“So why are you working at a dance school, Nicole?” he asked when the plates had been cleared away.
She looked directly into his penetrating grey eyes and defiantly answered, “Private reasons.”
His mouth took on an ironic twist. “You know, money always leaves a trail. Mortgage on the school, mortgage on a house, big debt to a money-lender—all attached to one name, and that name is not yours. Who is Linda Ellis?”
The question tapped into a bank of resentment that had never been resolved. “You’d know if you’d ever accepted one of my invitations to meet my mother.”
He ignored her reference to the old bone of contention between them. “Your mother. Why the different name?”
“A second marriage.”
“Does she have a gambling problem?”
“No. What happened will not happen again.”
“How can you be sure of that?”
“Because my stepfather is dead.”
Her bald statement gave him pause for thought, a deep frown drawing his black eyebrows together. “He bled her of all that money?” he finally asked.
“No. The people who held out false hope bled her of all that money.”
She heard the angry frustration in her voice, saw the sharp questions in his eyes and knew she might as well explain how the debts had mounted up, stop any further unwelcome speculation on the subject.
“Harry had liver cancer. My mother spent the last two years of his life taking him around the world to quacks and clinics that promised cures. She wouldn’t give up. If there was any chance, any way—” Nicole sighed and gestured her own helplessness over the situation. “It didn’t matter what it cost, she kept getting the money to do it. Harry was not going to die because they didn’t have the money to save him.”
“Blind faith,” Quin muttered.
“She loved him,” Nicole said defensively, ashamed of her own exasperation with her mother’s belief in people who’d preyed on her desperation. It had been hard losing her father when she was fifteen, no doubt even harder for her mother. The thought of losing Harry, too, had probably been unbearable.
“The price of love,” Quin mused with a quirky little smile. “The same price I’ve just paid for you, Nicole. Maybe I should have negotiated for two years instead of taking only three months.”
“Not at all. You’ve got prime time,” she retorted mockingly. “Lust burns out much faster than love.”
He laughed, adding a megawatt attraction to his handsome face. A warm flood of pleasure swept through Nicole, forcing her to acknowledge that no man before or since Quin Sola had done this to her, arousing such strong feelings she had to ride through them because there was no blocking them.
He leaned towards her, forearms on the table, his eyes dancing with a wicked inner joy. “I have missed you, Nicole,” he purred. “Missed you very much.”
“Not enough to drop everything and chase after me when I left you,” she flipped at him as she leaned away, pressing against the back-rest of her chair, needing to put some steel in her spine, bringing out memories of the past to shield her from the weakening effect of his personal charisma.
His shoulders straightened, the twinkle in his eyes sharpening to a hard glitter. “Proving your power over me? I didn’t have time for such games.”
“You didn’t have time for me.”
“Not as much as you wanted, no,” he retorted, his voice gathering a harsh intensity. “But more than I’ve given any other woman, before or since.”
“Am I supposed to feel flattered by that?”
“Just stating a fact.”
Nicole’s cheeks were burning from the hot rush of aggression he’d stirred. She bit her lips, fiercely telling herself to retreat to a neutral place. This kind of exchange was not going to serve any good purpose. Though despite her attempt to regain a calmer composure, her hackles rose again when Quin smiled with wolfish satisfaction.
“You know what is worth every cent of my investment, Nicole?”
She shrugged, pretending disinterest.
“You’re honour bound to stay with me—like it or not—for twenty-six nights. No running away from what we are together.”
“What are we, Quin?” she asked with arch carelessness.
“I intend for us to be unstoppable.”
“And I intend for us to be finally finished.”
He grinned, not the least bit turned off by her claim.
He was still grinning as the waiter arrived, served their lobsters and refilled their glasses.
Quin lifted his champagne and said with a lilt of elation, “To a fine start and an even finer finish.”
Nicole held her tongue.
But she did lift her glass derisively and drank to his toast. It meant nothing, she told herself. She wouldn’t let it. The one thing she was certain about—Quin couldn’t be trusted to commit himself to anything other than making money.
CHAPTER SIX
NOW to the business end of the evening, Nicole thought, as they left the restaurant. The skin-prickling awareness of Quin walking beside her and the treacherous excitement he generated, made it extremely difficult to keep a level head and an objective attitude about what was going to happen when they reached his apartment.
“It’s only a short stroll,” he said amiably, showing no tension whatsoever over being with her.
Why would he?
He was in the box seat, directing the action.
It was okay to want sex with him, Nicole told herself. Take it, enjoy it, then leave it behind you when you go in the morning. Just don’t believe it’s anything else but physical chemistry driving a perfectly natural urge. After five long celibate years she was entitled—as a woman—to feel sexual pleasure again. Probably her highly personal knowledge of how Quin had given it in the past was stirring the desire.
“Look!” His hand curled around her arm to hold her still as he pointed to the shop window they were passing.
“At what?”
Her gaze swept around a display of Australian souvenirs. Being situated here, underneath the marble colonnade, the place was very much an upmarket boutique for tourists. A small group of Japanese were inside, stocking up on gifts to take home with them. There were many such shops around Circular Quay, catering for the same trade. This was an expensive one but beyond that…
“The blue butterfly,” Quin enlightened her. “Come on. Let’s go in and buy it for your tree.”
Nicole’s heart lurched—the shock of his knowledge only dissipating when she remembered he’d queried Jade’s gift to her last night. Jules had explained it although she’d stopped him from saying too much. The butterfly tree was a special thing between her and Zoe.