There was an odd, vibrating pause. “I’m sorry if I hurt you six years ago, but after what happened that night it couldn’t be any other way.”
His words, the fact that he obviously thought she had fallen for him six years ago, dropped into a pool of silence that seemed to expand and spread around them, blotting out the street noise. She dragged her gaze from the taut planes of his cheekbones, the inky crescents of his lashes. “Are you referring to the accident, or the fact that you were already involved with someone else called Tiffany?” A girlfriend he’d apparently had stashed away in Dubai.
Nick frowned. “The relationship with Tiffany was already ending.”
Elena found herself staring at the V of bronzed flesh bared by the pale peach T-shirt Nick was wearing beneath his black jacket. Peach. It was a feminine color, but on Nick the color looked sexy and hot, emphasizing the tough, stubbled line of his jaw and the cool gleam of his eyes. “I read about Tiffany in an article that was published a whole month later.”
She would never forget because the statement that Nick Messena and his gorgeous model girlfriend were in love had finally convinced her that a relationship with him had never been viable.
“You shouldn’t believe anything printed in a tabloid. We broke up as soon as I got back to Dubai.”
Elena ruthlessly suppressed the sudden, wild, improbable notion that Nick had ended his relationship with Tiffany because of her.
That was the kind of flawed thinking that had seen her climbing into bed with him in the first place. “That still didn’t make it all right to sleep with me when you had no intention of ever following up.”
A hint of color rimmed Nick’s cheekbones. “No, it didn’t. If you’ll recall, I did apologize.”
Her jaw tightened. As if it had all been a gigantic mistake. “So why, exactly, did you finish with Tiffany?”
She shouldn’t have the slightest interest. Nick Messena meant nothing to her—absolutely nothing—but suddenly she desperately needed to know.
He dragged long, tanned fingers through his hair, his expression just a little bad-tempered and terminally, broodingly sexy. “How would I know why?” he growled. “Men don’t know that stuff. It ended, like it always does.”
She blinked at his statement that his relationships always ended. For reasons she didn’t want to go into, there was something profoundly depressing in that thought.
She stared at his wide mouth and the fuller bottom lip, which was decorated with a small, jagged scar. She couldn’t remember the scar being there six years ago. It suggested he had since been involved in a fight.
Probably a brawl on one of his construction sites.
Against all good sense, the heady tension she had so far failed to defuse tightened another notch. Feeling, as she was, unsettled by memories of the past, distinctly vulnerable and on edge from the blast of Nick’s potent sexuality, it was not a good idea to imagine Nick Messena in warrior mode.
She dragged her gaze from his mouth and the vivid memory of what it had felt like to be kissed by Nick. “Maybe you go about things in the wrong way?”
He stared at her, transfixed. “How, exactly, should I ‘go about’ things?”
She took a deep breath and tried to ignore the piercing power of his gaze. “Conversation is not a bad starter.” That had been something that had been distinctly lacking in their night together.
“I talk.”
The gravelly irritation in his voice, the way his gaze lingered on her mouth, made her suddenly intensely aware that he, too, was remembering that night.
She could feel her cheeks warming all over again that she had actually offered Nick advice about improving his relationships. Advice had so far failed to be her forte, despite the psychology classes she had passed.
The heat that rose off the sidewalk and floated in the air seemed to increase in intensity, opening up every pore. Perspiration trickled down the groove of her spine and between her breasts. She longed to shrug out of the overlarge jacket, but she would rather die of heatstroke than take off one item of clothing in Nick’s presence. “Women need more than sex. They need to be appreciated and...liked.”
They needed to be loved.
He glanced down the street as if he was looking for someone. “I like women.”
A muscular black four-wheel-drive vehicle braked to a halt in a restricted parking zone a few steps away; a horn blared. Nick lifted a hand at the driver. “That’s my Jeep. If you want, I can give you a ride.”
The words, the unconscious innuendo, sent another small, sensual dart through her. Climb into a vehicle with tinted windows with Nick Messena? Never again. “I don’t need a ride.”
His mouth quirked. “Just like you don’t need my apartment or, I’m guessing, anything else I’ve got to offer.”
Reaching out a finger, he gently relocated her glasses, which had once again slipped, back onto the bridge of her nose. “Why do you wear these things?”
She blinked at the small, intimate gesture. “You know I’m shortsighted.”
“You should get contacts.”
“Why?” But the moment she asked the question she realized what had prompted the suggestion. Fiery outrage poured through her. “So I can get a man?”
He frowned. “That wasn’t what I meant, but last I heard there’s nothing wrong with that...yet.”
Her chin jerked up another notch. “I’m curious, what else should I change? My clothes? My shoes? How about my hair?”
“Don’t change the shoes,” he said on a soft growl. “Your hair is fine. It’s gorgeous.” He touched a loose strand with one finger. “I just don’t like whatever it is you do with it.”
Elena tried not to respond to the ripple of sensation that flowed out from that small touch, or to love it that he thought her hair was gorgeous. It would take more than a bit of judicious flattery to change the fact that she was hurt—and now more than a little bit mad. “It’s called a French pleat.” She drew a swift breath. “What else is wrong?”
He muttered something short and indistinct that she didn’t quite catch. “There’s no point asking me this stuff. I’m not exactly an expert.”
“Meaning that I need expert help.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “How did we get onto this? It’s starting to remind me of a conversation with my sisters. And before you say it, no, I can categorically say I have never thought of you as a sister.”
His gaze, as it once again dropped to her mouth, carried the same fascinated gleam she had noticed in Cutler’s office. Her breath stopped in her throat at the heart-pounding thought that he was actually considering kissing her. Despite all of her deficiencies.
A horn blast from a delivery vehicle that wanted the restricted parking place jerked her attention away from the tough line of Nick’s jaw.
A split second later the passenger door of the Jeep popped open. Nick ignored the waiting vehicle. “Damn, I did hurt you,” he said softly.
Elena tried to suppress a small stab of panic that, after six years of stoically burying the past, she had clearly lost control to the point that she had revealed her vulnerability to Nick.
Pinning a bright smile on her face, she attempted to smooth out the moment by checking her watch, as if she was in a hurry. “It was a blind date. Everyone knows they never turn out.”
“It