JUST ONE MORE NIGHT Read Free Page A

thought she had fallen for him six years ago, dropped into a pool of silence that seemed to expand and spread around them, blotting out the street noise. She dragged her gaze from the taut planes of his cheekbones, the inky crescents of his lashes. “Are you referring to the accident, or the fact that you were already involved with someone else called Tiffany? ” A girlfriend he’d apparently had stashed away in Dubai.
    Nick frowned. “The relationship with Tiffany was already ending.”
    Elena found herself staring at the V of bronzed flesh bared by the pale peach T-shirt Nick was wearing beneath his black jacket. Peach. It was a feminine color, but on Nick the color looked sexy and hot, emphasizing the tough, stubbled line of his jaw and the cool gleam of his eyes. “I read about Tiffany in an article that was published a whole month later.”
    She would never forget because the statement that Nick Messena and his gorgeous model girlfriend were in love had finally convinced her that a relationship with him had never been viable.
    “You shouldn’t believe anything printed in a tabloid. We broke up as soon as I got back to Dubai.”
    Elena ruthlessly suppressed the sudden, wild, improbable notion that Nick had ended his relationship with Tiffany because of her.
    That was the kind of flawed thinking that had seen her climbing into bed with him in the first place. “That still didn’t make it all right to sleep with me when you had no intention of ever following up.”
    A hint of color rimmed Nick’s cheekbones. “No, it didn’t. If you’ll recall, I did apologize.”
    Her jaw tightened. As if it had all been a gigantic mistake. “So why, exactly, did you finish with Tiffany?”
    She shouldn’t have the slightest interest. Nick Messena meant nothing to her—absolutely nothing—but suddenly she desperately needed to know.
    He dragged long, tanned fingers through his hair, his expression just a little bad-tempered and terminally, broodingly sexy. “How would I know why?” he growled. “Men don’t know that stuff. It ended, like it always does.”
    She blinked at his statement that his relationships always ended. For reasons she didn’t want to go into, there was something profoundly depressing in that thought.
    She stared at his wide mouth and the fuller bottom lip, which was decorated with a small, jagged scar. She couldn’t remember the scar being there six years ago. It suggested he had since been involved in a fight.
    Probably a brawl on one of his construction sites.
    Against all good sense, the heady tension she had so far failed to defuse tightened another notch. Feeling, as she was, unsettled by memories of the past, distinctly vulnerable and on edge from the blast of Nick’s potent sexuality, it was not a good idea to imagine Nick Messena in warrior mode.
    She dragged her gaze from his mouth and the vivid memory of what it had felt like to be kissed by Nick. “Maybe you go about things in the wrong way?”
    He stared at her, transfixed. “How, exactly, should I ‘go about’ things?”
    She took a deep breath and tried to ignore the piercing power of his gaze. “Conversation is not a bad starter.” That had been something that had been distinctly lacking in their night together.
    “I talk.”
    The gravelly irritation in his voice, the way his gaze lingered on her mouth, made her suddenly intensely aware that he, too, was remembering that night.
    She could feel her cheeks warming all over again that she had actually offered Nick advice about improving his relationships. Advice had so far failed to be her forte, despite the psychology classes she had passed.
    The heat that rose off the sidewalk and floated in the air seemed to increase in intensity, opening up every pore. Perspiration trickled down the groove of her spine and between her breasts. She longed to shrug out of the overlarge jacket, but she would rather die of heatstroke than take off one item of clothing in Nick’s presence.