One Night in the Orient (18 page)

She couldn’t lie. “A little regretful, but a little foolish too.”

It was all she dared say. Anything more might reveal the true state of her feelings, and Nick wouldn’t want to know.

She longed to experience everything she could with Nick, fill her heart with memories, and she wouldn’t let her fears about the future stop her from indulging her love in the present.

She’d deal with that future—and Nick’s absence from it—when she had to. For this moment, Nick’s arms about her—
this
was the present …

Candidly, she said, “You must realise I want you. And I don’t expect promises or vows, either. I suspect I’m rather over them right now. Let’s just take things as they come, shall we?”

She reached up and pulled his head down and kissed him, boldly signalling her hunger, her body sinuous and tense as she pressed against him. Without hesitation he responded, and her heart sang when he tore his mouth from hers and looked into her eyes.

“No vows,” he promised in a low, gravelly growl.

This time their lovemaking was fierce, a wild sharing of rapture that carried Siena beyond everything she’d ever known about herself.

Much later, coming down in Nick’s arms from unimaginable ecstasy, she wondered how on earth anyone could endure such rapture and not die of it.

She’d been lost—lost in desire, lost to everything but how much physical delight her body could feel.

She was also lost in love. She loved Nick with everything in her, her emotion strong enough to encompass passion and trust and commitment—a yearning that ached through her with such power that without him her life would be grey and weary and shapeless, an echoing waste of breath.

Could there be any chance of Nick loving her in return?

In a way he already did, she thought painfully. But that kind of love—the
girl-next-door grows up
love—wasn’t what she wanted from him. He’d been kind and
thoughtful and helpful. He certainly desired her. He was a fantastic lover.

Yet if she hadn’t found herself with a problem in London he’d have gone to Hong Kong without her. They’d have said goodbye, gone their separate ways, and she’d have seen him next in some gossip magazine with another exquisite blonde on his arm.

What she wanted from him was her kind of love—the all-in, no-holds-barred sort, a love like her parents’ that would grow and change and last a lifetime.

With the solid, heavy thud of his heartbeat in her ears, his arms holding her against his lean body, the scent of their lovemaking so erotically stimulating she could feel her innermost parts stir with longing again, she forced herself to drag in a painful breath.

There was a term for that sort of yearning—crying for the moon. Nick had made no mention of anything but desire.

She couldn’t allow such a complete surrender again. She had to be like Nick and protect herself—keep her treacherously crumbling barriers intact, protect herself with all her strength from such an addictive need.

But how?

Those two bleak words told her it was already far too late.

In a rough voice he said, “Asleep?” “No.”

He moved, held her a little away so he could see her face. “When do your parents come home?”

Siena had to think before she could give him the date.

“Just on three weeks from now,” he said. “I’ll be back by then, but before I leave we’d better get all of your stuff over here.”

“Back?” she stammered, completely thrown. “I thought—you said you were going away.”

His eyes were cool and hard—no trace of residual passion, she noted, and certainly nothing of love in that keen gaze. “I’m not going to stay away.”

“Oh. I thought you—well, you don’t normally spend much time in New Zealand.”

He frowned. “And I thought we were supposed to be madly in love,” he said dryly. “That means fairly close contact. As you’re going to be busy with the garden, naturally I’ll be based here from now on.”

Her heart leapt, but she forced herself to be practical. “I’m assuming this is an invitation to share your house and bed for a while?” she said, as crisply as she could.

His mouth curved. “Bear with me—I’ve never asked anyone to live with me before.”

Siena reined in her racing pulse. “Never?”

“No.”

When he left it at that she said primly, “There didn’t appear to be any asking involved. I got the distinct impression I was being told—in a roundabout way.”

He surveyed her face with an expression she couldn’t read. “My PA is going to think you’re just what I deserve.” He locked his arms around her to pull her hard against him.

The vague wisp of memory concerning that efficient PA in London, with her children and her househusband, fled from Siena’s mind.

In her ear he said harshly, “Siena, not only will staying here make your valiant attempts to smooth things over for your sister and your parents much more likely to succeed, it will give me enormous pleasure to have
you close.” His voice deepened. “And I can promise you’ll enjoy it too.”

For as long as it lasts, she thought on a flash of anguish. “Perhaps we should think—” she began, only to have the words stopped by his mouth.

Fleetingly she thought she might have been able to resist if it had been a passionate, hungry kiss. Instead it was sweet and tender, baffling common sense, making only one decision possible.

When he lifted his head, he said roughly, “What’s your decision?”

It took all her courage to whisper, “Yes.” She cleared her throat and said more boldly, “I’ll stay here.”

However, he didn’t take her surrender at face value.

“Was it so hard?”

Hard? It was hell—and heaven. The promise of a short heaven, with the surety of a long hell. But what could she say? Like a coward, she evaded. “Like you, I haven’t ever stayed—lived with anyone. I don’t know the protocol.”

His eyes narrowed, but to her relief he didn’t push. “Then we’ll learn together.”

Together …

One word, yet it gave her hope, probably spurious, almost certainly doomed. She didn’t even know if he could feel anything beyond passion. And she wanted more from him than that tenderly fierce drive to possess.

Hoping she was wrong, she doubted if he’d ever understand the emotion that gripped her now, propelling her into a situation she knew could cause her unbearable pain.

In fact he’d cancel the whole deal if she blurted out that she loved him.

For a moment she was tempted to do just that, but all loving came entwined with the prospect of pain; to refuse its joys because it meant caring too much would be to turn her back on life.

And her impatient heart would never stop nurturing a hope that one day he would look at her and see someone he loved.

“So we will,” she said quietly.

His mouth twisted. “Not that we’re going to enjoy each other for long this time,” he said. “I’ve just had a message from my PA; I have to go to San Francisco to a meeting. I should be back within the week.”

“OK,” she said, hiding a bleak pang of dismay with an airy smile. “When do you leave?”

“In an hour.”

She managed a laugh. “Then you’d better get packing,” she advised, hoping her insouciance rang true.

He didn’t want her to come to the airport with him, so they said their farewells at the house. Siena was a little reassured by the fierceness of his embrace.

“I’ll start thinking about the garden,” she promised.

“Think of
me
occasionally,” he commanded coolly, then dropped his arms and turned away.

Of course she thought of him constantly. He rang every night, and during those talks she felt herself falling ever more in love with him. Although discreet, he made her laugh—and sometimes gasp—with short, occasionally brutal character studies of the people he was dealing with. And she told him about her method of learning about the garden.

“Lots of walking around and staring at things,” she
said. “And squinting and imagining other things in their place. And sketches and notes.”

“Are you enjoying it?”

“Very much.”
And missing you …

“I’ll see you soon. Don’t work too hard.” He paused, then said, “Are you swimming?”

“No,” she said, although the pool beckoned her every day. She laughed. “Mum has a thing about swimming alone—I’ve been brainwashed into thinking it’s highly dangerous—almost as bad as going into a paddock with a Jersey bull.”

He laughed, but said, “Keep safe.”

Siena woke with a start at the sound of her name.
Nick,
she thought, dazed with delight, and scrambled to her feet. Too late, she remembered she wasn’t in her bed, and gave a startled yelp as she crash-landed on the wooden floor.

“What the hell—?
Siena!”

“I’m here,” she croaked. She muttered something as she tried to untangle herself from the thin blanket she’d carried down to the summerhouse.

He stood in the opening, a dark figure against the soft summer midnight outside. “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded, crossing the floor in two strides and picking her and the blanket up from the floor. His arms closed tightly around her. “Are you all right?”

“I’m—I’m fine.” She struggled upright in his embrace.

He said, “Why are you here?”

“I was hot, so I came down here to sleep …”

“Dear God, I thought—I thought—” He walked
across to the sofa and sat down on it, holding her as carefully as though she were the most precious thing on earth to him.

In a voice she’d never heard before he said, “I thought you’d gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yes,” he said quietly. His chest rose and fell against her. “And I knew something then that I’ve been fighting for—for ever, it seems.”

Siena looked up, able to discern only the contours of his face in the dimness. Anxiety filled her as she scanned the drawn, hard angles of his face.

He said, “I knew then that hard as I’ve tried—and God knows I’ve exhausted more energy denying this than I have in achieving anything else—I knew that if you left me I’d never forget you, never stop longing for you.”

Unable to believe she’d heard properly, Siena blinked and shook her head to clear it.

Nick’s mouth tightened. Still in that strange voice she’d never heard before he said, “Don’t you believe me? Then I’ll just have to work at convincing you.”

Swiftly she said, “I shook my head because everything was jumbled up in it, and for a moment I thought I was dreaming. I—Nick, I want to believe you—you have no idea how much I want to.”

He was silent, then said unevenly, “Well, thank God for that.”

She took a deep breath and with desperate courage—or foolhardiness—said shakily, “I’m just—just finding it very difficult. You’ve not shown—I mean, I knew you wanted me—but that’s not—what you’re talking about is love.”

And held her breath.

Whatever,
knowing
what Nick felt for her had to be better than this horrible no-man’s-land she’d been enduring.

He tensed, and the seconds ticked by, and then he said in a taut, driven voice, “Yes. It has to be love.”

Her breath sighed out. “It’s about time,” she told him fiercely. “I’ve loved you for years and years—”

Nick choked back a laugh, deep and male and hugely satisfied, then said, “You
love
me? Are you sure?”

Siena didn’t hesitate. Her heart in her words, she told him, “I’ve loved you ever since I was old enough to know what love is. I just didn’t realise it. I loved you when we made love together that first time—”

He said, “It was the first time for you, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

He shook his head and accused, “You let me believe you’d had other experience.”

“Would you have made love to me if I hadn’t?”

His jaw hardened. “Probably not. Although—how the hell do I know? I wish I’d known.”

“I don’t think it would have made any difference,” she said quietly.

“I must have hurt you so much when I walked out.”

“Yes,” she said simply.

His arms tightened again. Locked in that fierce grip, Siena knew with a sure, radiant joy that her yearning heart had reached its goal. In Nick’s arms she was home.

He said, “So you chose someone safe, someone you didn’t love, someone who couldn’t hurt you?”

“Yes. Until you charged in like some buccaneer and carried me off to Hong Kong. And I—” She turned her
face into his shoulder and corrected herself. “No,
we
made love.”

Quietly he said, “And you had an orgasm for the first time.”

“It wasn’t that—or not just that.” She looked up at him, her eyes searching out the hard line of his jaw, the fierce framework that would keep him handsome all his life. “I wondered that too—and accused myself of being shallow, thinking it was too soon to know.” She stopped, then went on more strongly, “But it isn’t too soon because I’ve always loved you. I just had to let myself accept it.”

He said with a quiet intensity that removed any last shred of doubt from her mind, “My very dear heart.”

He stopped, and she felt his chest lift against her. Incredulously, she realised the hope she’d cherished was springing into full-blown bloom.

And then, at last, he kissed her.

Later, when they’d arrived back at the house, he poured champagne. “To us,” he said, handing her a glass. “And to our future.”

She laughed up at him, and said, “Shouldn’t we be toasting Gemma and Adrian? If it hadn’t been for them I wouldn’t have gone to Hong Kong with you and we might never have known—might have spent our lives looking for someone.”

Nick made a sound remarkably like a snort. “It would have happened,” he told her. “I might have been too thick-headed to understand what I felt for you, but I’d have got there in the end.”

She smiled a little shakily at him. Before she could say anything he added in an entirely different voice,
hard and flat, “I knew I had to do something when I caught sight of that damned ring on your finger.”

Siena stared at him, saw the naked truth in his face. “Do something?” she asked uncertainly.

“I felt as though someone had stolen the only thing that mattered to me. It was almost obscene that you should be wearing another man’s ring. The thought of you making love with him made me want to go out and lay waste to the world.”