Just One More Night. Fiona Brand
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had been a collector of all sorts of memorabilia. Elena had sorted through all the recent boxes, everything else she had opened lately was going back progressively in time.
There was a small, grim silence. “If you won’t consider my purchase offer, will you let me have a look through before you sell?”
Her jaw set. “I can’t see Aunt Katherine putting a valuable piece of jewelry in an attic.”
“My father noted in a diary that he had given the ring to Katherine. You haven’t found it anywhere else, which means it’s entirely probable that it’s in the house, somewhere.”
Elena loosened her grip on the small bouquet she was holding. Nick’s frustration that he wasn’t getting what he wanted was palpable. Against all the odds, she had to fight a knee-jerk impulse to cave and offer to help him.
Determinedly, she crushed the old overgenerous Elena: the doormat.
According to Giorgio her fatal weakness was that she liked to please men. The reason she had rushed around and done so much for her Atraeus bosses was that it satisfied her need to be needed. She was substituting pleasing powerful men for a genuine love relationship in which she was entitled to receive care and nurturing.
The discovery had been life altering. On the strength of it, she intended to quit her job as a PA, because she figured that the temptation to revert to her old habit of rushing to please would be so ingrained it would be hard to resist. Instead, she planned to branch out in a new, more creative direction. Now that she’d come this far, she couldn’t go back to being the old, downtrodden Elena.
Aware that Nick was waiting for an answer she crushed the impulse to say an outright yes. “I don’t think you’ll find anything, but since you’re so insistent, I’m willing for you to come and have a look through the house for yourself.”
“When? I’m flying out early tomorrow morning and I won’t be back for a month.”
In which time, if she accepted the offer she was considering, the villa could be sold. She frowned at the way Nick had neatly cornered her. “I suppose I could spare a couple of hours tonight. If I help you sort through the final trunks, one hour should do it.”
“Done.” Nick lifted a hand in brief acknowledgment of an elderly man Elena recognized as Mario Atraeus. Seated next to him was a gorgeous brunette, Eva Atraeus, Mario’s adopted daughter.
Elena’s hand tightened on Nick’s arm in a weird, instant reflex. Nick’s gaze clashed with hers. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She had just remembered a photograph she stumbled across a couple of months ago in a glossy women’s magazine of Nick partnering Eva at a charity function. They had looked perfect together. Nick with his strong masculine good looks, Eva, with her olive skin and tawny hair, looking like an exotic flower by his side.
The music swelled to a crescendo as Gabriel and Gemma, with Sanchia in tow, stopped to greet an elderly matriarch of the Messena clan instead of leaving the church.
Pressed forward by people behind, Elena found herself impelled onto the front steps of the church, into a shower of confetti and rice.
A dark-haired young man wearing a checked shirt loomed out of the waiting crowd. He lifted a large camera and began snapping them as if they were the married couple. Embarrassment clutched at Elena. It wasn’t the official photographer, which meant he was probably a journalist. “He’s making a mistake.”
Another wave of confetti had Nick tucking her in closer against his side. “A reporter making a mistake? It won’t be the first time.”
“Aren’t you worried?”
“Not particularly.”
A cluster of guests exiting the church jostled Elena, so that she found herself plastered against Nick’s chest.
“I said I wasn’t going to do this,” he muttered.
A split second later his head dipped and his mouth came down on hers.
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