watched him with an inquisitive frown. “Have you never been in here before?”
“Never. You?”
“Loads,” she said with a careless shrug.
Dismissing a weary of course she had, he gave the framed portraits a final considering look. “I think you should sell your mother’s things and use the money to get a degree in something practical like business admin.”
Rowan’s love for her mother might be very much of the dutiful variety, and stained with resentment and angst, but she was appalled by Nic’s suggestion. “I can’t do that!” she protested.
Nic lifted his brows at her vehemence. “Why not?”
“Mum loved this table and that mirror … You can’t just tear down someone’s life and make it disappear.” Her lingering sense of duty to preserve Cassandra O’Brien’s mystique made her balk at the idea completely. “And business admin? Why don’t you suggest I become an accountant? Or something really exciting like an insurance actuary? Maybe there’s a library somewhere that needs its Dewey Decimal System overhauled?”
“Put it all in storage and wait tables, then.” A muscle tightened in Nic’s jaw, giving Rowan the crazy impression that she’d injured him. “I don’t know you any better than you know yourself,” he stated, in a comeback that returned very nicely any wounding she’d delivered. “Given what you just said, this is a decision best made by you, isn’t it?”
Nic took on his warrior stance, strong and mute. If he wasn’t the product of Thor and Athena she didn’t know what he was, all masculine power and superiority.
His confident presence called to the woman in her, but his subtext didn’t escape her. He wasn’t contradicting her need to move on, and his mention of disposing of her mother’s things reinforced his expectation that she’d do so.
Taking a surreptitious breath to ease the panicky constriction in her lungs, she nodded, mulling over what he’d said. “You’re right. I need to figure it out on my own. But there is one thing we should plan together.” She shoved aside the barbed wires curling around the tender walls of her heart to allow the statement out. “We need a memorial service.”
He jerked back his head in immediate refusal. “I don’t. Why would you?”
“Everyone does.” She hugged herself tighter.
“No. It’s a social convention that many subscribe to, particularly if they’re of a religious bent, but that doesn’t mean you and I have to buckle to it.”
“It’s not buckling! It offers closure.” He couldn’t really imagine she’d sign a piece of paper and that would be it, could he?
Rowan stared at his impermeable expression and got a sick, hollow feeling in her stomach. She was such an idiot. She had thought sleeping with him would change things. Change him. Soften his edges and make him feel … something.
Nic shook his head at Rowan’s stare of horrified objection, continually amazed by how sentimental she was. His inner core tightened protectively against that weakness. What was nostalgia but revisiting old pain?
“What did you have in mind? You and I reading poetry to each other over a marker on the lawn?” he asked.
“You don’t have to be like that about it!” Her sniff of affront was followed by a haughty set of her chin that made him feel about two inches tall. “I thought we’d say something nice to people who care about them in a chapel in Athens.”
“Oh, you want a party,” he said with sudden realization, disgusted with himself for beginning to credit her with more substance. “Why didn’t you say so? No.”
“It’s a service!” Rowan argued. “People need one. Aren’t you getting emails and phone calls? Their friends are asking for a chance to pay their respects.”
“Which they’ve done,” Nic insisted. If he had to field one more empty platitude or soupy look he’d drop himself from a plane into the sea. “There is absolutely no reason to drag it all into the limelight again—or is that your goal? Feeling a bit isolated here, Ro? Then leave.”
Well, that certainly told her how much he valued their time together! Rowan’s belligerent chin took his dismissal as a direct hit, pulling in and—she feared—crumpling before she steadied it.
“Is there really nothing in you that feels a need to say goodbye? Or are you only willing to give Olief as much time as he gave you?” It was a cruel thing to say. He’d spent hours on the search personally, and hiring teams of divers and pilots …
He didn’t remind her of all that. He only stared flatly at her. The silence stretched. His stance hardened and his jaw clenched.
Her belly quivered in apprehension.
“I said no.” He walked out.
Nic kept his distance for the next several days. If Rowan had lazed around underfoot he might have given her a piece of his mind, but she was actually doing as he’d told her to. She’d made a few trips to the other side of the island to fetch empty boxes. Garment bags had appeared with labels and markers. Every day, when she wasn’t leaving him a meal downstairs, she spent hours packing up the master bedroom.
If she had come to him he might have engaged, but he would not go looking for her. He was too proud. So proud it made his shoulders ache with hollow pressure. But the way she’d taken everything he’d told her and thrown it back in his face had been a blow. It was a perfect example of why he didn’t let people in. He didn’t want anyone to have the power to hurt him. If that meant he didn’t get the closeness—the sex and laughter and moments of basking in the light of a woman’s smile—so be it. Those were things he refused to crave anyway.
And if he had a curious tingling in his chest, almost like he was missing her—well, that was pure stupidity. She was right down the hall.
Or was she? He thought he heard a knock and clicked off his shaver.
“Nic?” She was in his lounge. Grabbing a towel off the rail, he hitched it around his hips and pulled the bathroom door inward.
Rowan was halfway around the sofa, heading toward the double doors that led into his bedroom. She started when he revealed himself, visibly taken aback to find him so close and fresh from the shower, but what did she expect at six-thirty in the morning?
She was in a short robe belted loosely over a torturously short babydoll nightgown. Her warm sleep scent, like almonds and tea, teased his nostrils. Despite going months without a woman on many occasions, he suddenly and acutely felt this recent abstinence.
A flustered blush colored her cheeks and she took a half step back, then held her ground within his reach even though he could tell she was discomfited.
Desire pulsed through him with increasing punches from his strengthening heart rate, reacting to her tousled hair and fresh-from-bed look. He wanted to heave her over his shoulder and carry her to his unmade sheets, but alongside his immediate lust was a pang of surprise at how exhausted she looked. Her eyes were green gems in bruised sockets, her skin thin and pale.
He wasn’t exactly sleeping well himself. Every day was a fight to incapacitate his sex drive with punishing workouts. Every night he woke to erotic dreams anyway, heavy and aching to go to her.
Funny how there was no satisfaction in knowing she was suffering too. He shifted his weight so his feet were braced wide, hopeful that his uncontrollable response to her wouldn’t become obvious.
“Yes?” he demanded.
She swallowed and ran a hand through her hair, reminding him how silky and thick it was, how good it had felt to grasp a handful of the luscious waves and kiss her until neither of them could breathe.
Her breath sucked in and she said in a rush, “I just heard the ferry horn. It’s coming now. I totally forgot they change