”

Elena walked back to her seat, clutching the bouquet. She was acutely aware that Nick, who was standing talking with a group of friends, had watched the exchange.

Gray-haired Marge Hamilton, an old character in Dolphin Bay, with a legendary reputation for gossip in a town that abounded with it, made a beeline for her. “Caught the bouquet I see. Clever girl.”

“Actually, it was given to me—”

Marge’s gaze narrowed, but there was a pleased glint in the speculation. “You’ll be next down the aisle and, I must say, it’s about time.”

Elena’s discomfort escalated. Nick was close enough that he could hear every word. But as embarrassing as the conversation was, she would never forget that, despite Marge’s love of gossip, she had been fiercely supportive of her aunt when the scandal had erupted.

Elena dredged up a smile. “As a matter of fact, I’m working on it.”

Marge’s gaze swiveled to her left hand. A small frown formed when she noted the third finger was bare. “Sounds like you have someone in mind. What’s his name, dear?”

Elena’s fingers tightened on the bouquet as she tried to make herself say Robert’s name, but somehow she just couldn’t seem to get it out. Something snapped at the base of the bouquet. There was a small clunk as a small plastic horseshoe, included for luck, dropped to the floor. “He’s...from Sydney.”

“Not that hot young Atraeus boy?” Marge sent a disapproving glance at Zane, who had flown in from Florida and happened to be leaning on the bar, a beer in his hand.

“
Zane?
He’s my boss. No, his name is—”

Marge frowned. “At one point we thought you actually might snaffle one of those Atraeus boys. Although, any one of them is a wild handful.”

Elena could feel herself stiffening at the idea that she was hunting for a husband in her workplace and, worse, the suggestion that the whole of Dolphin Bay was speculating on whether or not she could actually succeed. “I
work
for the Atraeus Group. It would be highly unprofessional to mix business—”

Nick’s arm curved around her waist as casually as if they were a couple. His breath feathered her cheek, sending heat flooding through her.

“Were you about to say ‘with pleasure’?”

Marge blinked as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was witnessing. “I can see why you didn’t want to say his name, dear. A little premature to announce it at a family wedding.”

With surprising nimbleness she extracted a gleaming smartphone from her evening bag and snapped a picture. Beaming, she hurried off.

Elena disengaged herself from Nick’s hold. “I was about to say that it would be unprofessional to mix business with a
personal relationship.
”

“Last I heard, personal relationships should be about pleasure.”

“Commitment would be the quality I’d be looking for.”

She noted Marge sharing the photo with one of her cronies. “The story will be all over town before the sun sets.”

“That fast?”

“You better believe it. And, unfortunately, she has the picture to prove it.”

“I must admit I didn’t expect her to have a phone with a camera.” Nick looked abashed.

Infuriatingly, it only made him look sexier. Elena had to steel herself against the almost irresistible impulse to smile back and forgive him, and forget that he hadn’t responded to her probe about commitment. “Never underestimate a woman with a lilac rinse and a double string of pearls.”

“Damn. Sorry, babe, it’ll be a five-minute wonder—”

“Approximately the length of time your relationships last?” But, despite her knee-jerk attempt to freeze him out, Elena melted inside at the casual way Nick had called her “babe,” as if they were intimately attached. As if she really were his girl.

Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to recall every magazine article or gossip columnist’s piece she had ever read about Nick. And every one of the gorgeous girls with whom he’d been photographed.

Nick’s expression sobered. “Okay, I guess I deserved that.”

Elena set the gorgeous bouquet down on the table. “So, why did you do it?”

Nick’s gaze was laced with impatience. “You should ignore the gossips. They’ve had me married off a dozen times. I’m still single.”

Elena pulled out her chair and sat down. She couldn’t quite dredge up a light smile or a quip for the simple reason that a small, tender part of her didn’t want there to be
any
gossip about her and Nick. The night she had spent with Nick, as disastrous as it was, had been an intensely private experience.

She didn’t know if she would ever feel anything like it again. In six years she hadn’t had so much as a glimmer of the searing, shimmering heat that had gripped her while she’d been in Nick’s arms.

If people gossiped about them now, assuming they were sleeping together, that night would be sullied.

Nick frowned. “Is this about Robert?”

Elena almost made the mistake of saying
who?
“Robert isn’t possessive.” He hadn’t had time to be, yet.

“A New Age guy.”

She tried to focus on couples slow dancing to another dreamy waltz as Nick took the chair beside her. “What’s so wrong with that?”

“Nothing, I guess, just so long as that’s what you really want.”

Elena’s chest squeezed tight at the wording, which seemed to suggest that she had some kind of choice, between Robert and Nick.

Somehow, within the space of a few short hours the situation between them had gotten out of hand. She didn’t think she could afford to be around Nick much longer. They needed to resolve the issue of the ring, and whatever else it was he was looking for, tonight.

She pushed to her feet again, so fast that her chair threatened to tip over.

Nick said something curt beneath his breath as he rose to his feet and caught the chair in one smooth movement. In the process, her shoulder bumped his chest and the top of her head brushed his jaw.

He reached out to steady her, his fingers leaving an imprint of heat on her upper arm. Elena stiffened at her response to his touch, light as it was. She instantly moved away, disengaging.

Blinking a little at the strobing lights on the dance floor, and because her new contacts were starting to make her eyes feel dry and itchy, she collected the pink, beaded purse that went with her dress. “If you want to look for the ring, I’m ready now. The sooner we get this over and done with the better.”

She was still clearly vulnerable when it came to Nick, but that just meant she had to work harder at being immune.

As she strolled with Nick out of the lavish resort, she tried to fill her mind with all of the positive, romantic things she could plan to do with Robert.

Intimate, candlelit dinners, walks on the beach, romantic nights spent together in the large bed she had recently installed in her Sydney apartment.

Unfortunately, every time she tried to picture Robert in her bed, tangled in her very expensive silk sheets, his features changed, becoming a little more hawkish and battered, his jaw solid, his gaze piercing.

Annoyed with the heated tension that reverberated through her at the thought of Nick naked and sprawled in her bed, she banished the disruptive image.

Six

T
ension coursed through Nick as he walked through the resort foyer and down the front steps. Outside the sun had set, leaving a golden glow in the west. The air was still and balmy, the cool of evening infusing the air with a soft dampness.

“My car’s this way.” He indicated the resort’s staff parking lot.

Elena paused beside his Jeep, which was parked in the manager’s space. “No towing service in Dolphin Bay?”

“Not for a Messena.”

She waited while he unlocked the Jeep. “I keep forgetting you’re related to the Atraeus family. Nothing like a bit of nepotism.”

He controlled the automatic desire to flirt back and held the door while Elena climbed in. As she did so, the flimsy skirt of her dress shimmied back, revealing elegant, shapely legs and the ultra-sexy high heels.

He found himself relaxing for the first time since Elena’s pronouncement that she had a boyfriend. Although the hot pulse of jealousy that Elena had not only been ignoring his calls, but that sometime in the past few weeks she had started dating someone else, was still on a slow burn.

Robert Corrado. Grimly, he noted the name.

It was familiar, which meant he probably moved in business circles. Given that Elena was Zane’s PA, she had probably met him in conjunction with her work for the Atraeus Group.

The thought that Corrado could be a businessman, and very likely wealthy, didn’t please Nick. He would call his personnel manager and get him to run a check on Corrado first thing in the morning.

Jaw taut, he swung into the cab. The door closed with a thunk, and Elena’s delicate, tantalizing perfume scented the air, making the enclosed space seem even smaller and more intimate.

The drive to the villa, with its steep bush-clad gullies and winding road, took a good fifteen minutes despite the fact that the property was literally next door to the resort, tucked into a small private curve of Dolphin Bay.

Security lights flicked on as he turned into the cypress-lined gravel drive. He checked out the for-sale sign and noted that it didn’t have a Sold sticker across it yet.

Satisfaction eased some of his tension. He didn’t need another property, and with its links to his father’s past he shouldn’t want this one. His offer to Elena had been a tactic, pure and simple, a sweetener to give him the opening he needed to research the past.

Although, once he had decided to make the purchase, the desire to own the property had taken on a life of its own.

On thinking it through, he had decided that his motives were impractical and self-centered. In buying the villa he hoped to somehow soothe over the past and cement a link with Elena.

Whichever way he looked at it, the whole concept was flawed. It presupposed that he wanted a relationship.

The second he brought the Jeep to a halt, Elena sent him a bright professional smile and unfastened her seat belt. “Let’s get this over and done with.”

With crisp movements, she opened her door and stepped out onto the drive.

Jaw tightening at the unsubtle hint that, far from being irresistibly attracted, Elena couldn’t wait to get rid of him, Nick locked the Jeep.

He padded behind Elena, studying the smooth walls glowing a soft, inviting honey, the palms and lush plantings.

Elena was being difficult about the property, but he was certain he could bring her around. With the deal he was negotiating to buy a majority share in the Dolphin Bay Resort, in partnership with the Atraeus Group, it made sense to add the property to the resort’s portfolio.

As Elena unlocked the front door, the sense of stepping back in time was so powerful that he almost reached out to pull her close. It was a blunt reminder that almost everything about a liaison with Elena had been wrong from the beginning, and six years on, nothing had changed.

The tabloids exaggerated his love life. Mostly he just dated because he liked female company and he liked to relax. If he wanted to take things further, it was a considered move with nothing left to chance, including the possibility that he might be drawn into any kind of commitment.

With Elena the situation had always been frustratingly different;
she
was different. For a start, she had never set out to attract him.

Six years ago he had muscled in on her blind date because he had overheard a conversation in a café and gotten annoyed that her friend had set her up with a guy who could quite possibly be dangerous.

But, if he was honest, that had only been an excuse. Elena had been on the periphery of his life for years. She was obviously naive and tantalizingly sweet, and the idea that some other guy could date Elena and maybe make love to her had quite simply ticked him off.

She had been a virgin.

The moment he had logged that fact was still burned indelibly into his mind.

The maelstrom of emotions that had hit him had been fierce, but tempered by caution. At that point he’d had no room in his life for a relationship. His business had come first—he had been traveling constantly and working crazy hours. Elena had needed love, commitment,
marriage,
and he hadn’t been in a position to offer her any of those things.

The accident and his father’s death had slammed the lid on any further contact, but years later the pull of the attraction was just as powerful, just as frustrating.

Despite applying his usual logic—that no matter how hot the sex, a committed relationship didn’t fit with his life—he still wanted Elena.

The fact that Elena wanted him despite all of the barriers she kept throwing up made every muscle in his body tighten. They were going to make love. He knew it, and he was certain, at some underlying level, so did she.

And now he was beginning to wonder if one night was going to be enough.

* * *

Elena stepped inside the villa and flicked on the hall light. Nick, tall and broad-shouldered behind her, instantly made the airy hall seem claustrophobic and cramped, triggering a vivid set of memories.

Nick closing the door six years ago and pulling her into his arms. The long passionate kiss, as if he couldn’t get enough of her....

Elena’s stomach tightened at the vivid replay. With one brisk step she reached the next series of light switches and flicked every one of them.

They didn’t require that much light, since the boxes they needed to search were in the attic. She didn’t care. With tension zinging through her, and Nick making no bones about the fact that he wouldn’t be averse to repeating their one night together, she wasn’t taking any risks.

The blazing lights illuminated the small sunroom to the left, the larger sitting room to the right and the stairs directly ahead.

Sending Nick a smile she was aware was overbright and strained, she started up the stairs. “Help yourself to a drink in the kitchen. I’ll change and be right back.”

There were four bedrooms upstairs. The doors to each were open, allowing air to circulate. Elena stepped inside the master bedroom she had claimed as her own. A room her aunt had refused to use and which was, incidentally, the same room she and Nick had shared six years ago.

With white walls and dramatic, midnight-dark floorboards, the bedroom was decorated in the typical Medinian style, with a four-poster dominating. Once a starkly romantic but empty testament to her aunt’s lost love, Elena had worked hard to inject a little warmth.

Now, with its lush, piled cushions and rich pomegranate-red coverlet picked out in gold, the bed glowed like a warm, exotic nest. A lavish slice of paradise in an otherwise very simply furnished house.

Closing the door behind her, she began working on the line of silk-covered buttons that fastened the pink dress, her fingers fumbling in their haste.

As she hung the lavish cascade of silk and lace in her closet, her reflection, captured by an antique oval mirror on a stand, distracted her. In pink lingerie and high heels, her hair falling in soft waves around her face, jewels gleaming at her lobes and her navel, she looked like nothing so much as a high-priced courtesan.

Not a good thought to have when she was committed to spending the next two hours with Nick.

Dragging her gaze from an image she was still struggling to adjust to, she pulled on a summer dress in a rich shade of red.

Unfortunately the thin straps revealed the butterfly transfer on her shoulder. Maybe it was ridiculous, but she didn’t want Nick to see the full extent of the fake tattoo. With all of the changes she had made, the addition of a tattoo now seemed like overkill and just a little desperate.

Unfastening the gorgeous pink heels, she slipped on a pair of comfortable red sandals that made the best of her spray-on tan, shrugged into a thin, black cardigan and walked downstairs.

When she entered the sitting room, she saw Nick’s jacket tossed over the back of a chair. The French doors that led out to the garden were open, warm light spilling out onto a small patio.

As she flicked on another lamp, Nick stepped in out of the darkness, the scents of salt and sea flowing in with him. He half turned, locking the door behind him, and the simple, intimate motion of closing out the night made her heart squeeze tight.

With his jaw dark and stubbled, his shirt open at the throat, he looked rumpled and sexy and heartbreakingly like the young man she had used to daydream about on the beach.

Although the instant his cool, green gaze connected with hers that impression evaporated. “Are you ready?”

“Absolutely. This way.” She started back up the stairs, her heart thumping faster as she registered Nick’s tread behind her.

As she passed her bedroom, she noted that in her rush to get downstairs she had forgotten to close the door. The full weight of her decision to invite the
only
man she had a passionate past with to the scene of her seduction, hit home.

If she had been thinking straight she would have asked someone to come with them. A third person would have canceled out the tension and the angst.

Relieved when Nick didn’t appear to notice her room or the exotic makeover she’d given the bed, she ascended another small flight of stairs. Pushing the door open into a small, airless attic, she switched on the light. Nick ducked underneath the low lintel and stepped inside.

He stared at the conglomeration of old furniture, trunks and boxes. “Did Katherine ever throw anything away?”

“Not that I’ve noticed. I suppose that if the ring is anywhere on the property, it’ll be here.”

As always when she thought of her aunt, Elena felt a sentimental softness and warmth. She knew Katherine had adored all of her nieces and nephews, but she and Elena had shared a special bond. She had often thought that had been because Katherine hadn’t had children of her own.

Feeling stifled by the stale air and oppressive heat, Elena walked to one end of the room to open a window. The sound of a corresponding click and a cooling flow of air told her that Nick had opened the window at the other end.

“Where do we start?” Nick picked up an ancient book, a dusty tome on Medinian history.

“Everything on that side of the room has been searched and sorted.” She indicated a stack of trunks. “This is where we need to start.”

“Cool. Sea trunks.” Nick bent down to study one of the old leather trunks with their distinctive Medinian labeling. “When did these come out?”

“Probably in 1944. That’s when the Lyon family immigrated to New Zealand.”

“During the war, about the same time my family landed. I wonder if they traveled on the same ship.”

“It’s possible,” Elena muttered. “Although, since your family owned the ships it was unlikely they would have socialized.”

Nick flipped a trunk open. Another wave of dust rose in the air. “Let me get this right. My grandparents would have traveled first-class so they wouldn’t have spoken to your relatives?”

Still feeling overheated, Elena ignored her longing to discard her cardigan. “The Lyons were market gardeners and domestic servants. They would have been on the lower decks.”

With a muffled imprecation, Nick shrugged out of his tightly fitted waistcoat. Tossing it over the back of a chair, he unfastened another button on his shirt, revealing more brown, tanned skin.

Dragging her gaze from the way the shirt clung across his chest, Elena concentrated on her trunk, which was filled with yellowed, fragile magazines and newspapers.

Nick, by some painful coincidence, had opened a trunk filled with ancient women’s foundation garments. He held up a pair of king-size knickers in heavy, serviceable cotton. “And the fact that some of them settled here in Dolphin Bay was just a coincidence, right?”

The tension sawing at her nerves morphed into annoyance. She had never paid any particular attention to her family’s history of settlement, especially since her parents lived in Auckland. But now that Nick was pointing it out, the link seemed obvious. “Okay, so maybe they did meet.”

Nick extracted a corset that appeared to rely on a network of small steel girders to control the hefty curves of one of her ancestors. “It was a little more than that. Pretty sure Katherine’s grandparents worked for mine.”

Elena vowed to burn the trunk, contents and all, at the earliest possible moment. “I suppose they could have been offered jobs.”

He closed the lid on the evidence that past Lyon women had been sturdy, buxom specimens and pulled the lid off a tea chest. “So, maybe the Messena family aren’t all monsters.”

Feeling increasingly overheated and smothered by the cardigan, Elena discreetly undid the buttons and let it flap open. The neckline of her dress was scooped, revealing a hint of cleavage, but she would have to live with that. “I didn’t say you were. Aunt Katherine liked working for your family.”

The echoing silence that greeted her quiet comment, was a reminder of the cold rift that still existed between their families—the abyss that separated their lifestyles— and made her mood plummet.

Although she was fiercely glad she had ruined the camaraderie that had been building. Stuck in the confined space with Nick, the past linking them at every turn, she had needed the reminder.