He wore the most painfully supercilious smirk. “I’m willing to forgive your debts to gain your cooperation,” he levied.
“My debts?” she repeated laughingly. “A few months of credit card bills?” She and her mother had been in worse shape dozens of times. “We’re in dire straits, love. Be a good girl and dance us out.” Appearance fees were a sordid last resort, but Rowan wasn’t above it. “You’ll have to do better than that,” she said coldly.
He leaned a well-muscled arm on the refrigerator. His laconic stance and wide chest, so unashamedly male, made her mouth go dry.
“Name your price, then.”
His confidence was as compelling as his physique, and all the more aggravating because she didn’t possess any immunity to it. She wanted to put a crack in his composure.
“Rosedale,” she tossed out. It was a defiant challenge, but earnest want crept into her tone. This was her home. This was where Olief would return … if he could.
“Rosedale?” Nic repeated.
His frigid stare gave her a shiver of apprehension before she reminded herself she was being crass because he was.
She tensed her sooty lashes into protective slits as she held his intimidating gaze. “Why not?” she challenged. “You don’t want it.”
“Not true. I don’t like the house,” he corrected, shifting his big body into an uncompromising stance, shoulders pinned back, arms folded in refusal. “The location is perfect, though. I intend to tear down this monstrosity as soon as it’s emptied and build something that suits me better. So, no, you may not have Rosedale.”
“Tear it down?” The words hissed in her throat like the steam off the kettle. “Why would you even threaten such a thing? Just to hurt me?”
“Hurt you?” He frowned briefly. Any hint of softening was dismissed in a blink. “Don’t try to manipulate me with your acts of melodrama, Rowan. No, I’m not doing anything to you. You’re not on my radar enough for me to be that personal.”
Of course not. And she shouldn’t let him so far into her psyche that she was scorched by that. But there he was, making her burn with humiliation and hurt.
“Unlike you, I don’t play games,” he continued. “That wasn’t a threat. It’s the truth. The house is completely impractical. If I’m going to live here I want open rooms, more access to the outdoors, fewer stairs.”
“Then don’t live here!”
“Athens has been my base most of my life. It’s a short helicopter or boat trip from here to there. The island’s vineyard is profitable in its own right, which I’m sure is the real reason you want your hands on the place, but I’m not going to hand you a property worth multi-millions because your mother slept her way into having a ridiculous house built on it. What I will do is allow you to take whatever Cassandra left here—if you do it in a timely manner.”
Rowan could only stare into his emotionless blue eyes. His gall left her speechless. Her mind could barely comprehend all he was saying. Rosedale gone? Pick over her mother’s things like she was snatching bargains at a yard sale? Give up hope?
A stabbing pain drove through her, spreading an ache like poison across her chest and lifting a sting into her throat and behind her eyes.
“I don’t want things, Nic. I want my home and my family!”
She was going to cry, and it was the last thing she could bear to do in front of this glacier-veined man. It was more like her to go toe-to-toe than run from a fight, but for the second time in half an hour she had to walk out on him.
After hiking the length of the island in heels, her feet refused a visit to all her favored haunts, so Rowan went as far as the sandy shoreline and kicked off her boots. The water was higher than she’d ever seen it, but she usually only swam in summer, rarely came to the beach in winter, and she hadn’t been looking at the water when she’d followed Nic down here two years ago.
Wincing, she turned her mind from that debacle—only to become conscious of how grim a place the beach was to visit since her mother and Olief had likely drowned somewhere out there in the Mediterranean. One year ago.
She was starting to hate this time of year.
Starting up the beach, she tried to escape the hitch of guilt catching in her, not wanting to dwell on how she’d asked them to come for her when she’d broken her leg. She hadn’t been able to go to them—not physically and, more significantly, because she had feared running into Nic.
Oh, that hateful man! She hated him all the more for having a point. He wasn’t right, but she had to acknowledge he wasn’t completely wrong. She hadn’t expected to find her mother and Olief in residence, but she’d wanted to feel close to them as she faced the anniversary of their disappearance and accepted what he’d come out and said: it was very unlikely they would ever come back and tell her what to do.