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  His words cut off abruptly when he saw her standing against the door. Their glances connected and she felt the same warmth cascade through her bloodstream that she felt every time she saw him. As he became aware of her presence, it was as if a metamorphosis occurred within him; his aggressive stance relaxed as the anger slowly receded from his body and his features softened.

  They stood across the room and studied each other in silence. Courtney was the first to speak and she did so tentatively, “You don’t want me to go away to school?”

  He let out a long sigh and said very gently, “I didn’t say that. I was talking about Florida.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “How much did you hear?” he asked with a frown.

  “A lot. I probably shouldn’t have listened, but I did.” His eyes grew stormy at her answer and she asked, “You don’t want me to be happy?”

  His lips twisted and his shoulders sagged. “The only thing I want is for you to be happy.”

  Watching him imploringly, she said, “I want to go to Florida, Nick. Please let me go.”

  His body jerked as if he’d taken a hit. “Sweetheart, you’re so young.” He shook his head slowly as if actually debating it but knowing it wasn’t a good idea. “You’ve been too sheltered.”

  She shook her head, disagreeing with him about being too young, but unable to speak.

  “You don’t think you’ve been sheltered?” he asked.

  Oh yes, she knew she’d been sheltered. If she hadn’t been, she wouldn’t be standing here now, imagining herself in love with him, while he only saw her as a burden, albeit one that he worried about. But she couldn’t tell him those things. “I’ll be okay. I’m smart, you know I am,” she argued her case softly, somehow knowing that she had to make her tone of voice exactly right with him. “I’ll make good choices and stay out of trouble. You won’t have to worry about me.”

  As he listened to her, he remained silent, but his expression looked as if her words were paining him.

  “Please, Nick. I’ll study, I’ll make good grades, and I’ll … I’ll pay you back.”

  His eyes narrowed. “This isn’t about the money. It has nothing to do with the money.”

  She felt a shiver of response from the look in his eyes as his gaze held hers and all she could manage was a whispered, “Please.”

  He stared at her intently, as if he were being torn in two. He turned, paced a few steps away, and then abruptly faced her again. “Do you promise, do you swear to God, that you’ll be careful?”

  Holding her breath in anticipation, she nodded her head.

  “Do you promise that you’ll call me if you need anything? Do you promise you’ll call me even if you do mess up and get into trouble?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  His features turned to stone. “Do you promise that you won’t mess up and get into trouble?”

  She smiled and nodded her head and his look became more serious than she’d ever seen it. He took a deep breath and asked, “Do you promise you’ll come home after you graduate?”

  The oxygen hitched in her lungs as she swallowed. “I promise.”

  He stared straight at her but Courtney felt as if he were talking to himself. “I ought to be shot��” he’d mumbled.

  Courtney began to resurface from the memory of four years ago. She remembered the excitement that had built within her at his words. “I can go?” she’d asked him.

  She’d never forget his sigh of defeat and the answer he’d seemed forced to make. “You can go.”

  The memory dissolved as she hung up another blouse. She shivered as she realized that she would be seeing him again soon, probably within a few hours. She tried to control the involuntary tremor in her legs at the knowledge.

  But it was impossible.

  Nick Rule had always made her tremble and he always would.

  Chapter Two

  Nick drummed his fingers on his desk with impatience.

  Courtney was up there alone. At the top of the building. In his penthouse.

  He knew she was because his mother had sailed into his office not long after Damian had left and hugged him, thanking him for letting them stay with him. She’d told him she was going to be gone all afternoon picking out flooring samples, and did he want her to pick up something for supper on the way back?

  He’d smiled distractedly and answered, ‘why not?’

  After she’d left his office, Nick stared blankly at his screen before he closed the windows on his computer and told his secretary that he’d be out. He waited as long as he could before he rode the elevator to the top of the building. During the ride up, he seethed with frustration. The hardest thing he’d ever done in his life had been to allow Courtney to go to school in Florida. It had been ten times harder than staying away from her while she’d lived in his mother’s house … fifty times harder … a hundred times harder.

  While she’d lived in his mother’s home and gone to community college, he’d been able to check up on her regularly. He’d been able to keep his eye on her, even if it meant dropping by to visit his mother way more often than he was comfortable with. Courtney had been right there, where he could study her eyes and try to pinpoint even the slightest change her emotions might have undergone. He could watch her, even if he couldn’t touch her. He’d found that not touching her, while pure agony, was something that he could live with, if only barely. After that one horrendous misstep he’d taken on her eighteenth birthday, he’d endured not touching her as he’d waited for her to grow up, waited for her to become less vulnerable with the passing of time.

  He’d struggled with his conscience the entire time. She was an orphan who lived in the family home for God’s sake; he should absolutely leave her alone. His family had embraced her as if she were one of their own, and why the hell couldn’t he feel the same?

  But that wasn’t the way he felt about her, it never had been. She wasn’t one of them.

  She wasn’t his sister. She wasn’t even his stepsister. She didn’t carry their last name and there wasn’t an ounce of shared blood between them. No matter how hard he tried to forget those facts, he couldn’t. He’d been intrigued by her since the moment she’d come to St. Louis, even though he didn’t understand exactly why. Certainly she’d been pretty, even as a teenager, even if it had been a quiet beauty that she herself didn’t seem to recognize.

  But it was her strong character, her fortitude that held his attention, at least at first. She’d been just a girl, and really, his emotions hadn’t turned into infatuation for months, maybe almost a year. But the second he’d realized her eighteenth birthday was right around the corner, his curious and sympathetic thoughts toward her had transformed into sexual thoughts. He’d gone from wanting to hold her in his arms and stroke her hair, to wanting to hold her underneath him and stroke her body.

  She became something he fervently wanted that he couldn’t have. It had made him feel like a sick fuck, but he’d never been able to shake his need for her. And the fact was, letting Courtney go to Florida had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. It was only supposed to have been for two years, but with graduate school, it had turned into four.

  But now she was back, and she was all grown up. She wouldn’t be as vulnerable anymore.

  And he was damned if he was ever going to let her leave again.

  He leaned against the wall of the elevator as it rose to the top of the building and tried to contain the turmoil roiling through his bloodstream, but it was impossible.

  Courtney was back. She was his.

  And in a few moments, she’d know that truth.

  ****

  Courtney began stacking her shoes in the built-in shelving unit at the back of the closet. As much as she tried to keep her mind focused on something productive, like preparing for her job interviews, she couldn’t keep her mind off Nick. If the argument he’d had with Damian before she’d left for Florida all those years ago had been bad, it still didn�
�t compare to how he’d acted during her four years away.

  When Courtney had left St. Louis, her initial plan was to only be gone the two years it would take to finish her bachelor’s degree. Justine had made the trip down with her in Courtney’s car, helping her drive part of the way. Her godmother had stayed for a couple of days, helping her settle into her off-campus apartment with her girlfriends, before flying back to Missouri.

  The first few months in Florida had flown by for Courtney. Settling into classes and familiarizing herself with the huge university was actually secondary; getting caught up with her girlfriends was the most important thing and it had been wonderful, amazing. It was exactly what Courtney had needed emotionally, and the last of her deep, soul-crushing grief had finally begun to recede.

  Although she was having fun at school and adjusting well, Courtney was surprised that she missed St. Louis so much. It confused her. How could she be homesick when she was finally home? But she didn’t feel like she was home; she was homesick. She and Justine had grown close over the years, the older woman becoming a second mother to her as well as a friend, and so they talked on the phone often. Justine had always been involved in Courtney’s life, and her godmother always asked about boys. And at the beginning of her time in Florida, at least, Courtney always told the other woman the truth. Sometimes there was something to tell, and sometimes there wasn’t.

  Several months in, Courtney had become fairly interested in a frat guy. The boy obviously didn’t compare to Nick, but Courtney had known she had to get over Nick Rule, to get over the way she felt about him. It had seemed to her at the time that although Nick was protective of her, he didn’t feel the same way about her that she felt about him. And the frat boy was more than interested in her, and he was smart and good-looking to boot.

  Looking back, in retrospect, Courtney knew she’d probably gushed about him a little too much to Justine, but she couldn’t have guessed what Nick’s reaction would be when he found out.

  He’d shown up on her doorstep within twenty-four hours. He’d flown almost a thousand miles across country, and shown up out of the blue. He’d had a ready excuse, something about checking out a piece of property not far away. He’d insisted on meeting not only her roommates, but also ‘the kid you told my mother about.’ Courtney had tried to argue about that, but Nick was inflexible.

  He’d gotten his way and met her new boyfriend. Courtney could still remember how Nick’s expression had frozen, how his muscles had grown rigid. All it had taken was a single ferocious look and a stern warning, and the boy had fled and never returned.

  Courtney had been beyond livid.

  But Nick had brushed off her anger as if it meant nothing and had taken her out to dinner where he’d grilled her for a couple of hours about her classes, her professors and her friends.

  After he’d gone back to Missouri, it had taken several weeks, but she’d slowly gotten over her anger and gotten on with her life again. It was amazing, looking back now, that she hadn’t recognized Nick’s jealousy for what it had been. But she hadn’t and her life had gone on. It took Courtney several more months before she found another guy who intrigued her enough to begin dating him.

  And when she had, the same cycle went into play. Courtney had told Justine, Nick had shown up unexpectedly and her newest boyfriend was dispatched posthaste.

  That was when she’d had her first doubts about everything she’d believed to be true about Nick when she’d left St. Louis. How could she not have doubts when he seemed prepared to fly halfway across the country just to get rid of her boyfriends?

  It had been confusing; it had been suspicious, because those were the only times she heard from him. But after several more months passed by, she began to think it had all been her imagination and that the probability of Nick having deeper feelings for her were next to nil. But just to be on the safe side, when she began dating someone new, she didn’t mention it to Justine.

  But the problem was, nobody could compare to Nick Rule. Not a single kiss could compare to the kiss that was so instilled in her memory that she could conjure it up day or night. Nobody could make her knees tremble and there was absolutely nobody who she cared enough about to make her part with her virginity.

  She wasn’t purposely saving it for Nick; she wasn’t.

  But whatever the reason, the outcome was the same. Her interest in dating became less and less as the months went by, so she put it on the back burner and threw herself into her studies and having fun with her friends.

  She began to love being a college student. She studied hard, partied harder and went to the beach whenever she could. She had the freedom to try things she’d never tried before. Tanning beds, thong underwear, shots of tequila.

  Life was suddenly fun again. Her parents became a sentimental memory always in her heart, but finally, life truly became fun again.

  Everything went great for a while, except that the few recent trips she’d made to St. Louis hadn’t been satisfactory to her. For one reason or another, when she went to visit, she and Nick were never at the house at the same time. And that bothered her. Was it by coincidence or his design?

  One evening in the middle of the week, she was studying for a test, but no matter how much she tried, she couldn’t seem to concentrate. By this time, she’d been in the second semester of her second year in Florida, close to graduating with her bachelor’s degree. So why was she suddenly homesick again? And then it dawned on her. She realized it had been almost a year since she’d seen Nick. And when she realized that, she began missing him. Missing him badly.

  Missing him so badly that she did a semi-evil thing.

  Okay, a really evil thing.

  She literally couldn’t drag her mind off Nick and of course, she thought back to when he’d flown to Florida to get rid of her boyfriends. Had the times he’d come to see her been just a coincidence or not? The more she deliberated the small amount of evidence at her disposal, the stronger the idea took root in her head again. Before long, she’d developed a hypothesis; he’d come to Florida for the express purpose of getting rid of her boyfriends, not to look at real estate, as he’d maintained. Crazy idea, maybe not so crazy, but the more she missed him, the more her reasoning seemed sound.

  That’s when she’d come up with the brilliant plan to test her hypothesis. Evil, for sure. Although she wasn’t dating anyone at the time, and hadn’t been for a long while, she did have several male friends and one of them was exceptionally brilliant and good-looking. Unable to stop herself, she’d picked up her cell and called Justine. They had a lovely, hour-long chat about everything under the sun.

  Nick had shown up on Friday after her last class.

  Her roommates had gone to Daytona Beach for the weekend, but Courtney hadn’t been feeling up to joining them because she’d been suffering from cramps earlier in the day. That evening, her cramps were mostly under control, thanks to three ibuprofen and a heating pad. She was on the couch watching television in her shortie pajamas when the doorbell had pealed.

  She’d glanced at the door and her heart had constricted and then started beating more rapidly. No way. It couldn’t be him.

  It couldn’t be true.

  Slowly, she’d stood to her feet and walked to her door, thanking the good Lord that even though she’d been feeling bad, she’d gone to class that day, because that meant that her hair was clean and she was still wearing make-up.

  She looked through the peephole and almost had a coronary.

  Damn. It had worked.

  And that had been the day her life had changed. That was the exact moment she’d known. She hadn’t known exactly what she’d known, but she’d known for a fact that Nick was attracted to her. She’d known in that instant, as she’d looked through the peephole, as he’d stood on her doorstep, irritation plastered across his face, that Nick was jealous and possessive and that he didn’t think of her as a little sister.

  She’d opened the door, forgetting all about her flimsy pajamas
, only trying to contain the violent beating of her heart. “Hey,” she’d said, trying for a look of pleasant surprise as her eyes drank him in, so happy to see him that she’d wanted to fling herself at him. Stunned beyond belief at her new understanding of him.

  Nick gave her no response; he made no attempt to embrace her. All she saw was six-feet-two inches of pissed-off male on her doorstep. He stood stock-still, his hands braced above his head on the doorframe. He wore extremely casual clothing, and his t-shirt was tight. It molded to his stomach, showing his washboard abs underneath. His biceps were pronounced as he flexed his hands, gripping the wood above him. “You going to let me in?” he asked, narrowing his eyes on her.

  Fighting butterflies and at a loss for words, stunned that Nick did have feelings for her after all, she nodded her head and pushed the door all the way opened.

  He walked inside and glanced around at the empty apartment with a suspicious glint. “Where are your friends?”

  “They went to the beach for the weekend,” she answered neutrally.

  He took another step forward and slammed the door shut, sliding the deadbolt into place with a resounding click. “Which beach?”

  Swallowing hard, her blood beating so quickly that her brain was spinning, she managed to answer, “Daytona.”

  “Why aren’t you with them?” he asked, leaning against the door and crossing one foot over the other in a falsely lazy fashion.

  Not wanting to blurt out that she would have been if she hadn’t had the cramps, she was silent for a moment too long.

  “Is it because you don’t have enough money?” he drawled in a tone that suggested he didn’t believe that was the real reason.

  Trying with all her might to follow the conversation because she was still so floored that he was actually standing here in her apartment, she mumbled, “No, I’ve got enough.”