“I’m glad you still think of Nick as part of our family,” Hugh said thoughtfully.
Siena shrugged airily, and bent the truth. “Oh, well, while you were mentoring him Gemma and I saw him at least once a week for years and years, and every holiday while his mother was working. We thought he was wonderful. He was always lovely to us, although he obviously hadn’t had much to do with small girls.”
She’d managed not to look across the room again, but she couldn’t help asking, “Who is his—the woman with him?”
His latest lover, she thought, a raw edge of old pain surfacing unexpectedly.
Diane exchanged a cryptic glance with her husband. “Portia Makepeace-Singleton. We had dinner in his apartment the night after we arrived in London, and she appeared at his door halfway through the meal. Unexpectedly, I’d say, although you know Nicholas—he gave nothing away.”
“I presume she’s his latest significant other,” Siena said, hoping she sounded coolly dismissive.
Her mother shrugged. “Possibly. Naturally we didn’t ask.”
Siena looked from one parent to the other. “You didn’t like her,” she guessed.
Diane looked a little self-conscious and didn’t answer directly. “Have they seen us?”
“No, they’ve been seated out of sight of us less distinguished diners.”
But the evening was comparatively young—plenty of time to be noticed, and Nick always noticed.
She wouldn’t let Nick’s arrival spoil the evening. Defiantly she raised her glass, only to set it down when light scintillated again from Adrian’s diamond.
Adrian was a darling. She was very happily looking forward to marrying him next year. He would never hurt her.
Whereas Nick.
She drew in a sharp breath. Nick had almost shattered her.
At sixteen she’d successfully exorcised a crush on her father’s protégé. Even then she’d known that Nick was not for her. By the time she’d left high school he’d well outstripped his mentor, made his first millions, and based himself overseas for several years.
He’d stayed in contact with Hugh, sending cards on important dates, calling in to see the family on his visits to New Zealand.
Then, when she’d been nineteen, he’d returned to New Zealand for a few months.
And Siena had been forced to realise she’d been fooling herself. Far from being exorcised, that adolescent crush had metamorphosed into full-blown desire. Oh, she’d fought it, until he’d.
“Siena?”
Jolted back into the present by her mother’s puzzled voice, she lifted her glass again and drank a little too deeply of the champagne.
“Sorry,” she said automatically. “I was daydreaming, I’m afraid. I’m overwhelmed by all this glitter and luxury. I wonder what it would be like to live like this?”
Hugh surveyed her with indulgent amusement. “It wouldn’t be long before you’d be bored out of your mind. Why don’t you ask Nick some day? It’s his milieu now that he’s a permanent figure in the world’s financial pages.”
“And described variously—depending on the journalist—as a buccaneer, a financial genius and an arrogant billionaire far too handsome for his own good,” Siena commented, hoping her parents didn’t notice the astringent note in her words.
“All accurate,” her father said, his tone not entirely approving.
He didn’t mention the gossip magazines, with their avid comments on Nick’s various relationships. Allowing for the usual frenetic exaggeration, there had been several of those.
Siena wished fervently Nick hadn’t come in.
Five years had gone by since she’d seen him last—she’d grown up from the naïve nineteen-year-old she’d been then, abandoning her adolescent fantasies of the perfect hero to settle for a happy future with a lovely man.
It was stupid to be so affected by his arrival.
Not that she’d been the only woman in the room to notice him. His arrogantly handsome features and leanly muscled height gave him a potent charisma that had caught the eye of most of the women in the restaurant.
A very dangerous charisma.
Don’t go there …
His presence added to a nameless unease that had been gathering in her for several weeks, a sense that her world—her life—was heading into a grey blandness.
Well, she was probably entitled to a certain concern about her future—a week ago she’d walked out of a perfectly good job.
And now was not the time to be thinking of that disaster. She set her jaw and pushed everything from her mind but the need to enjoy this evening with her parents.
To her relief, a band struck up the sort of music her parents loved. They’d met at a high school ball, and their shared love of dancing was the reason they’d chosen to celebrate their anniversary at this hotel, famous for its dinner dances.
Siena looked at her parents. “What are you waiting for? Up you get.”
“Nonsense,” her mother said robustly. “We’re not leaving you by yourself.”
“Mum, of course you must get up. I’m twenty-four! Sitting alone in a restaurant for a few minutes is not going to embarrass me. And I’d like very much to see you dance on your thirtieth wedding anniversary.”
After a little more encouragement her parents rose and made their way to the floor. Siena watched them go with a slightly twisted smile. They looked good together, moving with inbuilt, confident grace. Like them, her sister Gemma had hair and skin touched by gold and their long-boned, willowy stature, perfect for a model.
The sort of woman Nick favoured …
Oh, stop it! she commanded. OK, so her unfashionably curly tresses were black, and her skin so pale she didn’t dare spend more than a few minutes in New Zealand’s notorious summer sun unless she was slathered in sunscreen.
But she had inherited her parents’ love of dancing. Smiling, she realised one foot was tapping unconsciously. Using her savings to fly twelve thousand miles as a surprise had been an inspired decision, even if it had cleaned out her bank account. When she’d knocked on their hotel door the previous day her mother had fought back tears and her father had swallowed.
Siena glanced at a woman dressed with such superb taste she shone like a gem even in that gathering of the rich and the famous. Beside her was a notorious and inordinately handsome actor.
The skin between her shoulder-blades tightened. Refusing to turn, she kept her eyes on the dance floor while an odd, primitive apprehension throbbed through her.
From behind her a deep male voice said, “Five years ago you’d have turned to see who was watching you.”
Nick.
Deep within her something fierce and bewildering leapt into existence. No, was reborn …
Disconcerted, she focused on the diamond Adrian had given her, and squelched the automatic urge to swivel around. “Five years is a long time, Nick.”
Only then did she brace herself and turn to look up into his lean, handsome face. His brows lifted, one slightly higher than the other, as her wary gaze clashed with the hard, dense green of his eyes, exactly the burnished, many-layered colour of pounamu, the greenstone prized by both ancient Maori and modern New Zealanders.
Beautiful eyes, she’d thought as an adolescent—and