A waiter arrived at their table and proceeded to serve their drinks and her chocolate cake.
A timely distraction.
Nick couldn’t expect her to answer him until they were alone again. He sat back…waiting. Watching her and waiting. And Tess had the weird sense of him harnessing all his dynamic energy, ready to roll right over her reply and get what he wanted any way he could.
But for what purpose?
And why now?
CHAPTER FOUR
NICK wondered if he should dump the sexual approach. There was no doubting Tess’s shock. She hadn’t been expecting it and quite possibly was recoiling from it.
He’d read her provocative strut down the staircase as being aimed at him, a deliberate sexual stir, but maybe she’d simply been doing the female thing of putting on a show, doing it because she could, revelling in being the centre of admiring and amazed attention. Her six months in Hollywood with her mother might well have made this behaviour seem absolutely normal.
Problem was…he had been stirred by it.
Stirred into a highly vivid memory of how it had felt to have nothing between them except the heat of intense and passionate pleasure. Big mistake to ever get sexually involved with a highly useful business connection, he’d told himself, but the truth was…he’d felt himself shifting onto dangerous ground with Tessa Steele and his survival instincts had screamed at him to get out fast—get out and don’t revisit that scene. It raised too many ripples of consequence and he didn’t want to face any of them.
Now…well, marriage was something else.
And if he was going to have a child with Tess, consequences had to be faced.
He saw having great sex with her as a bonus, and a means of persuading her into considering marriage with him. There was no denying the chemistry between them could be explosive, given free rein. Seeing her dressed to kill tonight, he’d thought she was inviting him to revisit that scene, which could have provided a smooth path into a long intimate relationship with her.
It still could, Nick reasoned, if he played his cards right. He wanted the intimacy with her. In fact, he wanted it so badly the desire was surprisingly uncomfortable.
Tess was sitting very still while the waiter unloaded his tray, setting everything out correctly on the table. Still, silent, tense, her gaze fixed on the guy’s hands. Once the waiter had gone, she stared at the cake, finally picking up her fork and carving a slice of it, working the heavy chocolate mixture onto the silver prongs to lift it to her mouth. When it was arranged to her satisfaction, she lifted her gaze and directed a sharp blast of killer blue eyes right at him. It was a look designed to pin him to the wall and make him squirm.
‘This doesn’t make sense, Nick. Why would you suddenly fancy having another one night stand with me?’
‘The experience lives in my memory as one that bears repetition, Tess.’
Hot colour rushed into her cheeks but the laser burn of her eyes did not waver from his. ‘I thought you were committed to an easy come, easy go, mindset.’
‘Well, that is the most sensible attitude in today’s world of changing partners. Less grief all around.’
‘Then we should be gone as an item. Why come back for seconds?’
‘I don’t have a one night stand in mind, this time around.’
‘I think you’d better lay out what you do have in mind, Nick, because I am feeling distinctly lost on the road you’ve just taken.’
She shoved the chocolate cake into her mouth, leaving him to talk without any interruption from her. Her gaze was still trained on his face, eyes guarded, yet intensely watchful for every variation of expression from him.
‘If we had a much closer relationship, at least you’d know it had nothing to do with your money,’ he started slowly, feeling his way forward with careful respect for her feelings. ‘In fact, nothing would induce me to touch a cent of the Steele fortune.’
A derisive little laugh gurgled from her throat. ‘I thought that applied to me, too.’
He frowned, not understanding. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, after our unplanned…fling…you couldn’t drop me fast enough. Didn’t want to touch me again. It seemed to me you were appalled to find yourself in flagrante with Brian Steele’s daughter.’
‘You think I care who your father is?’ He was astounded she should think it, incensed at the idea that any judgement of her would be based on her parentage. ‘Fathers are totally irrelevant to me, Tess. We make our own lives, regardless of them.’
‘Irrelevant…’ she echoed, as though weighing that concept in her mind. She heaved a deep sigh and gestured with her fork for him to continue before digging it back into the mud cake. ‘Okay, I accept that my money is no attraction to you…and you tell me you don’t care who my father is, even though you once thought he was yours and got horribly rejected by him…’
‘That’s ancient history, Tess.’
‘Is it, Nick?’ She gave him an ironic look. ‘I’ve always thought we are the sum of our past. It’s all inside us, driving who and what we are. Take fathers, for instance. I happen to love mine…’
‘It’s fine that you do,’ he swiftly assured her. ‘I have no problem with Brian Steele. He had every right to deny I was his son. It was the truth. And I have no problem with you being his daughter.’
It rather amused him that his erstwhile father would end up his father-in-law if Tess married him, and Brian Steele wouldn’t be able to deny that their child was his grandchild.
She shook her head, took a deep breath and said, ‘Let me get this straight. The only reason that our one night stand was a one night stand for you was because we were doing business together on an ongoing basis, so it wasn’t a good idea to extend it into an affair, which might have made things messy between us. Is that right, Nick?’
‘Yes.’
Though the main reason had been the strong sense of falling down the same slavish pit his mother’s men fell into, losing control of themselves and their lives by giving in to her sexual power over them. Just one night with Tess had demonstrated how addictive she could be—experiencing the whole package of her—and Nick instinctively shied from ceding that control to any woman. However, if he could keep things reasonable, and Tess was a very reasonable woman…
‘But since my agency has done business with you…during my absence…for the past six months…’ she went on, building a line of logic, ‘…you’ve reappraised the situation and decided you can have a harmless little affair with me. Is that where we are now, Nick?’