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

He was staying?

Still poleaxed from his phone call, Edie stared after Nick as he carried an armful of tiles to a spot near the side of the house. She still felt as if the breath had been knocked right out of her. She was giddy and panicky and perversely elated. At the same time she was trying not to feel anything at all.

She knew what he was doing.

He was calling her bluff. He was going to make her prove she could resist him. She ground her teeth, glaring at his back. But then, having put down the tiles, he straightened and turned and looked right at her, and she felt the giddiness again, and hoped to goodness she could do what she’d told herself—and him—was necessary.

It was necessary!

She knew herself. She knew how invested she became in relationships. She knew the pain that her unrequited love for Kyle had caused her. Even having gone to bed with Nick once had undermined her ability to remain uninvolved. She had told herself she could—but in the end, she’d cared.

She hadn’t fallen in love. But she hadn’t been able to forget him, either.

Now once more she tried to imagine taking Nick to her bed for as long as he was here, then smiling and saying goodbye whenever the house was finished.

Or sooner.

There was no guarantee he wouldn’t get bored with her much sooner than it took him to finish the house!

He could share a bed with her once more or five times more and then decide it was time to move on, find another woman. He wouldn’t even have to flaunt her in front of Edie. He could simply find a new bedmate.

And she’d be left, gutted, heartbroken.

In the end Nick was right—it was simple.

But he was wrong, too. He might find it easy to choose where he loved. But could she?

Again the answer was simple: no.

So she turned her head, refused to let her gaze linger on his easy walk, his lean muscular body, his smile, the gleam in his eyes. She helped him move the tiles, and tried to think about something else.

And when they had the truck unloaded, she said, “Goodbye.”

“Au revoir,” Nick said cheerfully. “That means I’ll see you again.”

“I know what it means,” Edie said shortly. She felt like saying, Not if I see you first. “Come, Roy.”

But Roy, perversely, was too busy following Nick around, watching what he was doing, deftly catching the occasional treat Nick tossed his way.

“I saw that,” Edie accused him. “Roy, come on!”

But Roy only had eyes for Nick.

“He’s my friend,” Nick told her, grinning.

“Because you’re bribing him,” Edie said indignantly.

“You haven’t ever heard the old saying, ‘The way to a dog’s heart is through his stomach’?”

Edie shot him a glare to keep from laughing. “Fine. Keep him with you. Just don’t overdo it,” she said irritably. “And don’t lose him.”

“No fear. We’ll both be back for dinner,” Nick promised.

Edie grunted her lack of enthusiasm about that and started up the hill.

“I’ll pick up a pizza,” Nick called after her. “What kind do you like?”

She didn’t answer that. “I’m going to be busy.” Busy avoiding him.

But if Nick got the message, he ignored it. “See you later.”

She tried to make sure that wouldn’t happen. She finished up at work early. She swam her laps early, so she would be done before he got back. And she was in her apartment making a salad for dinner when she heard his car.

The only reason she looked out the window was to see that Roy was with him. Once she saw the big black dog, she turned away. So she wasn’t prepared for the knock on her door.

“We’re back,” Nick announced unnecessarily. He had a pizza box in one hand.

She didn’t invite him in. Apparently she didn’t need to. He came in just the way Roy did, without an invitation. Only while Roy went straight to the food dish, Nick paused to look around at the overstuffed sofa and chair, the craftsman style bookcases and the library table that doubled as her dining room table. He nodded his approval. “Nice place. Suits you.” He spotted the cat on the windowsill. “Who’s this?”

“Gerald,” Edie told him. “What are you doing here? I didn’t invite you,” she said pointedly.

“No, I invited you,” Nick agreed. “For pizza,” he reminded her when she looked blank.

“I said I was busy.”

He looked around at the evidence of her doing absolutely nothing other than tearing up some salad greens. “Yeah, I can tell.”

Breath hissed through Edie’s teeth. “I don’t want to have dinner with you.”

“Because you’ll fall in love with me.” He paused, then the grin flashed again. “Or am I making myself so obnoxious that you can’t stand me?”

“Getting close,” Edie said, determined not to smile.

Nick shrugged equably. “Well, if you don’t want to share the pizza with me …” He waved the box close enough that she could smell sausage and other mouth-watering pizza sorts of smells as he moved toward the door. Edie’s stomach growled.

“Oh, fine. Sit down,” she snapped.

He beamed. “Will do. Gotta clean up a bit first. You take care of this while I grab a quick shower.” He thrust the pizza box into her hands. “Don’t eat it all before I get back.” And he ran lightly back down her stairs and headed for Mona’s house.

She put the pizza in the oven and turned the heat on low to keep it warm. Then she finished making the salad, adding enough for him now, and set the table for two. Roy looked hopeful. Gerald came over to see if there was something for him. Edie fed them both.

Then she told them sternly, “That’s all you get. No sitting around watching us, looking hopeful.”

“No, that would be me.”

She whipped around to see Nick standing in the doorway. He gave her what was undeniably a hopeful look, tempered with a grin, as his gaze slid over her, making her all too aware of what he was hoping for. Edie steeled her heart—and her hormones.

“Don’t,” she said firmly.

He shrugged. “Okay,” he said easily, dropping the hopeful look and heading straight for the table with the same single-mindedness Roy and Gerald had shown. “Starving,” he said as he put a piece of pizza on her plate and one on his. Then he dished her up some salad and took some for himself. “This looks great.”

It did. And she was hungry. So she ate.

For the first few minutes there was silence as they were both focused on the meal. But eventually Edie had had enough to be far more aware of the man than of the meal he’d brought.

When he finished his fourth piece of pizza, he leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Ripping off a roof gives a guy an appetite.”

She’d noticed that he’d already begun when he’d called her to bring the key. Now she reached over to the counter and plucked it up and held it out to him. “You’d better have this. Then you won’t have to keep calling me.”

His lips twisted, but he took the key and stuffed it into the pocket of the canvas shorts he was wearing. “Thanks.”

Their gazes met again. His dark eyes regarded her warmly. A slight smile played across his lips. She abruptly got up and carried her plate to the sink. “Thank you for the pizza,” she said, running water to wash the dishes.

“Thank you for the salad,” he said equally politely. He came up behind her, set his plate on the counter. He was so near she could feel the heat of his body. She added dish soap to the water, then began putting the dishes in, all the while aware of him right behind her. And equally aware when he moved away.

She breathed again.

“I’ve got some planning to do,” he said. “So I’ll say good night.”

She looked over her shoulder, surprised.

Nick shrugged. “Unless you have a better idea?” There was that hint of hope again.

Edie shook her head. “No. No. I—good night.”

It was the right thing to do, she assured herself when the door closed behind him and she heard his feet going down the steps. It was safer—far far safer—this way.

Nick finished ripping the roof off the next morning. The following day he cleaned and sorted tiles. It had been a while since he’d worked on a roof like this one. Putting new and old tiles together was a tricky business. He wanted to take his time.

And he wanted Edie to come back.

She hadn’t been here since the first day. He barely saw her except at dinner. Somehow they managed to eat that together every night. Either she cooked and apparently felt obligated to feed him—”Mona’s hospitality is legendary,” she said, making it clear the meals were an extension of it—or he went into town and picked up take-away.

But other than at dinner, he didn’t see her. She didn’t come around the adobe at all. Well, no, that wasn’t true. She was certainly there in spirit—in his head—even if she didn’t set foot in the place.

On Friday as he removed the last of the rotten front porch beams before he put the new one up this afternoon, he could look across the roof line and see the rusty swing set near the trees.

Edie hadn’t gone near it when she’d shown him the house, but he knew she must have played there as a child.

It took no imagination to envision her swinging high, short legs pumping furiously, long dark hair streaming out behind. He smiled as he saw it in his mind’s eye because he knew exactly what she’d looked like. The dark-haired little girl who had been Edie graced half a dozen pictures in the upstairs hall at Mona’s place.

Later when he ate his lunch in the kitchen at the rickety table, he thought about her eating meals here with her family. It was intriguing to think of Mona Tremayne cooking in this kitchen, of her not as a megastar but as a young wife and mother.

But it was more intriguing to think about Edie as a child.

As the sun spilled through the dirty windows, making patterns on the dusty floor, Nick tried to imagine her playing there with her brother. He was sure she had. He’d seen the flickering expressions on her face when she’d brought him here. He wondered about those memories.

Ordinarily when he thought about the earlier occupants of a building he was restoring, they were distant historical figures. They weren’t the woman he’d had pizza with on Tuesday and meat loaf with last night, the woman he’d made love with in Mont Chamion, the proper, tart-tongued woman who had melted in his arms, the woman he couldn’t stop wanting to take back to his bed.

But when he studied the vertical row of little ink marks climbing the wall by the back door—dark blue Rs for her brother Ronan, and bright red Es for Edie—once again she became the little dark-haired girl she had been when she’d lived here. He bet she had stood tall while her father measured her.

If he shut his eyes he could see them now in his mind. There was a photo in the hall of Edie and her dad. She had been sitting on the adobe’s front porch steps, snuggled close under her father’s arm. She’d had her head turned so that, instead of staring into the camera, she was looking up at her father as if he regularly hung the moon just for her.

The memory made Nick smile until he realized that within a year of that photo, Joe Tremayne had been killed in an accident and Edie’s life had irrevocably changed.

It was a wonder she wanted to come back here at all.

The noise of clicking on floorboards jolted him back to the present, and he turned to see Roy pattering in from the living room across the dusty floor. His mood lightened and he looked up, expecting—hoping—to see Edie at last.

But no one was there.

“Where is she?” Nick asked the dog.

Not surprisingly, Roy didn’t answer. He was more interested in what remained of Nick’s sandwich, and he whined hopefully. Nick gave the crusts to the dog, stood up and went outside to look for her. “Edie?”

But no one answered. He called her name again. Nothing. Except that Roy, having swallowed the crusts in one gulp, had come outside, too, and stood on the porch, wagging his tail.

“You didn’t come without her, did you?”

But apparently he had. Hope faded. Nick sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, kneading taut cords of muscle. “Well,” he said to the dog, “make yourself at home. I’ve got work to do.”

If Mona ever got back to civilization, Edie thought irritably, she’d be amazed at all the work her business manager had accomplished while she had been out of touch.

Edie always worked hard. But working all day and a good part of the night, determinedly refusing to let herself think about Nick Savas, was having an extraordinary effect on her work output.

Even in the instances where, previously, there would be half a dozen phone calls waiting to be returned when she got to work in the morning because people all over the world were involved with Mona, now Edie almost always picked up the phone regardless of the time of night.

Why not?

She wasn’t sleeping.

And talking about whatever they wanted to talk about was safer by far than lying in bed, tossing and turning and thinking about the man asleep in Mona’s house—the man who could be in her bed if only she’d let him.

But she wouldn’t let him. Couldn’t.

But she thought about him. Couldn’t help herself.

She looked forward to their dinners every evening. Couldn’t seem to help that, either. She was eager to learn what he’d done on the house every day.

“You should come and see,” he said each evening.

But she always declined. “I’ve got too much to do,” she said. But she was curious.

So was he. While she asked about his work, every evening he asked questions about the years she’d lived there.

Which had been her bedroom? When had the swing set been set up? Whose birthday present had it been? How had they celebrated Christmas when they’d lived there?

At first Edie was reluctant to answer. For years she had bottled up the memories because it had seemed safer that way. But under Nick’s gentle questioning, she found herself talking more, remembering more—and finding joy in the flood of memories she’d kept close to her heart.

Why hadn’t she done it sooner?

Because talking about her father had always caused her mother pain. Ronan, too, shied away from discussing their father. But then Ronan shied away from talking about everything. And no one else shared those memories. No one ever asked about them. Not even Ben, she realized. He hadn’t probed, didn’t want to make her sad. And Ben had always been busy looking forward.

But Nick asked.

And Edie talked. When she protested that she was talking too much about herself, that it was his turn, he obliged with stories about his own childhood—about summers on Long Island—he and his brother Ari with their Savas cousins, especially Demetrios who was his age and George who was the same age as his brother Ari.

“We were wild and crazy kids,” he told her. “If there was trouble to get into, we found it.”

He told her stories that made her laugh and he showed her scars that made her wince. And she realized that not going to bed with Nick wasn’t stopping her falling in love a little bit more every night they shared a meal.

Each evening the dinners lasted longer, and it was harder to pull herself away and say she needed to get back to work.

But she did. She had to. It was all she could do for self-preservation.

But by Friday she knew it was a very good thing she had agreed to go out with Derek that evening.

Midafternoon, after she’d taken four high-pressure phone calls in a row and spent another hour fruitlessly trying to contact Mona about a script, she decided to take a break, go back to her apartment and figure out what she was going to wear.

“Come on,” she said, turning to look for the dog as she hung up the phone, frustrated at still not reaching Mona. “Let’s get out of here.”

And that was when she realized Roy wasn’t there.

“Roy?”

She got up from her desk and went out to the kitchen. Sometimes on hot days he would go lie on the cool tiles there. But not today.

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