“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.