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“Yes. Though it isn’t quite the same living in the city as it was back at the house.”
“You miss raking?”
She glanced over. “Yeah, I do.”
Brandt had thought she was nuts. She remembered his disdainful stare as he watched her sweeping the rake back and forth across the yard, pulling the accumulated leaves into mass, ignoring the burn in her shoulders until she had the pile as wide and tall as she was.
And then the surprise of strong hands grabbing her from behind, that wicked laugh coming a second before she was tossed into the pile.
“You always helped me.”
He let out a short laugh. “Wasn’t like Brandt would.”
No. Nor her father. And Mom, she was more of Brandt’s mind. Confused why her daughter would even look at a rake when the landscapers would mow, blow and pluck every fallen leaf from the yard each Friday.
They hadn’t gotten it. But Nate had.
Payton closed her eyes, giving into the rush of open air around them as Nate blew south on the Drive headed for the Skyway. Her mind played in shadowed memories of leaf piles, Nate laughing at her side…and then as she drifted, lulled by the smooth hum of the engine, the memories became something else. A mix of then and now. A cross of memory and imagining blurred into one. The tastes and touches she’d only just learned coupling with their bodies rolling in a tangled embrace. The heavy weight of Nate pressing her down into a bed of crisp russet and plum foliage, the scent of woods and earth surrounding them.
His name broke her lips on a sigh. “Nate…”
“Yeah, babe?”
Payton jerked in her seat, the heat of embarrassment burning her cheeks even as another heat lingered deeper in her body. Her hands waved in the air as she cast about for some satisfactory explanation other than she’d fallen asleep and begun dreaming about him.
“I—I’m—how long do you think until we get there?”
“Forty minutes maybe?” he offered casually. “Plenty of time if you want to grab a little shut-eye.”
Stiffening, she managed one word. “What?”
“A nap. There’s time.” Dark lenses shielded his eyes from her scrutiny, but his mouth sat at that casual tilt so typical of him. He looked relaxed. Comfortable. Not at all as if he’d just busted her moaning his name in her sleep. Maybe she’d merely sounded drowsy.
That was it. Because he’d suggested a nap.
Easing down into the soft leather of the seats, she breathed deeply, trying to let go of the tension snapping through her body at the thought she’d given too much away. After a few moments, her limbs relaxed and her eyes drifted closed. And as fatigue overtook her, a low chuckle sounded from across the distance of her consciousness.
“Pleasant dreams, Payton.”
Once parked, Payton roused herself from what she only hoped was a quiet sleep and met Nate around the back of the car.
“Warm enough?” he asked, pulling an old blanket from the trunk.
The wind whipped at her hair, but the sun was still bright. Pulling her sweater tight around her, she nodded, peering up at the steep rise of the dunes before them. “I just need to wake up. And if I remember correctly, the hike up’ll get my blood pumping.”
“Needed that nap, huh?” Nate brushed a thumb beneath her right eye. “Puffy. Cute.”
Pulling back, she instinctively raised a hand to check. Puffy? Wonderful.
Clearing his throat, he stretched his arms out, rotating one shoulder and then the other. “Someone must have done a decent job of wearing you out last night.”
Only Nate would find a way to turn sleep-swollen eyes into a means of stroking his own ego.
It was a call to trash-talk if ever she heard one. “Not really. Pretty sure I slept through most of it.”
He laughed, already making his way up the rise. “You mean you were rendered unconscious. My attentions have been known to overwhelm.”
Payton struggled up beside him. “No.” Not to be outdone, she feigned a weary sigh. “I drift off when I’m bored.” Then fighting a gloating snicker, she added, “Can’t say for sure—I barely remember.”
She’d take that point.
Yes, sir.
With a swish of her hips and spring in her step, she pushed up the sandy incline, oblivious to Nate’s narrowing eyes or the calculating set to his jaw. In a motion too fast to defend against, he reached for her, one powerful arm pulling her into his chest while the other caught her knee to his hip.
Her breath was gone, her mouth agape. All misconceptions about scoring points swept away by the feral gleam in the blue eyes above her.
Straining for air, she gasped, “What are you doing?”
“Reminding you.” The gruff threat was her only warning before his lips descended in a brutal crush. The hand at her back snaked up to wind in the mass of her hair and pull her head back, opening her to the thrust of his tongue. Once. Twice. And her body was alive, pulsing with the need for more—
Except it was over and firm hands were setting her a step away.
A single brow rose in question, the seductive threat radiating off him in waves. “Now what were you saying about last night?”
Too stunned to even contemplate a quick-witted barb or smart-mouthed response, she gave him what he demanded. The truth. “It was incredible, and I’ll never forget it.”
“Good.” He winked, sweeping up the discarded blanket with one hand as he started up again. “No more reminders necessary.”
Payton stared in shocked disbelief at Nate’s retreating form, her indignation on the rise. “I thought we said one night!”
“We did,” he called back, barely bothering to turn his head to respond. “But if one night’s all I get, then, babe, you better believe I’m going to make sure you remember it.”
By the time they’d skidded down the beach side of the dune, Payton had her outrage, heart-rate and unwilling smile under control. The kiss had completely blindsided her, serving as an effective warning about going for the last word with a man whose drive to win apparently knew no limits of decency. But it also relieved her anxiety about Nate’s ability to handle the lovers-to-friends transition.
That was the kiss of a man unconcerned about his ability to turn it on or off. Which suited Payton fine. After so many years of watching every word, she didn’t want to censor herself now.
As they hit the damp packed sand, Nate offered a spot beneath his arm. She stepped into the warmth of his hold and they walked in companionable silence.
Gulls soared overhead, and children sprinted through the sand in the distance.
Nate pulled off his glasses and, tucking them into the V of his sweater, turned to her. The normal vibrancy of his eyes had gone brittle beneath the strain of his burden. She knew what was coming. An explanation for this cloak and dagger game with the press, the pretend affair that all too briefly turned real. He didn’t want to talk about it, but he would.
“One of the women I dated last year came to me pregnant.”
Her heart stalled in her chest as she imagined a child, a golden-haired, blue-eyed bit of Nate, new to the world. And a woman she couldn’t even fathom? “My God, Nate…”
What could she say? Congratulations? It hardly seemed as though joyous celebration were the theme of his disclosure considering the lengths to which he was going to shake the press off the scent of his secret. And yet, offering her sympathy seemed equally inappropriate. Questions rose fast and urgent within her, each more desperate to claw free than the one before, but she willed herself silent, waiting for him to go on.
“I was fairly sure she’d been with someone else after we’d ended things, but the timing she described…It was possible. She wanted to get married. Swore up and down the baby was mine. Only, I knew it wasn’t. Hell, I suspected.” He let out a heavy sigh, ducked and scooped up a handful of sand. Let the grains sift through his fingers. “Maybe I just wished.”
Eyes to the darkening waters of Lake Michigan, he straightened. “Whatever the case, I wouldn’t marry her. Not until I had a blood test to confirm her claim. She kept pushing. Didn’t want her child born a bastard. Didn’t want the risk of a prebirth DNA sample.” He shook his head, his jaw set off to one side.
Payton waited, her heart in her throat. Her mind blanked beyond anything but the words coming painfully from Nate’s mouth.
“In the end, she was born healthy. Not mine. Not that I’d had much doubt at that point.”
“Nate, I’m so sorry. That must have been terrible to wait through.”
He cast her a quick smile. “Yeah, well. It’s been a tough six months. And honestly, the last thing I need is to have the press getting things stirred up again.”
She could only imagine what it had been like for him. Of course he didn’t want the gory details rehashed for public consumption.
But what she couldn’t understand was how a woman who’d actually dated Nate would ever think she’d get away with a ploy like that. “What happened to them?”
“They live in a small town outside of Stuttgart. They’re both doing well.”
“You keep track of them?”
“Annegret needed help.” His tone didn’t convey pity, pain or any other depth of feeling. It was matter-of-fact as he stared out over the turbulent waters. “I don’t like what happened. Honestly, I don’t like her. But she didn’t know how to take care of herself. Her father cut her off. The baby’s father was married. And I’d been a part of the picture recently enough…” He let out a heavy sigh. “She was desperate and thought she’d found a solution through me.”
Perhaps not so ruthless after all…and maybe that was what he didn’t want broadcast around the globe.
“I found her a small house. I cover her bills. But the arrangement is she can’t talk. If she tries to profit from this in any way, the funding is off. So there’s a reason I don’t want the press getting a hold of her.”
She could see that quite clearly. He’d financed the woman who tried to trap him into marriage with a false paternity claim. It was a risky precedent to set. So why had he done it?
Slanting a glance his way, she asked, “Did you love her?”
Nate’s head snapped around, the strangest expression of shock on his face. “No. No, I didn’t.”
“But you set her up?”
He waved her off. “She was without resources.”
“So are a lot of women. Do you have a charitable foundation in place to help them all?” Though, now that she thought about it, he’d tried to do the very same thing with her that afternoon. Was it some kind of white-knight syndrome or was Nate simply the kind of man who couldn’t sit idly by when he was capable of making a difference?
“There was a part of me that wouldn’t let myself hate her. I knew on some level it was possible the child was mine. And if it turned out to be true, that baby couldn’t be born to a father who loathed her. Do you see what I’m saying?”
Payton didn’t trust herself to speak. Didn’t trust herself to touch him for fear she wouldn’t be able to stop. He’d developed an attachment to a child he hadn’t believed was his. Forced himself to care—maybe even to love—on the chance it was.
Pushing beyond her own heartbreak, she reached for his hand. “When you found out?”
His head tilted back, eyes fixing on the sky. “I care about Bella. But I can’t drop in and out of her life or be her daddy just because she doesn’t have one. It would never work with her mother. So I made sure she was taken care of and I let her go.”
That kind of emotional toll was unfathomable.
He seemed to have followed her train of thought. “I’d never planned on having a family. I didn’t want one thrust upon me. So in that regard it was a relief.”
“Because if she’d been yours?”
He met her gaze, steady and unwavering. “I would have married her mother and played the hand life dealt me.”
A nervous alarm sounded deep within her. It had been too close. He would have given everything up and she never would have had him back in her life. “Even though you didn’t love her?”
“It wouldn’t have mattered. If Bella was mine, I would have made us a family. I would have made it work. No issue. But that’s the only way I’d make a trek down the aisle.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d said he didn’t want to marry. Though this time she sensed more distaste behind his words. “Pretty adamant about that, huh?”
Nate caught her sidelong glance. “Yeah.”
“Was it always like that with you?” She never would have guessed it from the way he’d been in high school; of course, she wouldn’t have wanted to see something that didn’t support her fantasy that someday he’d marry her!
“I didn’t think a lot about it, but probably. My parents’ marriage—” He shook his head, squinting off into the distance before letting the rest drop as though it didn’t merit voicing. “In college and after, I was working so hard there wasn’t time for much more than a quick—There wasn’t time for anything involved.”
He caught himself in time, though the crinkling around his eyes and a tilt to his lips told her it had been a close thing.
“So kind of you to look out for my delicate sensibilities,” she teased.
“Don’t be disappointed. I’ll slip up another time. Anyway, the romance thing didn’t really become an issue until I’d started making a name for myself. And suddenly I couldn’t buy a woman a drink without some jerk sticking a mic in my face to ask when the wedding was. It bugged the hell out of me.”
She remembered what it was like when his name hit the papers. The constant speculation about how long he’d be able to dodge the gold band. Nate was so good-looking. So charming and charismatic. His success and wealth growing exponentially, it seemed. The press was forever trying to marry him off, practically placing bets as each new female graced his arm.
“I’m sure your dates loved that. It must have been very awkward.” It certainly had been when she and Clint faced similar speculation.
“Some of them got the wrong idea.” He laughed at the sky and then turned a wry smile on her. “Some had the wrong idea from the start. Honestly, that kind of constant speculation…” He let out a grunt. “It’s not like I had a mind for love and marriage before all that, so it didn’t take much to turn me off completely.”
“But…the right girl?”
“Payton, there are a million ‘right’ girls. Right for right now. But it doesn’t last with me.”
“And you still would have married Annegret? You could have lived like that?” She shook her head, fighting the urge to press her hand against the center of his chest. “Without love?”
Nate let out a short laugh. “It’s called responsibility. It’s not always fun. But it’s necessary. Besides, I’ve lived without falling in ‘love’ this long,” he said, making the taboo emotion sound like something toxic. “I don’t want it.”
That much was clear. Even so, she couldn’t help but wonder…How many women before her had inadvertently given Nate Evans their heart? And had any of them gotten it back?
Chapter Nine
THE temperature had dropped with the afternoon sun, and Nate stood at the rear of his car shaking out the sand from the blanket while Payton sat bundled in the front seat. The roof was up and the heater on. Still, she was chilled and he’d wrapped her into a spare fleece he kept in the trunk. She’d looked fragile tucked into the expanse of his oversized pullover. Like something to shelter. Take into his arms and hold.
Which was nuts. Closing the trunk, he rounded to the driver’s side door and levered into his seat.
Payton smiled over at him, then nodded back at the darkening sky. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Her curls were wild with wind-blown abandon. Her cheeks alive with the pink flush of exertion. “Yes. Breathtaking.”
Her gaze dropped to her lap, to where only the tips of her fingers peeked from the ends of cuffed sleeves. A sure sign of the nerves he really shouldn’t take such satisfaction in stirring.
