In the context of his previous strongly negative attitude towards any personal involvement with her, this didn’t make sense.
None of it made sense.
He hadn’t even said goodbye to his current girlfriend yet.
The only possible answer was…Nick Ramirez wanted something from her—something urgently needed by him—something important enough to drive him into breaking his own rules to get it.
Which put a fascinating spin on this extraordinary move.
Tess decided she had nothing to fear from it.
And quite possibly much to gain.
CHAPTER THREE
NICK was smiling to himself as he entered The Regent Hotel. Brilliant move—starting off a serious personal relationship with Tess in the publicity blaze of a premiere. If Enrique’s surveillance guy was on the job, reporting back to Javier Estes, he could hardly miss it.
Step one towards love and marriage.
Six o’clock and the lobby was abuzz with people coming in from the day, making plans for the night, waiting to be joined by others before proceeding elsewhere. Nick knew the bank of elevators was at the back of the open lounge area and he took up a position in a relatively clear space near the reception counter so Tess could easily spot him when she came down from her room. Any minute now. Unlike most women he knew, Tess had always been a stickler for punctuality.
No doubt time-keeping had been drilled into her at boarding school where bells were invariably rung to command a move from one place to another and punishments were handed out for dallying beyond an acceptable limit. It was another part of their background in common…boarding school, where many inconvenient children got dumped. It was also one thing he was sure Tess would agree on—no boarding school for their child if they had one.
Nick was not yet fully committed to the idea of being a father, taking on the heavy and enduring responsibility it entailed. At this point he was only playing with the factors, seeing if they could be moved into an acceptable framework. He could envisage doing the marriage part of the mission with Tess. That was mostly paperwork—a contract signed and subsequently dissolved at the parties’ convenience. The child part was far more troubling.
Weirdly enough, Enrique’s challenge on the fatherhood issue had certainly stirred him up on how parents should treat their children. Nick found himself brooding over an endless list of negatives coming straight out of his own life. But to carry through the positives that every child deserved was by no means an easy task. It would require some very solid planning.
If he went through with this.
It was a damnedly insidious challenge Enrique had thrown out. To get to brothers of his own, he had to beget a child of his own. But a child was a child, with much to be done for him or her. The brothers he didn’t know yet had to be adults if they’d been conceived and born during Enrique’s international polo-playing days—men he might not even like, let alone care about, not worth going through all this to get to them.
Nevertheless, having them arbitrarily withheld from him…
That was intolerable!
The sound buzz in the lobby changed—surprise and excited speculation lilting through it—alerting him to people turning, looking up to the head of the grand staircase which led down from the mezzanine level where the main restaurant was situated. Bound to be one of the actors starring in tonight’s premiere, Nick thought, his gaze flashing up in the expectation of seeing an instantly recognisable face.
Recognition certainly hit him but for a few stunned moments Nick couldn’t quite come to grips with what he was seeing.
Tess…walking down the stairs like a movie queen?
Tess…looking so fabulous, so glowingly exquisite, she would leave both her mother and his in the shade, even on their best-foot-forward days!
Her red hair, shining with golden highlights, rippled down in long loose curls all over and around her pale pearly shoulders. Framed by this spectacular halo and with the natural prettiness of her features enhanced by artistically applied make-up, her face positively sparkled with star-power, vividly lit by her bright blue eyes and even brighter white smile.
She wore a dress that would have been a showstopper on any red carpet in the world. Silvery beaded mauve lace barely cupped her breasts, the low decolletage caught together by swathes of mauve chiffon, hugging her small waist and tied tightly with long silver tassels that swayed over a long skirt of rows of lace and seductive frills, graduating in shades of mauve to smoky grey and deep violet. The frills played peek-a-boo with her long shapely legs and feet encased in very high-heeled sexy silver sandals.
Complementing this was the jewellery—diamond bracelet, long dangly diamond earrings and around her neck a fine chain of diamonds leading to a whopping big diamond pendant. The heiress to a mining fortune was certainly not hiding her light under any bushel tonight!
This vision of Tess did odd things to Nick’s stomach.
And predictable things to his groin.
Which completely fused his thought processes.
Tess paused halfway down the staircase. She’d spotted Nick before starting this perilous descent on the sexy stilettos that had to be worn with this dress. His focus had been trained elsewhere but it certainly had a fix on her now. He was staring straight at her. But he wasn’t moving, wasn’t taking one step to meet her.
Tess felt an almost evil satisfaction at the stunned look on his face. Just because she’d made a point of not dressing up for him all during their professional relationship, not wanting to be viewed as another one of the herd of women dying to draw his attention, it didn’t mean she couldn’t lay out the bait with the best of them when she wanted to. All it took was time; time with a hair stylist, time with a beautician, time shopping. And money, of course. The old adage—fine feathers made fine birds…always held true.
If she had to rock the boat between them by telling him about their child, she’d decided she might as well rock the boat in every direction—force him to see her as not so accidentally desirable, make him remember how he’d felt with her the night Zack had been conceived. She wasn’t sure if it was reckless pride driving her into being deliberately provocative or a savagely primitive need to knock Nick’s socks off so he’d reassess what he wanted from their relationship.
It was almost a year since he’d walked away from that explosive night of wild careless sex, forcing her to set it aside, as well. Was he remembering it now? Was that why he wasn’t moving to meet her? Bad Tess, stirring it up for him! Out of control Tess, not doing the sensible thing for once.