Addicted to Nick

He stood close behind her, close enough that the words washed over her nape in a warm wave. She shook her head to rid herself of the sensation, and he stretched her arm further.

“Ouch,” she breathed. “You’re hurting me.”

“You think that piece of plastic you were brandishing hasn’t bruised me?” He released the pressure on her arm, although he didn’t let it go. Long fingers manacled her wrist. “Well?” he prompted.

T.C. frowned. If he knew the gun was fake, it explained his casual attitude, but why hadn’t he called her on it? And why had he asked her to explain? She wrenched her arm and found herself hauled backward, right up hard against his body, so when he spoke his voice hummed close against her ear. “All right, sweet hands, if you don’t want to tell me why you’re skulking about in the dark, I’ll have to start searching for clues.”

His hand slid over her hip. T.C. yelped and tried to swat it away, but he pulled her nearer by banding an arm around her chest. Her back was pasted to his front, so close that when he laughed, the low sound vibrated from his chest into her body. It set up a resonant buzz along her spine, like a tuning fork perfectly pitched.

Or maybe that was in reaction to the hand cruising down one thigh then back up again, inch by leisurely inch. Omi-gosh, now it was inside her pajama coat, sliding across her belly. She wriggled frantically, needing to escape his touch—but wriggling was a big mistake. It brought her backside up hard against his thighs. All the breath left her lungs in a rush.

“What’s the matter, sweetheart? Not used to having a perfect stranger run his hands all over you? Intrusive, isn’t it?”

“My name’s not sweet anything!” She kicked out, and the sudden flurry of legs and boots caught him unaware. The arm holding her slipped, and she swiveled sideways; his free hand grabbed…and closed over her left breast.

For a long second they both went completely still. T.C. heard the rasp of her own breathing, not quite steady, over the heavy thud of her heartbeat. Then she kicked out again, and this time her booted heel caught him in the shin.

He swore succinctly, and T.C. felt a rush of vindictive satisfaction. This was his fault. He shouldn’t have been touching her at all, let alone in that deliberate way. She swung her feet again, and he grunted as he shifted sideways to avoid her heels.

He cursed again. “What are you, half mule? Stop kicking, for Pete’s sake!”

“Then…let…me…go!”

“I’ll let you go when I can see what you’re up to. Where’s the light switch?”

When she didn’t answer his arm tightened. “Down there…straight ahead…last door on your left.” T.C.’s instructions came out in reluctant grunts against the arm crushing her diaphragm.

He frog-marched her the length of the breezeway, pushed open the door to her quarters and flicked the switch. T.C. squeezed her eyes shut against the sudden brightness. Dazzling yellow figures danced across the backs of her lids. She heard Ug yap a greeting, the scratch of her nails as she scampered across the concrete floor, then felt the little dog bouncing around her legs…no, make that their legs.

Oh, great. First my dog doesn’t even hear him arrive, then she greets him like a long-lost friend!

“Down. Sit.” His instructions were so do-not-argue that T.C. almost sat herself.

Needless to say, her traitorous dog subsided.

The stranger’s grip eased. His hands moved to her shoulders, swinging her around until she stood staring into his broad chest. Her nose almost touched the front of his shirt and the chest hair revealed by two open buttons.

She swallowed with difficulty and raised a hand to push against the solid wall of his chest. It didn’t budge. Beneath her palm beat the steady pulse of his heart. She tipped her head back, found herself too close to see anything beyond a chin dark with regrowth and centered with a faint familiar-looking cleft.

Oh, no, it couldn’t be….

She backed up until the full lips and long, straight nose came into focus; then she closed her eyes.

Oh, yes, it most definitely was!

“Tell me I didn’t just kick Nick Corelli in the shins,” she said on the end of a long tortured groan. Tell me I didn’t just run my hands all over Nick Corelli’s body. Except she knew she had—the knowledge still tingled in the palms of those hands.

She opened her eyes to find his focused intently on her, and for a long moment she could do nothing but stare back. His eyes weren’t obsidian dark like all the Corellis she had met but the pure cerulean of a summer sky. So unexpected, so unusual, so giddily, perfectly beautiful. Finally she remembered to take another breath, to close the mouth she feared had fallen open in gobstopped awe.

“You know me?” He sounded startled by that, and there was definitely surprise lurking in those amazing eyes. Surprise and something more. Interest? Or merely curiosity?

She shook her head, as much to clear her stunned senses as in reply. “We’ve never met, but I recognize you. From photographs. Your father showed me photographs.”

“You recognized me instantly from a couple of pictures?”

More than a couple. T.C. felt herself color as she recalled how many…and how often she’d pored over them. Good grief, she had actually freeze-framed a video of his sister’s wedding on one spectacular shot. It was a wonder she hadn’t pegged him as Nick the Gorgeous One in the total dark!

“I take it you aren’t a burglar. Do you work here?” He glanced down at where Ug lay at his feet—almost on his feet—and grinned. “Let me guess. You’re security, and this is your guard dog.”

T.C.’s heart did a slow motion flip-flop as the effect of that lazy drawl, the warmth of that slow grin, rippled through her body. She couldn’t help her automatic response. How could she not smile back at him? How could she watch one quizzically arched brow disappear behind the thick fall of his hair and not think about combing it back from his face?

Belatedly she realized that the brow had arched in question. Asking what? Something about her working here? “Um…I’m the trainer. I train Joe’s horses.”

His expression changed from quizzical to startled in one blink of his dark lashes. “You’re Tamara Cole?”

“That’s me.”

He inspected her with unnerving thoroughness, starting at her boots and working all the way up her legs and body. When he arrived back at her face, he let out a choked sort of snort that sounded like equal parts disbelief and suppressed laughter, and the warmth suffusing T.C.’s veins turned prickly with irritation. She knew she wasn’t looking her best, but that was no reason for him to shake his head and grin as if he couldn’t quite believe what his eyes were telling him. She folded her arms and regarded him as coolly as the hot flush of mortification allowed. “What are you doing here, Nick?”

“Apart from being attacked by a crazy little horse-training woman dressed in pajamas and boots?”

“I mean,” she said tightly, as he continued to grin down at her, “I’ve been waiting to hear from someone for weeks and weeks, but I didn’t expect you. Last I heard, you were lost in the wilds of Alaska.”

The grin faded. “Who told you that?”

“George mentioned it. After the funeral.” She shrugged off the memory of that short, unpleasant meeting. Who-told-who-what didn’t matter when important questions remained unanswered. Like, what was Nick doing here, and why had he arrived unannounced in the middle of the night? “You should have let me know you were coming.”

“I’ve been trying to do that for the last six hours.” With disturbing accuracy he homed in on her telephone and picked up the receiver she’d left off the hook. “I don’t suppose this has anything to do with the constant busy signal?”

“I must have bumped it. Or something.”

He stared at her for a full ten seconds, then gestured with the instrument in his hand. “Is this on the same line as the house?”

T.C. cleared her throat, told herself it was ridiculous to feel such a sharp frisson of apprehension at the sight of a phone, at the thought of it being able to ring and ring and ring…. “Yes. There’s only the one line.”

“Then if it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer we keep that line open.” As he cradled the receiver, the meaning behind his words gelled. If he needed a phone, he must be staying.

“Why are you here, Nick?” she blurted. “I expected George, or that solicitor with the bullfrog eyes.”

The corners of Nick’s mouth twitched. “We used to call him Kermit.”

T.C. tried to ignore the mental image of Kermit in pinstripes but failed. And as they smiled in shared amusement, as she had done so many times with his father, T.C. knew why Nick was here. It made perfect sense that Joe would leave the place of his heart to the son of his heart, the one he had spoken of with such obvious love.

It also explained the delay. Nick—self-indulgent, freewheeling Nick—had disappeared on some wilderness skiing jaunt the day his father was hospitalized. Joe lingered ten more days, but Nick didn’t come home.

As she collected Ug from the floor and hugged the dog’s furry warmth close against her chest, T.C. felt the tight twist of pain for the man who had been her boss, her mentor and her savior—and the strong sting of resentment for the son who had let him down.

Nick watched as a sheen of moisture quelled the sea-green intensity of her gaze, and he felt a sharp kick of response, a need to ease the pain he glimpsed in those spectacular eyes. He actually took a step forward, but she nailed him to the spot with a fierce look that reminded him of his bruised ribs and scraped shin. He gave himself a mental tap on the head.