Addicted to Nick

“Then if it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer we keep that line open.” As he cradled the receiver, the meaning behind his words gelled. If he needed a phone, he must be staying.

“Why are you here, Nick?” she blurted. “I expected George, or that solicitor with the bullfrog eyes.”

The corners of Nick’s mouth twitched. “We used to call him Kermit.”

T.C. tried to ignore the mental image of Kermit in pinstripes but failed. And as they smiled in shared amusement, as she had done so many times with his father, T.C. knew why Nick was here. It made perfect sense that Joe would leave the place of his heart to the son of his heart, the one he had spoken of with such obvious love.

It also explained the delay. Nick—self-indulgent, freewheeling Nick—had disappeared on some wilderness skiing jaunt the day his father was hospitalized. Joe lingered ten more days, but Nick didn’t come home.

As she collected Ug from the floor and hugged the dog’s furry warmth close against her chest, T.C. felt the tight twist of pain for the man who had been her boss, her mentor and her savior—and the strong sting of resentment for the son who had let him down.

Nick watched as a sheen of moisture quelled the sea-green intensity of her gaze, and he felt a sharp kick of response, a need to ease the pain he glimpsed in those spectacular eyes. He actually took a step forward, but she nailed him to the spot with a fierce look that reminded him of his bruised ribs and scraped shin. He gave himself a mental tap on the head.

What was he thinking?

Jet lag must be kicking in if he thought she needed comforting. The pale cap of baby-soft hair, the cute little nose, the huge eyes—they were all a deception. This little firebrand had a tough streak a mile wide. His gaze slid to her lips for at least the tenth time since he’d flicked the light switch. Full and soft, with a distinct inclination to pout, there was absolutely nothing tough about them. They looked downright kissable…until they tightened savagely. Nick cleared his mind of all kissing-thoughts as he cleared his throat. “So, Tamara…”

“What did you call me?”

“Tamara. That is your name, isn’t it? Or would you rather I kept on calling you sweet hands?”

“You can call me T.C.”

“That’s hardly a name, just a couple of initials. I think I’ll stick with Tamara.”

Her lush lips compressed into an angry bow, and Nick felt a sudden spike of stimulation. It was the kind of buzz he’d chased across continents, from challenge to challenge and from woman to woman. The kind he hadn’t felt for too many years, and he didn’t understand where the feeling was coming from.

Apart from her mouth and the way those big eyes sparked green fire, Tamara Cole didn’t come close to his type. He liked women who slid out of bed with silk clinging to their curves. He liked women who knew they were women. Must be jet lag—that was the only explanation. That and the fact that George had got her all wrong. From his description, Nick had imagined big hair, a big blowzy body, an even bigger attitude. She surely had the attitude, but her blond hair was cropped boyishly short, and, frankly, there wasn’t a whole lot of body.

Just a nice little handful.

He allowed that sensory memory to drum through his blood for a whole minute before he reminded himself how deceptive appearances could be. George was a prime example. Just because Tamara Cole didn’t fit George’s description of the shrewd opportunist who had wriggled her way into Joe’s life as well as his bed—just because the very thought had caused his earlier guffaw of amusement—didn’t mean she hadn’t done just that.

“Why are you here, Nick?”

Her question cut into Nick’s reverie, and he pretended to consider it as he strolled over to her bed, tested the mattress, sat and swung his legs up. He picked up her pillow and propped it between his head and the wall.

“Why am I here?” He regarded her bottom lip through half-closed eyes, and the low-grade buzz in his veins intensified. “I’m here to meet you…partner.”

Two

“Part-ner?” T.C.’s voice cracked midword, so the second syllable came out squeaky. She tried to control her trembling legs but failed miserably, and the nearest storage trunk came up to meet her backside with an audible thump, jolting Ug from her arms. “What do you mean by partner?” Her voice sounded as weak as her knees felt.

“Standard definition. Two persons, sharing equally.”

Oh, no. Joe, you didn’t. You couldn’t. You wouldn’t. “Sharing what…exactly?”

“This place.”

T.C. swallowed, ran her tongue around her dry mouth. “You’re saying Joe left me half of Yarra Park?”

“And everything on it, four-legged and otherwise. You have a problem with that?”

“Of course I do. It’s too much, too…” Her throat constricted around the words, and she had to stop, to swallow twice before she could continue. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t he say something? Why hasn’t anyone said anything?”

“There was a clause in the will…. Joe requested that I come here and tell you.”

That made about as much sense as the rest of it.

T.C. shook her head slowly. Oh, Joe, why did you do this? She jerked to her feet and must have walked to the window, because she found herself staring into the aluminum-framed square of night. She forced herself to look beyond her stunned senses, beyond the thick emotion that constricted her chest and blurred her vision.

Why?

Her boss had been a steady, almost ponderous, thinker—this couldn’t be some whim. He had also been devoted to his large family to such an extent that he had often lamented spoiling them with a too-easy lifestyle. Staring into the dark, she recalled their hostility the day of Joe’s funeral, and for the first time she understood where it had come from. She had been in that same place. She knew how it felt to be overlooked in favor of a virtual stranger. “I imagine your family has a problem with it,” she said slowly.

“You could say they’re less than thrilled with our little windfall.”

T.C. whirled around. “Don’t call it that! I didn’t expect anything. I don’t want anything.” She spread her arms wide in an imploring gesture. “Why did he do this, Nick?”

“Gee, I don’t know, Tamara. Some might assume it’s because you were very good at your job.”

Heat flooded T.C.’s cheeks, then ebbed just as rapidly. Surely he couldn’t mean what that suggestive drawl implied…could he? Stunned, she stared at him, taking in his laid-back posture, the mocking half grin, and the heat returned in a flash of red.

“Yesss!” The word came out a long, low hiss as she advanced on him. “I am very good at my job—that’s why Joe employed me—so I hope you’re not insinuating I earned this windfall doing anything besides training horses.” She reached down and wrenched the pillow from behind him, then seriously contemplated koshing him over the head with it.

“Hey, take it easy. I said some might assume.”

The some most likely encompassed the rest of Joe’s family but apparently didn’t include Nick—that was why he had been so taken aback when he learned her identity. What had he called her? A crazy little horse-training woman in pajamas and boots. The thought of anyone wanting to bed that must really have tickled him.

Not having to prove the nature of her relationship with Joe should have delighted T.C., so why did she feel so…slighted? Annoyed with her contrary feelings, she tossed the pillow aside. It didn’t matter what Nick Corelli thought of her; it mattered that he was lounging on her bed, treating Joe’s bequest with a complete lack of respect.

“What about your part in this, Nick? What did your family make of that?”

“They shared the rest of Joe’s fortune.” He shrugged negligently. “I guess I got the consolation prize.”

Hands on hips, she took a step forward and looked down on him with all the scorn that comment deserved. “You feel you deserved a prize?”

He tipped his head back against the bare concrete wall, eyes narrowed, expression no longer amused. “Meaning?”

“Meaning where were you when your father needed you? When your brother and sisters took turns sitting by his hospital bed for days on end? It was you he wanted there, Nick. You he asked for. And where were you? Oh, that’s right, you had some dinky mountain to ski!”

Slowly he unfolded his long frame and rose to his feet. His eyes glittered darkly, a muscle ticked at the corner of his mouth, and without conscious thought T.C. took a step back. But when he spoke his voice was cool and flat. “George told you that?”

She swallowed, nodded, wondered what nerve she had struck.

“Did he tell you how much effort he put into finding me? That he didn’t even bother leaving a message with my service?”

“He shouldn’t have had to find you.”

“I should have known Joe was sick…how?”

T.C. flushed. Joe hadn’t told a soul about his diagnosis. No one had guessed until it was too late.

“I’m sorry, Nick.” And because the words sounded totally inadequate, or maybe because the dark emotion in his eyes—the hurt, anger, regret—echoed somewhere deep within, she reached out and placed her hand on his arm.

“Yeah, well, it’s history now.” Nick shrugged off both her apology and the touch of her fingers. He didn’t need her awkward attempt at sympathy any more than he needed his own sense of frustration at what might have been. Both were pointless. Abruptly he swung around, away from the mix of compassion and confusion that gleamed in her eyes. He needed something else to focus his frustration on, and he found it right before his eyes in the stark concrete walls, the uncarpeted floor and make-do furniture, the clothes discarded atop packing trunks.

“Why are you living here?”

She shook her head slightly. “What do you mean?”

“George said you used to live in the house but you’d moved out, I assumed to somewhere off the farm. Why the hell would you move out of the house into this rat-hole?”

“I didn’t feel right staying in the house,” she said stiffly.

“Couldn’t you find anywhere better than this?”

“I didn’t have any—” She stopped abruptly, changing tack with a forced casualness that didn’t fool Nick for a second. “I needed to be here, near the horses. It’s no big deal.”

“George should have told me you were living here.”

Except how could he, when Nick hadn’t given him a chance? When he’d grown so frustrated by the man’s smoothly evasive replies that he threw his hands in the air and walked out, jumped in his car and drove straight here?

He scrubbed a hand over his face and wondered what had happened to his logic, which seemed to have gone missing…probably to the same place as his usual even temper. He adopted a more reasonable tone before he continued. “If I’d known you were living here, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see your light.”

“So that’s why you came down here.” Her smile was edged with relief, as if she’d needed an explanation…or because the conversation had taken a safer turn. “Something woke me, but I wasn’t sure what, so I turned the light out again. When I heard you outside, it scared about a year off my life.”

“Sorry about that. I guess we both had the wrong handle on each other.”

Whatever the reason for her smile, it sliced a swathe through Nick’s irritability, made it possible for him to smile right back at her. And he found something in her expression, in the slow color that highlighted her cheekbones, that reminded him what sort of a handle they’d had on each other in the close darkness of the breezeway. Her hands sliding over his shirt, touching his jeans. His hand on her belly, her breast. Heat licked through him like wildfire, doing more than sear his blood vessels. It surprised the hell out of him.

Jet lag, he reminded himself as he shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and cleared his throat. “You want to pack a few things—what you need for tonight?”

She stiffened visibly. “I beg your pardon?”

“You’re not staying here.”

“I’m perfectly comfortable here.”

Her mutt, which had fallen asleep on the foot of her bed, chose that moment to whimper and twitch. Nick snorted. “Your dog isn’t even comfortable here.”

“Must we discuss this now?”

“No. We can discuss it later…after we’ve moved you.”

When he started toward her, she held up a hand. “Look, it’s the middle of the night. I don’t want to fight with you, and I don’t want to have to make up another bed. Okay?”

Nick dragged a hand through his hair. Unfortunately he could see her point. “Fine,” he conceded. “But tomorrow you’re moving out of here.”

“Shouldn’t sorting out this ridiculous bequest be our first priority?”

Nick frowned at her choice of adjective. Unexpected, yes. Unusual, maybe. Overly generous, definitely. “You think it’s ridiculous?”

“It makes no sense.”

“You can’t think of any reason why Joe would leave you a million-dollar bequest?”

All the color leached from her face as she stared back at him. In his world, a million dollars didn’t turn a hair; to Tamara Cole, the figure was obviously staggering. Buying her out would be as simple as writing a check, Nick realized. So where was the satisfaction that always accompanied knowledge of a sure thing, a deal all but closed? As she continued to stare at him, wide-eyed and unblinking, he noticed she looked more than stunned. She looked as dead beat as he felt.

“Sleep on it, green eyes,” he advised as he headed to the door. “We’ll talk later.”

“Nick.”

He stilled, one hand on the doorknob. Now why should the sound of his name on her tongue cause his pulse to pound? All his responses seemed shot to bits tonight.

“I’m sorry about before, about mistaking you for a burglar.”

Nick turned, caught her looking at him with that same expression as before, the one that made him think about hands in the dark and the sweet little body hidden beneath unflattering flannel. He stared back, a slow grin on his lips and a fast burn in his gut.

“I’m not.”

After the door clicked shut, T.C. rested her overheated face against the cool windowpane and one hand against her overstimulated heart. No man’s smile should be allowed to have such an effect, and especially not a man so out of her league.

It wasn’t fair, but it wasn’t unexpected.

From his photos, she knew the man was gorgeous, from Joe’s stories she’d learned of his charm, but nothing could have prepared her for Nick Corelli in the flesh. Nothing could have prepared her for that blue gaze sliding over her like a silk blanket, warming her, sensitizing every cell in her skin, as he murmured “I’m not.” As if he had enjoyed their tussle in the dark, as if the surge of attraction she had felt so intensely was mutual. As if a man who could take his pick of the glamorous, the beautiful and the smart, would be interested in her.

As if!

With a snort of derision, she turned her face against the windowpane and looked outside in time to see the house windows light up one by one, marking his progress through the entry hall into the living area, and then on to the bedrooms. A tug of alarm pulled her hard up against the glass. Which would he choose?

“Please. Not my room, not my bed,” she breathed. “It’s enough knowing you’re in my home.”

Whoa! When, precisely, had she started calling Joe’s house her home? Sure, she had lived in it the past five years, but only because Joe insisted, only because he was the kind of man who brooked no argument.

“You think a house like this deserves to be empty? You think I want to come here to an empty house after a whole week spent with too many idioti for any one man’s patience?”

The backs of her eyes pricked at the memory of Joe’s words, and she pressed her lids tightly closed. She hadn’t cried once in those god-awful months since she’d finally learned of her boss’s terminal illness, and she wasn’t going to start shedding tears now.

If you don’t want to be treated like a girl, don’t cry like one. That came straight from her father’s concise book of lessons, right after There’s only one thing a man like that could want from a girl like you.

She had been young and reckless when she learned the harsh truth of her father’s words. She had given that one thing to a rich, smooth-talking, heartbreaker named Miles Newman, and after he laughed at her words of love and moved on to the new stable girl, she’d dried the last of her girl-tears and thrown away the handkerchief.

Never again would she trade her self-respect for something she mistook for love. Never again would she mistake the flashfire of physical attraction for something more. Oh, she wanted there to be somebody—a special person to share her life, to love and to cherish—but she didn’t need the palpitations and the heartache and the tears. She needed strength and stability. She needed respect and understanding and companionship. Until she found a man with those qualities, she would make do with her own company.

Except at this moment her own company was making her edgy and unsettled. She swung away from the window and started to pace her room, but that activity did nothing to ease her restlessness. The quarters she had accepted as adequate now felt cold, dank and claustrophobic. The clutter she stepped over and around every day now looked like a sad chaotic mess. She jammed her eyes shut and cursed Nick Corelli for this new perspective, then cursed herself double-time for caring. His opinion of her living conditions shouldn’t matter one blue-eyed damn. But when she opened her eyes they were focused on her bed, and she could still see his long denim-encased legs spread across it. She could still imagine his body heat seeping into the covers.

With a growl of frustration she strode to the door and hauled it open. A horse whickered softly across the way, instantly easing the tightness in her chest. She pulled the door to behind her and moved surefootedly toward the lone equine head that loomed over its stable door.

“Hey, Star.” She smiled as she rubbed the proffered jaw, then let her fingers dwell on the velvet warmth of the animal’s muzzle. Warm, familiar, soothing. She felt her tense muscles relax another degree, felt her smile kick up a notch. “Don’t you ever sleep?” she crooned as she ran her other hand along the mare’s neck and under her blanket, automatically checking for warmth.

The mare stalked off with an impatient shake of her head, then circled the box with her long graceful strides. She, Tamara Cole, owned half of this fabulous animal. Shivering with a flash of intense excitement as much as the cold, T.C. shoved her hands deep into her pockets. “No,” she told herself firmly. “You know you can’t accept it.”

And if she didn’t accept it, what would happen? She wondered if Joe had considered that possibility and if he had made some provision, named some alternate benefactor. Nick hadn’t mentioned it, but then, he hadn’t mentioned much at all, and she had been too stunned to think coherently.

Now a whole crowd of questions scrambled for answers. Why had George told her to carry on as usual, knowing she was now a part-owner? Why had Joe made her a part-owner, knowing she would likely refuse the gift? Why had he specifically requested she learn the news from Nick?

Frowning, she turned to lean her back against the stable door. It didn’t surprise her that Joe hadn’t left Yarra Park to any of his Melbourne-based family. Neither George nor any of his sisters had ever shown any interest in the property—in fact, they had bemoaned their father’s obsession with horses. An old man’s eccentricity, George had called it, with a condescending twist of his lips.

Nor did it surprise her that he had singled out Nick, the only one who had chosen his own career path in preference to a ready-made position in a Corelli company. At first that decision had caused a rift, but ultimately Nick’s independent success had earned his father’s respect and admiration. It made sense that Joe would consider Nick worthy of his beloved property, but would Nick appreciate the magnitude of the gift?

T.C. snorted. He called it a consolation prize, for heaven’s sake.

Frankly she couldn’t see what he would want with a fledgling standardbred training establishment at the opposite end of the world from his New York base, and if he didn’t want his half, what should she do about hers?

She blew out a breath and shook her head slowly. “Gee, Joe, it’d be really good if you could help me out here…if you could tell me what you were thinking when you drafted that will.” Of course, no magical answer boomed out from beyond the steel rafters. “Seems like I’ll have to do this the hard way,” she told Star, knowing exactly how difficult that would be.

First she would have to deal with her treacherous body’s intense physical response to Nick’s presence, and then her awestruck mind might kick into gear and form some meaningful connection with her mouth. Maybe then she would be capable of asking all the questions that needed answering before she could decide what to do.

Three

T.C. intended posing those questions the next time she saw Nick. She planned to stiffen her backbone, look him in the eye and say, “Nick, I need to know your intentions.”

She was pleased with that forthright opener, composed the next morning while she and Jason, her stable hand, exercised the first half of their team. And when it was time for a coffee break, she took her mug to an upturned bucket in the breezeway, tilted her face toward the midmorning sun and fine-tuned her intonation.

“Nick, I need to know…Nick, I need to know…”

Then Nick sauntered into the barn, and her plans, her intonation and her backbone, turned to mush. He wore a polo shirt in the same azure-blue as his eyes, and faded jeans that hugged him in all the right places. The warmth that flooded her body had nothing to do with the sun. Her heart stalled, then bounded into overdrive. She felt all the same jittery reactions as when she stepped a horse onto the track before a big race, but she didn’t look away. She couldn’t not watch his lazy loose-limbed approach. Talk about poetry in slow motion. If he’d been a horse, she would have labeled him a fabulous mover.

“Is this the new boss?” Jason asked.

T.C. nodded, swallowed, inhaled once, exhaled once. By then Nick was close enough for her to notice his shower-damp hair and the rested look about his eyes. It was obvious his sleep hadn’t been disturbed by spicy aftertones clinging to his pillow!

Somehow she managed to mumble the necessary introductions, and Nick shook Jason’s hand. “You must own the one-two-five out front.”

Very smooth opening, T.C. thought with a cynical twist of her mouth, seeing as Jason was mad-keen on his newly acquired dirt bike. They swapped notes in that rev-head shorthand T.C. had never understood, and when Ug snuffled noisily out of her morning nap, Nick hunkered down to tickle her behind the ears. With a fatuous look of bliss clouding her mismatched eyes, the dog promptly rolled onto her back.

T.C. snorted. She bet females did that trick for Nick Corelli all the time.

“What do you call her?” His gaze lifted from the prone dog and met T.C.’s over the rim of her coffee mug.

“Ug.” Jason supplied the answer, which was just as well, because the smiling warmth in Nick’s eyes had struck T.C. dumb. Behind the subterfuge of sipping coffee, she attempted to unravel the knot in her tongue.

“Strange name.” He smiled right into her eyes, and that uncooperative tongue looped itself in a second half-hitch. Luckily Jason came to her rescue again.

“When Joe first brought her home—he found her down the road a bit—T.C. said she wanted to call her Lucky, because she was lucky Joe found her. But Joe says ‘There’s nothin’ lucky about a dog that looks like that.’”

“So how did she get to be Ug?” Nick asked.

“Joe said ‘I’d call her plain old ugly,’ and it just sort of stuck. Except T.C. shortened it to Ug.”

T.C. smiled at the familiar anecdote. She felt like she might finally be capable of speech. “You look like you slept well,” she said, by way of a start.