“I’m Scared Of How Far Out Of My Depth I Am.”

The words tumbled out in a breathy rush. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I think you do know. I think that’s what scares you.”

Nick’s voice was as soft as the moonlight. T.C. felt a shiver run through her. Not cold, but heat. “Casual sex isn’t something I handle well,” she breathed.

“You think this would be casual?”

Her startled gaze flew to his and was immediately trapped by his intent expression. Her breathing grew shallow; her pulse pounded like racing hoofbeats on summer-hard earth.

“I imagine nothing’s ever casual with you,” he said slowly.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Silhouette Desire! We’re delighted to offer you again this month six passionate, powerful and provocative romances sure to please you.

Start with December’s fabulous MAN OF THE MONTH, A Cowboy’s Promise. This latest title in Anne McAllister’s popular CODE OF THE WEST miniseries features a rugged Native American determined to win back the woman he left three years before. Then discover The Secret Life of Connor Monahan in Elizabeth Bevarly’s tale of a vice cop who mistakenly surmises that a prim and proper restaurateur is operating a call-girl ring.

The sizzling miniseries 20 AMBER COURT concludes with Anne Marie Winston’s Risqué Business, in which a loyal employee tries to prevent a powerful CEO with revenge on his mind from taking over the company she thinks of as her family. Reader favorite Maureen Child delivers the next installment of another exciting miniseries, THE FORTUNES OF TEXAS: THE LOST HEIRS. In Did You Say Twins?! a marine sergeant inherits twin daughters and is forced to turn for help to the woman who refused his marriage proposal ten years before.

The sexy hero of Michael’s Temptation, the last book in Eileen Wilks’s TALL, DARK & ELIGIBLE miniseries, goes to Central America to rescue a lovely lady who’s been captured by guerrillas. And sparks fly when a smooth charmer and a sassy tomboy are brought together by their shared inheritance of an Australian horse farm in Brownyn Jameson’s Addicted to Nick.

Take time out from the holiday rush and treat yourself to all six of these not-to-be-missed romances.

Enjoy,

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

Addicted to Nick

Bronwyn Jameson

BRONWYN JAMESON

spent much of her childhood with her head buried in a book. As a teenager, she discovered romance novels, and it was only a matter of time before she turned her love of reading them into a love of writing them. Bronwyn shares an idyllic piece of the Australian farming heartland with her husband and three sons, a thousand sheep, a dozen horses, assorted wildlife and one kelpie dog. She still chooses to spend her limited downtime with a good book. Bronwyn loves to hear from readers. Write to her at bronwyn@bronwynjameson.com.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Prologue

Nick didn’t know what coming home should feel like, but he figured something ought to register on the nostalgia scale. Nothing major, mind you, just a touch of the warm and fuzzies. Hell, even a twinge of bitterness would be better than the emotional numbness that seemed to have settled over him during the long flight from JFK to Australia.

He hated the lack of feeling. It reminded him too keenly of the first time he’d stood in this drive gazing up at Joe Corelli’s mansion, except that time he had deliberately schooled his eight-year-old heart to blankness. He hadn’t wanted to feel anything—not fear or confusion, shame or hope—so he’d simply looked at the big house and wondered how long till someone realized they’d made a serious mistake.

Kids like Niccolo Corelli got arrested for being anywhere near houses like this.

But the stranger who introduced himself as some relative of his dead mother had looped a comforting arm around his shoulders and said, “This is your home, Niccolo. Forget what came before—you’re part of my family now.”

Part of a family.

Nick hadn’t a clue what that meant, and, despite Joe’s best efforts, he’d never been allowed to forget his origins.

He stared a while longer at the big house and felt nothing. Maybe he just needed sleep. Ten hours, uninterrupted, between sheets. Yeah, that was exactly what his jet-lagged body and emotion-lagged mind needed, although they weren’t getting horizontal yet. With a barely stifled yawn, he unfolded himself from the hire car and stretched his limbs. Then, as he turned toward the house, he caught a flicker of movement at an upstairs window.

Big Brother George watching from on high.

Just like that first time, Nick thought, although today he raised a casual hand in acknowledgment instead of the single-finger salute of fourteen years before. The curtain shifted back into place, and Nick puffed out a derisive laugh. Idly he scanned the ground-floor windows and wondered who else might be watching.

How many of the four women who had grown up as his sisters waited inside the thick stucco walls? Sophie, no doubt. At the faintest whiff of trouble, Sophie always came running. She was the one who dobbed to her mother the first time he bloodied George’s nose…and to her father the last time. It was Sophie who eavesdropped on the heated argument between her parents before Joe brought him here, and who spread the phrase “dirty whore’s brat.”

Yeah, he would bet money on Sophie turning up—if George had bothered to let his sisters know he was coming. His adoptive brother’s communication record was something less than stellar.

He slammed the car door on that thought, but as he strode up the drive, he could feel the tension in his jaw and a stiffness in his muscles that had nothing to do with jet lag. He didn’t want to be here—not here in Melbourne, nor at the country stables he had reportedly inherited.

Reportedly.

Wasn’t it just like George to play petty games with the facts and to ensure that the solicitor handling Joe’s estate played along, too? Nick blew out an exasperated breath. As soon as he learned the full story and slapped a For Sale sign on Yarra Park, he was gone.

This time for good.

One

If the night hadn’t been so still, silent but for the occasional swoosh of straw under restless hooves, T.C. wouldn’t have heard the faint creak of gate hinges.

Or the crunch of footsteps on the gravel path leading from the house-yard to the stables.

She could have made her way back to the stable hand’s quarters at the far end of the barn and crawled back into bed, convinced her sleep had been disturbed by an unfamiliar and unforgiving mattress rather than the audible signs of a midnight intruder.

The footsteps paused, and a chill of fear shivered across her skin. “Turn around and go back the way you came. Get in your car and drive away. Please.” Her entreaty was a whisper of breath that barely pierced the thick night air. She closed her eyes, counted to ten—slowly—but no car door clicked shut, no starter-motor engaged. With her heart lurching painfully against her ribs, she edged to the end of the stable row and peered out into the night.

Nothing moved except some ghostly strands of autumn fog—strands that seemed to slither up from the Yarra River to wrap the house in the promise of winter. T.C. retreated a step, drew a long breath. The air was cold enough to sting in her nostrils, but it was also rich with leather and horsehair, sweet molasses and fresh clover hay, familiar bracing aromas that lent strength to her weak knees.

Someone was out there—maybe the jerk who had dialed her number over and over these past weeks, only to hang up without speaking a word. She pictured him standing on the path, head lifted to test the air as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Most likely a burglar who thought the place would be easy pickings with only a woman in residence, knowledge he could have gleaned in a casual chat with any of the locals in nearby Riddells Crossing.

Her fingers tightened around the gun in her right hand. It weighed next to nothing yet it felt curiously reassuring, considering it was useless. She switched it to her left hand and wiped her damp palm on her thigh…her pajama-pants-clad thigh, she amended. A semihysterical giggle bubbled up, and she pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle the sound.

Some scumbag was stalking her stables, and she intended taking him on dressed in oversize flannel pajamas and armed with nothing but a kid’s toy cap gun. She would take him while he was rolling around the floor laughing!

The footsteps started again, approaching rapidly this time and without any pretense of stealth. She had no time to consider this, no time to consider anything, no time to plan. A dark figure came through the barn entrance less than a pace away, close enough for her to absorb the soft tang of his aftershave on a swiftly drawn breath.

Close enough to touch, in the ribs, with the toy gun.

“Don’t move, mister, and I won’t have to shoot you.”

The phoney tough-guy line rolled from T.C.’s tongue without conscious thought. She closed her eyes and grimaced. Had she really said that? With such cool calm strength, when her insides were quivering like half-set Jell-O? The quaver transferred to her legs and started them trembling. She prayed the hand holding her make-believe weapon wouldn’t follow suit.

The stranger slowly raised his hands above his head. “Take it easy, sweetheart. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I have the, um, gun, so you should be the one avoiding stupid moves!” T.C. hated herself for that stumbling pause, but before she could do more than wince, she sensed him start to move and jabbed him with the gun. Hard.

“I get the picture. I’m not to move, right?” He eased out the words in a deep, soothing monotone—the exact same voice she used to settle a nervous horse. That gave her pause. Why was he trying to mollify her? She wasn’t the one creeping about someone else’s stables in the dead of night.

“Right,” she clipped out, irritated as well as confused. “No…wrong.” She circled about him, transferring the gun from his ribs to his back, as she regathered her composure. “I do want you to move. I want you to turn, slowly, and put your hands up against the wall.”

Surprisingly he complied, although his posture looked way too casual for T.C.’s liking. “You want me to spread ’em?” he asked. A hint of amusement colored the rich depth of his voice.

“That won’t be necessary,” she replied, absolutely unamused. The guy acted like having a gun—okay, a toy gun, but he didn’t know that—pointed at his back was more an entertainment than a concern. She needed to assert some authority, but how on earth did she go about doing that? This was not a small man. At least six foot and, unless her night vision was severely impaired, most of it muscle. Her only advantage was a handful of plastic imitation weaponry.

What if he had a real weapon?

The alarming thought caused her throat to tighten. She had to clear that solid lump of dread before she could ask, “Are you armed?”

“And dangerous?” he mocked.

T.C. cursed herself for expecting to learn anything from such a foolish question. In order to find out she needed to search him…to put her hands on him….

She steeled herself by drawing a deep breath but found the air edged with his disturbingly appealing scent. She let the breath go with a snort. So even bad guys can find their way around a bottle of Calvin Klein, she told herself. So what? Get on with it!

Plunging forward, she patted down his jacket, found two outside pockets and two sets of keys—nothing unusual there. Her hand stilled on the jacket. Not cheap vinyl but real, malleable, high-quality leather, which did strike her as unusual.

What kind of burglar was he?

“There’s an inside pocket you’d better check. And one in my shirt.”

Obviously a helpful one.

Stung out of immobility, she took another C.K.-imbued breath before sliding her hand inside the jacket. His shirt was incredibly warm and the fabric so fine that she could feel the muted texture of his chest hair against her palm. And beneath that…holy toledo! she felt the rippling curves and indents of some exceedingly fine pecs. It was like stroking the finest horseflesh, all supple and deceptively languid, while underneath the slow, steady beat of his heart pumped all that heat into her hand, her blood, her belly.

Stroking?

She pulled her hand back sharply, and a shimmer of sensation skimmed across her fingertips, settled in her skin. “Static electricity,” she muttered, shaking her fingers.

“Pardon?”

“I wasn’t speaking to you.”

“Then who?”

“None of your business.” T.C. spoke through clenched teeth. “I’m going to search your pants now.”

“Be my guest.”

It was amazing how much amusement he managed to pack into that short statement. Enough to really rile T.C. She prodded him in the ribs with sufficient force to cause him to flinch. Good—maybe now he would show some respect!

His pants were jeans of the close-fitting variety. One rear pocket housed a slim leather wallet; the other contained nothing more than finely hewn muscle. She took a half step back and wiped her palm against her thigh, then scrubbed it harder. Somehow she couldn’t erase the imprint from her skin.

She jumped clear off the ground when he drawled, “Don’t stop there, sweet hands. There are more pockets around the front.”

“I have a better idea. Why don’t you just tell me where your weapon’s hidden?”

He laughed, a low rich belly-laugh that did strange things to T.C.’s insides. “Why don’t you slide that soft little hand around here and find out for yourself?”

Heat blazed into her cheeks. How dare he be so…so… Words failed her. She did the mental equivalent of spluttering and told herself the warmth in her cheeks was not due to his softly purred suggestion. She transferred the gun from left hand to right, stretched her tight tendons finger by finger, and inspected the hand that was indeed little but hadn’t been soft for more years than she could remember.

“Don’t,” she said, her voice as crisp and chill as the night air, “make the mistake of associating my size with softness.”

And with the strength of those words ringing in her ears, she did exactly as he’d asked. She reached around and checked the front pockets of his jeans. Very quickly. Then she slid her hand up and checked the waistband. Neat fit, hard to hide anything there, she noted. She also noted when he drew breath. She could tell by the sudden tautness of his abs beneath her hand.

What she didn’t realize was that the breath was taken in preparation.

His turn was quick, as was the hand that dislodged the gun. It clunked against the wall, hit the floor, then slid a long long way before clattering to a standstill. It took the stranger less time to twist her arm behind her back and right up between her shoulder blades.

“I’d like to think you were touching me up for the sheer pleasure of it, but something tells me that’s not it. How about you tell me what is going on?”

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.

What was he thinking?

Jet lag must be kicking in if he thought she needed comforting. The pale cap of baby-soft hair, the cute little nose, the huge eyes—they were all a deception. This little firebrand had a tough streak a mile wide. His gaze slid to her lips for at least the tenth time since he’d flicked the light switch. Full and soft, with a distinct inclination to pout, there was absolutely nothing tough about them. They looked downright kissable…until they tightened savagely. Nick cleared his mind of all kissing-thoughts as he cleared his throat. “So, Tamara…”

“What did you call me?”

“Tamara. That is your name, isn’t it? Or would you rather I kept on calling you sweet hands?”

“You can call me T.C.”

“That’s hardly a name, just a couple of initials. I think I’ll stick with Tamara.”

Her lush lips compressed into an angry bow, and Nick felt a sudden spike of stimulation. It was the kind of buzz he’d chased across continents, from challenge to challenge and from woman to woman. The kind he hadn’t felt for too many years, and he didn’t understand where the feeling was coming from.

Apart from her mouth and the way those big eyes sparked green fire, Tamara Cole didn’t come close to his type. He liked women who slid out of bed with silk clinging to their curves. He liked women who knew they were women. Must be jet lag—that was the only explanation. That and the fact that George had got her all wrong. From his description, Nick had imagined big hair, a big blowzy body, an even bigger attitude. She surely had the attitude, but her blond hair was cropped boyishly short, and, frankly, there wasn’t a whole lot of body.

Just a nice little handful.

He allowed that sensory memory to drum through his blood for a whole minute before he reminded himself how deceptive appearances could be. George was a prime example. Just because Tamara Cole didn’t fit George’s description of the shrewd opportunist who had wriggled her way into Joe’s life as well as his bed—just because the very thought had caused his earlier guffaw of amusement—didn’t mean she hadn’t done just that.

“Why are you here, Nick?”

Her question cut into Nick’s reverie, and he pretended to consider it as he strolled over to her bed, tested the mattress, sat and swung his legs up. He picked up her pillow and propped it between his head and the wall.

“Why am I here?” He regarded her bottom lip through half-closed eyes, and the low-grade buzz in his veins intensified. “I’m here to meet you…partner.”

Two

“Part-ner?” T.C.’s voice cracked midword, so the second syllable came out squeaky. She tried to control her trembling legs but failed miserably, and the nearest storage trunk came up to meet her backside with an audible thump, jolting Ug from her arms. “What do you mean by partner?” Her voice sounded as weak as her knees felt.

“Standard definition. Two persons, sharing equally.”

Oh, no. Joe, you didn’t. You couldn’t. You wouldn’t. “Sharing what…exactly?”

“This place.”

T.C. swallowed, ran her tongue around her dry mouth. “You’re saying Joe left me half of Yarra Park?”

“And everything on it, four-legged and otherwise. You have a problem with that?”

“Of course I do. It’s too much, too…” Her throat constricted around the words, and she had to stop, to swallow twice before she could continue. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t he say something? Why hasn’t anyone said anything?”

“There was a clause in the will…. Joe requested that I come here and tell you.”

That made about as much sense as the rest of it.

T.C. shook her head slowly. Oh, Joe, why did you do this? She jerked to her feet and must have walked to the window, because she found herself staring into the aluminum-framed square of night. She forced herself to look beyond her stunned senses, beyond the thick emotion that constricted her chest and blurred her vision.

Why?

Her boss had been a steady, almost ponderous, thinker—this couldn’t be some whim. He had also been devoted to his large family to such an extent that he had often lamented spoiling them with a too-easy lifestyle. Staring into the dark, she recalled their hostility the day of Joe’s funeral, and for the first time she understood where it had come from. She had been in that same place. She knew how it felt to be overlooked in favor of a virtual stranger. “I imagine your family has a problem with it,” she said slowly.

“You could say they’re less than thrilled with our little windfall.”

T.C. whirled around. “Don’t call it that! I didn’t expect anything. I don’t want anything.” She spread her arms wide in an imploring gesture. “Why did he do this, Nick?”

“Gee, I don’t know, Tamara. Some might assume it’s because you were very good at your job.”

Heat flooded T.C.’s cheeks, then ebbed just as rapidly. Surely he couldn’t mean what that suggestive drawl implied…could he? Stunned, she stared at him, taking in his laid-back posture, the mocking half grin, and the heat returned in a flash of red.

“Yesss!” The word came out a long, low hiss as she advanced on him. “I am very good at my job—that’s why Joe employed me—so I hope you’re not insinuating I earned this windfall doing anything besides training horses.” She reached down and wrenched the pillow from behind him, then seriously contemplated koshing him over the head with it.

“Hey, take it easy. I said some might assume.”

The some most likely encompassed the rest of Joe’s family but apparently didn’t include Nick—that was why he had been so taken aback when he learned her identity. What had he called her? A crazy little horse-training woman in pajamas and boots. The thought of anyone wanting to bed that must really have tickled him.

Not having to prove the nature of her relationship with Joe should have delighted T.C., so why did she feel so…slighted? Annoyed with her contrary feelings, she tossed the pillow aside. It didn’t matter what Nick Corelli thought of her; it mattered that he was lounging on her bed, treating Joe’s bequest with a complete lack of respect.

“What about your part in this, Nick? What did your family make of that?”

“They shared the rest of Joe’s fortune.” He shrugged negligently. “I guess I got the consolation prize.”

Hands on hips, she took a step forward and looked down on him with all the scorn that comment deserved. “You feel you deserved a prize?”

He tipped his head back against the bare concrete wall, eyes narrowed, expression no longer amused. “Meaning?”

“Meaning where were you when your father needed you? When your brother and sisters took turns sitting by his hospital bed for days on end? It was you he wanted there, Nick. You he asked for. And where were you? Oh, that’s right, you had some dinky mountain to ski!”

Slowly he unfolded his long frame and rose to his feet. His eyes glittered darkly, a muscle ticked at the corner of his mouth, and without conscious thought T.C. took a step back. But when he spoke his voice was cool and flat. “George told you that?”

She swallowed, nodded, wondered what nerve she had struck.

“Did he tell you how much effort he put into finding me? That he didn’t even bother leaving a message with my service?”

“He shouldn’t have had to find you.”

“I should have known Joe was sick…how?”

T.C. flushed. Joe hadn’t told a soul about his diagnosis. No one had guessed until it was too late.

“I’m sorry, Nick.” And because the words sounded totally inadequate, or maybe because the dark emotion in his eyes—the hurt, anger, regret—echoed somewhere deep within, she reached out and placed her hand on his arm.

“Yeah, well, it’s history now.” Nick shrugged off both her apology and the touch of her fingers. He didn’t need her awkward attempt at sympathy any more than he needed his own sense of frustration at what might have been. Both were pointless. Abruptly he swung around, away from the mix of compassion and confusion that gleamed in her eyes. He needed something else to focus his frustration on, and he found it right before his eyes in the stark concrete walls, the uncarpeted floor and make-do furniture, the clothes discarded atop packing trunks.

“Why are you living here?”

She shook her head slightly. “What do you mean?”

“George said you used to live in the house but you’d moved out, I assumed to somewhere off the farm. Why the hell would you move out of the house into this rat-hole?”

“I didn’t feel right staying in the house,” she said stiffly.

“Couldn’t you find anywhere better than this?”

“I didn’t have any—” She stopped abruptly, changing tack with a forced casualness that didn’t fool Nick for a second. “I needed to be here, near the horses. It’s no big deal.”

“George should have told me you were living here.”

Except how could he, when Nick hadn’t given him a chance? When he’d grown so frustrated by the man’s smoothly evasive replies that he threw his hands in the air and walked out, jumped in his car and drove straight here?

He scrubbed a hand over his face and wondered what had happened to his logic, which seemed to have gone missing…probably to the same place as his usual even temper. He adopted a more reasonable tone before he continued. “If I’d known you were living here, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see your light.”

“So that’s why you came down here.” Her smile was edged with relief, as if she’d needed an explanation…or because the conversation had taken a safer turn. “Something woke me, but I wasn’t sure what, so I turned the light out again. When I heard you outside, it scared about a year off my life.”

“Sorry about that. I guess we both had the wrong handle on each other.”

Whatever the reason for her smile, it sliced a swathe through Nick’s irritability, made it possible for him to smile right back at her. And he found something in her expression, in the slow color that highlighted her cheekbones, that reminded him what sort of a handle they’d had on each other in the close darkness of the breezeway. Her hands sliding over his shirt, touching his jeans. His hand on her belly, her breast. Heat licked through him like wildfire, doing more than sear his blood vessels. It surprised the hell out of him.

Jet lag, he reminded himself as he shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and cleared his throat. “You want to pack a few things—what you need for tonight?”

She stiffened visibly. “I beg your pardon?”

“You’re not staying here.”

“I’m perfectly comfortable here.”

Her mutt, which had fallen asleep on the foot of her bed, chose that moment to whimper and twitch. Nick snorted. “Your dog isn’t even comfortable here.”

“Must we discuss this now?”

“No. We can discuss it later…after we’ve moved you.”

When he started toward her, she held up a hand. “Look, it’s the middle of the night. I don’t want to fight with you, and I don’t want to have to make up another bed. Okay?”

Nick dragged a hand through his hair. Unfortunately he could see her point. “Fine,” he conceded. “But tomorrow you’re moving out of here.”

“Shouldn’t sorting out this ridiculous bequest be our first priority?”

Nick frowned at her choice of adjective. Unexpected, yes. Unusual, maybe. Overly generous, definitely. “You think it’s ridiculous?”

“It makes no sense.”

“You can’t think of any reason why Joe would leave you a million-dollar bequest?”

All the color leached from her face as she stared back at him. In his world, a million dollars didn’t turn a hair; to Tamara Cole, the figure was obviously staggering. Buying her out would be as simple as writing a check, Nick realized. So where was the satisfaction that always accompanied knowledge of a sure thing, a deal all but closed? As she continued to stare at him, wide-eyed and unblinking, he noticed she looked more than stunned. She looked as dead beat as he felt.

“Sleep on it, green eyes,” he advised as he headed to the door. “We’ll talk later.”

“Nick.”

He stilled, one hand on the doorknob. Now why should the sound of his name on her tongue cause his pulse to pound? All his responses seemed shot to bits tonight.

“I’m sorry about before, about mistaking you for a burglar.”

Nick turned, caught her looking at him with that same expression as before, the one that made him think about hands in the dark and the sweet little body hidden beneath unflattering flannel. He stared back, a slow grin on his lips and a fast burn in his gut.

“I’m not.”

After the door clicked shut, T.C. rested her overheated face against the cool windowpane and one hand against her overstimulated heart. No man’s smile should be allowed to have such an effect, and especially not a man so out of her league.

It wasn’t fair, but it wasn’t unexpected.

From his photos, she knew the man was gorgeous, from Joe’s stories she’d learned of his charm, but nothing could have prepared her for Nick Corelli in the flesh. Nothing could have prepared her for that blue gaze sliding over her like a silk blanket, warming her, sensitizing every cell in her skin, as he murmured “I’m not.” As if he had enjoyed their tussle in the dark, as if the surge of attraction she had felt so intensely was mutual. As if a man who could take his pick of the glamorous, the beautiful and the smart, would be interested in her.

As if!

With a snort of derision, she turned her face against the windowpane and looked outside in time to see the house windows light up one by one, marking his progress through the entry hall into the living area, and then on to the bedrooms. A tug of alarm pulled her hard up against the glass. Which would he choose?

“Please. Not my room, not my bed,” she breathed. “It’s enough knowing you’re in my home.”

Whoa! When, precisely, had she started calling Joe’s house her home? Sure, she had lived in it the past five years, but only because Joe insisted, only because he was the kind of man who brooked no argument.

“You think a house like this deserves to be empty? You think I want to come here to an empty house after a whole week spent with too many idioti for any one man’s patience?”

The backs of her eyes pricked at the memory of Joe’s words, and she pressed her lids tightly closed. She hadn’t cried once in those god-awful months since she’d finally learned of her boss’s terminal illness, and she wasn’t going to start shedding tears now.

If you don’t want to be treated like a girl, don’t cry like one. That came straight from her father’s concise book of lessons, right after There’s only one thing a man like that could want from a girl like you.

She had been young and reckless when she learned the harsh truth of her father’s words. She had given that one thing to a rich, smooth-talking, heartbreaker named Miles Newman, and after he laughed at her words of love and moved on to the new stable girl, she’d dried the last of her girl-tears and thrown away the handkerchief.

Never again would she trade her self-respect for something she mistook for love. Never again would she mistake the flashfire of physical attraction for something more. Oh, she wanted there to be somebody—a special person to share her life, to love and to cherish—but she didn’t need the palpitations and the heartache and the tears. She needed strength and stability. She needed respect and understanding and companionship. Until she found a man with those qualities, she would make do with her own company.

Except at this moment her own company was making her edgy and unsettled. She swung away from the window and started to pace her room, but that activity did nothing to ease her restlessness. The quarters she had accepted as adequate now felt cold, dank and claustrophobic. The clutter she stepped over and around every day now looked like a sad chaotic mess. She jammed her eyes shut and cursed Nick Corelli for this new perspective, then cursed herself double-time for caring. His opinion of her living conditions shouldn’t matter one blue-eyed damn. But when she opened her eyes they were focused on her bed, and she could still see his long denim-encased legs spread across it. She could still imagine his body heat seeping into the covers.

With a growl of frustration she strode to the door and hauled it open. A horse whickered softly across the way, instantly easing the tightness in her chest. She pulled the door to behind her and moved surefootedly toward the lone equine head that loomed over its stable door.

“Hey, Star.” She smiled as she rubbed the proffered jaw, then let her fingers dwell on the velvet warmth of the animal’s muzzle. Warm, familiar, soothing. She felt her tense muscles relax another degree, felt her smile kick up a notch. “Don’t you ever sleep?” she crooned as she ran her other hand along the mare’s neck and under her blanket, automatically checking for warmth.

The mare stalked off with an impatient shake of her head, then circled the box with her long graceful strides. She, Tamara Cole, owned half of this fabulous animal. Shivering with a flash of intense excitement as much as the cold, T.C. shoved her hands deep into her pockets. “No,” she told herself firmly. “You know you can’t accept it.”

And if she didn’t accept it, what would happen? She wondered if Joe had considered that possibility and if he had made some provision, named some alternate benefactor. Nick hadn’t mentioned it, but then, he hadn’t mentioned much at all, and she had been too stunned to think coherently.

Now a whole crowd of questions scrambled for answers. Why had George told her to carry on as usual, knowing she was now a part-owner? Why had Joe made her a part-owner, knowing she would likely refuse the gift? Why had he specifically requested she learn the news from Nick?

Frowning, she turned to lean her back against the stable door. It didn’t surprise her that Joe hadn’t left Yarra Park to any of his Melbourne-based family. Neither George nor any of his sisters had ever shown any interest in the property—in fact, they had bemoaned their father’s obsession with horses. An old man’s eccentricity, George had called it, with a condescending twist of his lips.

Nor did it surprise her that he had singled out Nick, the only one who had chosen his own career path in preference to a ready-made position in a Corelli company. At first that decision had caused a rift, but ultimately Nick’s independent success had earned his father’s respect and admiration. It made sense that Joe would consider Nick worthy of his beloved property, but would Nick appreciate the magnitude of the gift?

T.C. snorted. He called it a consolation prize, for heaven’s sake.

Frankly she couldn’t see what he would want with a fledgling standardbred training establishment at the opposite end of the world from his New York base, and if he didn’t want his half, what should she do about hers?

She blew out a breath and shook her head slowly. “Gee, Joe, it’d be really good if you could help me out here…if you could tell me what you were thinking when you drafted that will.” Of course, no magical answer boomed out from beyond the steel rafters. “Seems like I’ll have to do this the hard way,” she told Star, knowing exactly how difficult that would be.

First she would have to deal with her treacherous body’s intense physical response to Nick’s presence, and then her awestruck mind might kick into gear and form some meaningful connection with her mouth. Maybe then she would be capable of asking all the questions that needed answering before she could decide what to do.

Three

T.C. intended posing those questions the next time she saw Nick. She planned to stiffen her backbone, look him in the eye and say, “Nick, I need to know your intentions.”

She was pleased with that forthright opener, composed the next morning while she and Jason, her stable hand, exercised the first half of their team. And when it was time for a coffee break, she took her mug to an upturned bucket in the breezeway, tilted her face toward the midmorning sun and fine-tuned her intonation.

“Nick, I need to know…Nick, I need to know…”

Then Nick sauntered into the barn, and her plans, her intonation and her backbone, turned to mush. He wore a polo shirt in the same azure-blue as his eyes, and faded jeans that hugged him in all the right places. The warmth that flooded her body had nothing to do with the sun. Her heart stalled, then bounded into overdrive. She felt all the same jittery reactions as when she stepped a horse onto the track before a big race, but she didn’t look away. She couldn’t not watch his lazy loose-limbed approach. Talk about poetry in slow motion. If he’d been a horse, she would have labeled him a fabulous mover.

“Is this the new boss?” Jason asked.

T.C. nodded, swallowed, inhaled once, exhaled once. By then Nick was close enough for her to notice his shower-damp hair and the rested look about his eyes. It was obvious his sleep hadn’t been disturbed by spicy aftertones clinging to his pillow!

Somehow she managed to mumble the necessary introductions, and Nick shook Jason’s hand. “You must own the one-two-five out front.”

Very smooth opening, T.C. thought with a cynical twist of her mouth, seeing as Jason was mad-keen on his newly acquired dirt bike. They swapped notes in that rev-head shorthand T.C. had never understood, and when Ug snuffled noisily out of her morning nap, Nick hunkered down to tickle her behind the ears. With a fatuous look of bliss clouding her mismatched eyes, the dog promptly rolled onto her back.

T.C. snorted. She bet females did that trick for Nick Corelli all the time.

“What do you call her?” His gaze lifted from the prone dog and met T.C.’s over the rim of her coffee mug.

“Ug.” Jason supplied the answer, which was just as well, because the smiling warmth in Nick’s eyes had struck T.C. dumb. Behind the subterfuge of sipping coffee, she attempted to unravel the knot in her tongue.

“Strange name.” He smiled right into her eyes, and that uncooperative tongue looped itself in a second half-hitch. Luckily Jason came to her rescue again.

“When Joe first brought her home—he found her down the road a bit—T.C. said she wanted to call her Lucky, because she was lucky Joe found her. But Joe says ‘There’s nothin’ lucky about a dog that looks like that.’”

“So how did she get to be Ug?” Nick asked.

“Joe said ‘I’d call her plain old ugly,’ and it just sort of stuck. Except T.C. shortened it to Ug.”

T.C. smiled at the familiar anecdote. She felt like she might finally be capable of speech. “You look like you slept well,” she said, by way of a start.

“Like a baby.” His smile deepened the creases on either side of his mouth, and it struck her that he must smile a lot. “Any more of that coffee around?”

“I’ll get it,” Jason offered. “Um, you want milk or anythin’?”

“The works.” Somehow T.C. wasn’t surprised. She figured Nick would demand the works in all kinds of ways. “Plenty of milk, at least two sugars. Thanks, Jason.”

As the kid bustled off, Nick hoped the coffee wasn’t already bubbling away in a percolator. He wanted some time alone with Tamara. He pulled up the bucket vacated by Jason and sat. “You know, I’d still be sleeping like a baby except the phone rang.”

She stopped fidgeting with her mug and went very still. “I didn’t hear it. I guess we were down at the track. Was the call for me?”

“I can’t say. There was no one there.”

She cradled the mug in both hands as if to steady it, declared, “Probably a wrong number,” then swiveled around to peer down the alleyway. “I wonder what’s keeping Jason?”

Nick gritted his teeth. Her evasiveness was already roughing the edges of his patience. “If it was a boyfriend calling,” he suggested slowly, “I might have put him off.”

“If I had a boyfriend, he’d know not to call when it’s short odds I’d be down at the track.”

When he met her hostile glare, Nick felt a perverse satisfaction, and it had nothing to do with the no-boyfriend revelation. Finally he had her attention. “Seems to me there’s something funny going on with your telephone. No one there this morning, off the hook yesterday.”

“Geez, T.C.” Neither had heard Jason’s approach. He stood there, shaking his head reproachfully. “Did you leave it off the hook again?” He handed Nick his coffee. “She did that the other day, too.”

The warning glare she directed at Jason told Nick his instincts were spot on. “Perhaps you had better explain.”

“Explain what? I knocked the receiver off the hook and didn’t notice. You got a wrong number. End of story.” With a dismissive shrug, she turned to Jason. “You can show Nick around while I finish the jogging.”

Nick stopped her intended exit with a hand on her shoulder. “Have you been getting nuisance calls?”

When she shuffled from foot to foot without answering, Nick increased the pressure on her shoulder. Over the top of her head he met Jason’s worried look and smiled reassuringly. “How about you carry on with the horses while I sort this out?”

As Jason set off, whistling cheerfully, he felt her tense up beneath his hand. “You’ve been here less than twelve hours and you’re giving directions to my staff?”

“Our staff,” he corrected.

She let out her breath in a soft whoosh. “We have to talk about that.”

“Yes, we do. But first we’re going to settle the phone business.”

She bit her bottom lip, and Nick waited a count of ten while she considered. “So, okay, there has been the odd anonymous call.”

“How long has this been going on?”

She shrugged. “A couple of weeks. On and off.”

“A couple of weeks! Have you reported it?”

“Look, there’s nothing to report. No threats, no heavy breathing. Probably just kids mucking about. It’s no big deal.”

“No?” Nick swore beneath his breath, then out loud when the penny dropped. “That’s why you attacked me last night. You thought I was the caller. What if you’d been right? What if I had been some stalker hell-bent on hurting you? Did you think of that before you confronted me with that damn fool toy?”

“I can look after myself. I’ve been looking after myself—”

“Is that what you think you were doing when you ran your hands all over me last night?” He grabbed her hand and pulled it to him, forcing her to touch him, then to stroke down his chest from collarbone to waist in one long, slow sensuous caress. “When you touched me like this?”

She recoiled as if she had contacted a live wire, then stood blinking her huge green eyes at him. She rubbed the hand he had used to demonstrate his point down her thigh as if trying to remove his imprint from her skin.

That notion was as powerfully erotic as her actual touch.

With a proud lift of her chin, she drew herself up as tall as her diminished height allowed and met his gaze. “I did not touch you like that,” she said with quiet dignity.

“You might as well have,” Nick muttered, and grimaced at the uncomfortable tightness of his jeans as she turned on her heel and walked away, her backbone rigid, head held high. He watched her until she disappeared out the front of the barn, and then he shook his head in disgust.

Well, hell, didn’t that little demonstration come off a treat?

All he had managed to prove was how easily she could fire up his temper and heat his blood. He had come out here this morning to get the phone business sorted, to smooth over their rocky start with some getting-to-know-you dialogue, then to move her back into the house. After lunch he wanted to check the balance sheet valuations to ensure the offer he made to buy her out was fair. And after dinner, once business was out of the way, his getting-to-know-you plans were aimed purely at pleasure.

So far he had barely managed to tackle item one on his list—not exactly a grade-A start. Then he relived the touch of her hand, recalled the hot spark in her eyes and the soft color in her cheeks, and he smiled. He had some work in front of him to get to that last pleasurable item, but it would be worth the effort.

Yep, it would take both work and flexibility, and when Jason came by leading a horse, Nick saw an opportunity to adapt his plans. Chances were he would learn more from the kid in an hour than he could finesse from Tamara in a day.

“Need some help?” he asked as Jason tethered the animal to a hitching rail.

“You know how to bandage?”

Nick counted four rolls in Jason’s hands and smiled easily. “I’m a quick study. You show me the first one, and I figure I can manage the rest.”

T.C. eased Monte’s leg down, stretched out the kink in her back and tried to prevent her gaze straying to the other end of the barn. What were they laughing about this time? They’d been at it for more than an hour, chatting easily, laughing with nerve-grating regularity, Jason obviously reveling in his role as teacher to Nick’s student. Their rapport shouldn’t rankle. Nick could spread his charm from here to the back of beyond, but as long as he didn’t try it on her, what should she care?

With a last disgruntled glance in their direction, she stooped down, took Monte’s leg again and eased it between her knees, determined to refocus on rasping a level surface for the horseshoe. She managed to concentrate for all of three minutes before she heard the slow tread of approaching boots, then the scrape of a drum against concrete. Looking back beneath her arm, she saw the outstretched length of denim-clad legs as he took a seat.

Ignore him, she warned her body, but to no avail. Already her muscles had tightened in unconscious response to his proximity, to the notion of him watching her. So okay, she told herself, the man unnerves you, but he’s right there, not six feet away, and it’s about time you started on that list of questions. But as she shifted the words about in her mind, forcing them into some sort of logical order, her tension must have transmitted itself to Monte and he shifted his weight, almost overbalancing her.

By the time she righted herself and calmed Monte, she had decided this was neither the time nor the place for this conversation. Much too important for casual asides between hammer blows, she justified, attacking Monte’s hoof with renewed fervor because she wanted the job finished—quickly. She could practically feel the touch of that warm blue gaze on her backside every time she bent into her task, but she clenched her jaw firmly, determined not to show how much he disconcerted her.

“What are you doing?” Nick asked after she had steadfastly ignored him for several minutes.

“Rasping.”

“I can see that much.”

“Glad your eyesight’s not a problem,” she mumbled.

“Nothing wrong with my eyesight…fortunately.”

She let the horse’s leg down and tsked with disgust as she strode to the anvil seated on a nearby workbench and started bashing at the horseshoe. “Haven’t you anything better to do than ogle my backside?” Bash. Bash. Bash.

“You think I was ogling?”

She stopped hammering long enough to cast him a long-suffering look.

“I hardly ever ogle a woman with a hammer in her hand. Too dangerous.”

She almost smiled at that. Almost. Nick wondered why she fought the urge, wondered what it would take to hear her laugh out loud. He had a feeling he would enjoy seeing her emotive eyes brimming with laughter even more than he enjoyed them sparking with irritation.

“I hope it doesn’t bother you, me sitting here, watching you.”

“Actually it does.” Tossing the hammer aside, she turned around to face him. “I’m not used to having anyone watch me work.”

“Joe didn’t?”

“He…he didn’t make me feel uncomfortable.” And Nick did. He could see the uneasiness in her gaze, in the restless way she shifted her weight from one hip to the other, in the way she scuffed the toe of one boot against the ground.

“You must have gotten along pretty well with Joe,” he said before she could turn away again. He didn’t mind if her discomfort was due to her awareness of him, but he did want her comfortable enough to talk with him. Joe seemed like the place to start.

“Because he left me so much?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

One corner of her mouth curled cynically. “No?”

“No. You say you weren’t lovers, but obviously you were closer than the usual boss-employee.”

Their eyes met and held, and he saw a flicker of something—maybe surprise, maybe relief, maybe some kind of yielding—before she looked away. He saw her swallow, then take a deep breath, before she spoke in a slow, measured voice.

“Joe gave me this job at a time when I really needed it, and he did so against everyone’s advice. I knew horses, but I’d never managed a stable this size. I was young and inexperienced, plus I was female. But he went with his gut instinct, and he gave me the job.” A ghost of a smile curved her lips and touched Nick somewhere deep inside, somewhere he didn’t even want to identify. “I made sure he never regretted that decision, and he appreciated the extra effort I put in. We weren’t lovers, but we built a bond.”

“Of mutual respect?”

She looked up then, and the intensity in her eyes smacked him hard, midchest. “I don’t know about the mutual, but I do know how much I respected Joe. I admired him, I loved him, I wished he was my father.” The last phrase came out in a breathy rush. Then, as if she regretted letting on so much, she turned her head and looked away.

“You said Joe gave you a job at a time when you really needed it. You were broke?”

“In more ways than you can imagine.”

Silently Nick willed her to go on, to tell him something of the past that shadowed her voice.

“I won’t bore you with the long story. Suffice it to say my esteem had taken a pounding and this job was exactly what I needed. I’m not talking about finding employment or the money—it was the responsibility and the trust. It was his belief in me.”

She turned abruptly and stomped back to the horse, leaving Nick standing there weighed down by the intensity of her words and his own memories. He had experienced that same aching need. Hell, he’d spent the first eight years of his life with no one caring for him, let alone believing in him, so it had taken him a long time to recognize those gifts as the most precious Joe had given him when he took him into his family and called him his second son.

“Yeah,” he muttered hoarsely to himself. “I wish he’d been my father, too.”

He found her back at work, nailing the shoe with businesslike efficiency, as if she had already shed the emotion that still knotted Nick’s gut. That irritated him almost as much as how she had walked away. He watched her swat a fly from the horse’s belly, and with half an eye noticed the animal had worked its lead undone. It didn’t seem to be going anywhere—in fact, it looked like it had fallen asleep. What was it with her animals and sleep?

“Why don’t you get a farrier to do that?” he asked.

“Pay someone to do something I can do? I don’t think so.”

“Why do something so tough and painstaking when you can pay someone to do it?” he countered.

She looked up, her eyes sharp with disdain. “That’s not my way of doing things.”

Trying to prove her toughness, Nick guessed. Not because she was young and inexperienced, but because she was female. There was a story here, a history he suddenly needed to know. “What is your way, Tamara?”

No answer. Okay. He would try a different tack.

“How did you learn to farrier?”

“My father taught me.”

“Your father’s a horseman?”

“He was.”

That was it. No further explanation, and, dammit, her reticence intrigued him as much as it irritated him. “So you followed the family tradition into horse training?”

In one smooth movement she turned, drew the horse’s leg forward and rested the hoof on her thigh. “I chose this profession because I love it. Tradition had nothing to do with it.”

Nick inspected her closely drawn brows, the flare of her nostrils, her tense grip on the hammer. “For someone who loves her job, you don’t look like you’re having much fun.”

Eyes almost crossed with consternation, she glared up at him, but before she could respond the horse swung its head and nipped her neatly on the backside. She yelped and leaped sideways, and when Nick grabbed her shoulders to pull her aside and then to steady her, he noticed the tears flooding her eyes. He also noticed that she wasn’t rubbing her behind but was sucking her thumb.

“Hey, what’s the matter?”

She slid the thumb from her mouth, and Nick felt the most unexpected rush of heat. Unexpected and unwarranted, given the circumstances. It was those lips, that damn pout.

“Here, let me see.” Gently he took her hand and inspected the blood oozing from the base of her thumb. The sharp end of an unclinched nail had obviously dug in. “Do you have first-aid supplies?”

“It’s only a scratch.”

He silenced her with a look. “Sit down and don’t move.”

His authority didn’t come from a raised voice but a certain don’t-argue timbre. It had worked on Ug the previous night, and it worked on T.C. now. She sat on the drum. She didn’t move. And when she looked up to find him standing, feet spread, hands on hips, glaring down at her, she told him where to find the first-aid kit.

“It’s in the lunchroom—in the cupboard next to the fridge.” She indicated the general direction with her good hand. He nodded grimly, pivoted, then stopped short when confronted by the ugly end of Monte. T.C. watched in amazement as he smacked the gelding’s rump to turn him around, gathered up the lead and retethered it to the hitching rail before striding off.

Like he did it every day.

She didn’t want to admire the man’s competence—she had spent the last half hour deliberately not admiring anything about him—so she turned her attention to her thumb. Gingerly she wiggled it back and forth, reminding herself that the pain was all his fault.

If he hadn’t disturbed her sleep, she wouldn’t be so fuzzy-headed. If he hadn’t forced her to touch him, her senses wouldn’t be chock-full of memories of his hands on her. If he hadn’t distracted her with his questions, she would have noticed Monte was loose.

So let him play Mr. Competence if he wanted. Maybe then he would go off and do something else—like leave her in peace.

Unfortunately his idea of playing Mr. Competence involved hunkering down in front of her and steadying himself with a hand on each of her knees. She could feel every degree of his body heat radiating through his long fingers, through her jeans and her skin, all the way into her flesh. For a man who moved with such lithe grace, he seemed to take an inordinate length of time to regain his balance and remove his hands.

Not that T.C. gained much respite. She had scarcely recovered her equilibrium before he picked up her hand, placed it palm-up in one of his and bent over to inspect her injury.

She stared at her hand lying in his. How small and soft it looked compared with his—exactly as he had described it in the early hours of the morning. She disliked that thought as much as she disliked the hitch in her breath as his thumb stroked across the center of her palm, tracing her lifeline. Or was that her heart line?

She closed her eyes and dragged in a breath, but instead of badly needed oxygen, her lungs filled with his soft musky scent. Dimly she thought about leaning forward and burying her nose in his neck…but then something akin to liquid fire hit her thumb, and she rose clean off the drum.

Nick steadied her with a hand on her elbow. “Sting a little?” he asked as he reapplied the antiseptic-soaked swab.

“Try a lot,” she muttered shakily.

He leaned closer, so close that when he looked up, she could make out tiny flecks of gold in the blue of his irises. Then he smiled that brilliant world-tilting smile, and she couldn’t help but return it.

“Good girl,” he murmured, and for some dumb reason the admiration intermingled with concern in his eyes brought a thick lump to her throat. Tears welled in her eyes. To her chagrin, one spilled over and rolled down her cheek. She scrubbed at it with the back of her free hand, bit her lip, chanced a glance from beneath her lashes.

The hand on her elbow tightened for a second; then he bent over the first-aid kit at his feet. “We need to get this covered up.”

He took longer than necessary to fix a plaster to her wound, as if he knew she needed time to collect herself and that she would find her tears humiliating. The thought of such insightfulness threatened her composure all over again. She shut her eyes and tried to concentrate on the pain—except there didn’t seem to be much of that anymore.

“All right now?” His thumb gently stroked the inside of her wrist.

T.C. nodded, although she wasn’t all right. For a start, there was that thumb stroking fire across her oversensitive skin. She knew his intent was solicitous rather than sensuous, but her senses weren’t listening to reason. He moved, or she moved, or maybe the air around them moved, for she caught another heady whiff of his scent.

Burying her nose in his neck suddenly seemed like the only thing to do. With eyes still closed, she must have actually leaned in his direction, because the drum tipped forward and she would have toppled right into his lap but for a last second reflex that saw both her hands curl around his upper arms, her injury forgotten.

“Hey, no need to throw yourself at me.”

His quip should have defused the awkwardness. T.C. did try to smile back, but her lips wouldn’t cooperate. The sensation of taut muscles beneath her hands had turned her mouth desert-dry. She tried another smile, considered removing her hands, but couldn’t manage either simple task.

And when she moistened her lips, his gaze followed the movement. His smile faded. There was a moment of intense gravity as they studied each other, and T.C. felt as if she was suspended in time and motion. As if her senses were too packed full of everything-Nick to allow anything else in.

Nearby a horse snorted, breaking the spell, and one corner of Nick’s mouth kicked up. She could have escaped then, if she had wanted to. She didn’t. She sat still, completely enmeshed in the slow-motion sequence. His hand reached toward her. His fingers combed a slow path through her hair, to her nape. He drew her face to his, gradually and surely, until their lips finally met.

His were warm, their touch soft and restrained, as if he were savoring that first contact as much as she. It was no more than lips meeting, touching, retreating, returning, yet it was the most exquisitely sensual indulgence of her life.

She whimpered low in her throat. His hand tightened on her neck, drew her mouth closer, while he slowly—oh so slowly—tasted his way around her lips, enticing them open, inviting her response, causing a cascade of delight to ripple through her body. He was leisurely, almost lazy, but he was very, very thorough. Around the edges of her hearing something jangled vaguely, but she shut it out, focusing all her senses on the complexities of a kiss she had never known existed.

Until he pulled away from her clinging lips.

Then she recognized the metallic strike of shod hooves on concrete, heard a low tuneless whistle, the clink of a steel bit. Jason returning from the track.

Four

Like a teenager caught necking, T.C. jumped to her feet, stumbling over her boots—or Nick’s—in her clumsy haste.

“Jason’s back,” she said, only because she had to say something, to drop some words into the ever-deepening pool of silence.

“I did gather that.”

“Yes, well, I should go help him.”

“I’m sure he can manage,” Nick said reasonably.

“Manage what?” Jason asked as he came into view. He pulled up short and frowned at T.C. “Thought you were going into town to watch Dave do that bone-chip op?”

Thank you, Jase! T.C. checked her watch and tossed an apologetic smile in Nick’s general direction. “I lost all track of time. If I don’t get moving, I’ll be late.”

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