No Longer Forbidden(40)

“I said no.” He walked out.

Nic kept his distance for the next several days. If Rowan had lazed around underfoot he might have given her a piece of his mind, but she was actually doing as he’d told her to. She’d made a few trips to the other side of the island to fetch empty boxes. Garment bags had appeared with labels and markers. Every day, when she wasn’t leaving him a meal downstairs, she spent hours packing up the master bedroom.

If she had come to him he might have engaged, but he would not go looking for her. He was too proud. So proud it made his shoulders ache with hollow pressure. But the way she’d taken everything he’d told her and thrown it back in his face had been a blow. It was a perfect example of why he didn’t let people in. He didn’t want anyone to have the power to hurt him. If that meant he didn’t get the closeness—the sex and laughter and moments of basking in the light of a woman’s smile—so be it. Those were things he refused to crave anyway.

And if he had a curious tingling in his chest, almost like he was missing her—well, that was pure stupidity. She was right down the hall.

Or was she? He thought he heard a knock and clicked off his shaver.

“Nic?” She was in his lounge. Grabbing a towel off the rail, he hitched it around his hips and pulled the bathroom door inward.

Rowan was halfway around the sofa, heading toward the double doors that led into his bedroom. She started when he revealed himself, visibly taken aback to find him so close and fresh from the shower, but what did she expect at six-thirty in the morning?

She was in a short robe belted loosely over a torturously short babydoll nightgown. Her warm sleep scent, like almonds and tea, teased his nostrils. Despite going months without a woman on many occasions, he suddenly and acutely felt this recent abstinence.

A flustered blush colored her cheeks and she took a half step back, then held her ground within his reach even though he could tell she was discomfited.

Desire pulsed through him with increasing punches from his strengthening heart rate, reacting to her tousled hair and fresh-from-bed look. He wanted to heave her over his shoulder and carry her to his unmade sheets, but alongside his immediate lust was a pang of surprise at how exhausted she looked. Her eyes were green gems in bruised sockets, her skin thin and pale.

He wasn’t exactly sleeping well himself. Every day was a fight to incapacitate his sex drive with punishing workouts. Every night he woke to erotic dreams anyway, heavy and aching to go to her.

Funny how there was no satisfaction in knowing she was suffering too. He shifted his weight so his feet were braced wide, hopeful that his uncontrollable response to her wouldn’t become obvious.

“Yes?” he demanded.

She swallowed and ran a hand through her hair, reminding him how silky and thick it was, how good it had felt to grasp a handful of the luscious waves and kiss her until neither of them could breathe.

Her breath sucked in and she said in a rush, “I just heard the ferry horn. It’s coming now. I totally forgot they change the schedule on weekdays.”

His sex thoughts dissipated under something that made him pull inward with apprehension—even though he didn’t know why a change in the ferry schedule was such a crisis she had to burst in here, wringing her hands over it. “So?”

“That means I have to pack and leave now, unless you’re coming and want to make other arrangements to get us to the city by two.”

His brain stalled on pack and leave. The rest penetrated more slowly and didn’t make a lick of sense. “What?”

Rowan folded her arms across her chest in a move that was so defensive he instinctively knew he didn’t want to be enlightened. She spoke with exaggerated patience that annoyed him further.

“I thought I would have more time to reason with you, but I’ve just realized I don’t. I have to go now. Unless you’re willing to have the helicopter come and get us in a few hours? In that case we have all kinds of time to fight.”

“About …?” He tensed right down to the arches of his bare feet.

Her mouth pursed before she took a brave breath and stated, “The service.”





CHAPTER NINE


“WHAT? Service?”

The way Nic chomped the words made Rowan tremble internally, but it was far too late to back down. She’d known as she set this up that the worst part would be now, when she told him—and there had been a lot of hard parts, not least of which had been finding the money. She’d put off telling him as long as she could, avoiding him, checking that he couldn’t overhear her calls. All the way along she’d known she’d need to set aside patience and temper to make him see she was doing the right thing.