Target (30 page)

Her climax still raged when he pulled her to the end of the counter and pushed into her.

Far away, she heard hammering at the door.

Nick either didn't hear or didn't care—or both.

He exploded into her, his face between her breasts, his mouth wide open and teasing her flesh.

Loud knocking sounded again.

Nick said, “Drop off and die, suckers,” and carried Aurelie to the bedroom. He paused long enough to close and lock that door, too.

N
ick picked up his phone and switched it on. “I don't want to do this but I'd better reconnect with the world.”

“Yes,” Aurelie said. She sat on the bed beside him, comfortable in her nakedness, and stretched, ran her fingers through crazy curls and yawned. “I've got to go back to the shop and explain why I've been gone for two hours.”

“Easy,” he said. “I needed you.”

She dropped her arms. “Very funny.”

“No. You know I wouldn't be flip at a time like this. I did—do—need you. In fact, you can't go back to the shop today.”

“Oh, yes, I can.” She hopped from the bed but he captured her hand before she could get away. “C'mon, Nick. You're needed at the lab, too.”

“No, I'm not. Absolutely not.”

She kissed him quickly. “You're impossible.” How she wished she could let go and just play with him and forget everything else.

“Aurelie, we have to talk.”

“And we will,” she said, afraid to meet his eyes, afraid of what he might say. “Later, when we've got more time.”

“What I want to say won't take much time.”

She put a hand over his mouth. Her heart began to bump. “I think we should take a little time before we go any farther.”

He tipped her over him. “I'd have said we've gone about as far as we can go. But you can prove me wrong if you like.” She felt him grow still. “I was afraid to hope this would happen for us,” he said.

His phone rang.

“I'm not answering that,” he said. “I shouldn't have turned it on.”

“Turn it off,” Aurelie said, jarred by the sound.

Nick picked up the phone and glanced at the readout. He turned it off and lay quiet.

Aurelie sat up. “Who is it?”

He propped his head. “Delia.”

She hopped off the bed and started gathering her clothes.

“What are you doing?”

“You can see what I'm doing.”

“Yes. You're panicking. Stand still and take some breaths. And think. Delia's trying to get hold of me. She does that several times a day. We're in the same business, I'm her assistant and general advice counsel, and she needs to talk to me sometimes.” He sat up and threw off the covers.

Aurelie didn't look away. “I feel as if I'm lying to Delia, and to Sarah. We're hiding things from them. How would you feel in their position?”

He thought about it. “Like a fool. And probably angry.”

“Help me figure out how to get around that. Unless…”

“Unless what?” he asked, with an uncomfortable notion he knew what she'd almost said.

“If this is just a fling, why worry them with it?”

Nick shot from the bed and pulled her against him. “If you wanted someone to have a fling with, would you choose me?”

She laughed a little. “I don't think so. Too complicated.”

“Good. I think you're right. We'd better get back to business, at least until this evening. We're going to dinner at Damalis's.” Sometimes it worked to use bulldozer tactics with Aurelie. “It'll be a good way to start letting people see us together—as a couple.”

Aurelie averted her face from him.

“I expected you to overreact,” Nick said. “I'm not doing this in an impetuous way. I want to make a reservation for the four of us. I'll see if we can get one of the small private rooms.”

“Why not just meet at home? I'll cook,” she said. He meant to let Delia and Sarah know about them, then anyone else who was interested. She shivered and pushed open the door to the bathroom.

“No,” Nick said. “No home-cooked meal. This time we're not having a family powwow. This is about us as grown-ups and what we want to do with our lives. We're going to ask them to encourage us. And we're going to have to make it public that we're not related.”

Aurelie sorted through arguments for why they shouldn't go out for the express purpose of making an announcement that could be taken very badly by at least one of them.

“I'll invite the other two.”

She felt wobbly. “Don't do that.”

“You're not going to stop me. Humor me and go along this time. We can deal with it and not hurt anyone.”

She hoped he was right but didn't think so.

In the distance, she heard voices, droning voices. “D'you hear that?” she asked. “It's outside. Sounds like someone talking.”

Nick stood still and concentrated, then laughed. “It's nothing. Catching armadillos with my lovely flamingo radio, is all. The thing's faulty. It comes on when it feels like it.”

“They work,” Aurelie said. “And the best thing is that you don't end up with dead animals in your yard, they just run away.”

She took a shower, blew her hair semidry and dressed, just a tiny bit disappointed that Nick hadn't come into the bathroom. Control was no longer in her hands—if it ever had been.

A small tear at the waist of her dress didn't show when the bodice was buttoned. She borrowed a comb and went through the painful process of working the tangles from her hair.

A tap on the door startled her. She opened up and smiled at Nick.

“Can I get in the shower?” he asked and she noted he wasn't grinning anymore.

“Of course,” she said as she returned to working on her hair. She couldn't keep her eyes off him in the mirror. He turned on the shower and tossed a white towel over a hook.

Running on instinct, she went to him and put her arms around him, buried her face in his chest and hung on convulsively. He was solid, and felt so good under her hands.

Nick held her hard and rested his cheek on top of her head. “You're scared to just go along and be with me,” he said. “I'm going to have to cure you of that. Honey?” He waited for her to look up at him. “The phone rang again when you were in the shower. It was Delia. She's coming here. She doesn't know about us yet, remember.”

Aurelie pulled away from him. “When is she coming?” She had used a new toothbrush she found under the sink. She waved it in the air. “I'll replace this. How long before she gets here?”

“Any moment.”

Aurelie twirled around, checking for any possessions. “I wish you'd put her off a bit longer.”

“You know how Delia is when she wants something. Just get out of her way.”

Cold darted up her arms. “At least the Hummer is over at Poke Around. As soon as Delia gets here, I'll go out the back way and cut around the block.”

Nick stepped into the shower. The glass doors were clear and she saw him lather his hair, hold his face up to the stream of water, flatten his hands on his chest while soap poured off him. He scrubbed water from his eyes and stuck his head out the door again. “Delia does know you're here,” he said, and closed the door again. He started to sing, and soap himself all over.

Aurelie couldn't stay in one place. She went to the door, changed her mind and returned to the sinks. Then she stood next to the shower and rapped on the door. It vibrated, making an unholy racket.

Nick's face was covered with soap again while he washed other parts.

She actually felt herself turn red. Then she hammered on the door again.

He sang both parts of the main aria from
Turandot
—very badly. His voice soared, falsetto, and broke long before the top note, and bellowed forth in a tenor that also broke long before the top note.

Aurelie marched back and forth.

Stop it.

She sat on the toilet lid.
Fight or flight. Run away or stay and be a grown-up
. At least Delia didn't know the truth.

But Nick wanted to tell her! Tonight. With Sarah there.

The next noise from the shower sounded like a horse clearing its ears. Nick turned off the shower, located her on the toilet and gave her a huge smile. He swiped away a patch of steam, pressed his face to the glass, crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue.

And Aurelie laughed. She laughed, shook her head hard and shook her hands like a primo Italian chef who'd just presented a masterpiece.

She stood up and held the sides of her head. “I'm losing it,” she said and by the wicked expression on his face he'd obviously heard. “My mind isn't strong. You've told me that often enough. Well, you're right and I think I'm having a nervous breakdown.”

“No time,” he called. “Delia's going to—”

The intercom, with a convenient panel in the bathroom, chimed three times. Nick leaned out of the shower and punched a button. “'Lo?”

“Wait till I get out there,” Aurelie said and slapped a hand over her mouth.

Nick covered the speaker and said, “Ouch. Just go out now and stop worrying. We're grown-ups and so is Delia.”

“She can't be this grown-up,” Aurelie said, and left. “She must have heard me. She's going to know.”

Any cover-up would be pointless. She went to the front door and opened it wide. But she couldn't make herself smile at Delia.

Delia wasn't smiling, either.

Fascination, that was the reaction on Delia's face. She stepped inside carefully, as if afraid to make any noise.

“Come in,” Aurelie said unnecessarily. “It's still raining.” Lightning cut the sky in the distance and Aurelie was grateful. Anything, rather than focus on Nick and herself. “Lightning,” she said.

“Close the door, please, Aurelie,” Delia said, but gave it a hard enough push to slam it herself. Pointedly, she avoided looking toward the bedrooms and went directly to a chair at the small dining-room table. A chair facing the wall. “Where's Nick?” she said.

“Um. Nick is—in—getting out of—he's in the bathroom.”

“That's what I thought.”

She'd forgotten to put her shoes on, Aurelie realized. And her hair wasn't dry yet. And she wore no makeup at all. And her dress was damp in places from putting it on over moist skin.

“Sit down, please,” Delia said. She gave her head a shake and ran her fingers through her hair. She kept her eyes wherever they didn't have to see Aurelie's.

Aurelie sat down.

“You two have the worst timing I've ever seen,” Delia said quietly, examining the backs of her hands.

There wasn't even a way to protest, to deny, to say Delia was jumping to conclusions. “Pretty bad,” Aurelie said.

“Delay the summit,” Nick said. In jeans, an unbuttoned white shirt—and no shoes—he joined them, careful to sit at the end of the table with one of them on either side of him. “How're you doing, sweet Delia?”

She narrowed her green eyes to teeny, tiny slits. “Don't you even try that on me. When did you get so sneaky? You weren't a sneaky teenager when I expected you to be. And neither were you.” A long finger leveled at Aurelie.
“Nick's just getting out of the shower?
Was that what you were going to say a while back?”

Aurelie nodded.

“How very cozy and comfortable you two are together.”

This was when he was supposed to be masterful, to take charge, Nick decided. “Everything here is perfectly natural,” he said. “Would you like some coffee, Delia?”

He got another flinty look. “Do you know how to pour gin into a glass?”

This wasn't good.
“You don't drink gin.”

“I didn't ask you to remind me about my habits.”

“Gin. Yep, one gin coming up. What will you take with that?” He went to a cabinet under a corner wet bar in the living room.

“Nothing,” Delia said. “If you can manage it, you can say
vermouth
extremely quietly over the glass.”

Nick didn't dare look at Aurelie. He went right and got that gin.

“If I wanted a thimbleful of gin, I'd say so,” Delia said. Her pale peach linen suit gleamed, and so did the diamonds around her neck and at her ears.

Nick splashed more gin into the glass.

“Yuck,” Aurelie said.

Delia's head snapped in her direction. “What did you say?”

Aurelie shrugged. “I said, yuck. I think gin is horrible.”

“Give her some white wine,” Delia said to Nick. “That's about all she can handle. And you'd better have something yourself.”

Nick knew better than to argue. He poured the wine and had Scotch himself. “It's a bit early,” he said, mostly under his breath.

“It's a bit early for a lot of things,” Delia said. “I imagine some people are even still working.” She looked at her watch.

Nick couldn't manage to feel chastened. There was something funny about a man in his thirties being taken to task for…well, just being taken to task. He put Aurelie's glass in front of her and smiled into her eyes.