The Night that Changed Everything (6 page)

If the evening had felt like something out of a Cinderella fairy tale before, now, with the tiny lights of Mont Chamion’s formal gardens spread out below her, Edie felt herself swept ever more fully into a sense of enchantment.

“Not exactly what it would have looked like in the thirteenth century,” Nick said wryly.

“But beautiful,” Edie murmured, putting her hands on the rough stone wall and leaning out to look down. “It’s amazing. We have gardens back at home in Santa Barbara. But nothing like these.”

“There aren’t any like these. They’re one of a kind.” Nick’s voice was quiet, almost reverent, as he came to stand beside her and together they stared out at the wonderland below. Neither of them spoke.

There were a few wedding guests outside in the gardens, and Edie could hear an occasional murmur of a voice or crack of laughter. From an open window came the lilting sounds of the orchestra playing a waltz. But as magical as it was, it was less enthralling than the man next to her.

He stood very close, but not touching her as he leaned forward, his elbows on the wall, the pristine white of his shirt cuffs peeking out from beneath his dark suit coat. His fingers were loosely knotted together. In the light of a three-quarter moon, she could, glancing sideways, see the light and shadow on the hard angles and planes of his face.

Her sister Rhiannon had casually and flirtatiously stroked his cheek. Edie’s fingers curled into a fist so she wasn’t tempted to do likewise. She turned her gaze away, too, tried to focus on the tableau below.

What Nick was actually thinking she didn’t know. While moments ago in the stairwell she would have said he was as aware of her as she was of him, now he seemed so remote she doubted he was thinking about her at all. So she turned her head to risk another look.

He turned at the same time. Their gazes locked. The heat flared. And Edie’s breath caught in her throat.

Nick cleared his. Then, deliberately he straightened. “It’s getting cool up here. Shall we go down?” His voice was perfectly
polite, but Edie thought she detected a hint of raggedness in his tone. The raggedness of desire?

Did she even know what that sounded like anymore?

“I’ll go first on the way down,” Nick decreed.

“So I can crash into you and knock us both all the way to the bottom?” Edie joked.

“Hang on to my shoulder if you want. I’ll go slow.”

He did go slow, but she didn’t reach for him. She might have liked a hand, but clutching at him unnecessarily was something Rhiannon would have done, so Edie deliberately didn’t do it. She just kept one hand on the wall as she made her way carefully down the steps behind him and tried not to stumble and crash into him. It was a relief to reach the hallway again and to have Nick turn and secure the door.

“That was lovely. Thank you,” she said, slipping the flipflops off and holding them out to him, smiling up at him at the same time.

Nick didn’t smile back. His features were taut; there was almost a grim line to his mouth which, after a moment, he managed to curve into something resembling a smile. Then he stepped back and said briskly, “Well, there you have it. Nick Savas’s two-bit architectural tour.” He flashed her a quick glib sort of smile.

Edie’s smile didn’t flash. It remained firmly in place. But her heart was galloping and she had the sensation of walking on water. She dared not contemplate it too closely. She just needed to keep going. “It was wonderful.”

Their gazes locked again. Nick’s expression wasn’t remote now. His eyes were intent. Focused on her. The silence went on. And on.

Until finally Nick said, “I want you.”

His voice was rough. She heard an edge to it, a desperation almost. And something that sounded like annoyance. Edie wasn’t annoyed. But she was shocked to hear him say the words so bluntly. At the same time, to her own astonishment, elated.

“Is that a problem?” she asked, keeping her tone light.

“Isn’t it?” he challenged her, one brow lifting.

She blinked at the ferocity of his tone. “We’re adults,” she heard herself say mildly.

“There’s more to it than that.”

“Yes.” She nodded, unsure where he was going with this.

“Usually,” he amended.

Edie shook her head, not following. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I mean,” he said firmly, “that I don’t want anything more than that.”

“Than sex?” Edie said, wanting to be clear.

His jaw tightened and he looked faintly discomfitted by her plain-speaking, but nodded. “Exactly.”

So much for fairy tales, Edie thought.

But really, she wasn’t expecting a fairy tale, either. She knew better. So why not be frank? Why not set out parameters?

If Kyle Robbins had done so years ago, she wouldn’t have been expecting a proposal of marriage when he’d simply wanted to go to bed with her. She wouldn’t have had her hopes raised merely to see them dashed.

“I don’t do relationships,” Nick continued to spell it out. “One night. That’s it.”

“Those are the rules?” Edie said, smiling.

Nick nodded. “Those are the rules.”

Their gazes met again, clear and unblinking. No starry-eyed foolishness here, Edie thought. No romance. No hearts and flowers. No expectations.

“Okay,” she said at last, drawing the word out even as she came to terms with the implications.

Nick’s brow rose a fraction higher. “You’re all right with that?” He sounded as if he didn’t believe her. “You’re sure?”

“Well, I’m not expecting a proposal of marriage,” Edie said sharply.

Nick raked a hand through his hair. “Good,” he said with obvious
relief. “Because I’m not making one.” He shuddered and shook his head. “Never again.”

“One day you might—” Edie began.

But he cut her off. “No,” he said, absolutely adamant. “I won’t.”

Edie didn’t think she ought to say she felt sorry for him, but the truth was, she did. She had loved Ben with all her heart and soul. But she would never say she wouldn’t fall in love again, wouldn’t marry again. She’d told Mona she wasn’t interested because she hadn’t been—then.

It didn’t mean she wouldn’t ever be.

Good grief, look how suddenly things could change. Two hours ago her hormones had been missing in action. She hadn’t been remotely interested in a man. And now—now she was contemplating going to bed with a man she barely knew. Why? Because she was attracted to him, certainly. But mostly because she didn’t trust herself not to do something even more foolish with a recently divorced, clearly interested Kyle Robbins. One night with Nick was far preferable.

“So if you’re not interested, I’d completely understand,” Nick was saying.

“I’m interested,” Edie said. “One night. No relationship. Got it. That’s what I want, too.”

Nick stared at her long and hard.

Edie stared back, unblinking.
Don’t look down. Don’t look down.
The words echoed around her brain. Still he didn’t move.

“I know what I’m doing,” she assured him, with the slightest hint of irritation. “Do you?”

Apparently he did. Abruptly Nick closed the space between them and wrapped her in his arms.

Like when they’d danced, Edie thought for a split second.

But then as his hard, strong, warm body enveloped her in his embrace, she thought,
No, not like dancing at all.
A hundred, thousand, million times better.

Her whole body responded. Her knees wobbled. Her eyes
opened, then shut. Her lips parted and suddenly his mouth was on hers. Fierce, hungry, demanding.

I want you,
Nick had said. His voice had been hungry, ragged.

But his subsequent words had seemed like some sort of impersonal negotiation of terms. There was nothing impersonal or negotiated about this. This was instinct, pure and simple. He was a man who wanted a woman—a man who wanted her.

And Edie wanted him, too.
Yes,
she thought, kissing him back.
Oh, yes!

Yes, it was just one night. No, it wasn’t going anywhere. She had no expectations. But where had expectations ever got her?

He wasn’t Ben. But Ben was gone forever. He wasn’t Kyle. And thank God for that.

He was Nick. And tonight—just tonight—he was hers. She was determined not to regret it.

S
HE
wasn’t his usual sort of woman.

Nick didn’t care.

He wanted her. And the desire that had been building all evening was the only thing that mattered to him now. She was tart and sweet, eager and tentative, cool and yet capable of burning him down to the ground.

She looked too closely, saw too much. And she wasn’t afraid to talk about what she saw.

But they weren’t talking now, were they?

No. They were kissing. God, yes, they were kissing! And her lips were as hungry as his. Her hands were as eager as his. They slid up his arms and around the back of his neck to hold his face to hers. He didn’t complain. It was what he wanted, too.

Restless and eager, his hands roved over her back, tangled in her hair, loosening whatever pins she had anchored it with so that it fell in loose, heavy dark waves over her shoulders and down her back. He ran his fingers through it, buried his face in it, drew in the citrusy scent of shampoo and something exclusively Edie Daley.

It was heady, dizzying, and it didn’t matter if she wasn’t the sort of woman he ordinarily took to bed, a woman he could scratch a physical itch with and walk away from. He could do the same with her. He
would
do the same.

But first he would spend the night with her.

And yes, he knew exactly what he was doing.

“I missed a spot on the tour,” he murmured against her lips.

Edie pulled back slightly, stared at him, disbelieving.

“My bedroom.”

She smiled. Then she placed her hands on his arm and looked up into his eyes. “What a very good idea,” she said. And there was a breathless quality in her voice that cranked his desire up another notch.

“Right this way.” And he scooped her up into his arms and carried her down the hall to the room he’d been using as a bedroom, pausing only to kick the door open. Then he bumped it firmly shut again with one hip and then, in the darkness, lowered her onto his bed. He dropped down beside her, intending to pick up where they’d left off.

“Turn on the light,” Edie said.

He pulled back and looked at her. “What?”

“If I’m getting a tour, I want to see everything.”

Which wasn’t a bad idea at all. He very much wanted to see her as he made love to her. He grinned.

“Or maybe there aren’t lights,” she reflected. “Do you use candles for an authentic ambiance?”

“It’s possible to use candles,” Nick said. But he reached over and flipped on a bedside lamp. “When they give tours at night, I imagine they do. But tonight I think a lamp will do.”

It was a subdued light, but even so it threw the room with its utilitarian furnishings and spartan double bed into a pattern of light and shadow. Hardly the sight of a romantic seduction.

But Nick wasn’t focusing on the room. He had eyes only for Edie Daley. He’d seduce her anywhere. She was half-reclining on his bed, the mauve dress dark against her creamy skin. The low light made Edie’s peekaboo freckles entirely disappear and turned her skin to a soft gold while it made her dark hair look even thicker and more lustrous. Nick reached up a hand and ran his fingers through it again. It seemed to curl around his fingers with a life of its own. He rubbed a strand of it against his cheek, smoothed it over his lips, tasted it.

Then once more he buried his face into it, breathed deeply, knew the scent now—the hints of citrus and woods—and woman. This woman.

He wanted to give her a night to remember. He didn’t want to erase her husband’s memory. He knew she wouldn’t forget just as he could never forget Amy. But equally, from here ever after, whenever Edie thought about making love, Nick wanted his face to come to mind.

He pulled back and undid his tie, then stripped off his coat and tossed it on the bureau. All the while he kept his gaze locked on hers. Smiling, Edie lay back against the pillow and watched him with a kind of hungry fascination that made his blood heat even more.

He reached for his shirt buttons, fingers trembling. As he did so, Edie raised a hand to touch his. “May I?”

Undress him? Nick wasn’t used to giving up control. It seemed far too intimate. Risky. But Edie was smiling at him, looking hopeful, eager yet a little hesitant, too. And he knew he didn’t want her hesitant. He wanted her to enjoy, to be involved, an active equal partner in their lovemaking.

So he gave a quick nod. “Be my guest.”

Resolutely he dropped his hands to his sides and let her fingers do the work, certain his could have done in mere seconds. But the way they were trembling as she touched him, he wasn’t sure that was true.

Edie sat up on the bed and leaned toward him, then began to studiously go to work on his shirt buttons. Her knuckles brushed lightly against the underside of his chin as she undid the top button. The soft brush of her skin against his made his chin tingle. As she moved lower, she caught her lower lip between her teeth as she concentrated on each one in turn.

His fingers clenched into fists to keep from pushing her hands away and doing it himself. It would be so much quicker and easier and he would get to feel her bare fingers on his skin that much sooner.

But having relinquished control he knew he couldn’t wrest it from her now, knew she had to be the one to set the tempo.

So he let her—even as the tentative dance of her fingers damned near killed him.

Edie took her time.

She didn’t know what was going to happen after tonight.

She didn’t care. She didn’t want to think about it. Since Ben had died, she’d spent too much of her life trying unsuccessfully to focus on the moment when she’d really never been able to do more than endure.

Not now.

Not tonight.

Not when this moment and those immediately following were going to be spent with Nick Savas—
making love
with Nick Savas.

She was going to savor it. Why not?

She’d missed the intimacy of the bedroom. Her first experience, with Kyle, had left her wondering what all the excitement was about. During the few weeks they’d been together, he had been fierce and hungry and demanding. He’d always directed things. Always taken charge. And with the eagerness of youth—he’d been twenty-three—Kyle had been more concerned with the end than the journey along the way. He’d never given her a chance to discover the subtleties of lovemaking.

With Ben it had been different. The two of them had learned together. They’d explored together. With Ben it had been about the journey, about pleasing, about loving, not simply about the orgasmic rush. It had been about knowing and being known.

She knew better than to expect that here. A single night meant nothing compared to the years she’d had with Ben. But until tonight she’d never even been tempted. She wasn’t sure what that meant.

She wanted to find out.

Would she be in bed with him if Kyle hadn’t turned up?

Probably not. Her well-developed common sense would likely have led her back to her room at a reasonable hour to her chaste single bed. And once there, then what? Would she have dreamed of Ben?

Lately she had not dreamed of him. For the past few months, she barely remembered dreaming at all. For all that she wanted to hang on to every memory, she knew he was slipping away from her. If she had gone to bed alone, would it have been memories of Ben that would have kept her awake? Or would she have tossed and turned all night thinking about this dark, handsome man who was holding so still now while she undid the buttons of his shirt.

The shirt was starched, the buttons stiff. It took a while. Edie enjoyed every moment.

It wasn’t as if she was going to do it again, she told herself. Nick had been absolutely clear about that.

They were having a “one-night stand,” she thought, and was appalled that those trite tawdry words could be used to describe what was happening at this very moment.

It didn’t feel tawdry at all.

For all that it was unexpected, it felt—right.

So Edie shoved the words away, shoved all the rest of her life away, and focused on the man—and the moment.

She slid the last button loose, then eased the shirt off his shoulders and down his arms. Before she could decide where to go from there, Nick took it from her and tossed it aside. Then he yanked his undershirt out of his black trousers and started to pull it over his head.

Edie caught his hands. “Mine,” she said, astonished at the word as it came out of her mouth.

Nick groaned, but he dropped his hands. “I get to undress you, then,” he muttered, giving her a look that promised action.

“When it’s your turn,” she agreed, trying to sound as if it didn’t make her shiver with anticipation. She was getting enough shivers just peeling his shirt over his head, then resting her hands
for a moment on his shoulders before daring to rake her nails lightly down over his hair-roughened chest.

She could feel a tremor run through him as he remained still under her hands, his dark eyes hooded, watching her every move. She traced circles around his nipples, then arrowed her fingers down the center of his chest across his abdomen. They stilled when they came to rest at his belt.

“I suppose that’s yours, too,” Nick rasped, looking down.

Edie looked, too. “Sounds good to me,” she said. “Do you want to stand up?”

He stood. She was just above eye level with the belt in question now. She brushed her fingers lightly over the front of his trousers as she began to undo the buckle. Nick drew a quick breath.

The buckle was easier than the buttons had been, and in bare seconds she had it undone. Without stopping to think about what she was doing, Edie skimmed down the zip of his trousers. Only when she did so, did she realize how close she was to the hot flesh that she wanted to touch, that she could tell, from its persistent press against the front of his shorts, wanted to touch her.

Belt undone, zip down, his trousers fell to the floor. Nick toed off his shoes and kicked them away, then stepped out of his pants and stood before her in only a pair of cotton boxers that did nothing to hide his arousal.

“Yours, too, obviously,” he said gruffly, looking down. Then he lifted his gaze to meet hers. “Now it’s my turn.”

“I’m not done,” Edie protested.

“Neither one of us is done,” Nick said, grasping her hands in his, holding them loosely so she couldn’t continue. “Let me catch up.”

He bent his head and kissed his way down her bare shoulders, his hot mouth against her skin making her shiver as his fingers went to the back of her dress. Then he groaned and dropped his head against her shoulders.

“What?”

“There’re five thousand buttons back here.”

“Only forty, I think.” But she remembered standing still for what seemed like forever as her mother had done up the dress. “Or maybe fifty.”

“Fifty?” Another groan. But even as he did so, his nimble fingers set to work.

Nick Savas was a man of many talents, and he could multi task with the best of them, Edie thought, as his lips nibbled her jaw, her earlobes, her shoulders even as his fingers undid the buttons one at a time. Even his hair seemed to be actively seducing her as silky black strands brushed softly against her sensitized skin.

Then he sighed, pleased and lifted his head to smile at her. “Victory is mine,” he murmured and hooked his fingers in the top of her dress and drew it slowly down.

The bra was part of the dress, and when he lowered the bodice, he bared her breasts. The cool air made her shiver. But so did the look on Nick Savas’s face. Edie had never had the confidence in her bodily beauty that her mother and Rhiannon did. While she’d always known she had no major defects, she couldn’t help feeling as if she suffered by comparison to her mother and sister.

But Nick seemed to be entranced by what he saw. His hands came up to cup her breasts, to weigh them gently in his hands. His thumbs rolled over her nipples heightening her awareness of her body’s needs.

“Beautiful. You are so beautiful,” he murmured and bent his head to lave first one breast and then the other. And Edie felt a shaft of desire clear to the center of her. She shivered.

“Are you cold?”

“N-no. I’m just—” But she couldn’t seem to find words to express what she was feeling, so she just shook her head and savored the sensations.

Nick took his time as she had taken hers. He drew her off the bed, then as she stood before him, he pressed light kisses along her breastbone as he hooked his fingers inside the top of
her dress, which was at her waist now. Kneeling, he continued to tug it down. The calluses on his fingers stroked her bare legs as he did so. She could still feel their imprint on her thighs from when he’d slid her stockings off. The dress pooled at her feet. He lifted first one and then the other, removing the dress completely. Then he skimmed the silk half-slip right down her legs, leaving her bare except for a pair of ecru lace bikini panties.

“Ah.” He rested back on his heels and looked up at her. She could feel his gaze as it traveled slowly up her legs, past her belly, over her breasts to her face. He smiled at her.

He traced the lace at the top of her panties with a single tantalizing finger. Then he grasped them gently and pulled them slowly down.

Mindlessly Edie stepped out of them. Then, staring down at his head as he knelt before her, she felt his fingers begin at her ankles and stroke back up the length of her legs, teasing her smooth skin, making her tremble with need. Involuntarily she reached out and gripped his shoulders, hanging on for dear life.

His breath was warm on her belly. He kissed her there. Then his fingers slid slowly up the insides of her legs, reached the juncture of her thighs, brushed his fingers over the curls that covered her womanhood. Then he touched her there.

Edie swallowed a moan.

He didn’t stop. On the contrary, he seemed to take it as invitation to go further, to part her legs and stroke between them. Her knees trembled. Her fingers tightened on his shoulders, dug into them.

“N-no f-fair.”

He glanced up, smiling at her. “No?”

“You’re not waiting for me.”

He slanted her a glance. “Feel free to jump in anytime.”