He picked up the phone and called her home number again.
“You’ve reached the Pearce household…”
Nicole satin the tiny pantry off the kitchen that had been converted into a home office. She stared at the words on-screen, listening to the phone ring. Again. The housekeeper had strict instructions to let the answering machine pick up. From the suspicious look thrown Nicole’s way, Manuela clearly thought it was someone Nicole owed money to. Not that there weren’t plenty of those.
The answering machine clicked, went through its little spiel about them not being home then clicked again.Nicole, a deep voice said.Pick up?—
She switched the whole thing off then pulled the plug from the wall. Sam had graduated from the tentative messages at the beginning of the morning, with lots ofpleases, to a peremptory tone.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow she’d go into the office, ring his bell and talk to him, adult to adult. Not today. Oh God, no, she couldn’t face him today. Not on no sleep and after the most intense sexual experience of her life, which had left her so shaken and off-balance.
Just listening to his deep voice leaving messages had made her stomach muscles clench, her thighs quiver. And worse.
Nicole had shared a dorm room once with a funny, smart girl from Seattle who had a crazy, wild sex life. She cut a swathe through the university, basically going to bed with everyone with the right plumbing. When a man particularly attracted her, she’d whisper to Nicole, “Whoa, that guy makes mecream.”
Nicole hadn’t really understood until now. Now she knew exactly what Sharon had been talking about.
Listening to Sam’s voice loosened a wave of moisture in her sex that was embarrassing. As if her body were preparing itself for him to walk through her door and fling her on the couch. Just from listening to the man leave a damned message on her answering machine!
She stared at her screen, incomprehensible words swimming in front of her. A report of the board of directors’ meeting of a Luxembourg bank. Something she could do with her eyes closed, though not, apparently, while blasted by leftover lust from the night before.
She blew out an impatient breath. The report was due tomorrow and she was only halfway through it. They were paying her very good money, more than the market rate. If she wanted the bank as a customer, she had to deliver that translation by tomorrow.
She forced herself to sit up straight, concentrate. She reread the paragraph for the millionth time and finally started typing, forcing herself to focus on the translation and not on Sam Reston.
“Darling?” The quavering voice cut through Nicole’s attention. She sighed and rose from her workstation.
“Coming, Pops,” she called. This was one of the reasons she couldn’t work from home. He called her a thousand times a day. Though there was a housekeeper on call and though a registered nurse stopped by twice a day, if Nicole was around, Nicholas Pearce wanted his daughter.
Nicole knew why. Manuela was an excellent cook, kept the house gleaming and wore a perpetual smile, but she didn’t know how to handle her father. Once, she’d insisted on helping him get up and he’d fallen to the floor.
The nurse who stopped by twice a day was super-efficient but had never cracked a smile in her life. Certainly never in Nicole’s presence.
Nicole had learned how to physically care for her father. She never let him fall, she knew exactly which muscles were sore and how to massage them, she could dress him smoothly and quickly. She also took care to smile, to be upbeat, no matter how hard it was.
The downside of that was that when she was home, Nicholas wanted her, and only her, by his side. Nicole understood completely. If she could have afforded to, she would have dedicated herself exclusively to her father in the last waning months of his life.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t afford to do that. The oncologist had mentioned a brand-new, incredibly expensive treatment that wouldn’t cure but could possibly halt the progression of the disease. Nicole had enrolled her father in the experimental protocol and was waiting for him to be called up.
The new drug cost almost $1,500 a month and the protocol called for a three-month cycle.
Wordsmith was doing well, even in the downturn. She was gaining new customers by the week. She was growing, earning more each month. But the expenses went up each month, too, in a horrible spiral.
Her father was in his wheelchair in the living room, a big book open on his lap. His head lifted when he saw her and he smiled. “Ah, darling, there you are. The light seems to have dimmed, could you open the curtains a little more?”
Her step and her smile faltered. There was plenty of light in the room.
The doctors had told her that Nicholas Pearce’s brain was “peppered” with tumors, bilaterally. Too many to count. And one was pressing down on an optic nerve. At times his eyesight dimmed, sometimes dramatically. It terrorized him.
Nicole opened the drapes wide and switched on a floor lamp, angling the light over his lap, hand on his shoulder so he’d feel her touch.
“That better, Dad?”
“Oh, yes, darling. Thank you.” He reached up and placed his hand on hers. “You’re so good to me.”
The one thing left to him was his voice—deep, strong, steady. Tears pricked her eyes. She squeezed his shoulder lightly and opened her mouth to ask how he was getting on in reading through the definitive history of medieval Japan, when the doorbell rang.
Frowning, Nicole went out into the hallway to the front door. Through the side windows she could see a police car parked in front of her house.
