Resisting Nick (Wicked in Wellington) (13 page)

“No Nick—I don’t want people talking.”

“I’ll meet you by the front door.” And he’d gone, down the stairs in a whirl of long legs, leather jacket and wide smile.

Sammie kept him waiting—quite content to sign Anita up, process her payment, and talk a little about Kelly’s apartment. Once she’d excused herself, grabbed her bag and jogged down the stairs, she found him sitting in his rain-spattered car at the street end of the alley. He was listening to the radio news and apparently unconcerned at the time she’d taken to arrive. He reached over and pushed the passenger door open.

She gave an exaggerated sigh, slid in beside him, and belted up. “So where are we going?”

“My place.” He accelerated out into the traffic.

“Nick!” She shot him an aggravated glare. “I thought you meant a quick coffee somewhere nearby.”
 

He met her eyes with an easy grin. “This’ll be a lot more private. No worries about being seen with the boss.”

“At the beach in weather like this?”

“Wait and see.”

“And who’s looking after BodyWork?”

“Someone on the team’ll fill in where they need to.”

Sammie marveled he had such faith in his people and his systems. A reflection of his own abilities, she presumed. “You hardly need me at all then.”

“I need you for things you can’t imagine.”

Oh, but she could—and all too vividly.

After a couple of minutes, he made a sharp left turn and shot up a steep, narrow street. The engine relished the challenge and growled its way up as far as a stucco-finished art deco house painted pale blue with pink facings. Anything less like Nick she couldn’t have imagined.
 

“It looks like a nursery rhyme,” she exclaimed as he braked in the driveway.

He nodded sagely. “I keep telling Bonnie she’s got the colors wrong. She’s going to love that description.”

“Who’s Bonnie?”

“She owns this little fantasy.”

“It’s not yours then?” Damn—she hadn’t meant to sound so suspicious.

He pushed his door open. “No, it’s Bonnie’s house. Her son Mike and I share it with her, for now.” He waited for Sammie to alight. “We’re close to the city center with a great view. I travel quite a bit so I can come and go as I please, and she never minds. And she needs the rent.”

Sammie digested that while Nick unlocked the house. Presumably Mike was an adult so Bonnie wasn’t in the first flush of youth. A landlady rather than a flat-mate, then? She found herself hoping so and pushed the thought away with annoyance. It was none of her business. She didn’t want it to be her business. Why was she even interested?

He stood aside for her, and she climbed the two pink-painted concrete steps and preceded him in. The interior looked as quirky as the outside. Bonnie collected old china—color-themed collections of plates and jugs clustered on shelves and hung on walls that glowed sunshine yellow. At the end of the entrance lobby, a line of old Toby jugs glared down.

“I pictured you in a minimalist high-rise apartment with heaps of electronics,” Sammie said as she entered a sage-green living room. More china, hundreds of books, vases of peacock feathers and dried grasses...

“Been there, done that, got offered a silly price and took it.” He smiled broadly. “Bet they wish they’d offered less, the way prices have dropped now. It suited me to have the cash on hand for other projects.”

He led her to the kitchen, opened a can of seafood chowder, tipped it into a pot, and set it to heat. Two ceramic soup-bowls and spoons were ready and waiting on the table.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“You planned this before you left this morning!”

“So?” He stepped close in front of her and tipped her face up for a lazy kiss.
 

Sammie tried to pull back but found herself trapped between Nick’s warm body and the hard edge of the kitchen counter.
 

It’s easier to kiss him, and you’ve got no fight left anyway.
 

She relaxed into him and enjoyed the embrace, even though she’d sworn blind she wouldn’t be doing it again.

His hands smoothed down her neck, out over her shoulders, along her arms. He threaded his fingers through hers and drew her arms around his waist until she stood flattened against him right down to her knees. And all the time his mouth settled...lifted...tilted onto even more delicious angles...captured her bottom lip and nipped gently...sucked on her top lip until she moaned with the pleasure of it.

Finally, she pulled away and laid her head against his chest. Somehow, she had to resist him. Somehow. Somehow.
 

It seemed he had only to crook his finger and she become as eager to play as a six-week-old puppy. Why had she let this happen again? Why wasn’t she tugging her hands away from his waist instead of sliding them up and down those lines of hard muscle beside his spine?

Too many questions, not enough answers.

Last night had been bad enough. Or good enough, she corrected herself, pressing her sensitized lips together to try and banish the delight of his kiss.
 

He wanted, he took, she gave.
 

Last night had been the opposite. She’d been the one who’d wanted and taken. He’d been the one who’d given; given in to her very rapid invitation to bed. Given her orgasm after orgasm. Shame rippled through her.
 

“Nick,” she sighed, “I’m sorry. I said I didn’t want to get involved. I’m going traveling as soon as I’ve finished working for you. I don’t need the complication of another man in my life.”

“So I’m Rebound Guy?” His deep voice rumbled through the wall of his chest and into her ear.

“Only from Grandpa.”

He laughed, and his warm chuckle set up a frisson of deep gnawing need, making her nipples tingle, and her pelvis feel full of heat and frustrated longing.

“Travel with
me
,” he coaxed. “I’m off to Sydney in a few days to check out properties.”

At least she had ammunition to fight
that
off. “No passport yet, Nick. It’ll be a while before I can go anywhere—I didn’t apply for it until after Grandpa died. Anyway, I have a cat to feed.”

The lid on the soup-pot started to dance as the steam lifted it. Nick released her and turned aside to lower the heat. “Make yourself useful with this then,” he suggested, indicating a bread-board and knife and a bakery bag which she found concealed a crusty wholegrain loaf. He dug into the freezer and pulled out a pack of frozen prawn tails, tossed two generous handfuls into the chowder and replaced the lid so it could come to a simmer again.

Sammie sawed away at the bread. Because she’d lived in Grandpa’s house for the last eleven years, there’d never been any question of inviting men to potter in the kitchen with her before a sexy little dinner or for a morning-after breakfast.
 

It felt wonderfully intimate to be sharing domestic chores with Nick. Curiously nice. She bit her bottom lip and tried to ignore the quiet buzz of happiness.
 

She’d be leaving. Would probably never see him again after this month. And he wouldn’t be interested in her on any long-term basis, so that was just as well.

“Don’t jump,” he said, right in her ear, but in her super-aroused state Sammie did. His hands settled on her shoulders, and his lips touched the back of her neck. “Wouldn’t want you taking fright and cutting yourself the way I did.”

His breath puffed warm against her skin as he spoke. Then the heavenly sensation of his open mouth followed—hot, damp, incendiary, dragging down from her hair to the neckline of her cream top. She trembled as all her nerves lit up like tiny embers rushing from a bonfire. The knife clattered down onto the counter.

“You have the sexiest little golden hairs catching the light there. They look as though they should be licked flat.” His husky whisper held her frozen, and she waited, unable to breathe while he proceeded to do exactly that. The sensation of his tongue on her nape felt almost as thrilling as it had on her clit the night before.
 

Somehow, in the hard noon light in the middle of a workday, with him unseen behind her, the intensity had ramped up to intolerable heights. If he could do this to her while she stood fully clad in a kitchen, she despaired of resisting him if he was serious about seducing her again somewhere dimly lit and romantic.
 

To her great relief the pot lid restarted its steam-dance. Nick gave a rueful curse and deserted her to pull the chowder away from the heat.

Sammie picked up the knife with unsteady hands and cut another slice of yeasty smelling bread. Nick ladled out the savory soup.

They sat, and he started to talk. “I phoned Doc Latimer earlier. He said as far as he was concerned Gaynor adopted one son and then struck it lucky by having a couple of her own. Not uncommon apparently. He thought nothing of it until last Friday.”

“He doesn’t think your brothers are adopted too?”
 

Nick shook his head. “They’re the image of Dad—Brian—and damn near as twisted. No, they’re his.”

“No further ahead then,” she murmured, maneuvering a juicy prawn tail onto her soup spoon.”
 

“I was clutching at straws. He wasn’t always our family doctor. We lived in Hastings until I was sixteen. Then we moved here to Wellington.”

“And I never saw you again. After we...” Sammie knew she must look awkward. “I mean...I thought...maybe someone discovered what we’d been doing that final summer.”

He sent her a long scorching gaze across the table. “I was a lot more careful of you than that.”

She swallowed another spoonful of chowder as her body reacted to the heat in his eyes. Yes, he’d always been protective of her. Never rough. Never insistent. She’d joined in his games because she wanted to. Wanted to know more. Wanted to find out with
him.

“So I have a favor to ask,” he continued. “Will you come and see my parents with me? I want to use you as ammunition.”

“How?” She was genuinely surprised. “What use will I be? It’s private family stuff, Nick. You don’t want a stranger there.”
 

“But that’s exactly it—you’re not a stranger.”
 

She shook her head, still puzzled. She’d never met them.

“I want to introduce you as Erik’s grand-daughter and see if it rattles them. Maybe they’ll think we know more than we do.”

She stayed silent for a while, considering the idea.

“We needn’t say he’s dead,” Nick added. “It’s unlikely they’ve heard. Please?”

“Would it be so terrible if you never found out?”

He stopped with his soup spoon halfway to his mouth. “How would you feel?” he asked. “If you didn’t know what your background was, or who your parents were? If you discovered you’d been lied to your whole life?”

“It’s really that bad?”

“Right now, yes. I might feel better in a few weeks, but currently I don’t know where I belong, and I’m so damn fired up I just need to get on with it.”

“Okay.” She took a slice of bread. “When do you want to go?” She saw relief wash over his face.

“Tonight?”

“Tonight!” She put the bread down again. “Do you know they’ll be home?”

“Not for sure, but surprise is a powerful thing. If I can catch them unprepared they might spill something they wouldn’t otherwise.”

“I planned on seeing Tyler tonight.”

“We can do both. Hit Brian and Gaynor first in case they’re going out later. Then continue on and admire the baby. And end up at your apartment with the rest of that wine and some Thai or Indian?”

“And that’s all you had in mind?” She picked up her bread once more and bit into it.

“Hell no—I want the full works again.”

She drew breath at the wrong moment and choked on the crumbs. “Not going to happen,” she spluttered as he grinned at her reaction.

But somehow it did. His parents weren’t there. Sammie felt almost relieved about that. Their home surprised her—a pleasant colonial that looked well cared for and more upmarket than she’d expected. Not that she knew the sort of home a criminal would choose or could afford.
 

Pink and apricot dahlias bowed their heavy heads in the rain. She had to hold them aside as she climbed the steps.

“It’s nice,” she murmured to Nick and they stood on the front deck after ringing the bell.
 

“Gaynor likes ‘nice’,” he replied laconically. “Likes to think she’s fooling everyone that she’s a respectable suburban matron. As if this isn’t bought with drugs and double-dealing and God-knows-what.”

Sammie stayed silent a moment, digesting that. “There’s no-one home,” she said a few seconds later.
 

“We’re out of luck, then. Damn.” He took her hand and led her back to the car, standing looking at the house with bitter eyes before he beeped the doors unlocked and seated her.

“Drugs?” she couldn’t help asking.

“You name it, he’s into it—not that he knows I know.”

Cold shivers ran along her spine. What if Nick was lying, and he was tied up with it too? Had he really made his own money with the fitness centers? “So how do you know about the drugs?” she asked.

He closed her door, rounded the car, pulled his own open, and sat in silence for a while. She didn’t dare question him further.

“Brothers,” he said eventually, closing the door with a hefty thud. “Both hard-assed, and not much better than him.” Another aching gap. Then he added, “I don’t see much of them, but I’ve had a bit to do with one lately. He considers me family, and family doesn’t rat on each other, so a few stories emerged.”
 

He fired up the engine and gave it a vicious rev. Sat there with a closed expression on his face until at last he drew a deep breath and added, “Except I’m not family now. Suddenly a lot of things make sense.”
 

He snapped his seatbelt closed and turned on the headlamps against the gathering gloom. “She’s at the main hospital, is she?”

Tyler looked tired but triumphant, and reached up to give Nick a kiss on the cheek to thank him for the yellow roses. Her new daughter squirmed and snuffled, mostly concealed by a pink blanket. Cameron, brown haired and sleepy eyed, sat beside the crib, playing with the tiny fingers just visible above the blanket hem.