Rebecca Winters - To Marry For Duty

The only other time he’d had this much physical contact with her was one evening last June when he and his cousins had kidnapped the girls during their attempt to escape on bikes.

Piper had been forced to sit on Nic’s lap in the back seat of a car. With the girls’ bikes on top of the car, the six of them piled inside for the half hour drive from the countryside beyond Genoa to the harbor.

Thirty minutes of ecstasy to feel her softly rounded warmth against his body. A lifetime of agony because he hadn’t been able to do anything about his needs.

Right now she was holding herself rigid, but he could feel her trembling. Because it was freezing out, he had no way of knowing if there wasn’t another reason for her condition.

“Please let go of me. People are watching us.”

“Let them. There’s a lot more I have to say to you, but we need the kind of privacy your office couldn’t afford us. You have two choices. Either we talk in your apartment, or my suite at the Kingston Hotel.”

“Not the hotel—” she fired.

“Very well. Let’s go inside your place then.” Her instinct for survival demanded she face him on her own turf. Since he’d always wanted to see where she lived, Nic couldn’t be more pleased.

After relishing the feel of her upper arms for one more moment, he removed his hands so he could follow her to the side steps leading down to her apartment.

She undid the lock. “I only have a few minutes before I have to get back for an important meeting with Don.”

“It’s been canceled. I already explained to him you wouldn’t be coming back today.”

Before she could slam the door in his face, he made a quick move inside the warm, inviting living room. Almost at once he came to a standstill in front of a large oil painting which could only be Piper’s parents in their latter years.

A long time ago he’d stashed the samples of her calendars in his library at Marbella. When he found himself wanting her too intensely, he would take them out of the drawer and examine her fabulous artwork to feel closer to her.

Yet looking at the painting on the wall, he realized she was a superb portrait painter too. It was a revelation to study the attractive faces and bodies of the two people responsible for bringing the Duchess triplets into the world.

He cleared his throat. “Odd how some couples in love grow to look like each other over the years. I can see many of their traits in you.”

She stood next to the coffee table with her arms folded like an adorable schoolteacher waiting for her kindergarten class to come to order.

“It’s déjà vu being pursued by one of the Varano cousins again. You’ve got me trapped, so let’s have it. Why have you really come, and what do you really want? Up until now it’s all been a bunch of gobbledygook.”

He couldn’t help smiling as he turned to face her. “Gobbledygook?”

“Don’t tell me one of Europe’s most renowned etymologists hasn’t heard that expression before.”

“I can’t say I have, but you’re right. I’ve been dancing around you until I could get you where I wanted you.”

Actually she wasn’t exactly where he wanted her yet, but being alone with her in this apartment constituted a major miracle and would do for starters.

“Certain information about the jewelry theft gleaned in New York has unearthed a startling new discovery.”

“And?” she prompted in a bored tone of voice. He could almost hear her tapping her foot, waiting for this to be over so she could boot him out the door. He had news for her…

“It turns out the accident that killed my fiancée in Cortina was no accident. I have every reason to believe the killer wanted both of us dead, but because of a quirk of fate that afternoon, Luc happened to be the one on that tram instead of me.”

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