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She reached up and stroked her hands through his hair, her eyes moving over the handsome contours of his face, lingering on the sensual curve of his lips. As if reading her mind, he leaned closer against her and kissed her deeply. It was a kiss unlike anything that had come before; it was so sweetly passionate that it made her want to cry.
Nicholas held her tenderly for a moment, his hand stroking down over the long length of her spine. He’d taken a lot of women to bed over the years but this had been the most incredible experience. He’d never wanted someone so intensely before; she had driven him into almost a state of delirium. Even now, holding her close, breathing in the scent of her perfume, feeling the warmth of her sensational body, he was aware that he wanted her again.
He frowned. This wasn’t supposed to happen. He was supposed to leave her wanting more, not the other way around. Nicholas pulled away from her abruptly and reached for his clothes. He’d forgotten to use contraception, he realized suddenly—that had never happened to him before. It wasn’t even as if he had been unprepared—he had condoms in his trouser pocket. How could he have been so stupid?
She stretched languorously and the sensual movement made him remember exactly why he had got so carried away. ‘You’ve got a beautiful body,’ he murmured.
The coolness of his tone flayed her sensitive nerves and Cat was suddenly acutely aware of the fact that she was naked except for her stockings.
She watched as he raked a smoothing hand through his hair and stood up. His eyes flicked over her nakedness and instantly she felt herself burn with desire. She still wanted him! The shame of that fact was like a punch striking into her. She had hoped that once she had surrendered to him she would be free of this need—that she could shake his control over her senses. But if anything her reaction to him now felt worse! She knew the pleasure he could give her and it was like some mind-altering drug that she desperately needed.
‘You’ll find a dressing gown in the en suite,’ he told her nonchalantly. ‘Put it on and come through to the terrace. I’ll ring down for room service and we’ll have dinner.’
She didn’t want to eat! In fact she didn’t think she could eat! All she wanted to do was run away and hide. Unfortunately she wanted to hide from herself and her own feelings as much as from him, and that wasn’t so easy.
Cat was glad that he didn’t wait around for an answer. She watched as he strode through to the other room and then she fled for the sanctuary of the bathroom.
Ripping off her stockings, she turned on the shower and stood under its forceful jet, trying to scrub away the weak feelings that had invaded her.
Cat had always prided herself on being strong. Although the sham of her romance with Ryan had hurt her greatly, she had made herself face the reality and had brushed him away with stoicism. She had told herself that no man would ever get under her skin again—she was too sensible, too wary of the pitfalls for that. She had known that she was nothing like her father, but she had also convinced herself that she was nothing like her mother either.
The episodes from the past that in adulthood had taken on a horrible clarity had been alien to her.
Her mother crying alone in her room when her father had rung yet again to say he wouldn’t be home that evening.
‘It’s just because I miss him,’ she had told Cat brokenly when she had tried to comfort her. ‘I love him so very much.’
And when he did come home her mother had been so happy. She would spend ages getting ready for him, making herself beautiful.
Cat had never understood that. Why would an intelligent woman waste herself on a man who didn’t love her? In a way it had made her angry. It had driven her forward with her fierce determination to be independent. It was why she had always held herself back from emotional and physical commitment. It was why she’d had no difficulty finishing with Ryan and not looking back.
But now, as she wrestled with these feelings for Nicholas, she understood for the first time how her mother had felt and realized that maybe she wasn’t so different from her as she liked to pretend. And that scared her more than anything!
Cat squeezed her eyes tightly closed as tears threatened to fall. She couldn’t allow herself to be weak—she just couldn’t.
CHAPTER EIGHT
NICHOLAS paced up and down the terrace. Below him the majesty of Venice glittered in all its beauty, but he was blind to it. All he could think about was Cat and the way she had felt in his arms, the shuddering beauty of her body, the way she had looked at him with those mysterious and beautiful eyes.
His heart twisted. He had to stop thinking like this he told himself fiercely. Cat meant nothing—she was a McKenzie! Leaning against the stone balustrade of the building, he forced himself to remember exactly why he was doing this.
Nicholas’s parents had died when he was three and he had been brought up in an orphanage on mainland Greece. The regime of the institution had been strict; there had been no love, no maternal influence, just the rigour of schoolwork and the ethic that to get anything in this life you had to earn it. By the time he had reached the age of ten he had given up on ever having a family life. Nobody really wanted to adopt a ten-year-old.
Then Stella and John Zentenas had walked into his life. From the moment they had first met, something magical had happened; straight away it was as if he really did belong somewhere. The day they had adopted him and brought him back to their home in Crete had been the proudest day of his life.
Although Stella and John had no children of their own, they both had large extended families who all lived in the same village. Suddenly, from having no relatives, Nicholas had cousins by the score, aunts and uncles and grandparents. And they had all shown him remarkable kindness and love, had embraced him and absorbed him into the community.
He had vowed to himself back then that he would never let them down—that he would repay their kindness, make them proud.
When Nicholas was nineteen his father had become ill and he had taken over the reins of his publishing business—a business that up until then had been struggling. Nicholas had always had a natural aptitude for figures—he had a shrewd brain and the Midas touch. Within a year profits had doubled, enabling him to buy his parents a new home with every convenience for his father’s disabilities. Within two years the business had been worth a small fortune. He had advised his father it was time to sell and John had gone along with him. It had meant a very comfortable retirement for his parents whilst Nicholas had reinvested in other businesses—namely hotels—and the money had just kept pouring in.
In his mid-twenties Nicholas had taken a calculated risk to expand his small chain of hotels. For a while finances had been tightly stretched and it was at that time that the ancient olive groves that surrounded his village had been under threat from developers.
His uncle had come to him, asking him to help. The person who owned the land needed to sell and a developer had already approached him with a substantial offer, but he had plans for a housing estate that would rip the heart out of the countryside. There was land at the far side of the groves that would be ideal for a small hotel—could Nicholas step in and develop the area with sensitivity, giving the owner the money he needed whilst safeguarding their idyllic surroundings for the heritage of the village?
If the request had come even three months down the line, Nicholas could have bought the land outright and gifted it to the village without any development, but bankers had tied his hands. To finance the purchase he’d needed a partner, and a business partner obviously wanted profit. Developing a small hotel as his uncle had suggested seemed the only option as it meant the surrounding area could be preserved.
A banking associate had introduced him to Carter McKenzie and a partnership had been drafted.
