Untamed Billionaires: Marriage: For Business or Pleasure? / Getting Red-Hot with the Rogue / One Night with the Rebel Billionaire. Элли Блейк

shook his head, looking proud of the fact as she struggled to keep her gaze averted from those boxers and the lean, muscled legs beneath them. Sheesh, he looked good enough to eat—and she definitely wouldn’t go there!

      ‘Too hot. Besides, you should be grateful. I usually sleep nude.’

      That shut her up as she closed her eyes and prayed for a miracle.

      Her slumber-party theory wasn’t working, not with Nick standing there in his underwear. His very sexy underwear.

      ‘Trying to imagine what I’d look like, huh? Well, if you open your eyes, I can give you a demo—’

      ‘No!’ she yelled, her eyes flying open against her will in the faint hope he’d go through with his threat. ‘Just get under the damn sheets and keep your underwear on.’

      ‘Your loss.’

      He had the audacity to shrug out of his T, toss it on a chair and slide in next to her, sending a dazzling smile in the process. Cocky, brash and totally shameless.

      The next ten hours were going to be hell. Or heaven, depending how she looked at it, and right now, with an amazing expanse of broad, tanned chest on display, heaven seemed uncomfortably closer to the mark. ‘’Night, Red. Pleasant dreams.’

      As if.

      Pleasant would be the last word she’d use to describe what she knew would be an erotic kaleidoscope of images that would plague her all night long.

      She turned off the lamp, grateful she couldn’t see him any more. Not that she needed to. The image of Nick standing next to the bed wearing nothing but those black boxers and a smile would be a memory to treasure for years to come.

      ‘Can I ask you something?’

      She sighed and rolled over to face him, her eyes adjusting to the darkness slowly and just able to make out his reclining form at a safe distance across the bed.

      Though were a few feet really safe? This was Nick Mancini she was sharing a bed with, the Nick Mancini she’d loved as a teenager and missed for years.

      ‘You will anyway, so go ahead.’

      ‘Why did you run away?’

      ‘I didn’t.’

      The defensive words popped out before she thought about it, an instant response to a subject she’d rather avoid.

      ‘Yeah, you did.’

      His whisper floated on the darkness, a mixture of accusation and regret, and she wondered how he’d felt at the time.

      When she’d first arrived in London, she’d been too busy coping with her own hurt to think about anything else. The people she loved in her life kept hurting her: her dad, then Nick, and she’d struggled to hold together while trying to build a new life.

      Part of her coping strategy had been to paint Nick in a bad light: he wasn’t worthy of her; he didn’t care; he wasn’t capable of emotions.

      But what if she’d been wrong?

      What if he had cared and there was another reason behind his refusal to accompany her? After all, she’d hidden her real reason for fleeing.

      ‘I just needed a new start.’

      Which was partially true. She just couldn’t tell him the reason behind her desperate yearning for a new start.

      ‘But why London? You hung around Brisbane for a month before you left—you could’ve stayed there. Even Sydney or Melbourne at a pinch, places where we could’ve kept in contact, tried to maintain a re…’ He trailed off and she resisted the urge to sit bolt upright and flick the light on.

      Had she heard right? Was he saying they could’ve had a relationship if she hadn’t wanted to get as far away from her father as possible?

      ‘Maintain a what?’ she prompted, eager to hear the words but almost wishing he wouldn’t say them.

      What was the point of bringing all this up now? She couldn’t change the past, couldn’t change what she’d done, and knowing she could’ve had a future with Nick even outside Jacaranda would hurt her all over again.

      ‘A really strong friendship,’ he finished, and disappointment pierced her.

      So what? Wasn’t that better than hearing he might’ve loved her back then as much as she’d loved him?

      ‘I know I acted like a jerk before you left, I know we had our share of troubles, but we were really good friends. I missed that after you left.’

      Wow, he’d missed her. And actually admitted it!

      Time to lighten the mood before she lost her head completely, blurted out the truth and sought comfort in his strong arms.

      ‘Aw, shucks. I didn’t think you cared.’

      ‘I cared.’

      His two little words hung in the growing silence between them, laden with untold truths and forgotten dreams. ‘But, hey, life happens.’

      This time, he broke the tension with a forced chuckle. ‘We’ve both come a long way. And however many times I tied your hair to a chair or put frogs in your bag, I still care. Goodnight.’

      Nick’s admission filled her with a slow, delicious warmth that seeped through her body, leaving her cocooned in a delightful haze.

      How could she maintain her immunity when he said stuff like that? Better yet, did she want to?

      ‘Don’t let the bed bugs bite,’ she murmured, snuggling under the sheets and closing her eyes, hoping for sleep and knowing it was useless.

      She had too much to think about, starting with her reawakening feelings for a man best left in her past.

       CHAPTER NINE

      NICK stirred some time around midnight, his dreamless sleep disturbed by a puff of air somewhere in the vicinity of his ear lobe.

      His eyelids cranked open a fraction, half-heartedly investigating the source of air, only to snap open as he registered a luscious woman draped over his upper torso, her arm flung proprietorially across his chest and a leg nudging the vicinity of his boxers.

      Not just any woman.

      Britt.

      His wife.

      Whom he wanted to make love to something fierce.

      Considering the chaste way they’d fallen asleep he should gently slip out from under her and try not to wake her.

      But his good intentions evaporated when she snuggled closer, her knee edging towards a fast-growing hard-on, and he froze, gritting his teeth to stop from groaning out loud.

      He could play the gentleman, but where would be the fun in that? Britt had always called him her bad boy and, while a small part of him had thought she only hung around him because she was tempted to slum it for a while, he’d liked the reputation.

      And it had grown, fuelled by idle gossip of small-town inhabitants and the fact he smoked, rode a motorbike and lived in denim.

      He’d heard the rumours, from his fictitious tattoo of skull-and-crossbones on his butt to riding bare-chested all the way to Sydney.

      He’d laughed, silently appalled at how reputations could be made or broken by hearsay. Considering he’d been working his ass off trying to make the plantation stay afloat at the time, he hadn’t much cared.

      Another puff of air, another small moan in her sleep had him easing away before he did something she’d regret. Make no mistake, she’d been about to give him the ‘don’t think you can seduce me’ talk last night before he’d cut her off. As if he wouldn’t have got the message from seeing her in that libido-killing