Addicted to Nick (5 page)

As she took in his sober expression and his strong bold print on the note, T.C. felt something she hadn't felt in a long time. She couldn't put a name to it, but it had to do with someone watching out for her, and at that moment it seemed as scarily seductive as the soft touch of his lips. She grabbed the note and backed up, half afraid she might do something crazy—like leaning into his strength.

“Thank you.” She swallowed, slid both hands along with the note into her back pockets. “That's something I should have done. I don't know why I didn't think of it.”

“Perhaps you've had too much else to think about.”

Perhaps. That certainly sounded better than the alternative that sprang to her mind. She'd done nothing because she didn't want to admit she felt scared and threatened, because she didn't want to appear weak. How stupid would
that
sound if she tried to explain?

“So, what else did you and Jason talk about?” she asked to change the subject.

“Mostly about the horses, the stable routine. He's a good kid. You did well choosing him.”

“He was Joe's choice, actually.”

His eyes narrowed. “I sense there's a story here.”

“Not really. His mother used to do some casual work here as a housekeeper before her husband died. Jase got into a bit of trouble. Bad company, not enough to occupy himself. Joe gave him a chance, and he turned out to be a natural.”

“He says he learned it all from you—that you're the natural.”

T.C. laughed self-consciously. “I told you I was good at my job.”

“Yeah, you did.”

He was watching her with serious eyes and the smallest hint of a smile on his beautiful lips, and her heart slammed hard against her ribs. Oh, help! She couldn't think of a thing to say. Couldn't move.

“You know, I really enjoyed myself this afternoon. I'd forgotten that elementally satisfying thing about manual labor, getting dirty and sweaty for a purpose.”

“You helped Jase clean out the yard?”

He laughed, probably at the expression on her face. “No need to sound so shocked. With two of us, we got it done in less than half the time.”

“So what did you do with all that time you saved?”

His pause was infinitesimal—just long enough for T.C. to realize she wasn't going to like what came next. “We shifted you back into the house.”

“You shifted me…? You moved my things?” She pictured his hands on her clothes, her underwear, and felt both hot and cold at once. She sucked in a long breath, tried to summon some indignation. Unfortunately, all she could summon was a wishy-washy, “I wish you hadn't done that.”

“I told you last night you were moving. Jase agreed it'd be easier if we presented it as a fait accompli.”

“Jase wouldn't know a fait accompli if it bit him on the butt!”

His laughter was quick and unexpected and, like everything else about Nick Corelli, infectious. T.C. couldn't help responding, couldn't stop herself from grinning back at him. With a slow shake of his head, he caught her gaze, arched that one brow and said, “Damn, but you are a surprising woman. I thought you'd be going for my throat by now.”

Her gaze skidded to the throat in question, and she felt that same hot-cold, heart-slamming response. How surprised would he be if she went for this throat with her lips and her tongue and her teeth? She swallowed the heat, the thought, the incredible temptation, and looked away. “I should be mad at you. I suspect, after I've stewed on it a while, I
will
be mad at you. I hate people touching my things.”

“Yeah, you have a right to be angry,” he said slowly. Then, “How long d'you usually stew on these things?”

Huh? She looked up, blinking, caught that hint of wickedness on his lips.

“I'm wondering if I should lock my door tonight….”

T.C. blinked again.

“I'd hate to be attacked in my sleep with something else from your toy arsenal.”

“I don't have an arsenal. Jase's cousin left that cap gun when he was here one day. I found it out back and put it in the tack room and forgot about it until the other night.” And why am I bothering to explain? He's packed all my things. He knows exactly what I own and don't own.

“So I can sleep soundly tonight?”

Oh great! All night she would be imagining Nick behind an
un
locked door, Nick sleeping soundly with his arms wrapped around his pillow, his tanned back exposed by the low-riding covers….

Brrriiiinnnngggg!

The first buzz of the phone resounded through T.C.'s bones. She would have sworn her feet literally left the
ground, and her gaze, wide and panicked, flew to Nick's before she could censure herself. And as he reached for the cordless on the bench, his eyes told her exactly what she wanted to hear.
Relax. You're not on your own here. I've got this.

“Yeah?” he barked into the receiver. Then the expression in his eyes, still focused intently on hers, softened. So did his voice when he said, “Lissa, honey, how's things?”

A slow smile spread across his face as he listened to
Lissa, honey's
long-winded reply. T.C. noticed his whole body relax, and as if there had been some weird energy transferal, her own tension compounded until she couldn't stand still.

She mouthed “I'll be going now” and gestured to the door. With one hand over the mouthpiece, Nick called, “Hang on a minute—I want to talk to you,” but she kept on moving. She didn't stop until she'd slammed the door on the voice and the eyes that demanded she stay, even while some other woman, a woman trusted enough to have their new unlisted number, hung on the end of the telephone.

Nick, honey, I don't think so!

 

“You gonna take that job over in the west now?” Big Will, who single-handedly ran the only licensed premises in Riddells Crossing, slid T.C. the beer she had ordered and the question she had not been expecting in one smooth motion.

“Did I miss something?” T.C. shook her head, not understanding where Will was coming from or, for that matter going to, with his opening gambit.

“Now the son and heir's finally shown up, are you gonna take that job you were offered?”

“Ah, so Jase has been in here already tonight.”

“You got it.” Will grinned. “Didn't stay long. Red's here.”

T.C. scanned the bar and found Red Wilmot in the far corner, lounging against the silent jukebox. He had recently returned home from a lengthy stay in juvenile detention, and there was something about his cocky stance and sneering face that had her quickly turning away before he caught her looking. “Do you suppose he's learned his lesson?”

“I know Jase has, thanks to you and Joe.”

“Jase is a good kid. Red was a bad influence, that's all.”

“You could have done us all a favor and brought this Corelli bloke in with you.” The loud, intrusive voice came from one of the tables to her right. Judy Meicklejohn, T.C. decided without turning around.

“She's going to dinner with Dave,” someone informed Judy. “She could hardly bring another bloke along.”

“No kidding? I didn't know you and Dave were playing kissy-kissy.”

“We're not,” T.C. replied. “We're just friends.”

When someone, probably Judy, made scoffing noises, T.C. shifted uncomfortably on her stool. She had told Nick she had a dinner date with Dave. She hadn't bothered telling
him
they were just friends. And why is that, Tamara Cole? she asked herself. Because you wanted to scare him off, or because you wanted him to think another man found you desirable?

“What's the story, T.C.?” Will interrupted her thoughts with another of his questions-from-nowhere.

“Which story would that be?”

“Joe's son from New York,” Rory Meicklejohn interjected. “Is he a big hotshot?”

“Or, more to the point—is he big and is he hot?” T.C. didn't recognize that female voice, and because her face had turned hot, she didn't turn around to see who had made them all hoot with laughter.

“Jase says he's cool.”

“Which doesn't mean he can't be hot. Come on, T.C., spill it. What's he like?”

A good question. “He only arrived last night, so it's hard to say,” she replied carefully.

“You think he'll keep the place?”

“Why would a city slicker like him want a place out here?” Judy scoffed.

“Joe wanted a place out here.”

“That's different. He
bought
the place.”

“This geezer might like it here, too.”

T.C. shut her ears to the speculation that flowed back and forth across the bar. She was still stuck on the “What's he like?” question and discovering that she might have misjudged him a teensy bit. Today she had discovered a real man beneath the smooth talker. That man had tended to her injury with a gentle efficiency, had helped Jase shovel muck for half the afternoon, and had worried enough about her security and comfort to move her back into the house
and
to change the phone number.

And which man changed your perception of how a kiss should be, Tamara Cole? Was that the real man or the smooth talker?

T.C. frowned into her beer and hoped it was the smooth talker, the one she'd left smiling for
Lissa, honey.
The one who had tricked her into shopping for him, who teased her in the kitchen with his soft touches and smarmy lines. Yes, she decided, with a reinforcing nod, the kiss had to be Mr. Smooth Talker.

Because if it was the real man, she was in big, big trouble.

“A
nyone in particular you're trying not to wake?”

The amused question startled T.C. into dropping the boots she'd been carrying, and she jerked her head around so sharply something pulled in her neck.

Oh, great! Whiplash is exactly what I need.

She lifted a hand to rub at her stiff neck and glared at the man responsible. Propped in the doorway to the office, a mug in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other, he looked far too awake for five-thirty in the morning.

“You want me to do that for you?” His velvet-coated drawl stroked her sleepy senses to immediate complete wakefulness; the thought of his strong, supple hands on her neck sent them into hyperactivity.

No!

No more touching. Last night she had decided that the best way to defuse the Nick-factor was to avoid all nonbusiness-related situations. “I didn't expect you to be up this early,” she admitted.

“My body clock's taking a while to adjust. I was awake before three, but then I crashed at ten.”

So there had been no need to stay out late. Damn, she wished she had known that.

“Did you enjoy your evening?”

“Very much.” Which wasn't so much a lie as a relative truth. When Dave had finally arrived after a difficult emergency procedure, they'd ditched the restaurant in favor of takeout. Dave fell asleep halfway through the combination of chow mein and cop show. T.C. had finished the food, channel-surfed into the early hours and worked on convincing herself that she preferred comfortable and stress-free to unpredictable and edgy. Like, say, the Shiraz-and-steaks-with-Nick alternative she had turned down.

Nick straightened away from the door frame and waved his mug. “Coffee's not long made.”

Filling her nostrils with the strong fresh aroma tested her resolve, but she shook her head. “Thanks, but I'll just grab some juice and keep going.”

She retrieved her boots and headed for the kitchen, remembering at the last minute to dispense with the sneaking.

“Do you always start this early?” he asked from close behind.

T.C. almost dropped her boots again. “Usually.” As she grabbed a glass and swung across to open the fridge, she felt the warmth of his lazy inspection all the way to her toes.

“Sure you don't want coffee?”

Leaning further into the refrigerator's cooling depths, she mumbled a negative reply and tried to recall what she was looking for. When she slammed the door shut in exasperation, she found him still watching her, and the refrigerator's chilling effect immediately evaporated.

With a barely articulate “See you later” she dispensed
with the glass, snatched an apple from the fruit bowl and bolted.

“Is that breakfast?” he asked as he followed her to the back door.

“I don't like to eat early,” she lied. “I catch up later, after fast work.”

“Fast work happens to be my specialty.”

With a mental eye-roll, she explained how her version of fast work referred to exercising the horses fast, in full race harness, as opposed to their slow work or jog days. “Jase and I usually do fast work first thing.”

“Jase will be a little late today, but I'll—”

“What do you mean, a little late?”

“Ten. Eleven.” He shrugged as if it didn't matter either way.

“It would have been nice to know this.”

“I tried to tell you last night, but you bolted before I could finish.”

True, but that didn't make it any easier to digest. “Please check with me before you go giving him any more time off,” she said stiffly.

“Sure.” His drawl sounded smoothly agreeable, but as she bent to pull on her boots, T.C. caught a coolness in his eyes. “In case you're interested in why, his mother wants him to take her to the cemetery.”

The cemetery. T.C. closed her eyes as a cold wave of remorse crashed over her. It was the anniversary of Jase's father's death in a work accident, and she should have remembered.
She
should have given Jase the time off. He should have asked
her.

As she followed Nick out into the predawn chill, her legs felt stiff and uncooperative, as if in physical response to her mental wretchedness. Jase had worked with her for more than two years, his mother Cheryl for longer, yet he hadn't come to her.

Had she become so unapproachable? So closed that he would prefer to ask a stranger?

She glanced at the stranger walking beside her, recalled his instant rapport with Jason, and her own bitter response. Shame burned through her, stopping her in her tracks.

“I wish I'd known—I would have taken them out there myself, or at least given Jase the day off.”

“He only took a couple of hours because I insisted.”

“I'm such a hard boss?”

“He thought he'd be letting you down.”

She closed her eyes briefly, struggled against the savage lash of emotion, didn't know what to say. She didn't deserve such loyalty—lately, she had done nothing to deserve it.

“Come on. The sooner we get started, the sooner we get to eat breakfast.”

T.C. didn't move. She needed alone; she needed composure. The last thing she needed was Nick's unsettling presence. “There's no need for you to do this.”

“Yes, there is. I promised Jase.”

She shook her head. “I don't have time to teach you what I want done. I'll be quicker on my own.”

He stared down at her for a minute that seemed like ten. “It doesn't hurt to accept help, Tamara.”

“I would accept your help—if it
was
a help.”

He let out his breath in sharp exasperation and looked off into the distance. “We need to resolve this partnership bind. D'you suppose you can fit that into your busy schedule?”

His voice held all the warmth of a winter southerly, and it cut through T.C. just as surely. His approval didn't matter, she told herself, but the appointment did. “This afternoon? After I finish work?”

“Perfect.” With that he turned on his heel and strode back the way they had come. T.C. held her breath until he disappeared beyond the bank of melaleucas lining the
house-yard. He was gone, out of her hair for the best part of the day. She couldn't have planned it any better.

So why did she feel such an intense desire to call him back?

 

It took Nick all morning to deal with the paperwork Melissa had e-mailed, and finishing it was about the only enjoyable part of the exercise—that and knowing she would now get off his case.

His partner could be a real pain in the butt…when she wasn't being brilliant. With a wry grimace, he recalled the set down she'd given him yesterday when, in her words, she finally got him to answer the bloody phone. Dealing with her from this far away had its advantages. Like he could call her
Lissa, honey
without getting swatted around the ears. She hated endearments almost as much as she hated the way he abbreviated her name.

So why had he answered the phone that way? To get up her nose, or because he wanted to prove a point to Tamara?

The point being?

That he didn't give a flying fig about her decision to eat with the on-again off-again boyfriend. That he would be just fine on his own, thanks for asking.

With an impatient shove, he propelled his chair away from the desk and let it swing in a half circle. He stretched his arms high, cracked his knuckles and ignored the temptation to look out the window. He would not check up on her, even under the guise of seeing if Jason had arrived yet.

She had made it clear she didn't want his help. She'd made it clear she didn't want anything from him, and although she appealed to him on many levels—the courage she'd shown in confronting him that first night, her fierce loyalty to Joe, the incredibly stimulating touch of her
hand…oh, and the way she kissed—she was way too prickly, too complex.

A thousand headaches in the making.

Just as soon as he had made a partnership-breaking deal, he would be on the first plane back to his life—the life he had made for himself. With a resolute nod he turned back to the desk and the box-file George had handed him before he walked out of their meeting.

“Crunch time, Niccolo,” he muttered as his glance slid over the solicitor's label: Estate Of The Late Joe Corelli. Ignoring the sudden tightness in his chest, he slipped on his reading glasses and extracted the first wad of papers.

 

It was almost seven before T.C. forced herself to sit down in the living room—much later than she had anticipated, but by the time Jason had arrived that morning she had been way behind schedule. She had wanted to talk to him but couldn't find the words, and that sat badly with her throughout the afternoon, so every small task had seemed to take twice as long. Then she had needed a good long shower, and if she tried hard enough she could even justify changing her clothes three times before deciding on her usual combination of jeans, tank top and flannel shirt.

She could justify all night long, but when it came down to it, she was a coward. This conversation with Nick would likely decide her future—whether she stayed in the place she had come to accept as home, or whether she would be forced to ring that Perth trainer and take the alternative he offered. Yet she feared she wasn't up to it. It surprised her that she had found the nerve to knock at the office door, to push it open a fraction, to inform Nick she would be in the living room. She hadn't waited for his reply; she hadn't even looked in. She had pulled the door shut and kept on walking.

Maybe her father had been right. Maybe she was a little girl playing in a man's world.

Before she could sink into that mire of self-pity, Nick strolled into the room. Watching him move, so loose limbed and full of masculine grace, had the usual effect. Her pulse thudded, the air in her lungs turned hot and thick, and the soft denim of her much-washed jeans felt harsh against her skin, her buttoned cuffs too tight for her wrists.

“This is for you,” he said without preliminary. “I think you should read it before we talk.”

Read what? She blinked, noticed the guarded expression on his face before she noticed the envelope in his hand. The warm flush under her skin prickled with a strong sense of déjà vu.

Another letter from the grave.

She needed to run her tongue twice around her dry mouth before she could speak. “Where did this come from?”

“It was in the papers George gave me. I only went through them this afternoon.”

“What do you mean…in the papers? Was it hidden? Didn't anyone know it was there?”

“I don't know. I'm sorry, but that's the truth.” When she didn't take the envelope, he dropped it in her lap. “I'll leave you to read it in peace. Then we'll talk.”

He left abruptly, leaving T.C. staring at the envelope until Joe's big boldly printed
T.C.
blurred into her father's spidery version. She sat up straight and shook her head.

“What is wrong with you? Why don't you just open it?”

There was no reason not to. This time there would be no bitter recriminations, no reminders of what a disappointment she had been as a daughter…or because she'd been a daughter. No terse words informing her that the family home, the stables and all the horses, had been left to an uncle she barely knew.

She squeezed her eyes tightly closed, as if that might
contain the hurt, stop it spreading from the deep-seated knot in her heart, and with a deep, shuddery breath she ripped into the envelope. Her trembling hands smoothed out the single sheet of vellum. Only then was she capable of opening her eyes.

 

Nick figured she needed privacy, and he wanted to try to reach George one last time. Not that talking to him would do any good—he would simply deny any knowledge of the letter. He had been obstructive from the get-go, but that was no surprise.

That was George.

Still, he jabbed out part of the number he'd dialed enough times in the past hours to know by heart, but then he pictured Tamara staring at the envelope, her face as pale as if Joe himself had appeared before her. With a harsh curse, he jammed down the receiver and went looking for her.

He found her sitting on the verandah steps, framed by the pale light cast through a foyer window. The dog clutched in her arms inspected Nick with solemn eyes, but Tamara didn't look up, and he knew she'd been crying.

Hell!

She sat hunched forward, body language screaming
keep away,
but whispering
hold me.
With a sense of fatalism riding him hard, he sat down next to her, close enough to feel her stiffen defensively.

“My shoulder's here if you need something to cry on,” he offered.

“I'm not crying.” She swiped the back of one hand across her eyes.

“It's okay. I don't mind a wet shoulder.”

“It's not okay. Crying is weak and foolish and female.”

Nick snorted. “Anyone who's tried to sneak into your stables in the middle of the night knows you're not weak. Definitely female, but never weak.”

“You forgot foolish.”

Nick smiled at her churlishness. “Yeah, well, some might consider what you did foolish. Others would call it brave.”

When her tense posture relaxed fractionally, he felt a disproportionate degree of satisfaction. “You want to talk about what Joe had to say?”

“What did he tell you?” she asked carefully.

Nick shook his head, not understanding.

“In your letter… He did leave you a letter?”

“No.”

She turned toward him slightly, enough that he could see the frown creasing her brow. “You're his son—you're family. Why would he write to me and not you?”

“Perhaps you were closer to him than any of his family.”

She made a disbelieving little noise, then shifted restlessly, as if even considering that notion didn't sit well with her. “The first years I worked here, I didn't know him at all,” she said softly. “He didn't stay over much, just came for a day whenever he could, rang maybe once a week. After his wife died, he started staying weekends, occasionally longer. I can almost see why people might have thought we were…” She cleared her throat. “It was only this last six months that he stayed most of the time.”