Every cell in her body had stood to attention in his presence. He often seemed to be going to the office when everyone else in the building was knocking off for the day. She’d been intensely aware of his presence even when he was behind her, as if she were made of iron filings and he were the lodestone.
This morning, it was only paralyzing anxiety that had kept her from sensing him behind her. At all other times, she’d had a sixth sense for his presence.
At the time, she’d thought it was fear. Helookedso utterly frightening. Terrifying, actually.
She’d never seen male power like that up close before. His muscles were long and lean, not bulging, and looked as if they were used, and used hard instead of being for show, as most modern men’s muscles were nowadays. It was as if Sam Reston belonged to another race of man.
Tougher, stronger, faster, bigger.
A bell rang downstairs and Nicole started. Oh my God! It was seven and she still wasn’t dressed!
Luckily, Manuela would be there to open the door, since her father couldn’t. It saved Nicole from having to run down the stairs in bra and panties with no makeup on and still-drying fingernails. Wouldn’t that be a way to greet Mr. Sam Reston, former US Navy SEAL?
It wasn’t like her at all to run late for a date, but she’d been running late all day. She’d only made it back home half an hour ago, craving a long, cool shower, but her father had waylaid her when she got in. He was agitated about an article on the government’s response to the latest bombing in Indonesia.
Her father had spent three years as ambassador to Indonesia and was infinitely better informed than the hapless State Department mouthpieces or the hacks who covered the press conference on the bombing.
It was such a pity that his illness prevented him from sharing his experience and expertise. Nicole’s heart ached for him. He had been planning a rewarding retirement of lecturing, writing newspaper articles, starting up a diplomacy Substack. Finally finishing that book on the diplomacy of the Medici he’d been writing forever. The sudden onset of cancer had shot those plans down.
To Nicole, her father was the very embodiment of light and reason and goodness. The very best of humankind. She’d never seen him do or say a dishonorable thing. The world desperately needed men like him and yet his light would soon be snuffed out by illness. Even desperately ill, often in pain, he remained kind and considerate. Never complaining. It was breaking her heart.
Nicholas Pearce had always been her hero. Tall and handsome and smart and affectionate, the very best. A wonderful husband and father. She’d grown up feeling her family was blessed. Then they lost her mother in a car crash and now he had stage-four brain cancer, diagnosed a year ago.
That was when Nicole quit her job with the UN in Geneva to take care of him. It wasn’t easy, taking care of a severely ill man, but there was no question in her mind. He’d been a wonderful father to her all her life. Taking care of him in his time of need was a privilege.
However, having a very sick father wreaked havoc on her love life. One whiff of what she was dealing with, and a lot of men who’d been very interested in a date suddenly lost interest.
It was her little test. As her philosophy professor in college would have put it, being able to deal with her father was a necessary but not sufficient condition for her to think of hooking up with a man.
If the man in question could deal with her life and all its troubles, fine. They might just take it a step or two further. If not…good-bye. If you wanted her, she came with her father. They were a package deal.
She’d had a lot of good-byes before the relationship even started, and now that her father was deteriorating so rapidly, she wasn’t open to dating at all.
Not that tonight was adate, of course. It was a thank-you.
Blue, black, blue, black…
Blue, she finally decided. The periwinkle blue polished cotton sheath paired with a black linen jacket. After ten years of Swiss winters, San Diego’s mild climate never failed to delight her.
Makeup! My God, there was no way she could go down with a naked face.
She glanced at her watch and shuddered. Twenty minutes late, unheard of for her. Nicole dressed and made up in record time and started descending the stairs when she suddenly stopped, transfixed.
There was her father downstairs, facing her, sitting in the fabulous wheelchair she’d bought with part of her severance pay from the UN. It did everything but make coffee and sing. He had a celebratory finger of whiskey in a crystal glass on the occasional table at his elbow and Sam had his own glass of twenty-year-old Talisker. Guests were few and far between and her father rejoiced at visits.
Sam Reston was sitting across from her father—she couldn’t see his face but she could see his shoulders, so broad they over-shot the chair back—clad in an expensive midnight blue suit.
But what had her blocked at the top of the staircase, one foot up, one foot down on the first step, was the expression on her father’s face. He was…happy. He looked animated and there was color in his cheeks. His eyes—the color so like her own—sparkled. No doubt he’d been telling one of his wicked jokes.
She hadn’t told Sam Reston that she lived with her father and that her father was ill. She hadn’t told him anything, in fact. So when he came to the door expecting to find a woman to take out to dinner, he’d been confronted with a visibly very ill man. An ill man he’d made smile.
Sam Reston just kept on moving up the scale. Lowlife to security company owner to guy who made her father smile. That last attribute was the best one.
Her father’s gaze shifted and his smile broadened. “Hello, darling.”
“Hi, Pops.” Smiling at her father’s expression, she walked down the staircase. If he was happy, even for a fleeting moment, then so was she.
Sam turned in his seat and their eyes met.
