Starting Over (28 page)

'Wrong,' Nick contradicted her as he closed the door on the damp mist. 'I do have someone to come in and sort through my mail, but she's obviously not been for a day or so. I couldn't do my job without technology, but unfortunately the nemesis currently hovering over me is in the shape of big brother Saul—

to such an extent that the merest hint I might have received a fax or email from a client is enough to have him put me under lock and key—for my own safety, of course!' Nick grinned when he saw her expression.

'Well, no, it isn't quite as bad as that, but as Saul has pointed out, until my GP has given me a clean bill of health, running the risk of getting myself locked up in some insalubrious foreign gaol is not a good idea.'

'Is that likely to happen?' Sara questioned him.

'Hopefully not, but I suppose it
is
always on the cards. The people who hire my services are hiring me to get my client out of such a situation. But...' He gave a brief careless shrug which showed Sara that he was neither exaggerating nor boasting in an attempt to impress her but simply speaking the truth. 'In some countries there comes a time when negotiation isn't going to get anywhere and a more physical form of action needs to be taken.' He started to frown. The hostage case he'd most recently been asked to take on had fortunately resolved itself as the woman had been released.

'There've been instances—fortunately very few—

when my client's health has been so damaged by their incarceration that protracted negotiations could have meant that even if they were freed it might have been too late.

'I had one client...a nineteen-year-old. He was up at Oxford and predicted to get a double first. Unbe-knownst to him the person he was travelling with to the Far East had agreed to act as a drugs mule not for money but for a dare. This person was being used as a decoy and of course, he got caught and my client was imprisoned along with him. They'd both been set up so that the real carrier could get through. The country they were caught in has a death penalty for drug smuggling....'

He saw Sara's indrawn breath.

'My client's parents were both distraught and they turned to me as a last resort.'

From the sudden subtle shadowing of his expression Sara knew intuitively that his story did not have a happy ending.

'You—you couldn't help?' she guessed.

'Oh, yes. I got him out and the other man finally got reprieved,' Nick told her. 'But unfortunately my client had been bitten by some insect whilst he was in prison. The wound had not been treated and as a result gangrene had set in and he had to have his leg am-putated.

'Oh, hell,' he swore when he saw Sara's expression.

'That was crass of me. I didn't mean to upset you.

Saul keeps telling me that I'm getting too old for this kind of work—or rather that it's getting too dangerous for me. He thinks I should give it up and settle for something more mundane.'

'But you don't want to,' Sara guessed, fighting to recover her equilibrium.

'No,' Nick acknowledged. 'Unlike Saul, I'm not the settling-down kind. I'm too restless...there's still too much I want to do...see....'

He was warning her off getting involved with him, Sara recognised; letting her know that there was strictly no future for her with him. But she already knew that—didn't she?

'I'll take your stuff upstairs for you,' Nick was telling her. 'If you want to come up with me I'll show you where everything is.'

Her heart thumping, Sara followed him up the narrow stairs which led off the attractive square hallway.

Halfway up the stairs a deep window with a cosy seat looked out across the countryside.

'On a clear day you can see the sea,' Nick informed her as she paused automatically to look out. 'On a day like today, you can't even see the road.'

'Do you live here all the time?' Sara asked him curiously.

'More or less. I'm not as isolated as it may seem.

My parents live less than an hour's drive away and the estate to which this cottage originally belonged is only a few miles across the hills.

'I had thought at one time of buying a flat in Chester—but so many members of the family live there that I can always beg a bed for the night when I want to visit.'

They had reached the top of the stairs now. Four closed doors led off it.

Nick pushed one of them open. Cautiously Sara followed him inside it.

'It's a guest room,' Nick told her before she could say anything. 'It's got its own bathroom.

'I'll leave you to make yourself at home while I go down and make us both a drink. Which do you prefer—tea or coffee?'

'Coffee, please,' Sara responded automatically. He was putting down her case, turning to look at her as he did so, not giving her time to conceal the surprise his comment had given her.

'What were you expecting?' he mocked her softly.

'That I was going to throw you on the bed and have my wicked way with you right here and now?'

'Don't be ridiculous,' Sara managed to reply, but she knew that her face was flushing and she prayed that her body language wasn't giving away what she was really thinking—and wanting!

'We've got all weekend, after all,' Nick continued, giving her a wicked smile as he added softly, 'although, of course, if
you
wish to pounce on
me...'

Refusing to respond, Sara turned her back on him, but she could hear him laughing softly as he left her.

NICK FROWNED
as he made his way back downstairs.

He had been an almighty fool to ever suggest what he
had
suggested and, as for bringing Sara
here...
Wasn't the very reason he had previously never invited a woman to spend time at the cottage with him simply because he had known what a dangerous, a treacher-ous swamp of potential disaster he would be letting himself in for if he did? Ah, yes; but
that
had been because he had been afraid that such close intimacy with the woman concerned would lead to boredom and irritation. With
Sara...
With Sara he was fascinated, entranced, driven mad with curiosity and desire, desperate to find some flaw in her which would enable him to step back from her. But instead... Even that unexpected shyness and reserve she had betrayed in the bedroom had idiotically appealed to him. Sharp-ening his hunting instinct?

In the cottage's well-equipped kitchen he filled the kettle and switched it on. A timer ensured that the place was warm and centrally heated. He might like the cottage's remoteness but Nick was not someone who saw any virtue in depriving himself of civilisa-tion's comforts unless he had to.

IN HER BEDROOM
Sara looked uncertainly towards the bathroom. She felt grimy after her journey and would have enjoyed a shower. A quick examination of the bathroom revealed that it had a lock and that her privacy could be assured.

She started to frown. She knew she was inexperienced where 'weekends away for sex' were concerned, but surely it was highly unusual to give one's partner a separate room. Or was that simply a subtle ploy on Nick's part, a deliberate reminder that all they were having was sex and that there was to be no intimacy between them? No intimacy and no preliminaries, either?

'HELLO THERE
,' Nick announced cheerfully half an hour later as Sara emerged into the kitchen. 'I'm afraid the coffee's gone cold. I'll make a fresh one.'

'I decided to have a shower,' Sara told him and then blushed. Would he interpret her remark as a hint that she was expecting...that she
wanted...
But to her relief he didn't pick her up on her comment or try to turn it into a sexual innuendo.

'There's quite a good restaurant in St. David's. I could book a table for us there this evening if you like or if you prefer we can eat here. I've brought some stuff with me.'

'Er...I don't mind,' Sara told him awkwardly.

'No?' Nick smiled. 'Well, in that case, we'll have dinner here. A client gave me a case of a particularly good red wine that I haven't touched yet. Will steak be okay for you? I'm afraid I'm no gourmet chef....'

'Steak will be line,' Sara confirmed.

Nick's eyebrows rose and Sara tensed as he came towards her carrying a mug of coffee.

'You've become unexpectedly docile,' he commented as he put the coffee down on the wooden table next to her. 'If I didn't know better I'd begin to think that you were feeling nervous.'

'Nervous... Of course I'm not....' Sara denied un-truthfully.

Perhaps it was something to do with the fact that she had just had a shower herself—she didn't know, but suddenly she felt far too hot and far, far too aware of the tempting sexy scent of Nick's skin, the potential male strength of his body, the sensuality of that just beginning to show through darkness along his jawline, that unwanted fascination possessing her as she watched the way his hand curled round the cup, imagining how it would feel against her skin, her body, how
she
would feel.

'Sara...'

Guiltily she looked up at him and then wished she hadn't as she realised how close to her he was. Her heart was thumping heavily, slow unsteady strokes.

For some reason she had started to tremble.

'Mmm...you smell all clean and soapy....'

How had he managed to wrap his arms around her like that without her seeing him move? So tightly in fact, that she had no option but to cling helplessly to him, letting him meld her body to the shape of his own.

'I had a shower,' she murmured incoherently.

'So you said,' Nick agreed softly. 'How disappoint-ing of you. I was hoping you would wait until / could share it with you.'

Her heart was lurching around inside her chest like a slingshot being practised by a mere novice.

'I can't... I didn't... Oh... Mmm...' Helplessly her voice faded away as Nick started to drift dangerous little kisses all over her face, his mouth edging closer and closer to her own but in the end
she
was the one who lifted her hand to his jaw to hold him captive as her lips parted against his.

What was it about a certain man
...the
man... that could make a woman feel like this... make her feel that her whole world, her whole life, her whole love, was bound up in the kiss they were sharing, its intimacy so sweet, so piercing, so intense that it was as though in the kiss they were exchanging she had already given herself to him body and soul, flesh and emotions?

Sara could feel her mouth clinging to Nick's as he started to release it. Without a word, one arm still holding her to him, he guided her out of the kitchen towards the stairs.

They paused on the landing where he had told her it was possible to see the sea and as she looked up at him Sara felt as though she were drowning in the depths of Nick's intensely sensual heavy-lidded gaze.

Her eyes widened as she saw the spark of fierce desire that suddenly illuminated Nick's as he looked down at her.

'You know that this is sheer reckless madness, don't you?' he told her. His voice was so calm, so controlled, so businesslike and so totally and utterly at odds with the way he was looking at her that Sara was too confused to make any response. And then it was too late because he was kissing her. This time there was no need for
her
to hold his mouth to hers.
This
time
he
was the one holding her in a way that told her that he had no intention of letting her go. Not that she wanted him to. No. She wanted him to hold her like this forever, kiss her like this forever.

They climbed the remaining few stairs still locked together, body to body, mouth to mouth.

On the landing Nick stood still, framing her face as he lifted his mouth from hers.

'This is the time to tell me if you want to change your mind,' he told her soberly.

Sara's eyes widened. He would let her do that
now
even though she could feel and was quite shamelessly relishing knowing just how aroused he was?

This time the liquid melting sensation softening her bones was caused by the intense sweetness of knowing that he would master his own desire for her if she asked him to. Knowing that gave her the courage to tell him huskily, 'No. I don't want to change my mind.'

Beneath his fingers Nick could feel her face start to burn. There was a shyness, a delicacy about her that made him ache all the more for her.

As Nick's silence deepened so did Sara's nervousness. To hide it she turned her head, forgetting for a moment that his hands were still cupping her face but made shockingly aware of their presence when her lips brushed against his skin.

How
could
just the feel of a man's fingers against her mouth make her tremble from head to foot with longing for him?

'Sara...'

The way he was saying her name made her give a small moan, swiftly silenced as he covered her mouth with his, kissing her with hungry, deep, passionate intimacy.

She was trembling so hard she could only lean helplessly against him as he opened the bedroom door—

not to her 'guest' room but to his own bedroom.

Sara had a confused impression of a huge old-fashioned bed, a fireplace stacked with logs, a desk beneath the window and a chair next to it as well as several chests.

Rich heavy curtains hung at the window, the carpet beneath her feet was a plain creamy Hessian, the bed linen an old-fashioned creamy white, a thick, soft, dark throw tossed across the foot of the bed.

The room gave off an almost medieval air, a mixture of the scholarly and the sensual; and something about it touched such a chord of sensitivity and pleasure inside Sara that it was almost as though somehow she had come home to a place that had always been there waiting for her.

A lamp either side of the large bed illuminated the room cloaking it in soft shadows. In a room like this it would be possible to completely blot out the rest of the world and its realities, Sara sensed.

When she shivered, her body reacting to everything that she was feeling, Nick offered quickly, 'If you're cold I can light the fire. I work up here sometimes.

That's why I kept it.'

Without waiting for her response he released her and went towards the fire, bending to strike a match and light the kindling. Whilst he crouched over the fire with his back to her Sara greedily absorbed the visual reality of him. After tonight she was never going to be the same person again, she recognised. After tonight...