LITMIR.BIZ

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them.

      The memories made her throat ache as she looked around.

      She walked around, touching things, recalling things. She ran her hand over the kitchen countertop and remembered standing on a chair helping her mother cut out cookies there. By the back door there were still the marks on the wall where her dad had marked her height and Ronan’s every few months. How small she’d been.

      She rubbed her thumb over the last, highest pencil mark and remembered how she used to stretch as tall as she could, and her dad would press his hand on the top of her head, laughing. “Stop that! You’re growing too fast already!”

      “You okay?” Nick appeared in the doorway, looking concerned.

      Edie mustered a smile. “Just remembering.” She gave the wall a little pat. “It’s been a long time. This was a good place. I was just remembering how good it was.”

      Nick nodded as if he understood.

      Maybe he did. She didn’t know that much about him. The trouble was, what she knew she liked. And seeing him here made things somehow even more difficult.

      When she’d had one night with him in a completely foreign setting, it was easier to tell herself she wasn’t really interested, that her awareness of him was a momentary aberration, that back in her own life, she wouldn’t really notice.

      But she did.

      He was opening the cupboards now, peering inside. And she allowed herself to study him because he wasn’t paying attention to her. She had run her fingers through that tousled hair. She’d nibbled her way along his stubbled jaw, then pulled off his tie and unbuttoned his shirt. Now, as he shut the cupboards and crouched down to look at the floor, she watched the muscles in his thighs bunch and flex beneath the worn denim covering his thighs and remembered that she had touched him there. And he had touched her, too.

      Not just her body—but something fundamental deep inside her. Something that she hadn’t managed to forget.

      “I have to go,” she said abruptly, her announcement rather louder than she intended. “I have work to do.”

      From where he was crouched on the floor studying the boards, Nick glanced up at her and nodded. “Yeah. Sure. Fine. Go ahead.” He sounded as if he’d already dismissed her from his mind.

      No doubt he had, Edie thought. She turned and hurried out of the house. “Come on, Roy,” she called to the dog who was nosing curiously around the edge of the porch.

      Roy looked at her, then back at the house, as if he expected Nick to join them.

      “He’s not coming,” Edie said, more for her own good than for the dog’s. “He’s here on business. And then he’s leaving.”

      She hoped.

      At least she thought that was what she hoped. He wasn’t here for her. He had awakened her, but he didn’t want her. He thought he was here for work, but it was really because Mona had been playing matchmaker again.

      Edie glanced at her watch. It was early yet in Thailand, but so what?

      If Mona thought she was going to get away with meddling in Edie’s life, she deserved an early wake-up call!

      He’d hadn’t made any promises.

      “I’ll take a look at the adobe,” Nick had told Mona on the phone last week. “You don’t want to throw money down the drain. If it isn’t a good candidate for restoration, I’ll tell you.”

      “Fine. Good. Whatever you think,” Mona had said. “You can stay at my place. There’s plenty of room.”

      “I’ll do that,” he’d said. “But it might not be worth it.”

      “Understood.” Mona had sounded impatient. “Got to go. We’re shooting now. Discuss it with Edie. She can show you around. You remember Edie.”

      He remembered Edie.

      She hadn’t changed a bit.

      Her utilitarian ponytail hardly recalled the sophisticated upswept hairstyle she’d worn to the wedding. And her casual canvas pants and open-neck pink shirt might mask the curves the purple dress had highlighted.

      But Nick was willing to bet that, unloosed, her hair would cascade down her back in those wondrously silken waves. Just as he knew damned well that underneath whatever Edie Daley wore, he would still find her petal-soft skin and the womanly secrets he’d only once had a chance to explore.

      “Hell,” he muttered, scowling toward the door she’d walked out of moments before.

      Hell—because she was just as appealing as she had been back in Mont Chamion. He’d hoped she wouldn’t be. That was why he’d been at pains to make sure Mona understood he might not stick around.

      Maybe the house wouldn’t be worth working on—or maybe he’d take one look at Edie Daley and decide that their one night in Mont Chamion was the extent of her appeal.

      No such luck.

      Now he stood in the shadows of the window and watched her until she was out of sight.

      She was still wearing the baseball cap, with her hair pulled back into a ponytail and poking out through the space above the adjustable strap at the back of the hat. And she really didn’t have any noticeable curves. In fact, from the back he was disconcerted to discover that she could probably pass for a tall, slender twelve-year-old girl.

      So why, for two and a half months, had he not been able to get her out of his mind?

      Nick had never dwelt on the women he bedded. Had no interest in them beyond the night they spent together. They were fun and attractive and he had a good time with them. But as soon as they were gone, he moved on and never looked back.

      End of story.

      He couldn’t even have told you half their names. But he couldn’t forget hers: Edie Daley.

      Edie of the long dark curls and flashing green eyes, of the wide mobile mouth and the very kissable lips. Lithe and limber Edie. Eager and passionate Edie. Her spark, her charm, her curiosity, her vulnerability, all had haunted him every night, and plenty of days. Since he’d shared his bed with her.

      Two and a half months and he hadn’t been able to forget her. It was absurd.

      At first Nick thought the memories kept coming back because they’d spent the night in his bed. He had always made a point of never sharing his own bed with a woman.

      He didn’t bring them onto his turf.

      Hell, he didn’t even have turf. He didn’t own a house, didn’t rent a flat. He had no place to call his own. He’d sold the house he’d built for Amy as soon as he could after her death. He wanted nothing more to do with it.

      He left what little personal gear he didn’t carry with him at his uncle Socrates’s house on Long Island. And he stayed on the move, living in someone else’s house while he renovated it. It suited him perfectly. He had no reason to have a house.

      He had no wife. No kids. No dog nor cat. No encumbrances at all.

      He didn’t need them. Didn’t want them.

      And he didn’t want Edie Daley, either!

      Well, he did. Carnally, at least, Nick admitted, he wanted her a hell of a lot. But that was all.

      The desire was an itch he needed to scratch. So, he’d scratch it and it would be gone, and that would be that.

       Chapter Five

      “WHAT do you mean she’s gone?” Edie demanded.

      The Thai woman on the other end of the phone connection didn’t speak particularly good English, which gave Edie

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