Fiona Hood-Stewart – One Night of Passion: The Night that Changed Everything / Champagne with a Celebrity / At the French Baron's Bidding (страница 15)

And the doorbell rang. Once, twice. Three times now.

Not many people got as far as Mona Tremayne’s front door. Tucked away high in the mountains behind Santa Barbara, the acreage Mona had bought with Edie’s father, Joe, was far off the beaten path.

Everyone else had urged Mona to move after Joe died. The acreage was too big, they said. It had been Joe’s dream to have the cutting horse operation on rural Santa Barbara ranch land. But Mona had stayed true to that dream.

She and Joe had bought it not just for the horses, but because they’d wanted a place to get away to, a place where they could be themselves without coming face-to-face with the fanfare of Mona’s growing celebrity on an hourly basis. Of course it hadn’t had the present house on it then, only the now sadly decaying old adobe ranch house even farther from the road.

This house had come later, after Joe’s death. In her grief Mona wouldn’t leave the place they’d had together. But the crumbling old adobe was no place to be with two small children. Without Joe to keep things together, the roof would have fallen in on them at the very least. So Mona had had a new house built and a year later she and five-year-old Edie and nine-year-old Ronan had moved down the hill several hundred yards to what Ronan still called “Ma’s movie star house.”

It was big and lavishly decorated, parts of it definitely elegant enough for spur-of-the-moment entertaining of Hollywood moguls and the world’s rich and famous. At the same time it had eleven bedrooms, even more bathrooms, a butler’s pantry big enough for Edie’s twelve-year-old twin half brothers Dirk and Ruud to roller skate in, a swimming pool, tennis court and, oh yes, a doorbell.

This time whoever it was didn’t just ring it, they leaned on it. Long and hard and far too shrilly.

Annoyed, Edie was tempted not to answer it at all. But Mona’s “open house” policy extended to whomever among her hundreds of “close” friends turned up in the vicinity. Even when Mona was on the other side of the world, she—or, basically, Edie—welcomed all and sundry. The Tremayne hospitality was legendary, and Edie was quite happy to do it, though usually her mother warned her before guests were expected.

Now the hourglass gave way to a “confirmed” screen. Gratefully Edie punched a button to print Rhiannon’s itinerary, then, with Roy at her heels, she went to answer the bell—which was still ringing “All right! I hear you!” she shouted as she hurried down the hallway from her office at the back of the house, across the living room and grabbed the handle of the oversize dark oak door. “You can stop now!”

It stopped.

She jerked open the door. Her jaw dropped. Her fingers clenched on the door handle. She stared in disbelief. “Nick?”

Because it was—Nick Savas in the flesh. As tall and gorgeous as she remembered. And as unexpected as—well, Edie couldn’t think of anything she had been anticipating less.

She clutched the door handle with one hand and Roy’s collar with the other, as if they would anchor her in a storm. And there was a storm—of emotions, of memories, of questions and answers that she’d put behind her because she’d never managed to sort them out.

Not that she hadn’t tried. For weeks after she’d got back home after the wedding in Mont Chamion she’d thought about that night—about the man she’d spent it with. She thought about what she’d done and tried to understand why.

As near as she could come to an explanation was that somehow that night he had awakened her.

After two and a half years of going through the motions of getting on with her life—and yet never really finding the spark that would make her recognize that she was alive and fully functional again on all levels—that night she had.

Something—and she never did put her finger on what—about Nick Savas had touched something elemental in her. In her most fanciful moments she thought it was what the prince’s kiss on Sleeping Beauty’s lips had done—brought her back to life.

It wasn’t Nick’s kiss that had done it for Edie. It wasn’t his lovemaking, either. It was simply him—his energy, his charm, his wit, his dazzling smile. And his eyes. His eyes were eloquent. They spoke to her without words. They laughed with her, they teased her. They bore witness to his suffering. They anguished with her about her own. They drew her in.

They woke her up.

The kisses, the lovemaking grew out of that. She thought maybe she’d gone to bed with him out of gratitude for her awakening. She was grateful. But it was more than that.

She’d felt a connection she couldn’t explain—as if he’d given her something that night and, in their lovemaking, she had given him something in return.

She’d tried over the past couple of months to articulate what. She hadn’t been able to. Not really. If he’d come after her, she might have been able to. But of course he hadn’t.

It had been a one-off, just as he’d said it would be.

So what was he doing here now?

His mobile mouth tilted into a conspiratorial smile and his eyes—those dark, sometimes laughing, sometimes brooding eyes—were just as intent as ever as they focused on her.

Once more Edie felt the connection she’d felt that night in Mont Chamion.

So whatever it was, it had lasted—for her at least—longer than one night. Edie felt her breath catch.

“What—What are you doing here?”

The Cinderella inside her wanted him to say he was here for her. The other sane sensible 99.9 percent of her brain told herself to get a grip. Things like that didn’t happen in real life. She wouldn’t want them to happen!

“Nice to see you, too,” Nick said amiably. Then he cocked his head and looked quizzically at her. “I don’t remember us parting on bad terms. Actually I don’t remember us parting at all. I woke up and you were gone.” Now his eyes accused her.

Edie felt her face warm, her fingers tightened on Roy’s collar. “You were asleep. I had a plane to catch.” She tried to sound matter-of-fact. In fact she knew she just sounded defensive. “Sorry,” she said after a moment. “It was …” She hesitated, trying to find the right word. “It was a lovely night.”

That was inadequate. But what else could she say? And the situation wasn’t one she’d ever been in before—or since.

He was still smiling at her, every bit as gorgeous as he had been that night, only this time in an easy California casual way. This Nick wore a pair of jeans, faded nearly white at the knees and thighs, a long sleeve sage-green oxford cloth shirt with the cuffs rolled half up his forearms and a pair of aviator sunglasses parked atop his midnight-black, wind-ruffled hair.

“It was,” Nick agreed. His gaze moved over her slowly, as if he were undressing her again now. Edie felt her whole body warm.

And then he said, “I’ve been talking with your mother.”

“My mother?” He was undressing her with his eyes and he’d been talking to her mother? Dear God, what had Mona done now?

“We were talking about an old adobe ranch house she’s got.”

Edie stared at him, feeling a total disconnect. “What?”

“She mentioned it when I met her in Mont Chamion,” Nick went on. “She said it was in need of work. So I told her I’d give her an evaluation.” He gave Edie an encouraging smile.

“Evaluation?” Edie echoed. He was here because he’d talked to her mother? It was business. It had nothing to do with her. She felt oddly deflated and off-kilter. She didn’t know quite what to say, but Nick was watching her, clearly waiting for her to say something.

Finally she said the only thing she could think of. “Mona’s not here. She’s in Thailand.”

“I know. I talked to her yesterday.”

“Really?” Edie had talked to her mother yesterday as well, and Mona hadn’t said a single word! The name Nick Savas hadn’t crossed her lips. Nor had any mention of the adobe.

“We discussed renovations a couple of weeks ago,” Nick said. “But I didn’t know when I was going to be finished then. She said it didn’t matter, just to come on ahead whenever I got my last job done.” Nick spread his hands.

Pennies were slowly beginning to drop.

“Come ahead?” Edie echoed again, wondering if he thought it was strange that she couldn’t seem to form a thought he hadn’t already said. “For what?”

“The evaluation. Working on the house, if it warrants it.” He reached out a hand to the dog, letting Roy sniff to make sure he was a friend.

Edie wished that was all the assurance it took. She felt pole-axed. And betrayed. Obviously when dangling Kyle in front of her didn’t tempt Edie, she’d moved on to the man Edie had gone off with the night of the wedding.

Had she tracked Nick down and called him? Twisted his arm?

Edie was mortified beyond belief.

“You won’t want to bother with the adobe,” she said shortly now. “It’s not worth saving.”

That wasn’t true, of course. Or at least she hoped it wasn’t. She loved the old house where she’d lived as a small child. But that didn’t mean she wanted her mother to hire Nick Savas to restore it!

Unfortunately Roy seemed to have accepted him as a friend. He began to slowly wag his tail. Edie anchored him firmly with a hand on his collar. She ground her teeth, trying to keep a polite smile in place.