he wasn’t immune to her physically, that was for sure. But what she wanted was the kind of feeling she had for him, the need to be with and comfort and give...
She stepped into her low-heeled beach sandals and barely paused to run a brush through her hair before she squared her shoulders and went into the sitting room. She hadn’t bothered with makeup, and she didn’t care. Cal wouldn’t notice. He’d probably send her home this morning, anyway, and she was half hoping he would.
It was nine o’clock, and she’d imagined that he was still in his staff meeting, but when she went out into the sitting room, he called to her from the balcony.
Her heart shifted nervously at his deep voice, but she walked calmly through the sliding door with none of her apprehension showing.
A lavish breakfast was spread out on the wrought iron table. Cal was buttering a biscuit over a plate dotted with eggs, sausage, ham and grits.
“I heard you stirring around, so I had breakfast sent up,” he said as nonchalantly as if nothing at all had happened last night. “Coffee’s in the pot. Help yourself.”
She sat down and automatically poured herself a cup, lacing it with cream and a spoonful of sugar. She took a piece of toast, but no eggs or meat, an omission he noticed immediately.
“Not eating won’t make it go away,” he said shortly. “We’re not going to talk about last night, now or ever. It didn’t happen. Eat your breakfast and we’ll go down to the aquarium and watch the dolphins perform.”
“I thought you came down here on business,” she murmured quietly.
“I did,” he growled. He looked up from his plate. “But right now I think I’d do anything to see the light back in your eyes again.”
“I just didn’t sleep very well,” she said.
He reached across the table and caught her hand in his, swallowing it in a warm, possessive clasp.
“Shall I be blunt?” he asked gently. “Nikki, what you feel is a mild case of infatuation.”
She went red from her hairline to her chin, but she met his eyes bravely. “I didn’t realize it showed,” she said unsteadily.
“I read you very well, Miss Blake,” he replied, and his voice was kind. “Nor am I blind. You aren’t old enough to build fences around your emotions to hide them. Especially with me. Nikki, you run to me, haven’t you ever noticed?” His face clouded. “I’m trying to be as gentle as I can, but I’m hurting, and I can’t help it. I want you to understand that it’s only the newness of it—I’m simply that, a new experience. Once that edge blunts down, we can be friends. But until it does, you’re going to have to keep from putting temptation in my path. I do want you very much, despite everything.”
She didn’t care about the dolphins, or sightseeing, or breakfast. Her blank eyes met his.
“If you don’t mind terribly,” she said in a ghost of her normal voice, “I think I’ll go home.”
His fork was halfway to his mouth. It never made it. He put it back down and leaned forward on his forearms with a heavy sigh, studying her with unnerving precision.
“I wanted you, too,” he said gruffly. “I still do. My God, I ache to my heels every time you walk around the room, but, Nikki...damn it!” He shot back the chair and got to his feet, jerking around to grasp the balcony rail and stare down at the crowded beach. “Nikki, you’re not ready for that kind of relationship with a man. Not yet, not with me. Men build houses for women like you. They sweat blood to make a decent living, and they look forward to children playing in a fenced-in yard out back somewhere. I’ve had that. But you haven’t. The way you live, where you live, is a world apart from mine. I like my women experienced and unemotional, because an affair is all I want to offer. But the kind of man you’ll marry one day isn’t going to want that kind of woman, and you know it. He’ll want something untouched. A vibrant, happy young woman with a sunny disposition and a body that she’ll give to him first, last and always.” He stared at his big hands on the railing and sighed. “Honestly, the thought of fathering another child terrifies me,” he said. It was in his voice, in those few words: the fear of caring deeply, the fear of