The internal directives came a split second too late. Her thumb had already stabbed the button that activated her voice mail.
Nick’s deep, curt voice filled her ear, shooting a hot tingle down her spine and making her stomach clench.
This message was simple, his number and the same arrogant demand he’d left on her answerphone a number of times since their initial conversation: Call me.
For a split second the busy street and the brassy glare of the sun glittering off cars dissolved in a red mist.
After six years? During which time he had utterly ignored her existence and the fact that he had ditched her after just one night.
Like that was going to happen.
Annoyed with herself for being weak enough to listen to the message, she dropped the phone back into her purse and stepped off the curb. No matter how much she had once wanted Nick to call, she had never fallen into the trap of chasing after a man she knew was not interested in her personally.
To her certain knowledge Nick Messena had only ever wanted two things from her. Lately, it was the recovery of a missing ring that Nick had mistakenly decided his father had gifted to her aunt. A scenario that resurrected the scandalous lie that her aunt Katherine—the Messena family’s housekeeper—had been engaged in a steamy affair with Stefano Messena, Nick’s father.
Six years ago, Nick’s needs had been a whole lot simpler: he had wanted sex.
The blast of a car horn jerked her attention back to the busy street. Adrenaline rocketing through her veins, Elena hurried out of the path of a bus and stepped into the air-conditioned coolness of an exclusive mall.
She couldn’t believe how stupid she had been to walk across a busy street without taking careful note of the traffic. Almost as stupid as she’d been six years ago on her birthday when she’d been lonely enough to break every personal rule she’d had and agree to a blind date.
The date, organized by so-called friends, had turned out to be with Messena, the man she’d had a hopeless crush on for most of her teenage years.
At age twenty-two, with a double degree in business and psychology, she should have been wary of such an improbable situation. Messena had been hot and in demand. With her long dark hair and creamy skin, and her legs—her best feature—she had been passable. But with her propensity to be just a little plump, she hadn’t been in Messena’s league.
Despite knowing that, her normal common sense had let her down. She had made the fatal mistake of believing in the heated gleam in Nick’s gaze and the off-the-register passion. She had thought that Messena, once branded a master of seduction by one notorious tabloid, was sincere.
Heart still pumping too fast, she strolled through the rich, soothing interior of the mall, which, as luck would have it, was the one that contained the premises for Coastal Realty.
The receptionist—a lean, elegant redhead—showed her into Evan Cutler’s office.
Cutler, who specialized in waterfront developments and central city apartments, shot to his feet as she stepped through the door. Shadow and light flickered over an expanse of dove-gray carpet, alerting Elena to the fact that Cutler wasn’t the sole occupant of the room.
A second man, large enough to block the sunlight that would otherwise have flooded through a window, turned, his black jacket stretched taut across broad shoulders, his tousled dark hair shot through with lighter streaks that gleamed like hot gold.
A second shot of adrenaline zinged through her veins. “You.”
Nick Messena. Six feet two inches of sleekly muscled male, with a firm jaw and the kind of clean, chiseled cheekbones that still made her mouth water.
He wasn’t male-model perfect. Despite the fact that he was a wealthy businessman, somewhere along the way he had gotten a broken nose and a couple of nicks on one cheekbone. The battered, faintly dangerous look, combined with a dark five-o’clock shadow—and that wicked body—and there was no doubting he was potent. A dry, low-key charm and a reputation with women that scorched, and Nick was officially hot.
Her stomach sank when she noticed the phone in his hand.
Eyes a light, piercing shade of green, clashed with hers. “And you didn’t pick up my call, because...?”
The low, faintly gravelly rasp of his voice, as if he had just rolled out of a tangled, rumpled bed, made her stomach tighten. “I was busy.”
“I noticed. You should check the street before you cross.”
Fiery irritation canceled out her embarrassment and other more disturbing sensations that had coiled in the pit of her stomach. Positioned at the window, Nick would have had a clear view of her walking down the street as he had phoned. “Since when have you been so concerned about my welfare?”
He slipped the phone into his jacket pocket. “Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve known you and your family most of my life.”
The easy comment, as if their families were on friendly terms and there hadn’t been a scandal, as if he hadn’t slept with her, made her bristle. “I guess if anything happened to me, you might not get what you want.”
The second the words were out Elena felt ashamed. As ruffled and annoyed as she was by Nick, she didn’t for a moment think he was that cold and calculating. If the assertion that her aunt and Stefano Messena had been having an affair when they were killed in a car accident, the same night she and Nick had made love, had hurt the Lyon family, it went without saying it had hurt the Messenas.
Her jaw tightened at Nick’s lightning perusal of her olive-green dress and black cotton jacket, and the way his attention lingered on her one and only vice, her shoes. The clothes were designer labels and expensive, but she was suddenly intensely aware that the dark colors in the middle of summer looked dull and boring. Unlike the shoes, which were strappy and outrageously feminine, the crisp tailoring and straight lines were more about hiding curves than displaying them.
Nick’s gaze rested briefly on her mouth. “And what is it, exactly, that you think I want?”
A question that shouldn’t be loaded, but suddenly was, made her breath hitch in her throat. Although the thought that Nick could possibly have any personal interest in her now was ridiculous.
And she was absolutely not interested in him. Despite the hot looks, GQ style and killer charm, he had a blunt, masculine toughness that had always set her subtly on edge.
Although she could never allow herself to forget that, through some weird alchemy, that same quality had once cut through her defenses like a hot knife through butter. “I already told you I have no idea where your lost jewelry is.”
“But you are on your way back to Dolphin Bay.”
“I have better reasons for going there than looking for your mythical lost ring.” She lifted her chin, abruptly certain that Nick’s search for the ring, something that the female members of his family could have done, was a ploy and that he had another, shadowy, agenda. Although what that agenda could be, she had no clue. “More to the point, how did you find out I would be here?”
“You haven’t been returning my calls, so I rang Zane.”
Her annoyance level increased another notch that Nick had intruded even further into her life by calling his cousin, and her boss, Zane Atraeus. “Zane is in Florida.”
Nick’s expression didn’t alter. “Like I said, you haven’t returned my calls, and you didn’t turn up for our...appointment in Sydney. You left me no choice.”
Elena’s cheeks warmed at his blunt reference to the fact that she had failed to meet him for what had sounded more like a date than a business meeting at one of Sydney’s most expensive restaurants.
She had never in her life missed an appointment, or even been late for one, but the idea that Nick’s father had paid her aunt off with jewelry, the standard currency