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

Now she was glad she hadn’t. She had only come back a few times since his death—mostly to bring the twins and Grace to the house, to try to interest them in it, to tell them stories there and give them a sense of connection to a past they were only peripherally part of.

“I thought you didn’t do houses,” she said now as she and Nick made their way up the path.

“Maybe I won’t,” he said. “I have to see it first.”

“Of course. It was nice of you to come all this way to look at it and give Mona an opinion,” Edie said, striving to sound properly businesslike. “I don’t know why she is so keen on doing it now.”

Well, she did, actually. And it had nothing to do with the house itself. But just how blatant had Mona been in her attempt at matchmaking? Edie slanted a glance at Nick as they walked, but he didn’t reply, and the look on his face didn’t give anything away.

“When did you finish at Mont Chamion?” she asked.

“I left a week or so after the wedding. There were some talented local craftsmen who continued the work while I was in Norway. I went back a couple of times to make sure everything was going well, but I’ve been in Norway and Scotland most of the past two months.”

“Scotland?”

“Mmm. Tell me about the ranch house.”

So much for getting him talking. But the ranch house was business, too, so Edie did as he asked.

“I think it’s from the mid-nineteenth century. Pretty primitive to begin with, I think. My dad used to tell us stories about the ranchers who lived here. I don’t know how true it was. Dad liked to tell stories.” She smiled now as she remembered the delight Joe Tremayne had taken in gathering her and Ronan onto his lap and regaling them with tales of early California.

“Was it in his family?” Nick asked.

“No. My mom and dad bought it right after they married. It was pretty run-down already by then, but the land was what my dad wanted. He was raised on a ranch north of San Luis Obispo. His dad was a foreman there. Dad wanted to raise cutting horses. That was his dream. He dabbled in winemaking, too. He wasn’t a Hollywood sort of guy.” In her mind’s eye she could still see her tall, handsome father with his shock of dark hair and wide mischievous grin. “He was a good balance to my mother. Solid. Dependable. Steady.” She caught herself before she went any further. “But you don’t care about that. You want to know about the house.”

“I want to know it all,” Nick said, his eyes on hers. “About the house, of course. But it’s important to understand the people who live—or lived—in it. What mattered to them. What they valued.”

Edie thought about that. She remembered him telling her about the history of the castle at Mont Chamion and about the royal family there. She guessed it was the same here.

“Family,” she said firmly. “That’s what they both wanted. Even Mona,” she said before he could raise his brows in doubt “My dad’s death changed her. He was her anchor. When he died, it was like she’d been cut adrift. She was lost. She wanted what they’d had—what we’d all had—and she kept trying to get it back.”

Telling him about it now, she could see it all again—the happy days they’d spend as a family in the old adobe followed by the painful dark days after the car accident that had taken her father’s life. Her voice trailed off as they crested the hill and headed down the other side. The old house came into sight beyond a stand of eucalyptus.

“Hence the marriages?” Nick ventured.

“Pretty much,” Edie agreed. “She wanted to be married. She wanted a man. And men want Mona. They always have. So they kept proposing, and she kept saying yes. And she kept having babies,” she added a little wryly.

“That must have been difficult for you.”

“No. It was great, especially after she got to be so famous. It was easier that there were six of us. It diluted the paparazzi’s attention.”

They were approaching the house now, and Edie was appalled at how run-down it looked. Tried to see it from Nick’s perspective. She imagined he was mentally packing his bags, ready to declare it worthless. It certainly didn’t look salvageable to her. And it had an empty forlorn air very much at odds with how she remembered it.

“It’s a lot worse than I remembered,” she said. “It wasn’t like this when I was growing up here.”

Nick didn’t say anything. He just stopped on the slope and studied the sprawling one-story adobe structure with its broad front porch and deep-set windows.

“It wasn’t in the best shape when they bought it,” Edie said quickly. “I remember Mona saying they got it cheap as a ‘fixer-upper.’ But my dad did a lot of work on it,” she added defensively. “But he was busy making a go of the ranch and the horses. He didn’t have a lot of time.”

“Understood.” Nick made his way down the rest of the dusty slope and began a closer inspection.

Edie, following him, recognized how very neglected the house had become. The broad front porch covering sagged. Pieces of the zaguán were broken or altogether missing. Places that her father had tried to patch with stucco had crumbled away and the adobe beneath them was crumbling as well.

Nick took his time, walking around the building slowly, looking at it from all angles while Edie followed, looking at the house, but also at him. He moved with the easy grace of some sort of jungle cat. Last year when she’d taken Ruud and Dirk to the San Diego Zoo, she’d been fascinated with the grace of a tiger moving through the brush. She thought of that tiger now as she watched Nick prowl around the house. He took hold of one of the timbers that poked out from the roof and jerked it. The crack of the wood made Edie wince.

“Probably not worth restoring,” she ventured.

He didn’t reply, just kept moving. He paused to pick at some of the stucco her father had used to repair part of the crumbling back wall, then watched it flake and fall to the ground. Another reason to wince.

It was good, she tried to tell herself. With all these things wrong with the house, the less likely he was to stay and Mona’s heavy-handed efforts at matchmaking would come to naught. But at the same time she didn’t want the house to fall down. And the Cinderella gene she was trying to ignore still wanted Nick Savas to stay.

“Is it unlocked?”

So the outside hadn’t totally discouraged him?

“I have a key.” She dug into her pocket and pulled out a set of keys, then chose the one to open the front door. Nick took it wordlessly from her. Their fingers brushed. Yes, heaven help her, even with a simple touch the awareness was still there.

In one long leap Nick vaulted onto the porch and opened the door.

Edie followed him more carefully, picking her way past the broken wooden steps up to the porch. “The electricity’s off,” she said. “I’m afraid you can’t see much.”

With a forest of towering eucalyptus all around, the house never received the brunt of the direct sun. It was far cooler that way, but the interior, shrouded in shadow and with only very deep-set windows, was barely visible when Edie followed him in the front door.

Apparently Nick was used to doing things by feel. As she watched, he moved around the room, running his hands over the walls, peering up at the ceiling, crouching down and studying the floor.

Edie didn’t know what he was seeing, but the longer she stood there, the more she saw memories of the house she’d been happy in as a child. This living room was the place where her dad had crawled around on the floor giving her horsey rides. Over by the window was where they’d put up the Christmas tree. In the big kitchen they had eaten meals her mother had actually cooked instead of those a cook made for them.

The memories made her throat ache as she looked around.

She walked around, touching things, recalling things. She ran her hand over the kitchen countertop and remembered standing on a chair helping her mother cut out cookies there. By the back door there were still the marks on the wall where her dad had marked her height and Ronan’s every few months. How small she’d been.

She rubbed her thumb over the last, highest pencil mark and remembered how she used to stretch as tall as she could, and her dad would press his hand on the top of her head, laughing. “Stop that! You’re growing too fast already!”

“You okay?” Nick appeared in the doorway, looking concerned.

Edie mustered a smile. “Just remembering.” She gave the wall a little pat. “It’s been a long time. This was a good place. I was just remembering how good it was.”

Nick nodded as if he understood.

Maybe he did. She didn’t know that much about him. The trouble was, what she knew she liked. And seeing him here made things somehow even more difficult.

When she’d had one night with him in a completely foreign setting, it was easier to tell herself she wasn’t really interested, that her awareness of him was a momentary aberration, that back in her own life, she wouldn’t really notice.

But she did.

He was opening the cupboards now, peering inside. And she allowed herself to study him because he wasn’t paying attention to her. She had run her fingers through that tousled hair. She’d nibbled her way along his stubbled jaw, then pulled off his tie and unbuttoned his shirt. Now, as he shut the cupboards and crouched down to look at the floor, she watched the muscles in his thighs bunch and flex beneath the worn denim covering his thighs and remembered that she had touched him there. And he had touched her, too.

Not just her body—but something fundamental deep inside her. Something that she hadn’t managed to forget.

“I have to go,” she said abruptly, her announcement rather louder than she intended. “I have work to do.”

From where he was crouched on the floor studying the boards, Nick glanced up at her and nodded. “Yeah. Sure. Fine. Go ahead.” He sounded as if he’d already dismissed her from his mind.

No doubt he had, Edie thought. She turned and hurried out of the house. “Come on, Roy,” she called to the dog who was nosing curiously around the edge of the porch.

Roy looked at her, then back at the house, as if he expected Nick to join them.

“He’s not coming,” Edie said, more for her own good than for the dog’s. “He’s here on business. And then he’s leaving.”

She hoped.

At least she thought that was what she hoped. He wasn’t here for her. He had awakened her, but he didn’t want her. He thought he was here for work, but it was really because Mona had been playing matchmaker again.

Edie glanced at her watch. It was early yet in Thailand, but so what?

If Mona thought she was going to get away with meddling in Edie’s life, she deserved an early wake-up call!

He’d hadn’t made any promises.

“I’ll take a look at the adobe,” Nick had told Mona on the phone last week. “You don’t want to throw money down the drain. If it isn’t a good candidate for restoration, I’ll tell you.”

“Fine. Good. Whatever you think,” Mona had said. “You can stay at my place. There’s plenty of room.”

“I’ll do that,” he’d said. “But it might not be worth it.”

“Understood.” Mona had sounded impatient. “Got to go. We’re shooting now. Discuss it with Edie. She can show you around. You remember Edie.”

He remembered Edie.

She hadn’t changed a bit.

Her utilitarian ponytail hardly recalled the sophisticated upswept hairstyle she’d worn to the wedding. And her casual canvas pants and open-neck pink shirt might mask the curves the purple dress had highlighted.

But Nick was willing to bet that, unloosed, her hair would cascade down her back in those wondrously silken waves. Just as he knew damned well that underneath whatever Edie Daley wore, he would still find her petal-soft skin and the womanly secrets he’d only once had a chance to explore.

“Hell,” he muttered, scowling toward the door she’d walked out of moments before.

Hell—because she was just as appealing as she had been back in Mont Chamion. He’d hoped she wouldn’t be. That was why he’d been at pains to make sure Mona understood he might not stick around.

Maybe the house wouldn’t be worth working on—or maybe he’d take one look at Edie Daley and decide that their one night in Mont Chamion was the extent of her appeal.

No such luck.

Now he stood in the shadows of the window and watched her until she was out of sight.

She was still wearing the baseball cap, with her hair pulled back into a ponytail and poking out through the space above the adjustable strap at the back of the hat. And she really didn’t have any noticeable curves. In fact, from the back he was disconcerted to discover that she could probably pass for a tall, slender twelve-year-old girl.

So why, for two and a half months, had he not been able to get her out of his mind?

Nick had never dwelt on the women he bedded. Had no interest in them beyond the night they spent together. They were fun and attractive and he had a good time with them. But as soon as they were gone, he moved on and never looked back.

End of story.

He couldn’t even have told you half their names. But he couldn’t forget hers: Edie Daley.

Edie of the long dark curls and flashing green eyes, of the wide mobile mouth and the very kissable lips. Lithe and limber Edie. Eager and passionate Edie. Her spark, her charm, her curiosity, her vulnerability, all had haunted him every night, and plenty of days. Since he’d shared his bed with her.

Two and a half months and he hadn’t been able to forget her. It was absurd.

At first Nick thought the memories kept coming back because they’d spent the night in his bed. He had always made a point of never sharing his own bed with a woman.

He didn’t bring them onto his turf.

Hell, he didn’t even have turf. He didn’t own a house, didn’t rent a flat. He had no place to call his own. He’d sold the house he’d built for Amy as soon as he could after her death. He wanted nothing more to do with it.

He left what little personal gear he didn’t carry with him at his uncle Socrates’s house on Long Island. And he stayed on the move, living in someone else’s house while he renovated it. It suited him perfectly. He had no reason to have a house.

He had no wife. No kids. No dog nor cat. No encumbrances at all.

He didn’t need them. Didn’t want them.

And he didn’t want Edie Daley, either!

Well, he did. Carnally, at least, Nick admitted, he wanted her a hell of a lot. But that was all.

The desire was an itch he needed to scratch. So, he’d scratch it and it would be gone, and that would be that.

Chapter Five

“WHAT do you mean she’s gone?” Edie demanded.

The Thai woman on the other end of the phone connection didn’t speak particularly good English, which gave Edie hope that she might have heard wrong. But when the woman repeated her words, the meaning was the same the second time around.

“Miz Tremayne go away for work. Not here.”

“But it’s barely light,” Edie protested. “What on earth time did she go?”

“She go last night.”

“Last night? But she didn’t mention anything yesterday.”

“Change of plan,” the woman said. She didn’t sound as if it was any big deal. Probably for her it wasn’t.

“When’s she coming back?”

“Don’t know. Three, four, five days maybe. They go to mountains.”

“Mountains?” That didn’t sound good. And they were going to be gone days? “But I need to talk to her.”

She was only calling the phone at the house Mona had rented because she had already tried Mona’s mobile phone half a dozen times. Each time it had gone directly to voice mail.

At first she’d thought her mother was simply avoiding her. But after two hours with no reply, she knew something else was going on. Mona was a stickler for returning messages. The only time she didn’t call back was when she was in the middle of a scene or completely out of range.

Obviously now she was out of range. But for days?

“Where are the kids?” Edie asked. Ordinarily her mother would have sent for her to take care of them while she was gone. Surely she hadn’t just left them with the woman who cared for the house.

“They go, too.”

“Ah. Well, um, good.” At least Edie hoped that was good. There was no doubt that Mona loved her children. But she also had a career that demanded she put it first most of the time. Taking the twins and Grace with her this summer—without having Edie along to keep an eye on things—was something of a first.

“Did she even take her phone?”

“She take it,” the woman said. “But hard to get calls. You try,” she suggested cheerfully. “Maybe you be lucky.”

Luck, Edie could have told her mother’s housekeeper, was not on her side at the moment.

She thanked the woman, tried Mona’s number twice more, then gave up. There was no point in filling her mother’s in-box with messages she wouldn’t see until she got back to civilization. Besides, when she confronted Mona about her matchmaking, she intended to do it live and, if not face-to-face, then at least ear to ear.

She’d given Mona a piece of her mind after the Kyle Robbins incident at the wedding. She thought Mona had learned her lesson. Apparently not.

Still grumbling, Edie stared at the computer screen and tried to focus on the rest of the afternoon’s work. She had phone calls to return, some correspondence from Mona’s contracts lawyer to deal with and Rhiannon’s plane reservations to cancel and rebook. Surely she had plenty to keep her busy—enough so that she wouldn’t spend the rest of the afternoon thinking about Nick Savas.

Easier said than done. She got the reservations rebooked. She looked up the answers to the questions Mona’s contracts lawyer wanted. She returned that call and several others. But all the while she did so, she had one ear cocked toward the door, expecting to hear it open, expecting the sound of footfalls heading toward the office.

Time passed. An hour. Two. By five-thirty he still hadn’t come. Perhaps he’d taken a look around, then simply left. When she closed up the office she actually walked out to the front room to look out the window to see if his car was still there.

Of course it was. He couldn’t have left without her knowing because he’d have had to come back for his bag. He’d already taken his duffel upstairs.

So did he expect her to simply sit in her office and wait for him?

Probably not, Edie admitted to herself. Probably he hadn’t given her a thought at all.

“And you should stop thinking about him,” she counseled herself.

So she did what she always did after work. She changed into her bathing suit, went out to the pool and dived in.

It was just past six when Nick got back to Mona’s house.

He had gone over every inch of the adobe, had walked around kicking the foundation, prying up floorboards, clambering onto the roof. He was grimy, filthy, sweaty and hot and he needed a shower. Bad.

Now he went around the house to go through the doors closest to the stairs so he wouldn’t track in dirt and dust. And so he could stop by Edie’s office. But before he got there, out of the corner of his eye he saw movement that caught his attention.

Beyond the bank of oleanders growing partway down the lawn, someone was in the pool.

Before his brain made a conscious decision, his feet were already heading across the lawn toward where Edie’s lithe form cut through the water as she did laps. Her stroke was smooth and even, but it wasn’t her stroke Nick was focused on. It was her body, her mile-long legs, her tanned back—all that lovely golden skin he remembered so well.

If he’d needed a shower before, he needed one worse now. A long icy cold one.

Or, he thought, he could dive into the pool, take Edie into his arms and solve all his problems at once.

Not a difficult choice.

He had unbuttoned his shirt by the time he reached the terrazzo-tiled patio where the pool was. He opened the gate, tossed the shirt onto a chaise longue and was toeing off his shoes and tugging his undershirt over his head at the same time.

“You’re back.” Edie’s voice startled him.

Nick jerked the T-shirt the rest of the way off to see her, out of the pool now, coming toward him. She had a towel wrapped around her waist and she was rubbing her hair dry with another. He couldn’t see her legs anymore, but her bare midriff was enticement enough. As Nick watched, half a dozen droplets of water slid down her abdomen from beneath the top of her bathing suit.

He swallowed, staring as the drops disappeared into the towel knotted at her waist.

“So what do you think?”

“Think?” He wasn’t thinking. Not with his brain anyway.

“About what?” he asked dazedly. She had to have seen him coming. Why the hell hadn’t she stayed in the pool? Was she trying to avoid him? he wondered, nettled.

“About the house.” She lowered the towel from her hair and peered at him over the top of it “Time to raze it? Cut our losses?” She sounded almost hopeful.

Was she hoping? Surely not. He’d seen the wistful look on her face this afternoon. He’d watched her move from room to room, running her hands over the woodwork and the cabinets, touching those little pencil marks by the back door.

“No,” he said sharply, with more force than he intended. He moderated his tone. “No. It’s quite salvageable.”

“Really? And it should be?” Now she sounded surprised.

“It’s an interesting piece of vernacular architecture,” he said firmly. “Not all of a piece, of course. And not of huge historical significance,” he added honestly. “But the fact that it’s not a mansion, but a surviving example of small ranch architecture makes it worth restoring.”

Also true. To a point. From a purely historical significance standpoint, the old adobe ranch house was such a pastiche of different styles, periods, restorations, disastrous additions and bad workmanship that, as a bonafide professional historical restoration expert called on to choose which buildings were worth preserving and restoring, he ought to have been running in the other direction.

But he wasn’t.

He was standing here saying, “It can be salvaged,” with an absolutely straight face.

And he was rewarded by seeing her face light up. “I thought you’d say it wasn’t worth the trouble.”

It wasn’t. At least not solely on an architectural basis. But there were other reasons to restore things.

“It’s worth it,” he said.

She gave him an instant brilliant smile. But it faded quickly. “So what does that mean?” she asked, sounding almost wary now.

We make love right here on the chaise. Of course he didn’t say that. He cleared his throat. “I put together a plan, talk it over with Mona, then get to work.”

“So, you’re … going to be staying a while?” She didn’t sound thrilled.

“Yes,” he said firmly.

Now she smiled again, but it still didn’t seem to reach her eyes. “Well, um, great. That’s just great.”

“You don’t want the house salvaged?”

Something flickered in her eyes. “No, I do. It’s—” she hesitated, then the smile appeared again “—it’s lovely.”

“Then why don’t I take you to dinner and we can celebrate?”

Edie blinked. She opened her mouth. But then she just stood there looking at him. No sound came out.

“Edie?” he prompted when seconds went by and she didn’t speak.

“Celebrate?” she echoed at last.

“Sure. We have a lot to celebrate. That the house is worth fixing. That I’m going to be here a while. That we’re both here,” he added pointedly and turned the full heat of his gaze on her. “I think that’s worth celebrating, don’t you?”

He saw her swallow. Then she bobbed her head a little jerkily and took a breath. “Yes. Of course.” Another breath, a brittle smile. “That would be nice.”

“Nice?” He cocked his head, regarding her from beneath hooded lids. “Nice?” he repeated, teasingly.