Paladin's Woman

'I want you to leave.'

'Not until I explain what Dina was doing in my bedroom.'

'I don't care what she was doing, or what you were doing or if the two of you were doing something together.'

'Adamant about it, aren't you?' Nick grinned at her, taking in the way Addy McConnell looked first thing in the morning. With her long red hair hanging freely halfway down her back and her tall, slender body encased in a cute little blue cotton nightgown and matching robe, she looked about twelve years old. Her face, scrubbed clean of the light makeup she'd worn earlier, radiated with a healthy glow. Her skin was golden tinted, with only a smattering of freckles here and there. A few on her nose. A few more on her throat and arms. He wondered how many there were on the rest of her body.

'Daddy knows that Dina isn't as pure as the driven snow…'

'But my guess is that Rusty wouldn't be pleased to find out that his fiancee, the woman he's bedding, was in my room trying to seduce me.' Nick watched Addy closely.

'Was that what she was doing, seducing you?' Addy maintained a calm control over her voice, praying that the quivering she felt inside wouldn't manifest itself in her words.

'It's an old game between Dina and me. Has been for years. She tries to seduce me. I reject her. She likes to think she's tormenting me, that I have to call forth all my strength in order to resist her.' Not since that once, twenty-five years ago, when he'd succumbed to his brother's widow, had Nick ever given in to that specific temptation again. After he'd gone against his better judgment and made love to Dina, she'd told him she was going to marry another man. An older man. A more powerful man. A richer man. And he'd spent the rest of his life feeling guilty for bedding Miguel's widow, feeling as if he'd betrayed his brother. Oh, he'd been hot for her then, so hot he'd thought he'd die. But that fire had burned itself out a long time ago and he and Dina had somehow come through it as friends. Friends of a sort, that is.

'My father is very possessive. He wouldn't want to share her.'

'He doesn't have anything to worry about where I'm concerned, but he might want to do a nightly bed check in Windsor's room.' Nick didn't know it for a fact, but he was reasonably sure that Dina and her stepson had been lovers for years, between her marriages and perhaps even during them. He'd bet his last dime that Rusty McConnell wasn't aware of that little fact.

'What a hateful thing to imply!' Addy said. 'You're probably trying to place blame on Brett to save your own hide. After all, I didn't see Dina coming out of Brett's room, did I?'

'Jealous?' Nick moved toward her, slowly, deliberately, like an animal stalking his prey.

'Of you and Dina?' Addy laughed, the sound blatantly phony. 'Don't be ridiculous.'

Nick reached out, slipping his hand beneath her hair, circling her neck. She gulped in huge swallows of air. Her eyes widened in a mixture of shock and excitement. He pulled her closer. In her bare feet, she stood five inches shorter than he did. The perfect height for him.

'You don't like me very much, do you, Addy?' He touched the tip of his nose to hers, and smiled when he heard her indrawn breath.

'I … I don't know you.' Decently clothed in her gown and robe, Addy felt naked, bare to his gaze and touch. Vulnerable. Nick Romero made her feel vulnerable.

'I remind you of your daddy, don't I?' His breath mingled with hers as he lowered his head just a fraction. 'All the qualities you dislike in Rusty, you see in me.'

'He was right, wasn't he? The two of you are a lot alike.'

'Probably.' Nick watched her intently, amazed by his own desire for this tall, flat-chested redhead. 'It's obvious that you love your father, why is it that you don't like him?'

'I—I do like him. It's just that—that he's so damned macho and controlling. So overprotective because he loves me. He thinks because I'm his daughter, he should be able to protect me from everything and everyone. He— he smothers me, sometimes.'

'A man tends to be that way with the people he loves. His woman, his children, his family.' Nick tightened his hold on Addy's neck, forcing her head upward toward his until only inches separated them. He touched her bottom lip with the tip of his finger.

She knew he was going to kiss her. What she didn't know was whether or not she wanted him to. 'Why—why are you doing this?'

'Damned if I know,' he said, then took her mouth.

His kiss was gentle and seductive, a practiced perfection. Addy trembled, her own lips responding, surrendering to a power she'd never known, an enticement she was unable to resist. She sighed, longing for more. Placing his hand on her hip, he stroked her through her cotton gown as he deepened the kiss.

Addy eased her hands upward, twining them around his neck. The minute his tongue entered her mouth, he felt himself spiraling out of control. It had been a long time since he'd gotten aroused so quickly, so thoroughly. If he didn't stop things immediately, he'd be flinging her down on her bed and ripping off that little-girl gown she wore. He'd be finding out how many freckles she had on her body and exactly where they were located.

He broke away from her, releasing her, gently pulling her arms from around his neck. 'You're wearing a disguise, Addy McConnell. You wrap yourself up in your Plain-Jane clothes and pretend you're an iceberg, that you dislike sex.'

'It—it isn't a disguise.' Her words came out choppy, on quick, heated little breaths. Nick had kissed her more thoroughly than she'd ever been kissed in her life, and she was still reeling from the aftereffects. 'I am a Plain Jane who dislikes chest-beating Neanderthal men. And I am an iceberg. Just ask my ex-husband.'

Nick walked away from her, then turned when he reached the door. 'Why should I ask that bastard anything, when I got all the proof I needed, first hand, that you're hot as a firecracker?'

'I am not!'

Nick grinned. 'That was a compliment, Red. I like my women hot.'

'I am not one of your women.'

Nick opened the door, paused briefly, then looked back at Addy. 'But you will be.' Before she could reply, be walked out and closed the door behind him.

She stood, speechless, her mouth agape, her gaze focused on the door. A riot of emotions exploded inside her. Desire. Anger. Passion. Outrage. She wanted to hit something, preferably Nick Romero. 'Of all the overconfident, strutting peacocks! He's insufferable! If he thinks for one minute that—that…' Addy couldn't finish her sentence. Visions of Nick Romero's big body filled her mind. Nick, pressing down onto her, into her, his dark eyes devouring her as he took her. Addy shook her head, trying to erase her erotic thoughts.

In a few hours, after she'd pacified her father by having breakfast with him, she would go home. She had no intention of being around Nick Romero one minute longer than she had to. After today, she'd never have to see him again.

Chapter 3

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Addy had delayed going downstairs for breakfast as long as she possibly could. Her father had already sent Mrs. Hargett upstairs twice, the last time relaying a command that she join the others at once.

Glancing out the windows onto the front lawn of her father's estate, located about ten miles outside of Huntsville, Addy thought again how much the rich green lawns and towering old trees reminded her of her mother's ancestral estate where they'd lived until Madeline's death. Wanting to escape all the agonizing memories of his son's kidnapping and subsequent murder and his wife's suicide four years later, Rusty McConnell had taken Addy away, moved her into a sparkling new mansion, pure and untainted by any reminders of a past too painful to remember. She had missed Elm Hill, the vast acres of rolling pastures and thickly wooded forests. Even now, she dreamed of someday returning and living out the rest of her life in the house where five generations of Delacourts had been born and raised. Someday … when she had laid all her fears to rest.

Her mother and Janice's mother had been the last of the line, both women now dead, leaving only the two cousins as heirs to family pride and genteel breeding. And Elm Hill had stood vacant for twenty-five years, Janice having neither the desire nor the money to renovate the old place and Addy, with more than enough money, but not enough courage to fight the demons from her childhood.