Just One More Night. Fiona Brand

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      Two

      Elena dragged her gaze from the magnetic power of Nick’s and fought the crazy urge to stay and continue sparring with him.

      Pushing to her feet, she bid Cutler good day, picked up her handbag and stepped out the door. Nick was close enough behind her that the sudden overpowering sense that she was being pursued sent another hot, forbidden thrill zinging through her.

      The door snapped closed. Nick’s firm tread confirmed that he was in pursuit and the faint, heady whiff of his cologne made her stomach clench. Clamping down on the wimpy feeling that she was prey and Nick was a large, disgruntled predator, Elena lengthened her stride and walked briskly past the receptionist out into the mall.

      She had just stepped out of air-conditioned coolness into the humid heat of the street when a large tanned hand curled briefly around her upper arm. “What I don’t get is why you’re still so angry.”

      Elena spun and faced Nick, although that was a mistake because she was suddenly close enough that she could see a pulse jumping along the line of his jaw.

      She tilted her chin to meet his gaze, unbearably aware that while she was quite tall at five foot eight, Nick was several inches taller and broad enough that he actually made her feel feminine and fragile. “You shouldn’t have crashed my meeting with Cutler or tried to pressure me when you knew ahead of time how I felt.”

      There was an odd, vibrating pause. “I’m sorry if I hurt you six years ago, but after what happened that night it couldn’t be any other way.”

      His words, the fact that he obviously thought she had fallen for him six years ago, dropped into a pool of silence that seemed to expand and spread around them, blotting out the street noise. She dragged her gaze from the taut planes of his cheekbones, the inky crescents of his lashes. “Are you referring to the accident, or the fact that you were already involved with someone else called Tiffany?” A girlfriend he’d apparently had stashed away in Dubai.

      Nick frowned. “The relationship with Tiffany was already ending.”

      Elena found herself staring at the V of bronzed flesh bared by the pale peach T-shirt Nick was wearing beneath his black jacket. Peach. It was a feminine color, but on Nick the color looked sexy and hot, emphasizing the tough, stubbled line of his jaw and the cool gleam of his eyes. “I read about Tiffany in an article that was published a whole month later.”

      She would never forget because the statement that Nick Messena and his gorgeous model girlfriend were in love had finally convinced her that a relationship with him had never been viable.

      “You shouldn’t believe anything printed in a tabloid. We broke up as soon as I got back to Dubai.”

      Elena ruthlessly suppressed the sudden, wild, improbable notion that Nick had ended his relationship with Tiffany because of her.

      That was the kind of flawed thinking that had seen her climbing into bed with him in the first place. “That still didn’t make it all right to sleep with me when you had no intention of ever following up.”

      A hint of color rimmed Nick’s cheekbones. “No, it didn’t. If you’ll recall, I did apologize.”

      Her jaw tightened. As if it had all been a gigantic mistake. “So why, exactly, did you finish with Tiffany?”

      She shouldn’t have the slightest interest. Nick Messena meant nothing to her—absolutely nothing—but suddenly she desperately needed to know.

      He dragged long, tanned fingers through his hair, his expression just a little bad-tempered and terminally, broodingly sexy. “How would I know why?” he growled. “Men don’t know that stuff. It ended, like it always does.”

      She blinked at his statement that his relationships always ended. For reasons she didn’t want to go into, there was something profoundly depressing in that thought.

      She stared at his wide mouth and the fuller bottom lip, which was decorated with a small, jagged scar. She couldn’t remember the scar being there six years ago. It suggested he had since been involved in a fight.

      Probably a brawl on one of his construction sites.

      Against all good sense, the heady tension she had so far failed to defuse tightened another notch. Feeling, as she was, unsettled by memories of the past, distinctly vulnerable and on edge from the blast of Nick’s potent sexuality, it was not a good idea to imagine Nick Messena in warrior mode.

      She dragged her gaze from his mouth and the vivid memory of what it had felt like to be kissed by Nick. “Maybe you go about things in the wrong way?”

      He stared at her, transfixed. “How, exactly, should I ‘go about’ things?”

      She СКАЧАТЬ