The Night that Changed Everything (4 page)

He wanted to thread his fingers through it, bury his face in
it. He imagined what it would look like spread out against the sheets. He began to consider again how to get her there when the last strains of the waltz died away and the orchestra segued into something louder, faster and with a pounding of drums, which matched the thrum of his blood coursing through his veins.

“Well,” Edie said, abruptly drawing back and pulling her hand out of his. “That was nice.”

Nice?
Nick stared at her, jolted.

She nodded, dimpling as she smiled. “Very nice. Thank you for the dance.” There was something almost impishly polite in her tone, as if she knew the effect she was having on him—and wasn’t going to even give him a chance to try his moves.

But Nick wasn’t going to give up without an effort.

“I can do better than nice,” he promised, holding out his hand, silently urging her to take it, to come with him.

Resolutely Edie shook her head. “Thank you, but no. And it isn’t impolite to refuse a second dance,” she informed him before he could claim otherwise.

“How about a glass of wine? We can sit this one out.”

But again she shook her head. “It’s been a pleasure, Mr. Savas. Thank you for being kind to my sister. And thank you for the dance. I … enjoyed it.”

Had he heard an infinitesimal hesitation in her words? Before Nick could decide, Edie held out her hand and shook his politely. “Good night.”

No!

He didn’t say it. Blessedly his mouth stayed firmly shut. But a thousand things ran through his mind that he might say to stop her, to prolong the moment, to keep her there.

That he wanted to so badly surprised him. He wasn’t used to feeling any such compulsion. Didn’t
want
to feel it.

Bedding her, yes, he’d like to do that. But just keep her there to talk to him? There was no point.

So he tucked his hands into his trouser pockets and nodded.

“Good night, Ms. Daley,” he said equally politely. “Thank you for the dance.”

She turned away. But as she did so, he couldn’t resist. “If you ever do want to see the architectural renovations in my bedroom, Ms. Daley …”

She spun back, her eyes flashing green fire.

Nick’s heart kicked over. He turned on his best millionmegawatt come-hither grin. Edie turned and, with a toss of her head, disappeared into the milling dancing crowd.

Only when the crowd had swallowed her up did he turn away. He felt oddly flat.

He should have gone back to his room then. It was nearly midnight. He’d done his duty. Showed up. Even danced. No one would remark on his vanishing now.

But he didn’t go. He prowled the edges of the dance floor, restless and out of sorts. Edgy. Hungry. And not for food. His body was still aware of how neatly Edie Daley had fit into his arms.

“Damn it.” Abruptly he turned and asked the nearest unattached female for a dance.

Why not? He’d danced once tonight already. It was just more of the same.

But it wasn’t the same. This woman was nothing like Edie Daley.

She didn’t settle into his arms with a reluctance that gave way to rightness. She plastered herself against him, locked her fingers together behind his neck and nibbled on his jaw. She didn’t so much dance as slither and move against him until at last the music ended and Nick was finally able to peel her off again.

“Another?” she murmured.

“No.” He’d had enough. More than. “I’m done dancing,” he said firmly, though years of having good manners drilled into him made him try to look regretful as he stepped away. “I’m calling it a night.”

Even as he did so, someone’s hand touched his arm from behind. “I’m glad to hear it,” an unexpected female voice said.

Nick spun around—and stared with shock into Edie Daley’s gray-green eyes. She linked her arm firmly through his and gave him a blinding smile. “Because I’ve just decided that I’d love to see those architectural renovations.”

N
ICK’S
brows shot up. So did his heartbeat. And the spark of interest that had vanished when she had was back in spades.

But even as his libido was in favor of her suggestion, his brain was saying,
Hang on a minute.

“Change your mind?” he asked her, careful not to sound too eager even though he damned well was.

Edie’s smile, if possible, grew brighter. “Yes.” Her voice was firm and clear. No hesitation at all. But he spotted a glitter in her eyes that he hadn’t seen before. And was that a bit of her sister’s desperation in her tone? He narrowed his gaze on her.

Her lashes flickered rapidly. Her smile amped up a bit more. Yes, this was desperation. And defiance, too. He could see that now. But exactly who or what had inspired it, he had no idea.

Carefully he let out a breath, drew another as he studied her from her flyaway hair to the tips of her stocking-clad toes. He wanted to take the stockings off those toes.

Would she let him?

Whatever was going on, taking her to his bedroom couldn’t be a bad thing. Could it?

Nick guessed he’d find out.

Putting his hand over hers, he smiled down at her. “By all means.” Then he turned to the blonde he’d danced with, the one who was still standing there and whom he’d completely forgotten about. “Thank you for the dance,” he said to her politely. “Good night.”

Then he laced Edie’s fingers through his and started to lead her back to where they’d first met.

“The door is that way.” Edie was practically dragging her feet.

“Shoes,” he said and dived beneath the table. The miserable things were still there. He grabbed them and rose again, then slanted Edie a glance.

“You don’t want to wear them, do you?”

She laughed, but it was a more brittle laugh than she’d shared with him before. Something had indeed happened. “I certainly don’t,” she said.

Nick tucked the shoes in his coat pockets so only the spiky mauve heels protruded. Then he offered her his arm. With no hesitation at all, Edie linked her arm through his and walked, head held high, along beside him, her bearing more regal than the queen of Mont Chamion.

Her posture was stiff and far more tense than when they’d danced, and she didn’t speak again. But Nick knew better than to ask about it now. Edie kept her gaze straight ahead until they had nearly reached the door.

Then, near the door they came upon Mona and the small but inevitable knot of men clustered around her. Edie barely glanced their way, but she turned her gaze on him, focused a melting smile right at him and fluttered her lashes.

Nick almost laughed. He did smile at raised brows on Mona’s face. There was a look of surprise and something else—consternation?—on Edie’s mother’s face. Whatever had sparked Edie’s return, it had something to do with her mother.

Or, Nick realized as Mona said something to the man standing next to her who was staring at Edie and frowning, did it have something to do with him?

He was about Nick’s age, fair-haired and handsome in a young Robert Redford sort of way. Familiar looking, but Nick couldn’t put a name on him.

An actor, no doubt. Actor friends of Demetrios’s were thick on the ground tonight.

This one transformed his frown into an engaging grin and stepped forward to intercept them as they approached. “Edie! Long time no see. I was so glad when Mona said you were here.”

Edie’s fingers tensed against his arm, but she smiled, too. “Not here for long,” she said, still moving. “We’re just leaving.”

“But we haven’t danced.”

She kept smiling, but Nick could see it was tight. “Nice to see you again, Kyle. Good night.”

“I’ll see you in the morning, then,” the man called Kyle said.

But they were already past him and headed toward the door when Edie said brightly to Nick in tones that were certainly loud enough to be overheard, “Which wing is your room in?”

Nick didn’t think he imagined the sound of several people sucking air behind them. His own brows arched, but he said cheerfully, “I’ll show you,” gave her a melting smile for good measure and held the door so she could sail through it ahead of him.

Only when the door closed behind them did Edie seem to sag. But almost at once she pulled herself up straight and tall again, and kept right on walking until they’d left the reception area totally and were in one of the long walnut-paneled corridors. There at last she stopped and took a deep breath, then looked up at him.

“Thank you,” she said, all her previous brightness gone. But the brittle tone had vanished, too.

Nick liked that. “My pleasure.” She looked pale suddenly and he said, “Do you need to sit down?”

She gave him a wan smile, but shook her head. “I’m all right.”

Still she looked rattled. Not at all like the Edie Daley who had come running to defend her baby sister. “What am I missing?” he asked her.

She looked down at her feet, then rubbed the bottom of one stocking-clad foot against the top of the other. They looked as
vulnerable as she did. He wondered if she was going to deny that he was missing anything.

But at last she looked up at him and made a wry face. “My mother’s heavy-handed attempt at matchmaking, I fear.”

“The blond guy with the hundred-dollar haircut?”

Edie looked startled, then sighed and nodded. “Yes.”

“You’re not interested in him?” Nick was surprised how glad he was to hear it.

“No!” she said with a force that indicated more than indifference. She seemed to realize it because she muttered, “I’m not. I was just—I was afraid she’d try something like this.”

“She being your mother?”

Edie nodded.

“She often sets you up?”

“She hints.”

“And you don’t like that?” He supposed she had a right to dislike matchmaking relatives as much as he did. But most women he knew welcomed the meddling. “Matchmaking is a bad thing?”

“Yes, it is,” Edie said flatly. She didn’t elaborate at first, and he thought she was going to change the subject. But then she sighed, “She thinks I need to start dating again.”

“Again?” Nick prompted when she didn’t explain.

There was another pause, as if she were deciding how much to say. Finally she looked around, then back at him and said impatiently, “Where are these architectural renovations?”

His brows lifted. “You really want to see them?”

“Do they really exist? Or were you flirting with my sister?”

“They really exist. And I wasn’t flirting with your sister. Coming to see them was her idea.”

“But you invited me—”

“I was flirting with
you
.” And not giving her a chance to respond, not waiting to see what her reaction to that actually was, Nick grasped her hand in his and led her toward the tower.

She didn’t speak as they walked, and Nick didn’t say anything,
either. He was too busy trying to assess the situation, trying to decide if she had been merely using him to avoid an unpleasant confrontation, no more no less? Or had she been angling for something else considerably more intimate.

He knew which he would prefer.

What she wanted he guessed he’d find out, he thought as he stopped and unlocked the east tower wing door. There was no one else staying in it but him so he’d only left a few lights burning, and the hall was cast in gloom when he pushed open the heavy door.

Edie paused at the entrance to peer into the shadows.

“Having second thoughts?” Nick asked. He wouldn’t have blamed her.

But she took a quick breath. “No.” There was a moment’s pause and then she turned her head and met his gaze. “Are you?”

The question caught Nick off guard.

He’d slept with other women since Amy’s death. It had been eight years, after all, and he had never claimed he would be a monk.

But it hadn’t meant anything. Not the way it had with Amy. It was an itch he scratched. But only with women who considered it the same way he did.

He looked intently at the woman beside him now and wondered how Edie Daley considered it—she who wasn’t even dating. That was when he realized that she was still looking at him, waiting for an answer.

Quickly Nick cleared his throat. “No,” he said just as firmly as she had.

Edie smiled. It wasn’t the smile she’d given her mother or the man named Kyle. It wasn’t the brittle smile she’d given him when she’d reappeared and taken his arm. It was the smile he’d coaxed out of her before they’d danced—a genuine smile, he thought, and one that wasn’t reluctant. It sent a shaft of desire right through him.

He wanted more of those smiles. More of her.

“Let me show you my renovations,” he said, and he began to talk about the structure of the building. Several sentences later he realized that she was staring at him, wide-eyed, and he stopped. “What?”

“You really know all this stuff?” She sounded amazed.

Nick laughed. “It’s what I do. My job. Why I’m here.”

“I thought … the wedding …”

“I didn’t come for the wedding. I came to restore the east tower.”

And suddenly the smile he’d been hoping for lit her face. “How wonderful,” she exclaimed. “Show me. Tell me everything.”

He thought she might just be being polite, but as he turned on more lights and walked her through the main rooms, which were already finished, all the time telling her about the history of the place, explaining when it had originally been built and which parts were added on later, she asked eager, interested questions.

She didn’t endure his lecture as her sister had done, but demanded to know more. Of course, to be fair, he’d deliberately droned on when he’d described his work to Rhiannon. He took pains to interest her sister.

But it wasn’t long before he realized he needn’t have bothered. Edie was clearly interested in the castle and in the work he’d done on it. She had studied history in college, she told him. She’d thought she might be a teacher.

“A teacher? Far cry from being your mother’s business manager, isn’t it?”

Her lips twisted. “One of those times when life happened while I was making other plans.”

What plans? Nick wondered, but he didn’t ask as there was something in the expression on her face that told him to leave it alone. So instead he asked, “Did you ever want to go into acting?”

She shook her head. “Never. That’s not my world.”

“But you work in it every day.”

“In the business part of things. Not the glitz and glamour part. Not the movie star bit,” she said adamantly.

“You don’t like the ‘movie star bit’?”

“It’s not for me,” she said simply, then added, “it’s too difficult.”

“Acting?”

“I suppose that’s part of it. But I think really that it’s harder being real. Being honest. If you act all the time, who are you? Really? Do you even know?”

Her voice rose when she asked the questions and they didn’t sound rhetorical. Nick supposed, having a mother who was an icon of American film and screen, she’d probably given it considerable thought. Then, as if she decided she’d betrayed a bit too much emotion, Edie shrugged and said lightly, “I’m a behind the scenes person, that’s all.”

“Yeah. Me, too.” When she blinked, clearly surprised, Nick explained. “When I’m working on a building, the building is what matters.” He waved a hand to encompass the whole of the one he’d been working on. “Not who does the work.”

Edie looked thoughtful, then she nodded. “Yes. I see what you mean.” Then she ran an appreciative hand down one of the window casings. “You’ve done an amazing job. At least I guess you have. Honestly, it’s hard to tell where the old stuff ends and the new begins.”

“Exactly the way it’s supposed to be.”

“How do you start?”

“I case the joint,” he told her with a grin. “I go over it all with a fine-tooth comb, so to speak. I learn who built it and when and why. Then I live in it.”

“Hence the architectural renovations in your bedroom,” she said with a grin. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.” He pointed toward a door at the far end of the hall. “My digs.”

Her gaze followed his gesture. Rhiannon would doubtless have rubbed up against him and suggested, “Show me.”

Edie looked at the door, then turned back to him and asked, “When was the tower built?”

So Nick told her.

“It was a thirteenth century addition to the castle. It was designed to be a lookout and barracks for the soldiers who defended against the onrushing hordes.”

“Hordes?” Her eyes got wide. “There were hordes? It’s so small! Why would they bother?”

“The whole country was bigger back then. The royal family had more wealth and they had some good mountain valleys for cultivation. There are several natural springs as well as rivers. It would have made a nice prize for whoever could take it.” He grinned and shrugged. “But no one could.”

“I had no idea.”

“The Chamion family are survivors. They knew how to pit one enemy against another. They also knew how to make alliances and how to make friends. There’s lots of history here,” he went on as he led her through the finished rooms to a heavy oak door at the far end. He pushed it open to reveal a hall where there was substantial scaffolding. “We’re still working in here.”

There were tarps and sawhorses—his concession to modern working conditions—all over, along with piles of lumber. But the tools were all primitive, ones that thirteenth century carpenters, joiners and masons would have used. Edie headed straight for them. She asked about every one, made him explain how he used them, where he’d found them. She looked at him with admiration when he said he often made his own.

“A matter of necessity,” he said. “No old ones left.”

“And you do it all yourself?”

Nick laid a proprietary hand on one of the scaffolds. “I started it. I did the first rooms on my own so I had a good feel for things. Recently I’ve been working up in the tower and there are a couple of local craftsmen doing this.”

She walked around the room, noting where he’d replaced a joist. The new wood was evident. But she ran her finger over the chisel marks and shook her head. “It must take forever.”

“Which is why it took generations to build places like this.”