Kate Hardy - One Night of Passion - The Night that Changed Everything / Champagne with a Celebrity / At the French Baron's Bidding

“Understood.” Mona had sounded impatient. “Got to go. We’re shooting now. Discuss it with Edie. She can show you around. You remember Edie.”

He remembered Edie.

She hadn’t changed a bit.

Her utilitarian ponytail hardly recalled the sophisticated upswept hairstyle she’d worn to the wedding. And her casual canvas pants and open-neck pink shirt might mask the curves the purple dress had highlighted.

But Nick was willing to bet that, unloosed, her hair would cascade down her back in those wondrously silken waves. Just as he knew damned well that underneath whatever Edie Daley wore, he would still find her petal-soft skin and the womanly secrets he’d only once had a chance to explore.

“Hell,” he muttered, scowling toward the door she’d walked out of moments before.

Hell—because she was just as appealing as she had been back in Mont Chamion. He’d hoped she wouldn’t be. That was why he’d been at pains to make sure Mona understood he might not stick around.

Maybe the house wouldn’t be worth working on—or maybe he’d take one look at Edie Daley and decide that their one night in Mont Chamion was the extent of her appeal.

No such luck.

Now he stood in the shadows of the window and watched her until she was out of sight.

She was still wearing the baseball cap, with her hair pulled back into a ponytail and poking out through the space above the adjustable strap at the back of the hat. And she really didn’t have any noticeable curves. In fact, from the back he was disconcerted to discover that she could probably pass for a tall, slender twelve-year-old girl.

So why, for two and a half months, had he not been able to get her out of his mind?

Nick had never dwelt on the women he bedded. Had no interest in them beyond the night they spent together. They were fun and attractive and he had a good time with them. But as soon as they were gone, he moved on and never looked back.

End of story.

He couldn’t even have told you half their names. But he couldn’t forget hers: Edie Daley.

Edie of the long dark curls and flashing green eyes, of the wide mobile mouth and the very kissable lips. Lithe and limber Edie. Eager and passionate Edie. Her spark, her charm, her curiosity, her vulnerability, all had haunted him every night, and plenty of days. Since he’d shared his bed with her.

Two and a half months and he hadn’t been able to forget her. It was absurd.

At first Nick thought the memories kept coming back because they’d spent the night in his bed. He had always made a point of never sharing his own bed with a woman.

He didn’t bring them onto his turf.

Hell, he didn’t even have turf. He didn’t own a house, didn’t rent a flat. He had no place to call his own. He’d sold the house he’d built for Amy as soon as he could after her death. He wanted nothing more to do with it.

He left what little personal gear he didn’t carry with him at his uncle Socrates’s house on Long Island. And he stayed on the move, living in someone else’s house while he renovated it. It suited him perfectly. He had no reason to have a house.

He had no wife. No kids. No dog nor cat. No encumbrances at all.

He didn’t need them. Didn’t want them.

And he didn’t want Edie Daley, either!

Well, he did. Carnally, at least, Nick admitted, he wanted her a hell of a lot. But that was all.

The desire was an itch he needed to scratch. So, he’d scratch it and it would be gone, and that would be that.

“WHAT do you mean she’s gone?” Edie demanded.

The Thai woman on the other end of the phone connection didn’t speak particularly good English, which gave Edie hope that she might have heard wrong. But when the woman repeated her words, the meaning was the same the second time around.

“Miz Tremayne go away for work. Not here.”

“But it’s barely light,” Edie protested. “What on earth time did she go?”

“She go last night.”

“Last night? But she didn’t mention anything yesterday.”

“Change of plan,” the woman said. She didn’t sound as if it was any big deal. Probably for her it wasn’t.

“When’s she coming back?”

“Don’t know. Three, four, five days maybe. They go to mountains.”

“Mountains?” That didn’t sound good. And they were going to be gone days? “But I need to talk to her.”

She was only calling the phone at the house Mona had rented because she had already tried Mona’s mobile phone half a dozen times. Each time it had gone directly to voice mail.

At first she’d thought her mother was simply avoiding her. But after two hours with no reply, she knew something else was going on. Mona was a stickler for returning messages. The only time she didn’t call back was when she was in the middle of a scene or completely out of range.

Obviously now she was out of range. But for days?

“Where are the kids?” Edie asked. Ordinarily her mother would have sent for her to take care of them while she was gone. Surely she hadn’t just left them with the woman who cared for the house.

“They go, too.”

“Ah. Well, um, good.” At least Edie hoped that was good. There was no doubt that Mona loved her children. But she also had a career that demanded she put it first most of the time. Taking the twins and Grace with her this summer—without having Edie along to keep an eye on things—was something of a first.

“Did she even take her phone?”

“She take it,” the woman said. “But hard to get calls. You try,” she suggested cheerfully. “Maybe you be lucky.”

Luck, Edie could have told her mother’s housekeeper, was not on her side at the moment.

She thanked the woman, tried Mona’s number twice more, then gave up. There was no point in filling her mother’s in-box with messages she wouldn’t see until she got back to civilization. Besides, when she confronted Mona about her matchmaking, she intended to do it live and, if not face-to-face, then at least ear to ear.

She’d given Mona a piece of her mind after the Kyle Robbins incident at the wedding. She thought Mona had learned her lesson. Apparently not.

Still grumbling, Edie stared at the computer screen and tried to focus on the rest of the afternoon’s work. She had phone calls to return, some correspondence from Mona’s contracts lawyer to deal with and Rhiannon’s plane reservations to cancel and rebook. Surely she had plenty to keep her busy—enough so that she wouldn’t spend the rest of the afternoon thinking about Nick Savas.

Easier said than done. She got the reservations rebooked. She looked up the answers to the questions Mona’s contracts lawyer wanted. She returned that call and several others. But all the while she did so, she had one ear cocked toward the door, expecting to hear it open, expecting the sound of footfalls heading toward the office.

Time passed. An hour. Two. By five-thirty he still hadn’t come. Perhaps he’d taken a look around, then simply left. When she closed up the office she actually walked out to the front room to look out the window to see if his car was still there.

Of course it was. He couldn’t have left without her knowing because he’d have had to come back for his bag. He’d already taken his duffel upstairs.

So did he expect her to simply sit in her office and wait for him?

Probably not, Edie admitted to herself. Probably he hadn’t given her a thought at all.

“And you should stop thinking about him,” she counseled herself.

So she did what she always did after work. She changed into her bathing suit, went out to the pool and dived in.

It was just past six when Nick got back to Mona’s house.