Pride After Her Fall

‘Who’s dead?’

‘Yes, she’s dead!’ Lorelei’s voice lifted almost on a wail. ‘She’s been dead two years, three months, five days!’

Nash stilled. There were tears behind Lorelei’s eyes. She suddenly looked much younger and a little lost. Two years...It had to be around the time of her father’s arrest. And she was still grieving.

She’d lost both her father and her grandmother.

‘Is that why you still do it even though you can’t afford it? Is that where the debts have sprung from?’ He kept his voice low, not wanting to trigger those tears. He didn’t know what he’d do if she began to cry.

Lorelei lowered her head. He could almost literally see her heart hammering. Her bare chest was so delicate—almost like a baby bird’s. Guilt took a bite out of him. But he had to know if he was going to help her.

‘Does this CEO bloke know about your problems with money?’

‘I don’t have a problem with money. I have a problem with paying my bills,’ she said, lifting her chin a little aggressively. Baby bird or not, she was spitting like a cat. ‘And, non, I don’t care to share my private business with the world and his wife. Or you.’

She spun around and ran. He loped after her, hitting the automatic door release on the car.

The ten-minute drive back to the bungalow was tense, but it gave Nash time to think over all she’d said. His little eventer who couldn’t manage her chequebook.

As they entered the dark house he asked, ‘How long did you think you could hide it?’

‘I wasn’t hiding anything,’ she rapped out, staccato-fashion. ‘I was dealing with it. In my own way.’

‘And how’s that been working for you?’

‘Well, pardon me,’ she said, reeling around, ‘but we’re all not big, capable genius designers who can fix everything with the snap of our fingers!’

Nash stared down at her. ‘What did you call me?’

‘You heard—and I think your ego’s big enough for me not to repeat it.’

He wanted to kiss her. Frame her lovely frustrated face and kiss her until she was his again.

‘Do you want me to fix this for you?’

She frowned.

‘Do you?’ he repeated.

‘You really don’t know me at all, do you? You haven’t even bothered to scratch the surface.’

Nash made a low sound of frustration. Didn’t she understand he was going out on a limb for her here? He never pried too deeply into his lovers’ lives. To do so invited intimacy, and he didn’t do that. He did sex.

‘How is it, Nash, that I know so much about you and you seem to know so little about me?’

‘Sweetheart, only you know what you’ve read in the media—and most of that’s crap.’

She narrowed her eyes at him like a cat, spun around and headed for the bedroom—then seemed to change her mind and bowled right back to him. ‘Here’s what I know. You’re amazing. You’re hardworking and driven and you have this shell that you need because you’re in the public eye. But when you’re with your friends you’re different. You don’t push your opinions or need other people to agree with you. You’re just certain in a way I’ll never be. I admire all those things about you.’

She was breathing hard, her eyes bright with repressed feeling. Nash tried not to engage but there she was, in his face.

‘But all you admire about me is my world-class ass—and don’t even think about smiling, because as far as I’m concerned you can kiss it, Mr Racing Car Driver. I’m not waiting around for you to wake up to yourself.’

She really should have stopped after amazing, thought Nash as he stepped up to her, meshed his hand through her hair and brought his mouth down possessively on hers.

As if he’d lit a match next to an open petrol tank Lorelei ignited, surging against him, aggressive as he’d never felt her before. Even the first time she’d kissed him, when she’d taken the initiative, there had been a feminine reticence in her as if she needed to keep her protective barriers in place.

There were no barriers up now. The feel of her mouth moving desperately against his own made him crazy. Kissing her, hauling her with him, he staggered to the nearest flat surface—which happened to be one of the guest bedrooms. Nash would have laughed if he could at how eager he was—like a damn teenager, reefing down his trousers, with Lorelei making desperate noises as she cleaved to him, making it more difficult to actually shed any layers of clothing.