Cassie was tempted to take off her one workable shoe and make a neat hole in the center of Nick’s forehead with its knife-sharp heel. Instead, she nodded toward the car. “The keys are in the ignition.”
Nick opened the car door and slid behind the wheel, then motioned for Cassie to step away from the car. He pulled the Lexus forward a few feet, then backed it up, and as if by magic, drove it safely up on the graveled shoulder beside the highway.
Cassie waited until he opened the door and got out before she hobbled in his direction doing a perfect imitation of a peg-legged pirate with a sawed-off wooden leg.
“Thanks,” she mumbled, choking on the word.
“Hey, what are neighbors for?” Nick teased, but Cassie refused to look at him again.
When he remained leaning against the driver’s side door blocking her escape, Cassie made a dramatic production of looking at her watch. “Look, it’s getting really late, and…”
“I owe you an apology for what I said in front of Evelyn Van Arbor,” Nick interrupted. “I couldn’t care less what those idiots think about me, but I shouldn’t have put you in that position.”
Cassie slowly raised her eyes to meet his, deciding she was much safer in his presence when he was being rude and nasty. “Well, there’s nothing you can do about it now.”
“For what it’s worth, I did try,” Nick told her. “I went back inside to explain the situation to the old bat, but she was too busy giving an Academy Award performance for anyone who was willing to listen.”
Caught off guard by his sudden show of sincerity, Cassie managed a tiny smile. “Careful, Mr. Hardin, your bad-boy image is losing out to those fine Georgian manners of yours.”
Nick instantly raised an eyebrow. “Why, counselor, if I didn’t know better I’d think you’d been checking up on me.”
Trapped by her own smart remark, Cassie felt the heat penetrate her cheeks again. “Don’t flatter yourself,” she sputtered. “It’s no big secret that you moved here from Atlanta. I simply read in the paper that you…”
Nick interrupted Cassie’s explanation when he reached out and pulled her to him. She did a little hip-hop dance across the ground when he dragged her into his arms. After kissing her so thoroughly that the cloud walk she was doing didn’t require the aid of both shoes, he opened the car door and guided her safely into the driver’s seat.
Leaning down, he whispered close to her ear, “Now, this is the part where you say ‘Follow me home, Nick, so we can finish what we started earlier on the veranda.”’
Outraged that the oaf would have the audacity to think she would hop into bed with him the minute he crooked his little finger, Cassie pushed him backward, then promptly slammed her car door shut. “No, this is the part where I say ‘You’ll come closer to being served Popsicles in hell than you will to finding me in your bed, Nick Hardin!”’
Cassie tore off down the highway while Nick blew her a sweet little kiss.
NICK WAS STILL CHUCKLING to himself as he walked back to his classic ’57 Corvette, which he kept covered in the garage except for special occasions. Feeling the lower half of his body stir at the thought of how good the angry Cassandra had felt in his arms, Nick removed his tux jacket and noticed it still held the faint sent of her expensive perfume. Tossing his jacket on the passenger’s seat, he slid behind the wheel, trying to remember when he’d ever been so taken with a woman.
He couldn’t.
Cassandra Collins had entered his life like a menacing whirlwind, and since the day he found her standing by his swimming pool, everything about her confused his thoughts and made him doubt what he thought were his deepest beliefs. He’d only attended the fund-raiser in the hope of seeing her again, though he had expected her to be on the arm of the stuffy senatorial candidate she’d been dating. To find out she was no longer involved with anyone both pleased him and bothered him that it did.
Nick certainly hadn’t been prepared for their collision on the veranda earlier. In fact, he couldn’t even remember pulling her to him—only that he had. And once her voluptuous body was pressed against his own, nothing else seemed to matter.
For one brief moment, Nick had actually felt complete.
But is this spitfire attorney typical wife and mother material? Nick kept asking himself as he drove along the highway. Not a chance. She was, after all, twenty-eight and still single, which led him to believe that her career came first in her life. She would probably even be the type of woman who refused to damage her perfect figure in order to give him the children he so desperately wanted.
No, Nick already had an image of the type of woman he wanted for a mate. She would be down-to-earth, fun-loving, warm and giving. And she would love him beyond all reason, always placing him first in her life, preferring to raise a family instead of having a career. Even if he had preferred the social, career-oriented type, everything about the sassy attorney’s actions told Nick she wasn’t interested.
Or was she?
Despite her silly protests, Nick hadn’t missed the wanton look his kisses had produced in those blue-green eyes of hers. Or how visibly shaken she’d been when she finally managed to get control of herself and push him away. As different as they were, Nick knew Miss Uptight Socialite couldn’t deny the electricity that existed between them any more than he could. He only hoped Cassandra Collins would continue to keep her distance if they were forced to deal with the dog issue.
Heaven knew he wouldn’t have any control over his actions if fate kept throwing them together.
Nick passed the street address he remembered from the notes he’d taken on the feisty female and caught a glimpse of taillights turning into a driveway. He was tempted to follow her home and try his luck again, but this woman had a strange power over him Nick couldn’t fully explain.
She’d even invaded his thoughts to the point that Nick was afraid he was developing a conscience. Rarely, if ever, had he apologized to anyone for his brusque behavior. Yet, he’d apologized to her without a second thought. And the fact that he’d apologized so easily scared him more than he cared to admit.
Turning into his driveway, Nick punched the remote button for his garage door opener, then guided the Corvette into the safety of the garage. Grabbing his tux jacket from the seat beside him, he brought the jacket close to his face and took another deep whiff of her intoxicating perfume.
And then he laughed.
Despite the havoc the woman was currently wreaking on his emotions, Nick couldn’t help but enjoy the mental picture that kept flashing through his mind of the captivating Miss Collins running naked through a fiery ring of hellfire and brimstone to hand him the multiflavored Popsicle she held in her outstretched hand.
4
CASSIE LEANED CLOSE to the blurred ultrasound screen, thinking that the squiggly image on the monitor was probably what her brain looked like on this particular Saturday morning. She hadn’t slept well at all, waking several times after having extremely erotic dreams involving the man who was responsible for getting her into this mess in the first place.
“Bingo,” Dee Bishop chirped as she moved a tubelike instrument across Duchess’s furry stomach.
“Please tell me you’re referring to a parlor game, and not a name for a puppy,” Cassie gasped.
“Sorry, old girl, but it looks like you’re going to be Auntie Cassie after all,” Dee assured her.
“Look again,” Cassie demanded. “You’ve made a mistake.”
Dee shook her head adamantly. Using the mouse on the computer to draw a circle around a small mass Cassie thought resembled a bowl of Jell-O, she pointed to the vague object.