Pulling back slightly, Henry shook his head. "I ...
I'm having a hard time fully absorbing this ... "
"I know," she replied. "I couldn't believe it, either." "But don't worry, sweet pea. We'll figure out what to do, and we'll get through it together."
The man looked adequately shook-up, knocked from his eternal podium of power ... until he finally seemed to notice Nick again, who almost could've believed he'd blended into the background if his paint clothes hadn't been splotched with countless colors. "Who's your friend?" Henry didn't smile. Nick wasn't surprised.
Lauren bit her lip and grabbed back on to his arm.
"I ... I wanted someone to lean on while I talked to you, Daddy."
Henry raised his eyebrows as if to say, Go on.
"He's, I'm, we're"-Lauren glanced at Nick nervously, likely more for his sake than hers-"seeing each other." "Does he have a name?" Henry asked, on the edge of sarcasm.
"Nick Armstrong."
Nick would've sworn the fountain stopped flowing, that time stood still, as he watched Henry's skin turn as white as his sweater. The two men's eyes met, and Nick steeled his gaze; he saw Henry measuring, weighing, trying to figure out if it was really true.
Finally, Nick said, "Yeah, that Nick Armstrong." Henry still didn't speak, simply stared him down, his gaze grown just as icy,
but Nick felt strong for having caught the man off guard.
"You don't look happy to see me, Henry."
Henry's head took a critical tilt. "How did you get involved with Lauren?"
You'd have thought he was a rapist or drug dealer from the way Henry looked at him. But that was okay if Henry wanted to judge him that quickly, he didn't mind playing the outlaw. He lowered his chin, tried to look dangerous. "No devious plan or anything. Just happened to be painting her house."
"Daddy, Nick paints for us. For Ash. He owns Horizon Painters."
Henry's obvious shock filled Nick with warring emotions. Satisfaction at having made something of himself despite everything. Anger at Henry's surprise to find out he owned his own company and wasn't just an hourly man trying to scrape by. An even deeper anger that he, like every other man who put together Ash condos, was such an incidental speck on the bottom of Henry's shoe. "I had no idea," Henry finally said.
"Of course you didn't."
He'd heard Nick's disdain. "What's that supposed to mean?"
The rubber band in Nick's chest finally snapped, and he started forward, but Lauren still held tight to his arm. "It means you don't give a damn about all the little people who keep this business alive for you, old man. You don't even know that John Armstrong's son has been painting your condos every day for the last seven years." He lowered his voice, his gaze slicing daggers through Henry. "You don't even know what the hell you did to my family, do you?"
"Now wait just a minute here," Henry said, curling his hands into fists at his side, his previously pale skin heating to red.
"No, you wait a minute"-He stepped forward, even within Lauren's grasp--"and you hear me out, you thieving bastard." Their eyes never left each other, and Nick felt the contest they engaged in, but he refused to back down; this was a moment he'd waited for his entire life. "Because of you, my father never recovered from her death-never."
Curiosity suddenly overrode Henry's defenses. "Is he still ... "
"Alive? Depends on how you look at it. He's still breathing, still walking around, on his good days any- way. He sells bait on the causeway in Dunedin when he's not sleeping off the booze. As for the rest of us, my brother and sister live in the same little house we moved into after you took our half of Double A, and I work my ass off every day to pay everybody's bills." "Look," Henry said, "I'm sorry about how things turned out back then, but it's not my fault your family can't take care of themselves-"
"Yes, it is," Nick said simply, surely. He wasn't going to explain how or why things had worked out as they had, but Henry must've believed him somehow, either that or he just had the good sense not to question it further, because he didn't reply. Instead, he placed a firm hand on Nick's shoulder, pulling him aside. As they stepped away from Lauren, Nick never took his eyes from Henry's.
"Listen," Henry said lowly, "I don't know how you ingratiated your way into my daughter's life, but if you hurt her in any way-" Nick sternly cut him off. "I won't." And he meant it.
He knew secrets still stood between them-the journal, the fact that he'd arrived in the beginning wanting to see what he'd thought should have been his-but he didn't intend to ever let those things come out, didn't intend to let them get in the way. He cared for her now, and that was all that mattered. Sometimes the truth, old truths, just muddied the water, complicated things that could've stayed simpler, and Nick thought his being here, his need to confront Henry when placed face-to-face with him, proved it.
"I'll tolerate you being in her life," Henry said, glaring into his eyes, "but only because she wants it."
"I'm not sure you have a choice."
"Blood is thicker than water."
Nick thought of his deteriorated relationship with his father and said, "Sometimes."
"It was Nick," Lauren interrupted, stepping between them, "who helped me figure out about Phil."
Henry glanced back and forth between them.
"He saw one of his invoices, one of the fake ones, in my office, and pointed it out. If not for him, we still wouldn't know." Henry's narrowed gaze returned to Nick. "Why would you help put a stop to this if you hate me so much?" He shrugged. The answer was simple. "In the end, it would have hurt her as much as you."
Lauren turned onto Bayview Drive that night just before sunset, never so glad to be home. She'd spent the afternoon and evening holed up at the office with her father and Sadie, scouring Phil's files, both physical and computer files-Henry was the only person in the company with the authority to get their IT guy to break into someone's computer. The result was a slow compilation of what Phil had stolen-over half a million dollars in the last six months. The amount was sizable, but Sadie had reasoned, "If you're gonna take this kind of risk, guess you've gotta make it worth your while."
Henry had run a hand back through his hair and said, "Just thank God we caught him now, and not a few years down the road."
At the very moment she returned home, Henry was holding an emergency partners' meeting minus Phil, but to Lauren's surprise, he'd told her they'd likely not press charges. "That kind of publicity is death to a business," he'd explained. "We'll have to negotiate with him, probably firing him and demanding restitution in return for not taking legal action." "And then he'll just be ... free to go?" she'd asked in disbelief. She'd imagined Phil spending time in prison.
Henry had nodded. "But he'll be minus a large sum of money, and he sure as hell won't be able to mention Ash Builders as a reference, so I would suspect he'll have a hard time finding a position even close to what he had with us." She thought it seemed a small punishment, but she supposed the important thing was making Ash Builders right again. She swung the car into the driveway and barely avoided sideswiping Nick's van. Once she caught her breath, though, her heart swelled at finding he was still here. She hadn't known what to expect after the confrontation with her father this morning, and she regretted not foreseeing it when she'd asked him to accompany her. She'd wanted to melt through the floor listening to them argue, witnessing the intense anger in both men's gazes. She couldn't believe she'd so thoughtlessly thrust them together, especially at such an emotional time.
Of course, because of it, she'd found out some things about Nick she hadn't known. He'd paid his whole family's way, all these years, and his father was an alcoholic. She'd understood they'd never recovered from the loss of the family business, but this magnified their loss in a way she couldn't have imagined. She'd felt the years of hate for her father coming from Nick today, and she wondered how he'd stood up under the tremendous force of that much resentment.
Entering quietly, she found him on the couch watching TV, Izzy curled contentedly at his side. He wore jeans and a T-shirt, his hair loose around his shoulders. He hadn't heard her come in.
"Hi," she said softly.
He rose to greet her, although it sent Izzy pouncing to the carpet, perturbed. He crossed the room to pull her into a hug, wrapping her in the warmth she'd missed all day.
"Nick, do you hate me?" she whispered in his ear. He pulled back slightly. "You? Why?"
She peered up at him. "Because I'm as bad as my father. I never knew about your family, about your supporting them, and I never knew about your dad, about how-"
"It's not your fault, babe," he cut her off in a deep, soothing voice, "not your fault. I'm just sorry I chose such a hard time to vent my feelings on Henry." He rained a few comforting kisses over her forehead, then pulled back. "So where do things stand with Phil?"
She sighed and explained about not pressing charges despite Phil's crime. He gave a low whistle when she told him how much Phil had stolen, and she couldn't help thinking how much more money that probably sounded like to Nick than to her father. ''The partners are meeting now," she concluded, "and Dad will call when it's over to let me know what they've decided, no matter how late it runs."
Nick brushed a stray lock of hair back from her face.
"You look tired."
"I feel completely wrung out," she admitted. "I ordered pizza-it's in the oven."
Her heart flooded with affection as she gazed up into his dark eyes. ''Thank you, Nick. For being here. For the food." She laughed softly. "It's just ... really good to come home to you right now."
His gaze flickered quickly away before coming back, and she wondered if she'd just said too much, been too honest, made him nervous about them ... but at the moment, she was too worn out to worry. She just hugged him tight, then said, "Let's eat."
Lauren lay beneath the sheets, basking in the cool air from the ceiling fan, in the afterglow of making love with Nick.
He'd been quiet yet attentive through their meal, and she'd sensed his wanting to distract her from her worries. It had worked when he'd said, "Let me give you a shower."
Her exhausted body had perked to life. "Give me a shower?"
He'd just nodded. Just said, "Trust me," without even the trace of a smile. Was just her dark, seductive ocean god pulling her into yet another hot web of passion.
Only as they'd stepped inside the shower together did she flash back to the first day she'd met him, to the lurid thoughts that had crept into her mind as she'd washed, the fantasy she'd written in her mind.
"How do you know?" she whispered as the water sprayed over them, her hands splaying across his chest. "How do you know the things I want you to do to me?"
His look reminded her of the sizzling, silent passion they'd once endured, and she'd thought perhaps he wouldn't answer, but finally his voice came husky. "Why? Are the things I do to you ... so special?"
"It's like deja vu," she tried to explain. "But better." He never said another word, merely turned her away from him in the shower. And she waited, braced herself, thought he would press against her, plunge deep inside her, bring that fantasy to life-but instead his hands sank into her hair. She gasped at first, at the sensation of his smoothing it back from her face, then stepping aside so the water could soak it. It felt just like ... but again, better, so much better, because it was real. Knowing what was coming, and not even being surprised anymore, she leaned her head back and waited while Nick reached for the shampoo.
He didn't hurry, massaging the suds deeply into her scalp, then working it through to the very ends halfway down her back. She kept her eyes shut tight against the soap, and got all the more lost in the sweet, tender sensations that were no longer just words in a journal.
Only after her hair was rinsed did he turn her away from him once more, place his hands at her hip, and push himself inside her, where-as always-it felt like he belonged. Ab yes, now that fantasy--even though unwritten-tumed real, as well. There were moments when she wanted to ask him-do you feel it. too? Do you feel the strange, mystical ties binding us. tighter and tighter? She even endured a long, frustrating moment when she considered leading him down the hall when they were done, pulling the red book from its shelf, and showing him the ways their lovemaking paralleled her private fantasies. But she still couldn't do that; despite everything, it remained too personal, too profoundly intimate. Everyone, she thought, should have at least one secret completely their own.
Now, she rolled to her side to look at him, the room lit by the dim lamp at her bedside. His eyes were closed, but she suspected he was awake.
"I love you," she whispered.
His eyes opened, connecting with hers on the pillow beside him.
He looked stunned, but she only smiled. "I know I shouldn't have said it, shouldn't have put the words out there. But I didn't say it to hear you say it back-I said it because I feel it. And I want to show you, Nick."
Meeting his gaze, she pushed the cool sheet down to
his thighs and gently began to stroke him.
"Too soon," he said. "What?"
"Too soon. After."
Yet Lauren only flashed a wicked grin, not deterred in the slightest. Rising up on her knees, she swung one leg over his hip, towering above him, before crouching down low to drop a kiss on his chest. She had never felt more confident, more in control, in her life. She'd not planned to profess her love, but it had been real and freeing and liberating. "I think I can make it not too soon."
As her touch slowly reverberated down through his body, Nick watched her. She was so beautiful writhing atop him, pale and bare, raking pearl-tipped breasts against his chest. When she peered heatedly into his eyes and licked her upper lip, he began to feel it below. "You're so hot, baby."
"You have no idea," she cooed back in the sexiest voice he'd ever heard. She still rubbed against him, her breasts, her hips now, too, the moisture between her thighs leaving him dew-kissed.
"Maybe," he murmured, "it's not too soon."
Her look grew ever more seductive. "I didn't think so."
She kissed her way down his chest, the movements and touches so slow and light that he began to feel agonized, wanting more. But he knew what was coming, knew without doubt what his princess had in mind for him, and he wasn't about to rush her. He kept his eyes locked on her every move, glad the lamp was on; he didn't want to miss a thing.
Her body drifted lower. her kisses dancing across his stomach, her full breasts curving round and warm over his erection like they'd been made to fit together. When she lifted her gaze, then slid her breasts up and down his length, he thought he might lose it, that quickly. "Don't."
She sighed, just an ounce of the sexual energy leaving her. "I thought you'd like it."
He ran his hands through her hair. "Baby, I love it. That's the problem. I don't wanna come, not for a long time." "But I want to do things to you, do everything-"
He cut her off by pressing two fingers to her lips-and she responded by taking them slowly into her mouth, sucking them in a way he felt to his core.
"Damn," he muttered. She let his fingers go, then moved down a little lower, releasing him from her cradling breasts until her face hovered not more than an inch above his arousal. His entire body tensed with anticipated pleasure-just as he caught sight of Isadora perched on a pink velvet footstool across the room.