Lauren straightened self-consciously and tried to put a bright smile on her sleepy face, which Nick observed with a gleam of humor. "I think," he said, "that Lauren is ready for bed."
The older man glanced at her, then winked at Nick. "Lucky you." With a brief wave, he turned and strolled off toward the house.
Wrapping his arms around her, Nick hugged her tightly to his muscular chest and buried his face in her fragrant hair. "Am I, Lauren?"
Lauren snuggled closer into the warmth of his arms. "Are you what?" she murmured.
"Going to be lucky tonight?"
"No," Lauren sleepily replied.
"I thought not," he chuckled against her hair. Leaning back he looked down at her sleepy face and wryly shook his head. "Come on—you're already half asleep." He put his arm around her shoulders and started walking her back to the house.
"I like Mr. Numbers," she commented.
Nick's sidelong look was filled with amusement. "Actually, his name happens to be Mason. Numbers is a nickname."
"He's a mathematical wizard," Lauren remarked admiringly. "And he's very nice. He's friendly, and he's—"
"A bookie," Nick provided.
"He's a what?" Lauren almost stumbled in her surprise.
Despite the lateness of the hour, the house was lit up and the party was at a fever pitch. "Don't these people ever sleep?" Lauren asked when Nick opened the front door, and the noisy laughter exploded around them.
"Not if they can help it," he answered, casually surveying the scene. He asked a servant which room Lauren had been given, then led her up the staircase. "I'm going to stay at the Cove tonight. We'll spend the day there tomorrow—alone." He opened the door to Lauren's room and added, "The keys to your car are with the butler. All you have to do is turn north out of the driveway and come two miles to the first road on the left. The Cove is at the end of that road, and it's the only house there—you can't miss it. I'll expect you at eleven."
His arrogant assumption that she would be perfectly willing to come to the Cove—and do anything else he wanted—filled Lauren with exasperated amusement. "Shouldn't you ask if I want to be alone with you there?"
He chucked her under the chin. "You do." Grinning at her as if she were an entertaining nine-year-old, he mocked lightly, "If you don't, you can always turn south out of the driveway and head for Missouri." Curving his arms around her he claimed her lips in a long, smoldering kiss. "I'll see you at eleven."
Rankled, Lauren contradicted flippantly, "Unless I decide to leave for Missouri."
When he left, she sank down onto the bed, an unwilling smile trembling on her lips. How could any one man be so outrageously self-confident, so arrogant—and so utterly wonderful? She had been too busy with school, her job and her music to ever become deeply involved with a man, but she was a grown woman. She knew what she wanted, and she wanted Nick. He was everything a man should be—strong, gentle, intelligent, wise—and he had a sense of humor. He was handsome and sexy…
Picking up her pillow, Lauren happily wrapped her arms around it and hugged it to her chest, rubbing her cheek against the white material as if it was his shirt. He was playing a game with desire, but she wanted to make him care for her too—she wanted to win him. If she was going to make him care for her, if she was ever going to be special to him, she had to be different from the other women he'd known.
Lauren flopped down on her back and gazed at the ceiling. He was entirely too sure of her, she decided. For example, he was perfectly confident that she would come to the Cove. A good dose of uncertainty might throw him off balance and help her cause. Therefore, she would be just late enough to make him think she wasn't coming. Eleven-thirty would be perfect—by then he would have decided she wasn't coming, but he wouldn't have left yet to go anywhere else.
With the pillow still wrapped in her arms and the smile still on her lips, Lauren fell asleep. She slept with the inner peace and profound joy of a woman who knows she has found the man whose destiny lies with hers.
6
« ^ »
In accordance with her plan to arrive at the Cove a bit late, Lauren asked the butler for the keys to her car and walked out onto the drive at eleven-twenty, only to find that there were at least six cars blocking hers.
By the time the owners had been identified, the keys found and the cars moved, it was eleven forty-five, and Lauren was a little frantic. Her hands clenched the steering wheel as she swung her car out onto the main road. What if he had decided not to wait?
Exactly two miles from the Middletons' she saw a blacktop driveway on the left with a small wooden sign that read The Cove, and she turned in to it, racing up the steep winding incline, sending startled rabbits and squirrels into the dense forest as she drove by.
An L-shaped house loomed into view at the end of the driveway, a spectacular structure of glass and rough-sawn cedar that looked as if it belonged on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Lauren braked the car to a jarring stop beside the house, grabbed her purse and hurried up the wide flagstone walk to the front door.
She rang the bell and waited, then she rang it again and waited even longer. But when she pressed it the third time, she already knew that no one was going to answer. No one was there.
Turning, Lauren gazed despondently at the small manicured lawn. There was no point in going around to the back because the house was perched on the very edge of a bluff, with nothing behind it but a sheer drop of a hundred feet down to the water and a cedar deck that was breathtakingly suspended in midair.
Nick hadn't been willing to wait very long for her, she thought bitterly. When she didn't arrive on time he must have thought that she'd left for Missouri. He didn't have a car of his own, so he must have gone off somewhere with the owner of this magnificent home.
She started walking back down the path, feeling very stupid and very much like crying. She couldn't just sit down on the doorstoop and hope Nick eventually came back there to sleep that night, and she couldn't return to the Middletons', since she was there as his guest. She should have known better than to try to play games with a man who was obviously a master at them. Because of her scheming, she was going to end up spending this glorious day driving back to Missouri after all.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, Lauren opened the car door and put her purse on the passenger seat. As she paused to look once more at the wild beauty of her surroundings, her gaze locked onto some steps carved into the rocky bluff just beside her, and she heard a strange metallic sound coming from far below. The steps obviously led down through the trees to the beach—and someone was down there. With her heart slamming into her ribs she hurried down the steep steps.
On the bottom step she stopped, paralyzed with joy and relief at the sight of Nick's lithe, familiar form. Clad only in a pair of brief white tennis shorts, he was crouched down, working on the motor of a small boat that had been pulled up onto the narrow crescent of sandy beach. For a long moment Lauren simply watched him, her eyes delighting in the sheer male beauty of his wide shoulders, muscular arms and tapered back, gleaming like oiled bronze in the sun.
As she stood there, he stopped working on the motor and looked down at his wristwatch. His arm dropped, and he slowly turned his head to stare at something on his right. He was so perfectly still that Lauren finally tore her eyes from his profile and followed his gaze. When she saw what he had done, tenderness vibrated through her entire body. He had spread blankets on the sand and placed a huge beach umbrella behind to screen them from the sun. A linen tablecloth had been carefully set with china, crystal goblets and silver. Three wicker picnic baskets were off to one side, and a bottle of wine was protruding from the open lid of one of them.
He must have made half a dozen trips up and down those steep steps, Lauren realized. Considering that a few minutes before she'd thought he didn't even care enough about her to wait until she got here, this evidence of how much he actually did care was doubly touching.
Not that touching, she hast
ily reminded herself, trying unsuccessfully to banish her smile. After all, what she was really looking at was the carefully prepared scene of her very own seduction… Attempted seduction, she corrected, with an inward grin.
Smoothing down the bright green V-necked velour top that matched her shorts, she decided she would say something witty by way of greeting. And Nick would, of course, be very casual and pretend he hadn't even noticed that she was late. With that scenario in mind she stepped forward. Unfortunately, she couldn't think of anything witty to say. "Hi," she called out cheerfully.
In his crouching position, Nick slowly pivoted around, the wrench still in his hand. He draped his arm across his bent knees and stared at her with cool, inscrutable gray eyes. "You're late," he said.
That was so far from what she'd envisioned that Lauren had to gulp back a stunned giggle as she walked over to him. "Did you think I wasn't coming?" she inquired innocently.
His dark brows lifted sardonically. "Wasn't that what I was supposed to think?"
It wasn't a question, it was a cool accusation, and Lauren's first impulse was to deny it. Instead she nodded her head, an irrepressible smile teasing her lips. "Yes," she admitted softly, watching his chilly gray eyes turn warm with fascinated interest. "Were you disappointed?" Instantly she regretted the question, because she knew Nick would now retaliate by saying something cutting.
"Very disappointed," he admitted quietly.
A treacherous heat was seeping through Lauren's nervous system as she gazed into those mesmerizing gray eyes, and as Nick put the wrench down and slowly stood up, she cautiously backed away a step.
"Lauren?"
She swallowed. "Yes?"
"Would you like to eat first?"
"First," she whispered hoarsely. "Before what?"
"Before we go sailing," he replied, studying her with puzzlement.
"Oh, sailing!" Her breath came out in a laugh. "Yes, thank you, I would like to eat first. And I'd love to go sailing."
7
« ^ »
Lauren had never known a more glorious day than this. In the two hours since they sailed away from the Cove, a warm comradery had sprung up between them—a companionship that was made up of spontaneous comments and shared laughter, punctuated with long relaxed silences.
The brilliant blue sky was decorated with puffy white clouds, and the wind caught the sail, sending the boat shooting soundlessly through the water. She watched a sea gull screeching overhead, then glanced at Nick, who was seated at the tiller, facing her. He smiled and Lauren smiled back, then she lifted her face to the sky again, basking in the sun's golden warmth and in the knowledge that Nick's lazy, admiring gaze was on her.
"We could drop anchor here and do some sunbathing and some fishing. Would you like that?" Nick said.
"I'd love it." Lauren watched him roll to his feet and begin taking in the sail.
"We should get some bass and blue gill for our dinner," he said a few minutes later as he rigged two fishing poles. "There's great salmon fishing here, but we'd need downriggers, and we'd have to troll."
Lauren had fished with her father many times from the banks of Missouri's verdant creeks and rivers, but she'd never fished from a boat. She didn't have the faintest idea what a downrigger was or what trolling was either, but intended to find out. If the man she loved liked to fish from boats, she would learn to like it too.
"I've got one," Nick called a half hour later as his line played out with a whir.
Lauren dropped her rod and went racing toward his end of the boat, unthinkingly shouting directions: "Set the hook! Keep your rod tip up. Don't let the line go slack. He's running—loosen the drag."
"Lord, are you bossy!" Nick grinned, and she realized with a rueful smile that he was handling the fish with expertise. A few minutes later he leaned over the side of the boat and scooped the big perch into a long-handled net. Like a proud little boy who was showing off his trophy to someone special, Nick held up his flapping fish for Lauren to properly admire. "Well, what do you think?"
One look at that boyish expression on his ruggedly chiseled features, and the love that had budded inside Lauren burst into full bloom. You're wonderful, she thought. "He's wonderful," she said.
And in that outwardly casual moment, Lauren made the most momentous decision of her life. Nick already owned her heart; tonight it was right that he have her body too.
The sun was setting in a blaze of crimson when Nick let out the sail and they started back to the Cove. Lauren again felt his gaze on her as he sat at the tiller, facing her in the waning light. It was getting chilly, and she drew her legs up against her chest, wrapping her arms around them. The question of how they were going to spend the night had been completely resolved in her mind, but it bothered her that she was about to take such an irrevocable step with a man whom she adored, but about whom she knew so very little.
"What are you thinking about?" Nick asked quietly.
"I was thinking that I know very little about you."
"What would you like to know?"
It was the opening Lauren desperately wanted. "Well, for a start, how do you happen to know Tracy Middleton and the crowd at her party?"
As if he was delaying his answer, Nick took a cigarette from the package in his pocket and put it between his lips. He lit a match and cupped his hands over the flame, lighting it. "Tracy and I grew up next door to each other," he said, extinguishing the match with a deft shake of his wrist. "Near where Tony's restaurant is now."
Lauren was astounded. Tony's restaurant was in what was today a fashionably renovated downtown neighborhood. But fifteen or twenty years ago, when Nick and Tracy were growing up there, it couldn't have been very nice at all.
Nick watched the play of emotions across her features and apparently guessed the direction of her thoughts. "Tracy married George, who is nearly twice her age, in order to escape from the old neighborhood."
Cautiously, Lauren approached the topic that Nick had avoided earlier and that interested her the most. "Nick, you said your father died when you were four, and that your grandparents raised you. But what happened to your mother?"
"Nothing happened to her. She went back to live with her parents the day after my father's funeral."
Oddly, it was his complete indifference that alerted Lauren and made her study him sharply. His handsome face was composed, a neutral mask. Too composed, too unemotional, she thought. She didn't want to pry, but she was falling in love with this compelling, enigmatic, passionate man, and she desperately needed to understand him. Hesitantly she said, "Your mother didn't take you with her?"
The curtness of Nick's tone warned her that he was not pleased with the direction of the conversation, but he answered, "My mother was a wealthy, pampered Grosse Pointe debutante who met my father when he went to her family's house to repair some electrical wiring. Six weeks later she jilted her bland but wealthy fiancé, and she married my proud but penniless father instead. Apparently she regretted it almost immediately. My father insisted that she live on what he could make, and she hated him for that. Even after his business was doing better, she despised her life, and she despised him."
"Then why didn't she leave him?"
"According to my grandfather," Nick responded dryly, "there was one area where she found my father irresistible."
"Do you resemble your father?" Lauren asked impulsively.
"Almost exactly, I'm told. Why?"
"No reason," Lauren said. But she had a rueful feeling that she understood exactly how irresistible Nick's father must have been to his mother. "Go on with the story, please."
"There isn't much else to tell. The day after my father's funeral, she announced that she wanted to forget the squalid life she'd led, and she moved back to her parents' house in Grosse Pointe. Apparently I was part of what she wanted to forget, because she left me behind with my grandparents. Three months later she married her former fiancé and within a year she had another son—my half brother."
"But she did come to visit you, didn't she?"
"No."
Lauren was horrified at the idea of a mother abandoning her child and then living in luxury only a few miles away from him. Grosse Pointe was where the Whitworths lived, too, and it wasn't far from the neighborhood where Nick had grown up. "You mean you never saw her again after that?"
"I saw her occasionally, but only accidentally. One night she pulled into the gas station where I was working."
"What did she say?" Lauren breathed.
"She told me to check the oil," Nick replied imperturbably.
Despite his outward attitude of total indifference, Lauren couldn't believe that as a younger man he'd been so invulnerable. Surely having his own mother treat him as if he didn't exist must have hurt him terribly. "Is that all she said?" she asked tightly.
Unaware that Lauren was not sharing his ironic humor in the story, he said, "No—I think she asked me to check the air in her tires too."
Lauren had kept her voice neutral, but inwardly she felt ill. Tears stung her eyes, and she turned her face up to the purpling sky to hide them, pretending to watch the lacy clouds drifting over the moon.
"Lauren?" His voice sounded curt.
"Hmmmm?" she asked, staring steadfastly at the moon.
Leaning forward, he caught her chin and turned her face toward his. He looked at her brimming eyes in stunned disbelief. "You're crying!" he said incredulously.
Lauren waved a dismissing hand at him. "Don't pay any attention to that—I cry at movies too."
Nick burst out laughing and pulled her onto his lap. Lauren felt strangely maternal as she put her arm around him and soothingly stroked his thick dark hair. "I suppose," she said in a shaky voice, "that when you were growing up, your brother got all sorts of things that you could only dream of having. New cars and everything."
Tipping her chin up, he smiled into her somber blue eyes. "I had wonderful grandparents, and I promise you that I don't have any emotional scars from what happened with my mother."