Instinctively she squared her shoulders, stiffened her spine, armouring herself against his impact. Impossible to calm her heart. She half turned, enough to see him, watch him, while giving him the least possible target to fire at.
"What do you want?" Blunt words, but she didn't care. Why wait for his attack? Better to get it over with quickly.
He closed the door behind him, ensuring privacy. His face wore a grimly determined look, causing Nicole's stomach to contract in apprehension. The sense of his presence was now magnified a hundredfold. She forced her gaze to rake him from head to toe, as he had done to her at their last meeting, but there was no sexual intent behind the action, more a need to reduce him to just a body without the power behind his eyes.
Except it wasn't just a body. It had power, too.
And it struck her as hopelessly perverse that she could still feel attracted to it, everything that was female in her responding with treacherous excitement to the aggressive masculinity of his perfectly sculpted physique.
"I want to apologise."
The words wafted quietly across the room and slid soothingly into ears that were clogged by the clamouring of her heart. Nicole wondered if she had imagined them. She saw his hands lift in an open gesture of appeal, giving some credibility to what she'd heard. Her gaze lifted to his mouth, waiting for it to move, to say more, to mitigate the deep offence he'd given.
"I'm sorry I suggested you were not what you portrayed yourself to be. In part, I was influenced by a memory which coloured my judgment."
It was like pressing the trigger on a shotgun loaded with bitter pellets. "A memory!" she fired at him, her eyes meeting his in a raging blaze of feeling. "You didn't even stop to ask why I was there in New Orleans, doing what I was doing. You know nothing about me except..." Her teeth were bared in savage scorn. "... you happened to see me one night, leading a haunted history tour."
He winced.
She kept on blasting. "And for that you decide I'm little better than a whore, pulling tricks, fleecing people, using whatever sex appeal I have to get out of trouble..."
"I didn't say that," he whipped back, frowning at the vehemence of her attack.
"You thought it. And you had no right to think it, no reason to think it.
It was you...you...who took liberties with me. Touching and...and suggesting..." A tide of heat was rushing up her neck, flooding into her cheeks, making her wish she hadn't brought up any reminder of how he had mused over how well they might go in bed together.
He took a deep breath and calmly said, "I'm sorry if any action of mine made you feel uncomfortable."
"If...if?" His calmness incensed her. "You set out to do it. You know you did," she wildly accused. "Even in your office. Why didn't you just hand me back my hat instead of..."
"It wasn't deliberate. It was pure impulse." "I didn't invite it."
"No, you didn't." His mouth curved ironically. "Except by being an exceptionally attractive woman."
She shook her head not accepting this excuse. "It showed a lack of proper respect for me."
"Oh, come on, Nicole!" he chided, impatience with her argument slipping through the reins of his control. He started walking towards her, gesturing a mocking dismissal of her case against him. "You can hardly call putting your hat on your head and touching your cheek major violations.
You didn't protest. Didn't flinch away. In fact..."
"Well, please take note of my evasive action right now, Matt King," she flung at him, marching pointedly to the other side of the billiard table to put it between them. "I don't want you near me," she stated bitingly.
"Fine!" he snapped, having already halted. Black derision glittered from his eyes. "I'd have to give you full marks for the drama queen performance."
"So much for your apology!" she mocked.
"A pity you weren't gracious enough to accept it," he shot back at her.
Her chin tilted in defiant challenge. "What's it worth when you're still casting me in a false light and not admitting to any fault yourself?"
"I might have cast you in a false light, lady, but you helped me do it, floundering around as you did in the park."
"And before that? Your memory from New Orleans?"
"Yes," he admitted.
From no more than a superficial look at her.
While her memories...the sadness of them still gutted her... although she was glad she had them.
"And just what were you doing there ten years ago?" she asked, still fiercely resenting his interpretation of one brief view of her.
"Seeing some of the world before settling down to family business," he answered with a dismissive shrug.
A wild youthful spree. Totally carefree.
The contrast between them could not have been wider.
Emotion welled as she remembered the heavy weight of her responsibility that year. Impossible to keep it out of her voice. She looked directly at Matt King, wanting to nail home how very mistaken he was about her, but even he faded from her mind as she spoke, the memories sharpening, taking over.
"Well, I was on family business. My father was dying of cancer and his last wish was to go back to New Orleans. He was a jazz musician and to him it was his soul city. We had very little money but I took him there and got what work I could to help support us. Every night he sat in Preservation Hall, right across the street from Reverend Zombie's Voodoo Shop, where the haunted history tours started and ended. In case you don't know, Preservation Hall is revered by jazz musicians all around the world. It's where..."
"I know," he broke in. "I dropped in there one evening."
She stared at him, wondering if he'd seen or met her father, heard him perform. A lump rose in her throat. She had to swallow hard to make her voice work and even then it came out huskily.
"Some nights when my father wasn't too ill, he'd be invited to play the drums. He was a great jazz drummer."
"Ollie's Drum,'' he murmured. "You know? You heard him play?"
He shook his head. "I only know about the book you wrote."
"The book..." Tears blurred her eyes. "He was a genius on the drums.
Everybody said so. A legend. There were so many stories..." "Did he die over there?"
She nodded, trying to blink back the tears, but she could see the jazz bands playing in the streets behind the coffin and the tears kept gathering, building up.
"I'm sorry, Nicole. I really am sorry."
She nodded. The quiet voice sounded sincere. Though somehow it wasn't important anymore.
"Please...go," she choked out, not wanting to cry in front of him.
He hesitated a moment then gruffly said, "Believe me. You do have my respect."
Without pressing anything else he left the room, closing the door quickly to give her the privacy she needed. Her chest was so tight it felt like a dam about to burst. She felt her way around the billiard table, reached the chair in front of her desk and sagged onto it. She didn't see the plastic bag with the Kauri Pine Park logo this time. She wasn't seeing anything.
It was ten years since she had buried her father. It felt like yesterday.
And the loneliness of not having anyone to love, or anyone to love her, was overwhelming.