Million Dollar Mistake

serve her right, contrary female that she is. Hot one minute, cold the next. How
can a man cope? His temper rose to the top like boiling bubbles, but he put a lid
on it instead of exploding.
He cooled his voice. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought you might need some help.”
“I’m capable of looking after the horses all by myself.”
“I know but…” Raven blinked at his arched eyebrow. “Oh, okay, Margaret
started fussing and I couldn’t stand it. You’d think no one had ever gotten wet
before. She was near hysterics right before I went out the door.”
“So you ran away?”
“No, not exactly. I wasn’t needed. J.R. got there and took control.”
Nicholas pinned her with a look. “I see.”

---

“Don’t look at me like that. If you’d heard her, you would have left too.”
“How’s Lorianne?”
“She seems okay. Limping a bit and got a bump on the head, but fine
otherwise. So is Jackson. Except he looks pretty annoyed.”
“Serves him right,” Nicholas snarled. “He should have been more careful.”
“It was an accident.”
“We were damn lucky the sleigh had already slowed down or someone could
have gotten seriously hurt.”
“He didn’t mean to run into the marsh.”
Nicholas began to unhitch the horses. “No, he just wanted to stop the talk
about our wedding.”
“Make-believe wedding.”
He sent her a fierce stare. “It sure as hell is.”
She recoiled at the expression on his face, but then recovered. “A conversation
you started, remember?”
“What was I supposed to do with you flirting with him as if nothing had ever
happened?”
“I was not flirting.”
“What do you call it then?”
She lifted her chin. “I was trying to be nice.”
He slipped the bits from the horses’ mouths and began to remove the leather
traces from their harnesses. “Being nice is saying please and thank you. You
were saying ‘let’s start again’.”
“Well, so what if I was?” Raven fisted her hands on her hips. “Not that I was.
But if I was, it was my choice.”
Nicholas snorted as he finished unhitching the horses. “That sentence made
even less sense than the thought of you and Jackson.”
Angling her chin at him, Raven gave him her haughtiest expression. “Maybe I
was too hasty in my decision about him. Maybe I should have given him more of
a chance. See if he could grow on me.”
He glanced over his shoulder as he moved to the hooks to hang the leathers.
“Like a fungus?”
Raven’s lips twitched. “That makes him sound dependent and easily led. He
has more spine than that.”
“I’m sure he does,” Nicholas agreed in a smooth tone, “only not with you. The
poor guy is putty in your hands.”
“So?”
“So I thought we straightened this out before. How we were going to handle
things.”

---

“Our strategy, you mean?”
He grabbed the horses and began leading them down the barn with Raven
following on his heels. “That’s right.”
“You know, Nicholas, I don’t see why everything always has to be your way.”
“My way? When you got us into this mess with your reckless behavior?”
Raven lifted her chin. “Perhaps I’ve changed my mind about our pretend
engagement—about Jackson, about everything.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t allow that.” Nicholas found the stall labeled Oscar and
placed the horse inside, then continued to the next before urging Ophelia through
the door.
“You…you can’t allow that?” Raven sputtered. “What am I, six? Who are you
to tell me what I can and cannot do? I didn’t ask you to come up here, you
know.”
“But you were pretty damn glad when I showed up, weren’t you?”
“Maybe at the time, but now I’m having second thoughts.”
“No, you’re not. You’re having a tantrum and doing everything in your power
to wind me up too.” He turned toward her. “I don’t know what set you off
because when I left you in the conservatory, I could have sworn we’d come to
terms with the situation.”
“Oh yes, I remember how you ‘came to terms’ with it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She hunched a shoulder. “Nothing.”
“Oh yes, it did.”
“It’s not important.”
Nicholas could have sworn she looked hurt, but couldn’t figure out what
about. Even the most open of women were a complete mystery, but when he
tried to figure out a complex puzzle like Raven, it was almost hopeless, no
matter how much experience he’d had with women.
He studied her more closely, thinking back to discover what might have
happened to cause her mood, besides their usual picking at each other. The only
thing that jumped out at him was their kiss. That kiss had unnerved the hell out
of him. Had it unnerved her as well? Had she felt something? Had he? Or was it
just the natural male reaction to a sexy female?
Nicholas cleared his throat, suddenly not sure of what he wanted to say. He
closed the stall door and stepped toward her. “Uh, look, Raven.”
“Aren’t you going to groom them?”
“What?”
“You can’t just stick them in there and walk away.”
At her superior tone, he bristled. “Oh please—I do know what to do with a

---

horse.”
Raven sniffed. “Just like you know what to do with a woman, I suppose.”
“I can handle a woman”—he sent her a sidelong glance—”as long as she’s
reasonable.”
“Are you implying I’m not?”
“Did I use your name?”
“No, but I know—”
“No, you don’t. The things you don’t know are legendary.”
“I know you’re a bossy, opinionated—”
Nicholas shrugged. “Yeah, so you’ve said.”
“It bears repeating.”
He couldn’t help but grin at that. He stared at her for a moment, noticing her
lips were twitching with reluctant humor. “Point taken.”
“Good.”
Nicholas thrust a hand through his hair. “You know, Raven, I don’t know how
you do this to me. Every time I think I’m on the right track you switch me to
another one.”
“It’s good for you to be off balance.”
He stared at her, his eyes warming as his gaze skimmed her from the top of
her wild curly mane of hair to the neat snow boots. She looked delicious, her
cheeks flushed with cold and annoyance, her eyes bright and wary, and her
mouth… Good Christ, what could he say about her mouth except he wanted to
taste it again. He brushed her jaw with his knuckles, forcing her to look at him.
“With you, I’m starting to get used to it.”
Raven met his gaze, then pulled hers away. “Would you like some help?”
“I’m beginning to think I might,” he said in a whimsical way.
She flushed. “With the horses, I mean.”
He sent her an easy smile. “Sure. Want to help groom them?”
Raven nodded and got two livery brushes, handing one to Nicholas. “You take
care of that horse and I’ll do the other.”
“Sounds good,” he said, taking the brush and entering the stall behind him. He
needed some time to think before he resumed his dealings with Raven. There
was something about her that threw him off, intellectually, physically and
emotionally. Every time he thought he had it under control, it slipped away. If he
were honest with himself, he’d admit that she’d always been able to create chaos
with his emotions.
He forced himself to curry Oscar, methodically working the brush with long
strokes over his hide. In the stall next to them, Raven was murmuring to
Ophelia, the horse responding to her with small whickers. To Nicholas’s

---

amusement, Oscar looked toward his feminine counterpart then gave a bit of a
sigh. Nicholas grinned. “Yeah, I know how you feel, pal.”
“Did you say something?” Raven asked, glancing in his direction.
“I was talking to the horse.”
“Oh.”
He watched her work for a moment. “How’re you doing over there?”
“Why,” Raven bristled, “do you think I don’t know how to groom a horse?”
“I didn’t say that. All I said was—”
“I’m a competent woman. I may not be a captain of industry like some people
I know, but—”
Nicholas rolled his eyes. “Oh here we go. Are you always this much of a
shrew, or is it just with me?”
“It’s probably you.” She tossed her head, making her hair bounce. “Most
people think I’m charming and adorable.”
Nicholas snorted, and so did the horse. “I have to hand it to you, Raven. You
run the biggest con of any woman I know.”
“I do not. I am charming…just not all the time.” She groomed furiously,
finishing up before sailing out of Ophelia’s stall and marching into Oscar’s.
Chin up, fighting stance ready, she demanded, “Why do you have to bait me
every minute?”
“Is that what I’m doing? I thought it was the other way around.” Nicholas
continued to brush Oscar, not even glancing her way. He knew that would make
her nuts. When Raven lost control, interesting things happened. He might not
always understand her, but he did have a good idea of how to confuse her. He
grinned to himself as he felt her impatience.
“Sometimes I just don’t know what to think of you,” she finally muttered.
“I thought what you see is what you get?”
“Usually it is, but now…” Raven scuffed her toe in the dirt, reminding
Nicholas of the child she’d been. “You opened up before and told me something
about yourself, about your family. Something I’d never expected, that no one in
the family had ever talked about.”
“Yeah, well…” Nicholas gave an uncomfortable squirm, realizing he’d acted
very out of character when he told her about his family circumstances. Thank
God he didn’t tell her the rest.
“I…I was intrigued. I’d never thought of you as anything other than what
you’ve always wanted me to think.”
“Bossy, controlling, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Goes without saying.” She smiled, stepping closer to him. “But also cool and
a bit remote. You’re a watcher, Nicholas. You watch, analyze, and then act. And

---

if you must know, that irritates the hell out of me.”
Nicholas gave her a half smile. “Sometimes it irritates the hell out of me too.”
“Is it because of your father? Is that why you pull back before you go too
far?”
He shrugged that off. “Some sense of caution isn’t a sin, Raven. It’s a hell of a
lot more comfortable than always being reckless.”
“But not as much fun.”
“There are more important things than fun.”
“My father always said life is to enjoy.”
Nicholas glanced over. “I wouldn’t take your father as the ideal role model.”
Raven frowned. “What do you mean by that? My father is the most wonderful
man in the world.”
Nicholas looked away. Should he tell her that her father was headed down the
same road his own father had taken? He wanted to give Raven’s father the
chance to come clean with his family himself, not have Nicholas do it for him.
Not that Nicholas had much hope of that. It was a far-fetched wish, from what he
knew and had recently learned about Raven’s father. Especially after he
discovered his little matchmaking scheme between Raven and Jackson. That
pissed him off for a whole new set of reasons that he didn’t want to examine too
closely.
“Hello,” she barked, walking over and thumping him on the arm. “Are you in
there?”
He pulled himself from his own world and rubbed his arm. “Ouch.”
“Just wanted to see if you were awake.”
“I was thinking of something else,” he said to divert her from a conversation
about her father.
It worked. “What?”
“Jackson and Lorianne.”
“Oh.”
“The more I see of her, the more I think she’s right for Jackson.”
“You wouldn’t think so if you’d heard them sniping at each other in the hall a
little while ago.”
“True love doesn’t always run smooth. Or quiet.” He sent her a whimsical
look. “We should know.”
Raven folded her arms. “You don’t have to pretend. There’s no one around to
watch.”
“Getting into practice.”
“Yes,” Raven said, her tone dark as a winter storm, “I know how you
practice.”

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