by Natalie Ann
But for some reason he couldn’t stop himself. Maybe he was still punch drunk from the lack of sleep and the stress of the last month, or maybe he really believed wholeheartedly what he’d said to her. She made him happy, and in his happiness he was just blurting out what he thought. Screw all the finesse he had in the past.
“I was up working all night if you must know. I didn’t go to bed until around eight this morning.”
“That’s still six hours of sleep. I’d say we had about the same.” He looked down at the flowers in his hand and the dirt now on her floor. “Here, I’ll put these in water while you go clean up and change.”
She stepped back, smiling, and shook her head. “Still persistent as ever. I guess some things never change. And no, I’ll do it. They need to be trimmed at the very least before you put them in water.”
“Is that a yes to the date, too?”
“I didn’t get the impression I was going to be able to say no,” she replied over her shoulder as she walked through the house into the kitchen toward a drawer and pulled out scissors, then started to trim up the flowers.
“I wouldn’t have forced you.”
She turned her head. “Probably not. Still, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try this date thing.”
He ignored her comment. He knew she’d dated, his grandmother had told him so, she told him so. “Great. Shower?” he said, reminding her.
“It’s early yet for dinner. Why don’t you go home and come back later?”
“Trying to get rid of me? Afraid I’m going to snoop around your house while you’re in the shower?”
“It crossed my mind.”
“What if I promise not to touch anything?”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“I’m hurt,” he said, feigning a pout and putting his hand over his heart, pretending to be in pain. “Didn’t you say we had to learn to trust each other? Why not start here?”
“Easy for you to say,” she mumbled.
He walked closer to her, leaned in quick and kissed her on the cheek. “You’re pretty adorable when you’re grouchy. Do you always wake up this way?”
She snorted, grabbed a vase, filled it with water and the flowers, set it on the counter and walked past him, then tossed her head over her shoulder and smiled. “Bet you’d like to find that out personally, wouldn’t you?”
“Damn straight.”
“Guess you’ll have to just wait now, won’t you?”
He watched her walk out of the room, her hips swinging in a pair of shorts too big for her, a loose T-shirt that had seen better days, and her hair all matted to her head, knotted in piles hanging down her back.
And to him, she couldn’t have looked more beautiful.
Divide
The minute Mallory was out of Nick’s sight, she lost all of her confident swagger and raced up the stairs to her bedroom, grabbed clothes at random, and hurried into the bathroom. It had to be the fastest shower she’d ever taken in her life, but there was no way she was leaving Nick alone in her house for any longer than necessary.
Not that she didn’t trust him to not snoop around. Oh, who the hell was she kidding? She didn’t trust him fully.
She had gone around and taken anything easily visible out of the house and tucked it away, but it never occurred to her he’d be alone where he could touch and move things, even open drawers. So with that thought in mind, she pushed herself even more to get back downstairs.
She was rubbing her hair dry as fast as she could since she knew she wasn’t going to take the time to blow dry it. Nope, it could air dry and he could accept that she wasn’t going to look her best. It still had to be better than she looked when he’d woken her up.
She was hopping around to get her shorts pulled up and tried to convince herself she wasn’t giddy over the date right now. That she wasn’t so excited that he approached her and suggested this, expanding on her friendship offer.
No, she was just in a rush to get back downstairs to make sure he wasn’t looking at her life too closely. If she told herself that enough, she might actually believe it.
After all, there were so many obstacles in their way right now. Secrets, lies, mysteries, and not just on her end, she was sure. They’d have to find a way through them, or around them, whatever worked the best. How they were going to fit a relationship in between all of this mess was beyond her.
Of course, he never said a relationship, did he? He said a date, and she had to remind herself to not think of this as more than it was. She’d done that once before and had gotten burned.
Yanking her T-shirt over her head, twisting and turning to get her arms through with her body still damp—she’d dried off, just not enough.
She whipped the door open and dashed down the stairs, then composed herself and calmly walked back into the kitchen expecting—hoping—he’d be sitting at her kitchen table and would have stayed where she left him.
Only she didn’t get that wish.
She turned around and walked back toward the stairs, then beyond into the living room and again found no sign of him.
There weren’t that many places he could have gone. Her house wasn’t that big. An eat-in kitchen, a small formal dining room, living room and half bath downstairs. Upstairs three bedrooms and a full bath. Nothing big, nothing fancy, but more than enough space for her. Perfect really.
She turned around and went back to the kitchen at the back of the house, then caught a movement from the corner her eye and saw Nick standing on her deck looking out over the water. She opened the back door and took a step out.
He turned, holding a bottle of water in his hand, and said, “Hope you don’t mind I helped myself.”
“No problem.”
She wasn’t sure what to say to him right now and didn’t understand why she was feeling so nervous. Adrenaline rush maybe? She did just get woken up and then ran around faster than normal trying to get ready.
“We’ve got time yet for dinner. Why don’t you have a seat and we can talk?”
She pulled out a chair and sat while he leaned on the railing of her deck, crossing his arms in front of him, his half-filled bottle of water dangling from his fingers. “What do you want to talk about?”
“How about work? I’ll start.” She knew her eyebrows rose; she couldn’t help her confusion. “We have to start somewhere, so I’ll do it.”
“What do you mean?” she asked nervously.
“All this open space between us. All the secrecy and mystery. I’d like to say we should pretend we’re strangers that just met and are getting to know each other. In some part that’s true, but in others it’s the furthest thing from the truth.”
He had a point and one she’d thought of too. There was a huge divide between them now, one that they would have to see if they could work through, or if she even wanted to.
No, that was wrong. She wanted to work through this. Even if nothing ever came about between her and Nick—and she wasn’t holding her breath—she still wanted to try to free herself from her past.
She’d thought long and hard the last few weeks and decided that maybe he was the person to help her. The right person. “Okay, you start then.”
“I’ve been working on developing a new software. Want to know what it’s all about, or will it bore you?”
He’d never bored her before when he talked about what he wanted to do with his life. He’d always had a clear vision for his future. Always knew he wanted to be his own boss and run his own company.
Unlike her. She’d never been able to see much more than a day in front of her, if even that when she was a teen. All her dreams and hopes had been squashed so long ago.
“It won’t bore me. But isn’t it top secret or something?”
“It is. Nothing has been released, only to employees now, and just top level at that. But then again, it’s not like I think you would go running to the media. You’d have to give up your identity for that, so I’d say it’s safe if I told you.”
Sh
e didn’t appreciate the grin he was sporting, even if what he said was the truth. Not that she’d ever tell anyone what he was going to say. She didn’t have anyone to tell. “True.”
“I’m in the process of developing software to help caregivers better manage their time and responsibilities, along with the medical needs of who they’re caring for. Though the medical part of it is further down the road.”
“What made you want to do that?” She knew most of his software was geared toward human interest, helping manage personal lives or businesses.
“Watching you care for your mother after her accident. I saw how hard it was. The revolving door of nurses and aides, not to mention some friends coming in to help. It was a crazy period of time for you.”
That was a mild description. She shouldn’t have been surprised he remembered that, or took so much notice of it, let alone having it be a driving force for his latest creation. That year after her mother’s accident was short of hell at the best of times.
She’d been old enough to help care for her mother before and after school. Get her mother her meds, help bathe and dress her, cook and clean. There were nurses and aides in the house at all times, but her mother didn’t want their help; she only wanted Mallory.
Things got forgotten, meds were accidentally given too often, and her mother ended up relying on them to manage not just her physical pain, but also her emotional one.
Then again, what did anyone expect putting it all on a fourteen-year-old back then?
Things didn’t start to get more organized until Paul came into the picture. He’d worked with her father and had been over plenty in the past. As much as she didn’t like that he came around like he did, life did get easier for Mallory during that time.
But the more Paul organized things, the more control he had.
Unfortunately, her mother learned to rely on Paul as much as the meds, and Mallory was pushed into the background once again. But those were thoughts she hadn’t had in years and the last thing she wanted creeping into her mind right now.
“That was a long time ago,” she said.
“It was, but it stuck with me. Added to the fact that several of my employees have had to care for loved ones, then listening to Rene talk all this time about her classes. You could say she helped inspire me too, and I’ve picked her brain quite a bit. Right now I’m working more on the social end of it, but I’ll move to the medical piece soon and enlist her help there from a medical professional’s point of view.”
“Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out.”
“I usually do, or find a way to get there. What about you?”
She hesitated to talk about her work. She’d kept it hidden for so long, but wondered—what could it hurt if he knew just a little bit? Wouldn’t it be nice to talk to someone other than her agent or Trixie about her writing?
“My agent called me yesterday to tell me she worked out a two-book deal for a new idea I’ve got.”
“Really? What’s that? Are you going to tell me what you write?”
“Not specifics right now. It’s not important, really.” She didn’t want to give too much. “It’s something similar I guess, but I’m just going to change my target audience.”
“Target audience, huh? To who?”
Before she could answer, she asked, “Who do you think? Who do you think my audience is right now?”
“I’m not sure. If I was to take a guess, I’d say you write love stories, so your main target is women.”
She had no idea why he would think that but was curious. It’s what she’d always thought she wanted to do. It’s what she was doing now—or trying to do—but no one was aware of it. “Why do you say that?”
“The “Happily Ever After” endings we were talking about before. You said you wanted them and liked them. I assumed that would be a logical choice for you.”
“I don’t write love stories, or romance, if you must know. Anyway, I’m moving my target audience toward adults now.”
“Meaning your target audience right now is children? Really? Okay, I never expected you to write children’s books.”
“I don’t. Not like you’re thinking. More like preteen, junior high. Still, why would it be so shocking if I did write children’s books?”
“It’s not you, or what I remember of you. I just always assumed that people who wrote children’s books had kids themselves, or were around kids.”
She’d always thought that too, which was why she’d never even attempted it.
Really, what she did now was write for an audience by keeping things simple and clean, watching a lot of TV and snooping on social media to see what topics the kids talked about. What interests they had.
It would be nice to write for a market base closer to her own age bracket now. But back when she started to write, she was still a teen herself—even though she was legally an adult, eighteen was still young. And she was naive and immature and her tastes were similar to kids much younger. It was easy to write what she knew then. She just continued along those lines, researching with the changing trends.
“Anyway, I was up late finishing my current book so that I could move forward on this new endeavor.”
“I’ve been there before. You get an idea in your head and you can’t stop until you work it out, or exhaust every possibility. Writing code probably isn’t much different in that aspect.”
He got it, and she was happy he did. Someone to understand why she worked the way she did. Why she could write for hours on end, days on end, and then not touch her laptop for days while she walked away and took a break to let her mind work out the details.
“I never thought of it that way, but yeah, it seems to work the same.”
Pushing back from the railing, he smiled bright, set his water bottle down, and said, “I’ll be back in about an hour to get you for dinner.”
“What?”
“I need to go home to shower and change. So do you. Change that is. I don’t think you want to go out to dinner with wet hair or wearing what you are.”
She looked down at her wrinkled plaid shorts and the old T-shirt sporting a frown face with words that read Not today, try back tomorrow. “If you were going to leave and come back, why did you make me go take a shower?”
“I didn’t make you take one,” he said, laughing, then walked off the back deck and around front, out of sight, just like he had the day before.
The Same
Nick was still trying to stop his laughter on the way back to Mallory’s an hour later. Her face was priceless when he said he was leaving to go shower and change.
What a little firecracker she’d been, pushing back at him and making him work for it. His grandmother was right all along: he wanted the challenge, he wanted a goal and a mission, and now he had it.
Not that he’d push her into something she didn’t want. He wouldn’t do that to her or any woman.
His grandmother had stopped him on the way out the door a few minutes ago. “Where are you off to now?”
He debated telling her and then thought, what the hell, why not? “I’m taking Mallory to dinner and then a movie.”
“Like a date?” she asked, not showing a lot of shock over the admission.
“Exactly like a date. By your reaction, I’m assuming you have no issue with it.”
“You’re a grown man, Nick. Why would I have an issue with it?”
“Because we’ve already established Mallory means a great deal to you.”
“She does, but that doesn’t mean I tell her who she can and can’t date or be friends with.”
He looked at his grandmother more carefully, saw her grinning from ear to ear. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“What’s that?” she said, playing coy with him.
“Watching me doubt myself.”
“I’ve never wanted you to doubt yourself, Nick. I want you to find yourself. I want you to have some self-awareness. And I want you to be happy. The same things that I w
ant for Mallory.”
“Do you think we can find it together?” He’d hoped so, but he was curious what his grandmother thought of it all.
“That would be up to you two, wouldn’t it?”
So with that conversation in his mind, he pulled in front of Mallory’s house, got out of the car and walked to the door, then knocked.
She opened the door up quickly. Maybe she’d been waiting for him? He hoped so at least, though she didn’t have a happy welcome expression on her face this time.
“I didn’t know where we were going, so I hope this is fine?”
He looked at her long shorts and cotton shirt. “Since I’m dressed in shorts too, it’s good. Nothing fancy, unless you’d prefer?”
“This is good. I don’t think too many people dress up to go to the movies.”
Good point, but he hadn’t been thinking that. He’d only been thinking of his own limited wardrobe he’d brought with him at the moment.
“If you’re ready, we can go, then catch the early movie.”
“Lead the way, since you seem to be calling the shots today.”
“Is that a problem?” he asked, looking at her closely. She didn’t seem mad, not really. “Not that I thought dinner and a movie was really calling the shots. Are you mad at me right now?”
“More annoyed, I guess. With myself, for falling for your little trick. I’m usually faster on my feet than that, but I can only say it must have been lack of sleep that caught me off guard.”
“I’m sure you won’t let me get away with too much next time.”
She grabbed her purse from a small table next to the door, then brushed by him, only to stop and turn to look over her shoulder and add that same mischievous smirk she had when she sashayed by him on the way to the shower earlier.
“I’m on to you now, buddy. Guess you’ll just have to watch your step.”
With those parting words, he’d done exactly that through dinner.
They didn’t talk about anything deep, just like their prior lunch together. There weren’t any awkward silences either, just the hint of electricity in the air between them.
