Pride After Her Fall (10 page)

The worst had finally happened, and it was her own decision to delay and prevaricate that had brought her to this point. This was rock-bottom.

Until she heard the crunch of gravel, the tread of footsteps and slowly looked up.

Nash.

Mon Dieu,
it just got worse. Could she just once have a personal disaster and not have this man witness it?

Yet something instinctive leapt in her body the moment she saw him.

‘Lorelei?’

She clambered ungracefully to her feet, brushing herself down.

‘What’s going on here?’

‘Rien.’
She walked towards him, trying to divert him from the door.

Those blue eyes narrowed on her. ‘Clearly. I don’t respond well to games.’

‘Fine,’ she said, her voice high and airless. ‘No more games. We had our fun. I need you to go.’

He was frowning down at her, and for a moment something about his anger penetrated the fog that seemed to have dropped around her. He was pounding out big, frustrated male and apparently
she
was the cause.

Gesturing at the drive, she repeated, ‘Please go.’

‘Why are you trembling?’ He put his hand on her upper arm, his fingers closing firmly, as if he knew she would try to pull away.

‘I’m not. I—’ But it was too late. She was shivering so hard she thought she’d fall down. Wordlessly he pulled her into his arms and she was enveloped by all that strength and the lovely, familiar scent of him.
This is why,
she thought a little desperately, even as she struggled to be free.
This is why I’m a little crazy for him...

‘What in the hell?’

She knew he’d spotted the padlock.

He went still against her.

His voice was very low and resonant when he spoke. ‘What’s going on, Lorelei?’

When she refused to answer he released her and strode over to the doors, gave them a rattle.

‘I’ve been locked out,’ she said redundantly. ‘The bank has foreclosed on my mortgage. I believe it happens if you don’t meet your payments.’

Nash was silent. His hands rested on his lean hips as he regarded her. Lorelei made herself meet his eyes. She wasn’t going to be ashamed. She wasn’t.

‘A mortgage? You said you inherited this house from your grandmother.’

‘I’ve had some debts,’ she said, lifting her chin defensively. ‘I had to raise the money somehow.’

She saw the moment he noticed the envelope beside her bag, and before she could move he had it open. Her stomach plummeted. He didn’t say a word, just started scanning it. Lorelei turned away, facing out to the sea view she had come to know so well over the years.

‘You haven’t met your payments in over six months,’ he said flatly.

‘Non.’

There was a long pause. ‘Do you have somewhere to go?’

Lorelei pulled herself together. ‘
Ah, oui
—of course.’

She turned around and her insides trembled.

Why did he make her feel like this? She hadn’t wanted to get involved with anyone. Once you let another person in you were vulnerable, and she couldn’t afford to let her defences down.

She looked into his eyes and saw his frustration and disbelief and she knew it was better to let him go.

Her chest began to hurt.

He picked up her handbag and strode towards her. He tossed it and she caught it reflexively.

‘Get in the car.’

‘
Pourquoi?
Why?’

He gave her an old-fashioned look and kept walking. Lorelei hesitated, but only for a moment, because she didn’t know what else to do. He held the door for her, his expression grim.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ she said stiffly.

‘Consider it me being a gentleman,’ he responded, looking faintly exasperated. ‘Get in.’

She slid into the passenger seat, her fingers like pincers around her handbag. At the moment it was all she possessed. Nash still had hold of the envelope. He was standing at the front of the car, making a call on his cell. He looked tense. She couldn’t blame him. This wasn’t his problem.

Minutes later he jumped in beside her.

‘If you could drop me in town—’ she began.

‘Yeah, I suppose I could.’ He gave her a hard look, gunning the engine. ‘Tell me, Lorelei, does all the drama ever get old for you?’

It was not the moment to lose her composure, but the line between keeping it together and unravelling completely frayed a bit.

‘I don’t know, Nash,’ she flashed back, wanting to slap him. ‘How about you? Do one-night stands ever get old for
you?
’

She knew it was unfair. She’d gone into last night with her eyes open. Except she was hurting and her pride was currently being stomped all over.

He braked and shifted around. For a moment she wasn’t sure what he was going to do and she backed up a little.

‘Right...’ he said slowly.

Right, what? Lorelei wanted to ask him what he thought he was doing when he threw the Veyron into First and she was flung back in her seat as he tore down the drive, sending stones and dust flying.

At the highway he swung right.

‘This isn’t the way into town.’

‘No, this is the way to the airport.’

‘Why are we going to the airport?’

‘Sweetheart, those meetings I told you about aren’t going to happen without me. I’ve got a flight to make, and as of...’ he consulted his watch ‘...half an hour ago, the plane is fuelled and waiting.’

For a moment Lorelei actually thought he was saying he was going to dump her at the airport...until her brain caught up with her emotions.

‘You’re taking me with you?’

‘Got it in one.’

‘But I can’t just leave. I’ve got to do something about
this.
’ She shook the envelope, which had assumed gigantic proportions in her mind.

‘It’s pretty clear you haven’t been doing anything about it for a long time,’ he observed, giving a couple of the buttons on the console a flick. Music filled the cabin with a heavy bass line. ‘A few more days isn’t going to change a damn thing.’

Lorelei wanted to strike back at him—not just because he was imposing his wishes on her, but because he was right. She hadn’t been looking after herself. The Scarlett O’Hara ‘tomorrow is another day’ shtick wasn’t working for her any more, and this was the price she paid. Just as she hadn’t thought through last night. She’d gone into his bed like a kamikaze pilot and wondered why she’d crashed and burned.

There was no way she was going to Paris with him...she wasn’t some little sex doll he could just carry around with him, picking her up and putting her down...

Her thoughts came staggering to a halt. Simone was in Paris. She could find shelter with her best friend, ride out this storm.

‘Very well,’ she said stiffly. ‘I agree to come to Paris with you.’

He shot her an amused look. ‘Paris? Who said anything about Paris?’

She was a little taken aback—by that glimpse of humour more than his words. Did he think this was
funny?

‘Where are you taking me? You said meetings. Blue has offices in Paris. I assumed...’

‘Mauritius,’ he said flatly, his expression firming.

Sun, white sand, turquoise-green sea. Bliss.

Oh.
Oh...

‘But I don’t have any luggage, my passport, clothes.’ Even as she protested she was rummaging around in her bag. ‘
Ah, oui,
I do have my passport,’ she said faintly. Was she really going to fly to Mauritius?

He gave her a look she recognised from last night. ‘You don’t need luggage. You don’t need clothes. You won’t be getting out of bed.’

Lorelei narrowed her eyes. ‘Is that so?’

Nash smiled wryly, his eyes back on the road.

‘And just in case that isn’t clear enough for you, Lorelei,’ he drawled, ‘last night wasn’t a one-night stand.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

L
ORELEI
was stunned by the natural beauty of the island below as their seaplane coasted in over turquoise water. Mountains rose up against a pale sky and the forest beneath looked thick and mysterious.

She turned to Nash and asked, ‘what are they growing down there?’

‘Sugar-cane plantations. It’s a big part of the economy—apart from tourism.’

‘I take it you haven’t come to harvest sugar?’ she commented, a little smartly.

He hadn’t told her much of anything over their long flight. He’d buried himself in work and she had watched in-flight films and tried to avoid thinking about the mess she’d left behind her at home.

Right now she noticed his expression cooling both in regard to her
and
the view. His arm around the back of her seat told her she was still a welcome addition on this trip, but his eyes were those of a man who didn’t share private or working details of his life with anyone.

Apparently being in his bed for one night didn’t give her the right to ask any questions.

Which also begged the question whether he expected a second, and whether she would grant it.

‘My meetings have nothing to do with us,’ he commented, as if that was all that needed to be said.

The resentment she had been trying to suppress since he’d high-handedly made a pretty big decision for her and run roughshod over her wishes reared up. What made it worse was the fact she knew she’d brought this all on herself by burying her head in the sand all these months. Except it wasn’t only about that, was it? It was to do with intimacy, and having this knowledge of him now, and realising for him it wasn’t the same.

Suddenly angry with herself for being so boringly
female
and needy, she jerked around. ‘Damn you, Nash Blue. I don’t need to be rescued—by you or anyone.’

Nash had removed his jacket when the heat had hit them on landing on the African coast, and he had looked more relaxed over the last half hour, with his shirtsleeves rolled up, than he had on the plane when he’d worked, taking calls, scrolling through documents, preoccupied.

Now he sat forward, tension in every line of his body.

‘Is that what you think this is?’

‘What else could it be?’

Her entire body was quivering.

‘How about me ensuring this isn’t a one-night stand...which I assumed was upsetting you. Something, I might add, that was never my intention to begin with.’

‘
Bonne chance
with that, as I have no intention of sharing your bed.’ She stuck her nose in the air. She knew she was being ridiculous as she did it, but everything about this situation was making her feel diminished.

He regarded her as if she was speaking nonsense. ‘I’m beginning to suspect this is not about me, Lorelei, but you. Am I to take it those guys you’ve dated in the past haven’t treated you all that well?’

Lorelei froze, feeling hunted and cornered.

‘My affairs are not your business,’ she said shortly. ‘I do not ask you about other women...of whom I’m sure there have been far too many.’

‘Possibly,’ he responded, unruffled.

She snorted. She didn’t want to think about his track record.

Hers was pretty tame, although he didn’t have to know that. Her handful of boyfriends consisted of a visual artist, a poet, a writer and a classical musician...the last breaking up with her over two years ago, just as the perfect storm of Grandy’s death and Raymond’s arrest had broken over her. Truth told, she was rather grateful he had, as she couldn’t possibly have supported him emotionally through the crisis. That was her role in all her relationships. She provided material support and emotional strength. She was, in effect, what she had always been with her father...the grown-up. And in the end every last one of them had foundered on the rocks because deep down what she craved...a man who could match her in strength of purpose...was the very thing she avoided like the plague.

She had seen enough unequal relationships paraded before her. It was a trap for a woman. She would always call the shots, hold the purse strings. She would keep herself independent—and strong.

Which was making all of this so very scary.

Because this man beside her, looking at her as if she were a puzzle he was determined to solve, was everything she should be running from. Dominant, wealthy, definitely calling the shots, and right now he had hold of those purse strings. None of that would really matter, except he filled her thoughts and took over her body and made her feel in a way she never had before.

She was vulnerable to him.

She had been from the moment she’d set eyes on him.

Why else had she slid into his car last night and abandoned her inhibitions in his bed? She wasn’t being free with her favours. She was being optimistic with her heart.

Not that he would understand. She doubted Nash had ever been vulnerable to anything.

‘I have some rules,’ she said, smoothing back her curls. ‘I expect you to abide by them.’

‘This should be good,’ he drawled.

‘Don’t patronise me, Nash. I want separate rooms.’

He regarded her as if she’d sprouted wings.

‘I just feel there’s too much inequality at play here.’

Oui,
Lorelei, that’s putting it mildly.

She didn’t want to be one of his shiny toys, like the Veyron or the penthouse apartment in La Condamine. She had seen too much of it growing up...a price tag attached to love. It was why she kept her charity work for the Aviary Foundation separate from the rest of her life. She had never dated any of the men whose parties and functions she attended on a regular basis, and it hadn’t been through lack of being pursued. She just didn’t want to blur those lines between spruiking for the charity and spruiking herself. The idea terrified her.

‘I’m not a toy for you to play with, Nash.’

Her whole body quivered as she spoke.

‘In what way have I treated you like a toy?’

‘I don’t need luggage. I don’t need clothes. I won’t be getting out of bed,’ she imitated sourly.

Nash’s expression of pure male bafflement would have made her laugh in any other frame of mind. Right now she just wanted to hit him.

‘It was a joke!’

She looked away, staring blindly through the plane porthole at the same view that only minutes ago had held her spellbound.

‘Just don’t call me doll any more,’ she muttered.

‘Sorry?’

She jerked her head around. ‘I don’t like being called
doll.
A doll is something you put in a box when you finish playing with it, or put on a shelf like a trophy.’

Nash was silent. He was examining her face as if translating Sanskrit.

‘Have you finished?’

‘
Non.
I didn’t in a million years imagine when I went to your apartment last night I’d be ending the next day with you in Mauritius.’

‘As I hadn’t told you I was flying out to Mauritius, I’m sure you didn’t,’ he observed dryly.

He was being deliberately obtuse.

‘I’m not that sort of person.’

‘
What
sort of person, dare I ask?’

‘One who freeloads.’

Nash threw back his head and laughed, the sound rich and warm.

‘I’m glad you find it so funny,’ she said stiffly. ‘I can assure you nothing about this situation amuses
me.
’

Fed up, Lorelei folded her arms and averted her face. Still in yesterday’s clothes, she felt creased and wilted and distinctly at a disadvantage. Whilst he found it funny and had it all under control.

‘Lorelei.’ He spoke patiently, the amusement still in his voice. ‘I apologise for not telling you last night I was going away.’

She hated this—him being the cool, calm male and her being the hot, hysterical female. She’d been a witness to this scenario before and vowed she’d never play this role.

But who was forcing her into the role? Didn’t she have a choice here? She was letting the inequalities of the situation play with her deepest insecurities and it wasn’t serving her. The fact she was in this seaplane with him, coasting towards the runway, was proof enough that last night hadn’t been all on her side.

‘Apology accepted,’ she said stiffly, wondering if they could start this all over again, with her being sexy and playing hard to get, instead of frustrated and sulky because she was in yesterday’s clothes and he hadn’t kissed her
once
since she’d slipped from his bed this morning.

‘And I do not consider you a freeloader.’

She made a dismissive gesture with one hand, keeping her eyes averted.

‘Is this about your father?’ he said, cutting right through to the heart of the matter.

She raised her eyes to his. Grim.

‘I don’t talk about my father. Ever.’

He looked at her for a moment and then inclined his head. ‘If that’s what you wish.’

No, it wasn’t. She wanted to wail and thump with her fists and bemoan Raymond and the fix he’d left her in, but none of that was Nash’s concern and she wasn’t laying more of her troubles at his feet. She’d dealt with this on her own thus far. She would continue to do so.

‘Except you’re not dealing with it, are you, Lorelei?’
whispered a niggly little voice.
‘You’re winging over the coast of Africa with a man who delights and terrifies you in equal measure because he’s seen what a mess you’ve got yourself into and he’s trying to help.’

All of a sudden she was beginning to feel ungrateful and childish.

She suspected a big part of her was trying to find something to take her attention off what she was trying resolutely
not
to think about—the mess she’d left behind her at home.

A mess that wasn’t hers to begin with.

Those defence measures against the impossible weight of debt and the expectations she had laid upon herself to keep her family legacy intact were barely holding up any more and so she was lashing out. She also knew one of the reasons those defence mechanisms were no longer working had something to do with the man sitting beside her. He’d opened up vulnerabilities in her she was having trouble overcoming. Hence last night’s tears.

She’d seen puzzlement and frustration in him several times as he’d come face-to-face with her issues back in the Principality, and it was getting harder to hide them from him.

She suspected it was one of the big reasons she hadn’t had a relationship since Raymond’s arrest. Why she had put distance between herself and her friends.

She should be putting distance between herself and Nash—especially when he was being so mysterious about exactly what they were doing here. The problem was, she couldn’t separate mind and body. Her emotions were involved, as last night attested. If she slept with him again she was going to open more of herself up and there would be consequences.

‘So these mysterious meetings—are they going to take up all of your time?’ She tried to change the subject.

‘Not entirely.’ He smiled at her, as if he understood she was finding this difficult. ‘I can, however, assure you you won’t be bored, Lorelei.’

‘Non?’
she said snippily, knowing exactly what he was implying. ‘I’m sure the island offers many attractions for tourists.’

Unexpectedly he tugged gently at the rogue curl she could never keep out of her eye, sliding it carefully behind her ear.

‘Still fighting me, Lorelei?’

She looked away, out of the window at the land coming ever closer, and thought, no, she
wasn’t
fighting him—and that was the problem.

* * *

‘I can’t get over how gorgeous it all is,’ Lorelei confided as they drove the beachfront road in a Jeep. She’d teased him when he’d dumped their driver on the tarmac, telling him Freud had a few theories about his need to call the shots.

‘Yeah, and I’ve got a few theories about Freud,’ he’d responded, lifting her into the Jeep, enjoying her shriek and subsequent laughter. It was as if she’d decided all on her own to stop fighting him. It was impossible not to take in the scenery through her eyes as she chattered and pointed out landmarks that in the past he’d taken for granted.

Tall latania palms swayed along the roadside, and tropical flowers flashed out of the undergrowth as they sped past.

‘You’ve brought me to paradise.’

Nash smiled to himself, finally comfortable with where this was going.

Lorelei had shied a little on the seaplane, and put on a bit of a performance, but he wouldn’t have expected any less from the show pony she most definitely was. He realised he enjoyed that about her—the unpredictability. His life was usually so ordered. He didn’t mind accommodating Lorelei’s eccentricities. Outside in the late-day sunshine, with the fresh air whipping her curls into a frenzy, she seemed to have shrugged off her insecurities and was now embracing what he had to offer.

‘Consider it part of the service,’ he responded easily.

She flashed a smile at him and he was surprised at how good it made him feel.

He wanted her to be happy, he realised. He didn’t like seeing that weight in her eyes as if the load she was carrying had been with her for too long. He suspected it was to do with that gaol bird father of hers. He could suggest to her cutting the cords that bind, as he’d done years ago with his own, but he doubted Lorelei would thank him for it.

He’d known since last night that she wasn’t quite the hard-headed little mover and shaker those reports he’d initially paid attention to had painted her to be.

As they drove the leafy road circling the resort Nash watched some of the animation leave her. It wasn’t his favourite place. A world-famous destination, sure enough, but they might as well not have left Monaco. The place dripped glamour and elitism, with groups of women in couture beachwear and jewellery, and men driving low-slung ego-extension cars.

‘If you’d prefer we can stay here,’ he commented as they cruised past the ostentatious entrance, ‘but I’ve got a place on the beach. It’s a lot more private.’

‘Naturellement.’
She gave him a small smile. ‘I would much prefer that.’