Читать книгу Addicted to Nick - Bronwyn Jameson - Страница 8

Nick didn’t know what coming home should feel like, but he figured something ought to register on the nostalgia scale. Nothing major, mind you, just a touch of the warm and fuzzies. Hell, even a twinge of bitterness would be better than the emotional numbness that seemed to have settled over him during the long flight from JFK to Australia.

He hated the lack of feeling. It reminded him too keenly of the first time he’d stood in this drive gazing up at Joe Corelli’s mansion, except that time he had deliberately schooled his eight-year-old heart to blankness. He hadn’t wanted to feel anything—not fear or confusion, shame or hope—so he’d simply looked at the big house and wondered how long till someone realized they’d made a serious mistake.

Kids like Niccolo Corelli got arrested for being anywhere near houses like this.

But the stranger who introduced himself as some relative of his dead mother had looped a comforting arm around his shoulders and said, “This is your home, Niccolo. Forget what came before—you’re part of my family now.”

Part of a family.

Nick hadn’t a clue what that meant, and, despite Joe’s best efforts, he’d never been allowed to forget his origins.

He stared a while longer at the big house and felt nothing. Maybe he just needed sleep. Ten hours, uninterrupted, between sheets. Yeah, that was exactly what his jet-lagged body and emotion-lagged mind needed, although they weren’t getting horizontal yet. With a barely stifled yawn, he unfolded himself from the hire car and stretched his limbs. Then, as he turned toward the house, he caught a flicker of movement at an upstairs window.

Big Brother George watching from on high.

Just like that first time, Nick thought, although today he raised a casual hand in acknowledgment instead of the single-finger salute of fourteen years before. The curtain shifted back into place, and Nick puffed out a derisive laugh. Idly he scanned the ground-floor windows and wondered who else might be watching.

How many of the four women who had grown up as his sisters waited inside the thick stucco walls? Sophie, no doubt. At the faintest whiff of trouble, Sophie always came running. She was the one who dobbed to her mother the first time he bloodied George’s nose…and to her father the last time. It was Sophie who eavesdropped on the heated argument between her parents before Joe brought him here, and who spread the phrase “dirty whore’s brat.”

Yeah, he would bet money on Sophie turning up—if George had bothered to let his sisters know he was coming. His adoptive brother’s communication record was something less than stellar.

He slammed the car door on that thought, but as he strode up the drive, he could feel the tension in his jaw and a stiffness in his muscles that had nothing to do with jet lag. He didn’t want to be here—not here in Melbourne, nor at the country stables he had reportedly inherited.

Reportedly.

Wasn’t it just like George to play petty games with the facts and to ensure that the solicitor handling Joe’s estate played along, too? Nick blew out an exasperated breath. As soon as he learned the full story and slapped a For Sale sign on Yarra Park, he was gone.

This time for good.