Kate Hardy - One Night of Passion

“Blast!” Edie shot a helpless glance in the direction of the living room, then turned a malevolent one on the computer screen she’d been staring at forever.

She was in the middle of making the latest of Rhiannon’s many plane reservations. She was almost to the last screen. If she stopped now, it would “time-out” and she would have to start over.

God knew, she probably would anyway. Rhiannon had been changing things almost daily for the past two months. Ever since she and Andrew had had their meltdown in Mont Chamion, even though they’d made up, Rhiannon had been edgy and wired, worried about whether Andrew would dump her one minute, and whether her career was over the next. She was constantly changing her priorities and her mind, and today’s rearranged schedule was just the latest indication of her turmoil.

It did not give Edie restful days, either. Fortunately Rhiannon was in the Bahamas shooting a music video today. If she hadn’t been, chances were good she’d have been perching on the edge of Edie’s desk talking a mile a minute, fretting about Andrew, and changing her mind even as Edie was rebooking her reservations. Now Edie glared at the hourglass, which still hung on the screen.

The doorbell rang again.

At its insistence, the dog, Roy, a gigantic Newfoundland—all black glossy fur and lolling red tongue—looked up with vague interest. As a pup he’d have been at the door already, barking like mad. Now at nine, he had a more casual approach to visitors. They had to be persistent or he wasn’t interested. He lay his head between his paws and closed his eyes again.

The doorbell chimed again. Emphatically. Twice.

Well, whoever they were, Roy would give them points for persistence. Ah, at last. The new screen finally appeared asking her to confirm the ticket purchase. Edie clicked. The hourglass reappeared. She waited.

And the doorbell rang. Once, twice. Three times now.

Not many people got as far as Mona Tremayne’s front door. Tucked away high in the mountains behind Santa Barbara, the acreage Mona had bought with Edie’s father, Joe, was far off the beaten path.

Everyone else had urged Mona to move after Joe died. The acreage was too big, they said. It had been Joe’s dream to have the cutting horse operation on rural Santa Barbara ranch land. But Mona had stayed true to that dream.

She and Joe had bought it not just for the horses, but because they’d wanted a place to get away to, a place where they could be themselves without coming face-to-face with the fanfare of Mona’s growing celebrity on an hourly basis. Of course it hadn’t had the present house on it then, only the now sadly decaying old adobe ranch house even farther from the road.

This house had come later, after Joe’s death. In her grief Mona wouldn’t leave the place they’d had together. But the crumbling old adobe was no place to be with two small children. Without Joe to keep things together, the roof would have fallen in on them at the very least. So Mona had had a new house built and a year later she and five-year-old Edie and nine-year-old Ronan had moved down the hill several hundred yards to what Ronan still called “Ma’s movie star house.”

It was big and lavishly decorated, parts of it definitely elegant enough for spur-of-the-moment entertaining of Hollywood moguls and the world’s rich and famous. At the same time it had eleven bedrooms, even more bathrooms, a butler’s pantry big enough for Edie’s twelve-year-old twin half brothers Dirk and Ruud to roller skate in, a swimming pool, tennis court and, oh yes, a doorbell.

This time whoever it was didn’t just ring it, they leaned on it. Long and hard and far too shrilly.

Annoyed, Edie was tempted not to answer it at all. But Mona’s “open house” policy extended to whomever among her hundreds of “close” friends turned up in the vicinity. Even when Mona was on the other side of the world, she—or, basically, Edie—welcomed all and sundry. The Tremayne hospitality was legendary, and Edie was quite happy to do it, though usually her mother warned her before guests were expected.

Now the hourglass gave way to a “confirmed” screen. Gratefully Edie punched a button to print Rhiannon’s itinerary, then, with Roy at her heels, she went to answer the bell—which was still ringing “All right! I hear you!” she shouted as she hurried down the hallway from her office at the back of the house, across the living room and grabbed the handle of the oversize dark oak door. “You can stop now!”

It stopped.

She jerked open the door. Her jaw dropped. Her fingers clenched on the door handle. She stared in disbelief. “Nick?”

Because it was—Nick Savas in the flesh. As tall and gorgeous as she remembered. And as unexpected as—well, Edie couldn’t think of anything she had been anticipating less.

She clutched the door handle with one hand and Roy’s collar with the other, as if they would anchor her in a storm. And there was a storm—of emotions, of memories, of questions and answers that she’d put behind her because she’d never managed to sort them out.

Not that she hadn’t tried. For weeks after she’d got back home after the wedding in Mont Chamion she’d thought about that night—about the man she’d spent it with. She thought about what she’d done and tried to understand why.

As near as she could come to an explanation was that somehow that night he had awakened her.

After two and a half years of going through the motions of getting on with her life—and yet never really finding the spark that would make her recognize that she was alive and fully functional again on all levels—that night she had.

Something—and she never did put her finger on what—about Nick Savas had touched something elemental in her. In her most fanciful moments she thought it was what the prince’s kiss on Sleeping Beauty’s lips had done—brought her back to life.

It wasn’t Nick’s kiss that had done it for Edie. It wasn’t his lovemaking, either. It was simply him—his energy, his charm, his wit, his dazzling smile. And his eyes. His eyes were eloquent. They spoke to her without words. They laughed with her, they teased her. They bore witness to his suffering. They anguished with her about her own. They drew her in.

They woke her up.

The kisses, the lovemaking grew out of that. She thought maybe she’d gone to bed with him out of gratitude for her awakening. She was grateful. But it was more than that.

She’d felt a connection she couldn’t explain—as if he’d given her something that night and, in their lovemaking, she had given him something in return.

She’d tried over the past couple of months to articulate what. She hadn’t been able to. Not really. If he’d come after her, she might have been able to. But of course he hadn’t.

It had been a one-off, just as he’d said it would be.

So what was he doing here now?

His mobile mouth tilted into a conspiratorial smile and his eyes—those dark, sometimes laughing, sometimes brooding eyes—were just as intent as ever as they focused on her.

Once more Edie felt the connection she’d felt that night in Mont Chamion.

So whatever it was, it had lasted—for her at least—longer than one night. Edie felt her breath catch.

“What—What are you doing here?”

The Cinderella inside her wanted him to say he was here for her. The other sane sensible 99.9 percent of her brain told herself to get a grip. Things like that didn’t happen in real life. She wouldn’t want them to happen!

“Nice to see you, too,” Nick said amiably. Then he cocked his head and looked quizzically at her. “I don’t remember us parting on bad terms. Actually I don’t remember us parting at all. I woke up and you were gone.” Now his eyes accused her.