One Night of Passion: The Night that Changed Everything / Champagne with a Celebrity / At the French Baron's Bidding

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.”

And so she did. Somehow he ended up on the bed beside her. Did she drag him there? Did he suddenly appear? She didn’t know. She only knew that she couldn’t get enough of him—even though, judging from the burgeoning of his shorts, there was a great deal of him. She hooked her fingers into the waistband of his boxers and dragged them down.

He shrugged them off, then settled beside her and began to explore her inch by inch. Edie was equally determined to take her time, to make this last, to wring every last moment of enjoyment out of the experience. But it wasn’t easy because she was too eager, too hungry, too desperate.

Worse than Rhiannon, she thought.

But even thinking it didn’t make her pull back. She wanted him. Her fingers dug into his hips as he settled between her knees. But still he took it slow, his fingers drawing light patterns of sensation as they moved up her thighs, brushed against her sex. His thumbs touched her, brushed her lightly, then slid back down her legs.

Edie swallowed a moan. She tried to lie still, not to squirm, not to lift her hips, not to seek his touch, not to betray how much she wanted him.

But he knew. He smiled, and his hands made the journey again. This time they traced small tantalizing circles on their way up, which he followed by pressing kisses first to the inside of one thigh and then the other. As he moved his head, his soft hair brushed against her sensitized skin. His lips were hot, but the moisture of his kiss was cool when he lifted his mouth and blew lightly where he’d just touched.

And every second he got closer. Closer.

Edie swallowed, tensed, waited, dug her heels into the mattress. Closer. Closer. Then his tongue touched her there—and she let out a little gasp.

“Nick!”

He lifted his head. “Yes?” Then he did it again. And again.

Edie’s knees wobbled frantically, and her hands reached blindly to grab his hair. But she didn’t pull away. She hung on. Desperate. Demented.

She twisted her head from side to side as he continued to stroke her, as his fingers followed his mouth, parting wet folds, sliding into her. His thumb found the most exquisitely sensitive spot and made slow firm circles as his fingers drove her mad with need. Her hips bucked.

“Oh!” She writhed on the bed. “Now! I—”

“Yes.” The word hissed through his teeth. He kept one hand on her while he turned to the small cabinet by the bedside and took out a foil packet.

Protection. Edie understood. She was grateful he took the time and she helped him sheath himself, but she was almost equally grateful when, sheathed at last, he came to her, slid forward and slowly eased in, fitting exactly where he belonged, giving her exactly what she needed.

Instinctively Edie rocked up to meet him, dug her fingers fiercely into his buttocks and gave Nick what he needed, too.

She didn’t know how she was so sure what he needed, but she was. Not just on a physical level—that wasn’t hard to decipher at all. But on some other deeper instinctive level, she felt the connection between them.

She might have come to him for herself—to avoid the pull Kyle had always had on her emotions. But this had nothing to do with Kyle. This was only about the two of them—she and Nick as they moved together, slick and hard, eager and hungry, giving and taking in equal measure.

There was nothing tentative. No second thoughts. No thoughts at all. Just the sense of rightness—and completion.

They shattered together, breathless, weightless. Two made one.

And as he slid to the side and cradled her in his arms, Edie slept.

A few minutes. Half an hour, perhaps. But amazingly, she did sleep—deeply, dreamlessly—and when she awoke she felt remarkably refreshed as she snuggled in the smooth sheets and turned, coming up against a hard, warm body.

Nick Savas’s body.

She felt a brief sense of shock. She waited for the feeling of impropriety. It wasn’t there. Still she waited. It didn’t come.

What came instead was a sense of satisfaction and an awareness of how good it felt to be with him. How right.

And how strange was that?

Edie didn’t know. There seemed to be no limit to what she didn’t know at the moment—like what she was supposed to do now.

Not get involved, she reminded herself.

Nick didn’t want involvement. He didn’t “do relationships.” Well, yes. She’d gone into this with her eyes open. He hadn’t led her on.

She wasn’t changing the rules.

But somehow she wasn’t prepared, either. The etiquette of the one-night stand was apparently beyond her. She’d never had one before.

She’d only slept with two men—Kyle and Ben. And with both she’d been in it for the long haul. Of course, Kyle hadn’t been. But she hadn’t known it at the time. And Ben had made her the happiest of women for their brief marriage. But he had wanted what she’d wanted: forever.

Whatever Nick Savas wanted, Edie was sure “forever” didn’t come into it.

Probably he expected her to be sliding out of bed and out the door right now. But when she began to ease away, a strong arm curved around her and pulled her back into his arms.

“Where are you going?”

She turned her head to look at him. He was smiling at her, a lazy, satisfied smile. A smile she had put there, Edie reminded herself.

But even so, for the first time she felt a little awkward. “I should leave,” she said tentatively.

“Why?”

“Because …” But the word trailed off and the reasons didn’t come. There were undoubtedly plenty of them, but none of them seemed as important as staying right here.

“Not good enough.” Nick’s smile became a grin. “Do you want to leave?” he asked.

She considered it again, thoroughly, and came to the same conclusion: she didn’t want to leave at all. She liked being in Nick Savas’s bed, liked letting her eyes drift over his handsome face, memorizing his features, the feelings, this moment. She wanted to bottle it and keep it even as she knew that was impossible.

But staying a little longer, that was possible. Slowly she shook her head.

“Good. We took the edge off,” he said. Then he smiled. “Now we can take our time.”

Which was exactly what he proceeded to do. He settled beside her and moved over her languidly this time, pausing to taste, to tease, to touch wherever it pleased him.

It pleased Edie, too. Kyle had never been the lingering sort. He’d never explored, never particularly been interested in what she wanted. Ben had been. But Ben was little more experienced than she had been. And while they’d learned together, they’d still had much more learning to do when Ben had died.

Since Ben she’d had nothing—felt nothing.

Until tonight.

Tonight she had Nick—and Nick had her. He was experienced. No doubt about that. But he wasn’t self-centered. He wasn’t going through the motions in order to get what he wanted. He was focused. He was involved, as intent on learning her secrets as he was on learning the details of these buildings he took apart and put back together again.

She felt as if he was doing the same to her.

The featherlight touch of his fingers as he explored her made Edie aware of nerve endings she hadn’t even known existed. The graze of his tongue on the inside of her elbow made her shiver. The soft stroke of his thumb swirling around first one nipple and then the other made her breasts peak. The dance of fingers down the middle of her abdomen, then brushing lightly through the curls that hid the place that longed for his touch roused her senses, made her quiver.

She wanted him to hurry, to touch her, to find her and shatter her and make her whole again. At the same time she wanted it to last forever.

What Nick apparently wanted was to drive her insane.

His fingers moved back up her body again. She swallowed her desperation. Then he traced her ribs, swirled circles round her navel, then with his thumbs he caressed the juncture of her thighs. Edie bit her lip as his hands slid around beneath her to cup her buttocks. He lifted her, spread her, stroked her.

Edie nearly whimpered. “Now,” she urged him, reaching out to grasp his hips and draw him to her.

He came to her then, thrust into her with a desperation belied by his earlier slow, leisurely caresses. There was nothing casual or leisurely now. His need, like hers, was naked and urgent. His teeth clenched. The skin drew taut across his cheekbones. His breathing grew quick and hard as did his movement. And Edie moved to meet him, to join him. She dug her nails into his back just as he gave a hoarse cry, and they shattered together again.

This time there was no edge taken off. There were no edges at all—just bone-deep contentment, relaxation, a sense of serenity and well-being as Nick’s weight settled against her. He would have moved off. She held him where he was—wasn’t ready to let go. Not now. Not yet.

Their hearts were still hammering in unison. His sweat-dampened cheek rested against hers. Midnight shadow whiskers abraded her sensitive skin. Instinctively Edie turned her head toward them, pressed her lips to his cheek, breathed in the scent of him.

Slowly he turned his head, too, so that they lay facing each other, sharing the pillow, their noses nearly touching, their eyes open, watching each other silently.

There were no words. At least Edie couldn’t think of any. So she smiled. It said everything she couldn’t find words for.

Nick didn’t smile. He looked like a man who didn’t know what had hit him. That made Edie’s smile widen.

His eyelids flickered shut. He opened them again, seemed to focus on her once more. But within moments his eyes shut again, and this time they stayed shut. His breathing slowed and deepened.

He was asleep.

This time Edie didn’t sleep at all. Her breathing, like Nick’s, slowed and settled into a regular peaceful rhythm once more. But she felt no exhaustion now, no lassitude. She felt centered. Settled. Physically a little sore because she hadn’t done this sort of thing in a while. But on the whole she felt astonishingly good.

Great sex will do that for you, she thought, remembering similar feelings after she’d made love with Ben. But with Ben it hadn’t only been great sex. There had always been something more.

There had been a connection between them, the sense that together they made beautiful music, that together they created something greater than the two of them could on their own.

Could that happen with Nick, too?

The thought came from out of nowhere—or from some wellspring deep within. Edie didn’t know where. She knew only that even thinking such a thing was a mistake.

Nick didn’t want that. He’d made it absolutely, perfectly clear that he wasn’t interested. And she had agreed to that. She’d assured him—and herself—that she wasn’t interested in anything else, either.

She wasn’t. She hoped.

And if she was?

Well, Edie acknowledged, that was her problem.

Now she lay quietly and allowed her gaze to trace Nick’s sleeping features. He looked younger asleep, his hard features gentled. Was it the “great sex” that had softened them? Edie wondered. Or was it the great sex with her?

Had he felt the sense of connection, too?

Or—Edie forced herself to confront the possibility—was she just a lonely widow trying to rationalize a night of very uncharacteristic behavior?

She didn’t have the answer to those questions. All she knew is that she wouldn’t get those answers tonight. Maybe she never would.

But lying here was not helping. It was only making her want things she had no right to, with a man she didn’t really know.

Except a part of her thought she knew Nick Savas very well indeed.

He had showed her tonight that it was possible to find life after Ben. And she certainly knew she would be thinking about him—and not about Kyle Robbins—for some time to come.

But now she needed to get up and get dressed and go back to her own room—to her own life.

There, over the next days or weeks or months, she might discover the answer to what she’d been doing tonight.

Carefully Edie eased herself from beneath his arm, then slipped out of the bed, wincing as she began to move about and gather up her clothing. Muscles she never knew she had were reminding her of their existence now.

In the bathroom—thank heavens for some modern conveniences!—she put on a small light and dressed as quickly as she could, which wasn’t very as she had to slither into the dress since no one was available to button it up the back for her, and she could hardly saunter down the corridors of Mont Chamion castle with her dress hanging half open.

Fortunately it was still the middle of the night. Even the earliest risers would not be in the hallways just yet. But she had a plane to catch in a scant six hours.

So she slipped back out of the bathroom and started toward the door, then stopped. She couldn’t just leave—not without looking back. Not without one last memory.

So she crept back to the bed and stood over Nick’s sleeping form, drinking in the sight of him. He’d rolled onto his back now. The sheet barely covered the essentials, but she had indelible muscle memory of them—and the soreness to remind her for a while at least.

Now she memorized the rest of him—the broad, hair-roughened chest, the strong shoulders, the blade-sharp nose, the sensuous lips, the hard planes of his cheeks, the delicate black half-moon lashes and the tousled dark hair. She wished she could see his eyes—sometimes laughing, sometimes haunted—again. The mirror of his soul.

Tonight he had touched her soul as well as her body. He had given her back a part of herself that had died with Ben. She hoped she had given him something, too. She took her time, imprinting him in her mind’s eye now the way he had imprinted himself on her body during the night.

She looked. And looked. And then, because she couldn’t help herself, she bent and brushed a kiss over his mouth. His lips moved, sought hers. But when she pulled away, when he didn’t find her, his lips parted. He sighed.

Edie did, too. “Good night, Nick,” she whispered. “Thank you.” She allowed herself one last light touch on his bare shoulder. “I think.”

And then she turned and slipped silently out into the night.

Chapter Four

The unexpected sound of the front doorbell of her mother’s Santa Barbara mansion startled her.

“Blast!” Edie shot a helpless glance in the direction of the living room, then turned a malevolent one on the computer screen she’d been staring at forever.

She was in the middle of making the latest of Rhiannon’s many plane reservations. She was almost to the last screen. If she stopped now, it would “time-out” and she would have to start over.

God knew, she probably would anyway. Rhiannon had been changing things almost daily for the past two months. Ever since she and Andrew had had their meltdown in Mont Chamion, even though they’d made up, Rhiannon had been edgy and wired, worried about whether Andrew would dump her one minute, and whether her career was over the next. She was constantly changing her priorities and her mind, and today’s rearranged schedule was just the latest indication of her turmoil.

It did not give Edie restful days, either. Fortunately Rhiannon was in the Bahamas shooting a music video today. If she hadn’t been, chances were good she’d have been perching on the edge of Edie’s desk talking a mile a minute, fretting about Andrew, and changing her mind even as Edie was rebooking her reservations. Now Edie glared at the hourglass, which still hung on the screen.

The doorbell rang again.

At its insistence, the dog, Roy, a gigantic Newfoundland—all black glossy fur and lolling red tongue—looked up with vague interest. As a pup he’d have been at the door already, barking like mad. Now at nine, he had a more casual approach to visitors. They had to be persistent or he wasn’t interested. He lay his head between his paws and closed his eyes again.

The doorbell chimed again. Emphatically. Twice.

Well, whoever they were, Roy would give them points for persistence. Ah, at last. The new screen finally appeared asking her to confirm the ticket purchase. Edie clicked. The hourglass reappeared. She waited.

And the doorbell rang. Once, twice. Three times now.

Not many people got as far as Mona Tremayne’s front door. Tucked away high in the mountains behind Santa Barbara, the acreage Mona had bought with Edie’s father, Joe, was far off the beaten path.

Everyone else had urged Mona to move after Joe died. The acreage was too big, they said. It had been Joe’s dream to have the cutting horse operation on rural Santa Barbara ranch land. But Mona had stayed true to that dream.

She and Joe had bought it not just for the horses, but because they’d wanted a place to get away to, a place where they could be themselves without coming face-to-face with the fanfare of Mona’s growing celebrity on an hourly basis. Of course it hadn’t had the present house on it then, only the now sadly decaying old adobe ranch house even farther from the road.

This house had come later, after Joe’s death. In her grief Mona wouldn’t leave the place they’d had together. But the crumbling old adobe was no place to be with two small children. Without Joe to keep things together, the roof would have fallen in on them at the very least. So Mona had had a new house built and a year later she and five-year-old Edie and nine-year-old Ronan had moved down the hill several hundred yards to what Ronan still called “Ma’s movie star house.”

It was big and lavishly decorated, parts of it definitely elegant enough for spur-of-the-moment entertaining of Hollywood moguls and the world’s rich and famous. At the same time it had eleven bedrooms, even more bathrooms, a butler’s pantry big enough for Edie’s twelve-year-old twin half brothers Dirk and Ruud to roller skate in, a swimming pool, tennis court and, oh yes, a doorbell.

This time whoever it was didn’t just ring it, they leaned on it. Long and hard and far too shrilly.

Annoyed, Edie was tempted not to answer it at all. But Mona’s “open house” policy extended to whomever among her hundreds of “close” friends turned up in the vicinity. Even when Mona was on the other side of the world, she—or, basically, Edie—welcomed all and sundry. The Tremayne hospitality was legendary, and Edie was quite happy to do it, though usually her mother warned her before guests were expected.

Now the hourglass gave way to a “confirmed” screen. Gratefully Edie punched a button to print Rhiannon’s itinerary, then, with Roy at her heels, she went to answer the bell—which was still ringing “All right! I hear you!” she shouted as she hurried down the hallway from her office at the back of the house, across the living room and grabbed the handle of the oversize dark oak door. “You can stop now!”