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He can feel me without touching me. I can feel him without touching him. I think back to my past, to the relationship that gave me the hard limits—a turbulent, addictive, completely-wrong-for-me relationship. Was it like this and I just can’t remember? I don’t think so, and yet itwaspassionate. Itwasintense. But it wasn’t this. And yet this isn’t romance. It’s sex. I mean, my God, we almost had sex in the bathroom. So, what makes Nick Rogers different? And I still can’t get past that sense of something darker than just our passion between us, that battle of friend versus enemy that should have scared me away. Earlier today, it would have.
Headlights now burn behind me, telling me that I am out of time, with no answers, and I accept this is how it must be, unless I plan to go panty-less and unsatisfied, which I don’t. I quickly turn on my car. Or I try. The engine clicks but doesn’t come to life. I try again. “No,” I whisper. “No. No. No.” The lights flickered when I unlocked the door. The battery isn’t dead. I try again with the same result. The headlights behind me shift, and Nick pulls in beside me. I try the ignition again, but the car doesn’t start. There’s a knock on my window, and I sigh, caving to my inevitable circumstances.
I open my door, and Nick rounds it, once again, squatting beside me. “Has this ever happened before?”
“No,” I say, “but I hate to admit this, because it’s completely irresponsible, which is not whoI am, but I can’t remember the last time I took it in for maintenance. And it’s a BMW. They’re high maintenance.”
“Yes, they are,” he says, and to my surprise he doesn’t make me feel more stupid than I already feel. “But they handle the San Francisco hills and the Sonoma cuts and curves like no other car. We’ll get it towed and fixed in the morning. Let’s take my car.”
In the morning.
The inference being that he’s not planning on leaving tonight, but that rattles me far less than him feeling me without touching me. But right now, I need to deal with my car. “Yes,” I say. “That works.” I rotate to get out of the car, and he snags my fingers, and then my waist, to help me stand, and suddenly I’m flush against him, his hands at my waist.
And while moments before he’d held me captive with words, with the idea of touching him, now it’s the way he feels when he touches me. The way I can’t breathe unless he’s breathing with me when we’re this close. “I’m going to go inside and tell them we’re leaving your car,” he says, warmth in his voice.
“There you go being polite again,” I accuse.
“I guess my mother raised me right after all,” he says, stroking a wayward strand of hair from my forehead, and not only do I barely contain a shiver, I barely contain my desire to ask a question about his mother, which he doesn’t give me time to ask anyway. “Come,” he says—or, rather, orders, which I’ve decided is as natural to him as that need for control we just talked about, and I don’t mind. It’s actually sexy when done at the right time and place by a man who knows that time and place, which is preferably while naked. And we’re both already mentally undressed.
In a few steps and moments, I’m sliding inside his BMW, its soft cream-colored leather encasing me while that earthy scent of the man himself surrounds me. “I’ll be right back,” Nick says, shutting the door, and I inhale that alluring scent of him again and pull my seat belt into place, the sound of soft music stirring curiosity in me. Turning up the volume, I find it’s classical music that I know well. Somehow, it fits Nick.
The driver’s door opens, and he joins me, and I swear the man has this energy that consumes the very air around him. And me. He consumes me. Suddenly, the car is smaller, more intimate, and I am warmer, my heart beating faster. “That was fast,” I say.
“A guard just showed up and made that easy on me,” he explains. “He’s letting Katie know the situation.” He reaches for the gear shift but pauses, seeming to listen or think before casting me a sideways look. “You found my music, I hear.”
“I did,” I say. “‘Symphony No. 5’. I know it well. It suits you.”
“Don’t let that fool you,” he says, starting the engine and backing out of the parking spot before placing us in gear. “I’d just as easily have Kid Rock or Keith Urban on the radio. It depends on my mood and where my head is at the time.”
“And tonight it was classical. Why?” I ask, casting him a curious look.
“It’s a work state of mind,” he says. “When I’m prepping for court, opening and closing statements in particular, words distract me, but music helps me set the tone in my mind.”
“Are you working on opening or closing statements now?”
“Actually, in this case,” he says, driving us through the narrow path connecting the gallery to the winery, “it’s deposition prep for next week. If you do them right—and I do—you convince the enemy that you’re going to win in court, and they make a deal out of court.”
“There is that word again,” I say, my gaze scanning the Wickermans’ castle as we turn toward the exit.
“What word?” Nick asks, pulling us onto the highway.
“Enemy,” I say. “I don’t like it, but I guess for you, that’s not a word but a rule of life. You always have a new enemy, right?”
“In most cases,” he says, “I have opponents.”
“You said enemy.”
“In this case, enemy applies. I used to work with the opposing counsel back in L.A. We cochaired an insider trader case for one of the biggest clients in the firm.”
“And what happened to make him an enemy?”
“I like to win,” he says, “but I do it the right way. With my brains. He likes to win as well. By playing dirty.”
“And you never play dirty? They do say you’ll rip someone’s throat out if they cross you.”
“If someone hires me to do a job, my job is to win. Not to feel sorry for the person coming after my client, or even the person aligned with the person coming after my client. My client needs to know that if he or she is with me, he or she is protected.”
“And what if the witness is pulled into the case without wanting to be pulled into the case?” I ask. “Are you still that coldhearted to that witness?”
