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had been satisfied by the two small savouries she’d eaten, but the wine was making its effects felt. She felt disconnected, the raw shock of Adrian’s rejection lightly blanketed by a buzz in her head that told her she needed food.
    Stubbornly she forced herself to eat, but halfway through the main course she stopped, shivering, and the words she’d been trying to get out refused to come. Horrified, she froze.
    “You’re probably still jet-lagged, and in shock,” Nick said abruptly, getting to his feet. “You can stay the night here.”
    “No, I—”
    He interrupted curtly, “You need rest. And you’re in no fit state to be on your own. I’ll get a bed made up for you and tomorrow morning we can discuss what you’ll do.”
    “N-Nick, there’s no reason …” She said feebly, “I must have had too much wine.”
    “I doubt if half a glass would have this effect onyou,” he said, his tone edging towards boredom. “Siena, stop fighting it. You’ve had a rotten day. A decent sleep should help, but you’re not going back to that hotel. I want to make sure you’re all right.”
    It would be so easy to give in to that masterful tone, to let Nick look after her, but she summoned her strength and said again, “No.”
    “Then I’ll contact your parents and tell them you’re in trouble,” he said.
    Siena stiffened, incredulity temporarily swamping her tiredness. “D-don’t you d-dare,” she stammered. “They’ve—they’ve been looking forward to this holiday for years. You wouldn’t really do that to them?”
    He raised his eyebrows. “Of course I would,” he said coolly. “It’s exactly what they’d expect me to do.”
    She couldn’t dispute that. Rallying, she challenged fiercely, “That would be
betrayal.’’
    “I fancy they’d think that not telling them would be the greater treachery.”
    Searching his face, she felt her heart clamp when she saw no gentleness, no sign of compromise in the hard, angular features.
    She attempted a laugh, only to find it ignominiously turning into something too close to a sob. “You mean you’ll tell on me,” she said, backing her caustic tone with the terminology of childhood to make her opinion of his threat clear.
    “If you like to look at it that way, yes.” Nick waited, and when she stayed silent his eyes narrowed. “So?”
    Abruptly she surrendered. “Damn you. All right,” she said unevenly.
    “Wait here while I sort out a bed for you,” he ordered. “And eat something more.”
    But the food tasted like cardboard, and when Siena tried to swallow she had to drink water to force it past the lump in her throat.
    Nick’s return brought her head up. With a snap she said, “I
hate
feeling like this.”
    He looked grimly amused. “Yes, I imagine you do. But you’ll get over it. You have too much energy—too much resilience and willpower—to let life keep you down for long. And sleep is a great healer.”
    Being Nick, he was probably right, she thought drearily as she slid naked into the bed in one of the guest rooms. But right now she couldn’t summon a spark of resilience, or the willpower to shut out the mess she’d somehow managed to make of her life.
    When her phone summoned her she ignored it, but it nagged at her until finally she switched on the lamp and picked it up.
    It was her sister. Incredulously she read an email, a tumbling apology for something—what?
    When she reached the end, she stared incredulously as the tiny screen. Gemma—and
Adrian?
    Gemma had tried to reach her at the hotel by phone, but there had been no answer. Siena recognised her sister’s desperation as she apologised for loving Adrian, saying she’d tried so hard not to—she’d go away, never see him again.
    “I
can
’t …” Siena didn’t finish. Dry-eyed, she hunched back against the pillows, thoughts tumbling through her mind in chaotic freefall.
    But eventually she dragged in a deep, painful breath and straightened up. The habit of caring for