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He let the suggestion hang, let her choose to answer it as she wanted.
She gave her flickering smile—the one that told him she was hovering between holding back and not holding back.
‘That sounds good,’ she answered. ‘A change from the hotel.’
He gunned the engine and they headed off, headlights cutting through the desert dusk that had turned to night by the time they drew up in the car park of a roadside diner.
It was a typical western diner, with a friendly, laid-back atmosphere and staff in the customary western outfits that went with the setting.
They ate at a table overlooking the desert, making themselves comfortable on the padded banquettes. Fran stuck to iced tea, but Nic had a beer, and they both ordered steak.
Hers was so massive she cut off a third, placing it on Nic’s plate. ‘You need to feed your muscles,’ she told him with a smile, refusing to let herself think that it was a strangely intimate gesture.
He laughed. ‘I’ll trade you my salad,’ he said, and pushed the bowl towards her.
‘Salad’s good for you!’ she protested, and pushed it back.
His hand was still on the bowl. Did her fingers brush against his hand? She didn’t know. Knew only that she pulled her hand away and that as she did so she felt it tingle, as though, maybe, she had made contact. Electrical contact...
She started to eat her steak. Made some remark about its tenderness. Any remark.
What am I doing?
The question framed itself. Rhetorical. Unnecessary. She knew what she was doing—knew perfectly well.
I’m on a date. Not official. Not announced. Not planned. But a date, all the same. We’ve watched the sun go down together, and now we’re eating together.
And what would they do next together?
She didn’t answer that one. Didn’t want to. Not yet. Not now.
Instead she asked a question—something about the desert. After all, he worked in this region—he must know more about it than she did. And, whatever Italian-American locality he came from originally, right now he was way more a native here than she was.
He answered the question readily, and all her other questions, but sometimes he shrugged and said he didn’t know. So they asked the diners at another table, obviously locals, who assumed they were tourists.
Fran did not enlighten them.
They also assumed they were a couple.
Fran did not enlighten them on that either.
Supposing we were.
The thought was in her head. Tantalising. Making her wonder. Speculate. Was that why she was sharing dinner with him now? Because she was accepting that she was willing to take things further between them?
But just how far?
She felt her mind thinking ahead. An affair? No, maybe not even that. A—a fling. That was more like it. Something out of the ordinary in her life...something that wouldn’t happen twice—because he was from a world different from her, as she was from him.
But that doesn’t matter.
Her eyes went to his face again, slid down over his strong, muscled body. The flicker of electricity came again—a kind of current flowing between them, strengthening, or so it seemed to her, with every circuit that it made. She didn’t know why...knew only that it was powerful and enticing.
Why not? Why not take this opportunity if it comes? I need to move on from Cesare. I need something...different. It would be good for me—mark a new chapter in my life.
Would Nic Rossi—so entirely different from any man she’d known before, so rawly, powerfully attractive to her—be it?
The question circled in her head. They’d finished eating—steaks demolished, side orders too—and now Nic was leaning back in his chair, letting his weight tilt it back, easing his broad shoulders. Relaxed, leonine, powerful.
Sexy as hell.
The phrase forced its way into her head. It was not one she’d ever used about a man. Not a phrase that had fitted any man she’d ever known. Not even Cesare. Her lips twisted. Cesare would have loathed any woman calling him that. Nic, she suspected, with another twist of her lips, but this time with humour in it, would simply take it as his due.
He knows he can pull. It’s in him, in every cell of his body. It’s part of him. It isn’t arrogance or conceit—it’s just... Well, it just is, that’s all. And he’d be glad I’m thinking it.
She didn’t need to spell it out. Didn’t need to think about it. Didn’t need to analyse it or wonder about it or speculate about it. All she needed to do right now was answer the question he was asking her as he picked up the menu, flicked it over to the dessert list.
‘Ice cream?’ he asked.
Fran smiled. That was one decision that was easy to make.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Definitely.’
* * *
They drove back to the hotel, the moon rising to the east, the night ablaze with stars. Nic had seen Fran glance upwards as they got back into the SUV and an idea had struck him. As they drove he gave voice to it.
‘Would you have any interest,’ he opened, glancing at her briefly, then back to the ink-dark road, ‘in maybe taking off to see the South-West Array tomorrow?’
She turned her head. ‘Could we do it in a day?’ she asked. Unconsciously, she had used the word ‘we’, and it registered a moment later. But she didn’t mind that she had. It seemed right that she had.
‘If we make an early start,’ Nic said. He paused. ‘So, how about it?’
‘Oh, yes!’ Fran answered, enthusiasm in her voice. ‘You know,’ she mused, ‘as a theoretical physicist I simply use the data that the observational physicists provide for me, to test my theories—but to actually see where they get that data is always a privilege. The South-West Array is only just coming on-stream—’
She fished in her bag for her phone, looked it up. Her face brightened.
‘Nic, could we? I can message them tonight, see if I can get in touch with one of the onsite guys tomorrow...’ She paused. ‘It might be boring for you, though,’ she warned.
Then she wondered whether she should have said that. Maybe this was just another tour laid on by the hotel, with her own personal chauffeur? But she didn’t think that—not now. Not any longer. Not after sharing steak and ice-cream at a roadside diner.
This isn’t about his job, or even mine. This is about us.
She felt the now familiar skip of her heart rate, telling her she was glad—glad that that was what it was about. Then she realised Nic was speaking again.
‘You can give me another physics tutorial on the way there,’ he said. ‘The elementary version, that is.’
There was a smile in his voice, and in hers as she answered. ‘Physics is usually simple—it’s just the maths that’s hard!’
He laughed, that low, gravelly sound that she was getting used to sending a little frisson through her—a frisson that she felt again as, gaining the hotel’s rear car park, he helped her step down, retaining her hand just a fraction longer than was necessary. Then he was opening a side door and they were heading down a deserted corridor towards the lobby.
As they did, a service door opened and someone emerged. He glanced at Nic as they headed past.
‘Evening, boss.’
Nic acknowledged him with a brief nod, and as the staff member passed by, Fran murmured, ‘Boss?’
‘He’s on my team,’ Nic answered smoothly.
They arrived at the elevators. Nic was glad that no other members of his staff were around, and without waiting to be invited he stepped inside the lift with her.
‘I’ll see you to your room,’ he said.
Fran made no demur, but suddenly, out of nowhere, she was supremely conscious of the confined space of the elevator, of Nic’s closeness to her, of her own heightened sense of the moment. Would he try and kiss her? She tensed, not knowing whether she wanted him to or not.
He made no move on her, however, just waited until she had opened her room door and was turning to bid him goodnight, finding it hard to take her eyes from him when she was this close to him.
His hand splayed against the doorjamb, enclosing her. ‘Thank you for tonight,’ he said. ‘It’s been good.’
There was a low note in his voice, a huskiness, and a smile—she could hear it, see the slight curve of his mouth, the dip of his long, long lashes over those blue, blue eyes. And then, while she was still gazing up at him, his mouth was lowering to hers.
It was a kiss like none she’d known. Slow, deliberate, and for one purpose only. To tell her what she could have if she chose to.
She gave herself to it, her eyelids fluttering closed, feeling her shoulders sag against the door, her hands slacken as her whole being became focussed on the sensation he was drawing from her.
It was like a kind of silken velvet, moving over her leisurely, tasting, exploring, taking his time. And then, without her even realising, he was deepening the kiss, easing her lips apart. Letting her taste, enjoy his tasting, enjoy what there was between them. What more there could be.
She felt arousal flare within her, more powerful than she had ever felt, more intense, more sensuous, and she yielded her willing mouth to his, feeling the pleasure of it until, it seemed like an age later, he was drawing back from her, gliding his mouth over her, skimming leisurely over her parted lips, a velvet withdrawal.
He lifted his head and her eyes fluttered open, looked into his gaze. So close...so very close to hers. She felt dazed, dizzy. He smiled, seeing her reaction to his kiss, liking it.
He stepped away, giving her a little space. ‘Goodnight, Doc Fran,’ he said, but there was intimacy in the way he said it. ‘Sleep well.’
She gave a reply, and then he was turning away, heading back down the corridor. She watched him reach the elevators. Felt dizziness inside her still.
Knew that whatever this man wanted of her she wanted it too.
* * *
Nic did not sleep well that night in the suite he’d reserved for himself at this, his latest multi-million-dollar acquisition. He lay sleepless, gazing at the shadowed ceiling, one arm crooked behind his head, feeling a mix of restlessness, satisfaction and anticipation.
Dio, but how he’d wanted to stay with her! That kiss had been like dipping his finger into a pot of honey to taste the sweetness, and it had told him she had found it just as pleasurable as he had. But it had also told him, just as every instinct since he’d first set eyes on her had told him, that she was not a woman to be hurried. She was no hedonistic party girl. She was a mature, highly intelligent woman, who would make her decision in her own time, in her own way, about indulging in a romance with him.
And if she did, as he burningly hoped she would, it would not be conducted here at the hotel. He liked it that to her he was not Nicolo Falcone, and if they stayed here it was bound to come out at some point. That encounter in the corridor had been a warning of that inevitability. No, better that they took off to somewhere he was not known, so that he was still simply Nic Rossi to her.
Nic Rossi—his birth name, abandoned so long ago, when he’d first set out to forge his glittering empire, echoed in his mind. It had been strange to use it again. As strange as remembering the way he’d revealed so much of his own deep feelings and his passionate beliefs to her in that very first conversation he’d had with her the previous night. His belief never to accept what life had dumped you with—to make someone new of yourself by effort and dedication and determination.
His thoughts moved on. Back to the familiar territory of his empire-building. He ran through his latest ambitions to launch a flagship hotel in Manhattan. It wouldn’t be easy, let alone cheap to achieve, but he’d do it in the end. He always did. Always. The determination to succeed in business never left him.
And to succeed on more pleasurable fronts too.
His thoughts went back to the breathtakingly beautiful, entrancing blonde, the oh-so-lovely Doc Fran, alone in her lonely bed—alone for one last night.
He smiled, anticipation filling him again.
* * *
‘Oh, wow!’ Fran breathed, her eyes widening at the sight appearing before them as the SUV gained the low brow of a hill, revealing what was beyond.
It was like something out of a sci-fi film—other-worldly—with a vast matrix of huge dish antennae, angled upwards to catch the faintest radio whisper of distant stars, each one set on rails for moving into precise position.
The whole place was perimeter-fenced, but they drove up to the visitor centre, where Fran identified herself as from her university and promptly got the attention of one of the technical staff to show them around.
Nic was as impressed as anyone would be by the engineering feats achieved, but understood scarcely a word of their erudite exchanges. He was content just to see how the animation in her face, the interest in her keen, intelligent eyes, only enhanced her beauty, her appeal to him.
As they finally left the array she was fulsome in her thanks. He gave her his slashing smile. ‘This morning was your treat—this afternoon is mine. But you’ll enjoy it, I promise you.’
She did, too—though she gasped breathlessly as Nic showed her just why it was his treat.
They drove on another forty miles or so to a reservoir lake with a water resort, where they lunched at a waterfront café. Then Nic led her out along the jetty and hired the leanest, meanest motorboat available.
And hit the accelerator.
Fran’s breath and speech were blown far behind her, her hair streaming, her hands clutching at the rails as the boat flew across the lake, the bow hitting the water’s surface as if it was concrete. Italian words broke from her—and she heard Nic laugh, realised he could understand her expletives, and her description of him as a certifiable maniac who would kill them both.
‘No way! You’re safe as a baby!’ he yelled at her, in the same language, his face alight with laughter.
He bombed across the width of the lake, slewing around in a huge arcing curve of water that caught the sun’s rays in a million rainbows before racing back towards the jetty again.
Within reach of it he slowed and turned to Fran. Her hair was a wild tangle, her eyes alight with laughter. Nic let his arm slide around her shoulder and pulled her against him.
‘Fun?’ he asked.
He didn’t really have to ask. It was visible in her face.
She let her head rest on his shoulder, feeling it strong beneath her cheek. ‘Most fun ever,’ she said.
‘Happy to please you,’ he said, and dropped a kiss on her forehead.
Such a slight gesture, such a slight tightening of his arm around her... They sat beside each other, his other hand on the wheel, guiding the boat lightly on the water as if he were Cesare on one of his thoroughbreds.
Fran’s eyes flickered slightly, and she wondered why, of all things, she was thinking of Cesare now.
Nic saw it, saw her expression change. ‘What is it?’ he asked quietly.
She looked at him, easing away a little, but not freeing herself. ‘I’m thinking of the man I nearly married,’ she said.
Nic stilled. It was impossible to think of her married, or even engaged—taken by another man. Not when he wanted her himself so much.
