“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