The Rebel

by J. R. Ward

  She’d been through it before. And though Nate was nothing like David, the toll would be taken. In the real world, daily life was inexorable, capable of wearing away the best of intentions, the most ardent of hearts, like water over stone.

  He pulled back. “You look grim.”

  She smoothed his cheek with her palm. “Let’s not talk about the future. Take me upstairs to my bed and make love to me.”

  NATE STARED UP AT THE ceiling as Frankie slept.

  He had told no one about Celia. Even Spike didn’t have the full story.

  He’d kept what had happened to himself because it hurt to put words to the events. And because he so regretted not having read the situation better. He should have known by the disgusted look on Celia’s face when he’d told her he wasn’t a wealthy guy that she was capable of doing something awful. He’d just assumed that because she wasn’t a rich man’s daughter that she wouldn’t care about money.

  A fatal miscalculation.

  Absently, he stroked Frankie’s arm. She’d been so damn supportive. But she was like that. Loyal. Fiercely protective of those she cared about.

  She reminded him of Spike.

  He thought about his friend and their plans. While Frankie had been out in the garden weeding this afternoon, Spike had called with bad news. The place they’d been talking about hadn’t panned out because they just couldn’t make the money work. It would be a terrible mistake to try to get a new joint off the ground while being too strapped with debt.

  Nate knew what they were up against. Ninety percent of new restaurants closed their doors within a year. But if his first attempt didn’t work, he was prepared to whore himself out to a celebrity joint for the next five years, amass another nest egg and try again. Spike was likewise too pigheaded to take failure seriously.

  God, they’d waited so long to make their mark. They’d sweated over blistering hot stoves and flaming grills, had worked double and triple shifts through burned hands and backs that ached. They’d honed their craft and paid their dues.

  Their shot was going to come. It just had to.

  Frankie stirred in her sleep, letting out a soft sigh of contentment as she snuggled in close.

  Nate closed his eyes. When she’d told him she didn’t want to talk about the future, he’d known exactly what the bleak expression on her face had meant. She was a realist, not a romantic. And she knew what it took to be in business for yourself. You didn’t have a lot of discretionary time for outside relationships. Especially long-distance ones.

  As he thought about the future, Labor Day loomed on the horizon like a thief. Leaving Frankie was going to be hard.

  Nate turned his head and breathed in the scent of her shampoo and her skin.

  Leaving Frankie was going to kill him.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE NEXT MORNING, Frankie knocked softly on her brother’s door. “Alex?”

  The response was slow in coming, delivered in a low tone. “Yeah.”

  She shifted the tray in her hand. “I brought you a little breakfast.”

  There was a grunt and a shuffling sound. The door opened.

  His beard had grown in overnight, darkening his jaw and cheeks, and his hair was roughed up. He had on a pair of shorts that hung off his hips and there were bruises on his chest, black and blue ones dark enough to show through his tan.

  “Thanks.” He took the tray, but didn’t invite her in.

  She watched with a hollow pit in her stomach as he put the food down on the bureau and limped back to bed. He was too big for the twin mattress, his feet hanging off the end, and he seemed equally out of place in the room. The America’s Cup posters of his teenage years had faded, the model ships he’d built with their father had sagging sails now. He was a man in a boy’s space and it struck her as odd that she’d never thought of redecorating his room. Although it wasn’t as if she’d had the money.

  And she supposed a part of her had wanted to keep it as it was. The remains of a brother she never really expected to come back home.

  “Do you need anything?” She stepped inside and that was when she saw a bottle of scotch on the floor, within easy reach of his hand. It was half empty.

  He eyed her darkly as if he didn’t want her to come any closer. “Nope.”

  The answer wasn’t a surprise, and since bringing him something to eat hadn’t been the only reason she’d come, she wasn’t going to pussyfoot around. He appeared on the verge of ordering her out the door. “Do you need help getting to the funeral?”

  He looked away, to one of the windows. “No.”

  “When is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have you talked to Reese’s wife?”

  “Widow. Cassandra’s a widow now.”

  Frankie closed her eyes. Reese Cutler had been Alex’s partner for years and she’d met the man once or twice. He was—had been—an industrial engineer who’d made millions and millions building manufacturing plants for the likes of Ford and GM. His widow, Cassandra, had been his second wife and nearly half his age, if Frankie remembered correctly.

  “I’m sure she’d appreciate hearing from you.”

  Alex’s voice was bitter. “Yeah, if I were her, I’d be in a big hurry to talk to me.”

  “Weren’t you friends?”

  “Frankie, don’t take this the wrong way, but back off, okay?” His face contorted as he moved the leg with the cast to another position.

  She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry that it took…what happened to get you home. But I’m so glad you’re here and I hope you’ll stay for a while. I’ve missed you. Joy has, too. You were always her hero.”

  “She needs to pick a new one.”

  “Alex, we love you. Please remember that.”

  Not expecting a response, she headed for the door.

  “Frankie?”

  She glanced over her shoulder. His head was still turned to the wall.

  “I have to go to the orthopedic surgeon. They want me eval’ed for surgery on my leg. The bone might have to be replaced by a metal rod.”

  She winced and wondered what that would do to his sailing career. “When?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon in Albany. Can you take me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Thanks.”

  She closed the door.

  “How’s he doing?” Nate asked from the head of the stairs.

  “Not well, but I don’t know how badly. He’s not a big talker.”

  They went down to the kitchen.

  “Would you mind coming with us to Albany tomorrow?” she asked. “He has to get his leg looked at. To be honest, I’m a fainter when it comes to mixing family with physicians. When Joy had her wisdom teeth out in the hospital, I hit the floor twice.”

  Nate kissed her. “No problem. I’m glad you asked.”

  ALEX OPENED HIS EYES THE moment the door closed. Frankie’s concern was well-intended, but it rubbed him raw.

  There was no way in hell he was going to the funeral. He wanted to pay his respects, but he just couldn’t look Cassandra in the face. Then again, he never really had been able to do that.

  Which was what happened when you fell in love with your best friend’s wife.

  God, Cassandra. He could remember so clearly the first moment he saw her. He and Reese had been coming in from a race down to Bermuda and back. As they’d pulled into the Narragansett Bay Yacht Club’s dock, Reese had waved at a woman who was jogging lithely toward them.

  “That’s my wife,” he’d said with pride.

  “When did you get married again?” Alex had asked.

  “Haven’t done the ceremony yet, but she’s my wife all right. And I’m going to make this one stick.”

  Alex had had an impression of long red hair and a perfectly proportioned female body, but that was as far as he got. As she’d leaped up into Reese’s arms, he’d looked away as a shock of pure lust and heat shot through him.

  That day, that moment of seeing her in the
setting sun, her hair flashing copper in the fading light, had marked him. He’d never understood how it was possible to be obsessed with someone you didn’t know, but then it had happened to him.

  Over the years, he’d learned more about Cassandra, though he’d never prompted his friend to talk. Reese had spoken easily enough and on his own about his wife. There had been plenty of stories about her accomplishments as an architect, the parties she threw, the small, intimate things she did. And Alex had only wanted more of the peeks into her world, even though he’d felt like hell obsessing about her. It had been so hard to be reduced to a voyeur, a greedy, sneaky bastard who was a parasite on someone else’s marriage. The guilt had been tremendous.

  And then it had all gotten worse.

  He’d thought he was alone on the boat. He’d honestly believed Reese and Cassandra had left. Which was the only reason he’d stepped out into the cabin, naked and drying his hair with a towel after a shower.

  When a shocked gasp behind him cut through his solitude, he’d looked over his shoulder. Cassandra was in the galley kitchen, in the midst of filling up a glass with lemonade. As her eyes had traveled down his body, she’d spilled the stuff all over the counter.

  God, even now the memory of her stare was enough to stir him.

  As he’d cursed and covered his ass with the towel, she’d stammered an apology, but he hadn’t heard much of it. All he’d been thinking of was, thank God he hadn’t turned around. Because then she would have seen the monstrous erection that had popped up the instant she’d looked at him.

  He’d gone back into the head, braced his arms on the tiny sink and tried to remember how to breathe. When he’d come back out ten minutes later, she was gone. And after that, he’d quickly changed the subject whenever Reese had talked about her. At one point, a couple months later, his friend had asked him whether or not he had a problem with Cassandra. Alex had prevaricated and Reese had never brought her up again.

  In the information vacuum, Alex had hoped to lose interest, but his fixation hadn’t needed fresh news or sightings to thrive. He’d continued to think of her, particularly at sunset when he was out on the ocean and the tips of the waves were tinted the color of copper.

  And his guilt, like his obsession, had continued to burn.

  He knew she was a fantasy. She had to be. No one was as perfect as the image he’d constructed in his mind.

  But he wasn’t ever going to find out the truth of who she was. How she kissed. How she made love. As far as he was concerned, Reese’s widow was as untouchable as Reese’s wife had been.

  Especially considering what had happened out in that storm.

  Alex squeezed his eyes shut again. Grief radiated out of his chest, running through his veins like vinegar, drowning out the aches in his body. He gritted his teeth so he didn’t cry out like a sissy, but tears escaped, rolling down his cheeks like the salty spray of the sea.

  NATE WAS HOTTER THAN HELL in the kitchen. He’d finished with his daily prep, the bread was made, and he had an hour before he had to get dinner service rolling. He took the back stairs two at a time, changed into his bathing suit, and went to look for Frankie. He found her in the garden, bent over, staking up the tomato plants. He took a moment to admire her long legs.

  “You want to go for a swim?” he asked.

  She glanced at him from under her arm and smiled. Tendrils of hair were curling around the nape of her neck from the heat and her sweat. “Great idea. I’ve got three more to go. I’ll meet you down at the lake.”

  As he looked into the flashing blue of her eyes, a shaft of yearning pierced his heart.

  “Go on, now. Shoo,” she said laughingly. “You’re distracting me.”

  “If you need any help getting into your bathing suit, let me know.”

  “Maybe you can get me out of it after we’re done swimming.”

  “Lady, it would be my pleasure.”

  He ambled down the lawn. When he got to the end of the dock, he jumped into the water, feeling the cooling rush over his skin. He floated on his back, sculling with his hands, staring up at the blue sky and the white clouds and the blinding yellow sunlight.

  “Hey, mister?”

  Nate looked over to the right. There was a seven-year-old boy standing at the shore, a brilliant orange life jacket hanging cockeyed from his little body.

  “Mister, can you help me? I’m not allowed to go on the dock without this thing, but I can’t get the things right and if I don’t get them right my brother’s going to tell on me because I put toothpaste in his shoe last night, and I want to see the fish because they were there yesterday and I need to know if they are still there and I can’t see them from the shore—”

  Nate blinked and treaded water as the sentence went on and on.

  It ended with, “So will you, huh? Please?”

  Nate looked around. There were no other grownups in sight so he swam over to the dock’s ladder, climbed out of the water, and dried off his face and hands. He approached cautiously, like the kid was of a different species entirely and maybe of the stinging variety. He fiddled with the straps and snap hooks, got everything where it should be, and rose to his feet. It was like passing a test, he thought.

  “Thanks, mister. My name is Henry. I come from New York City. I’m six and a half. My brother’s nine and he’s a pain, but I kind of like him sometimes except when he’s mean, which is not really all that often. My mother says she’s happy that she had two boys but that she doesn’t want any more kids, which is too bad because I want a sister…”

  Henry followed Nate back out to the end of the dock, chattering all the way. When they got to the end, Nate sat down and the boy plopped right next to him. Which was not exactly what Nate had had in mind.

  “Although, I don’t know, maybe she wouldn’t like SpongeBob SquarePants and then I don’t know if I would like her and I wonder whether there would be fewer presents…”

  Nate couldn’t help but stare at the kid. He had rosy cheeks and bright green eyes and his hands flew around as he talked like a sparrow’s wings.

  “Do you?” Henry demanded.

  Nate shook himself. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Know anything about fish?”

  “Ah, yeah.”

  There was a pause and Nate had to wonder if Henry was finally oxygenating his blood. The kid hadn’t taken more than two breaths since he’d stepped off the grass.

  “So?” Came the sturdy prompt. “Whadayaknow about them?”

  Nate cleared his throat. And then something odd happened. He started telling Henry about the different ways a chef could cook fish and before he knew it they were in a conversation.

  Henry was a sponge, all rapt eyes and smart questions. The kid was going to grow up to be an intellectual and that maybe explained why his head seemed so large on his thin shoulders. He probably needed extra room for that brain of his.

  When footsteps approached, Nate looked over his shoulder.

  Thank God, replacement troops.

  “Hi,” Frankie said gently. Her voice was even, but her eyes were concerned, as if she feared he’d been trapped by the boy. “What’s going on?”

  Henry looked up. “Hi. I’m Henry, I met you yesterday, remember? I’m learning about fish. Did you know that he’s a chef?”

  Frankie smiled. “Yes, I did.”

  “He knows everything about fish.”

  “Does he?”

  Henry nodded gravely, as if he were a medical resident who’d had the chance to spend time with Jonas Salk.

  Frankie looked back at Nate and he gave her a small smile. He couldn’t say that being with Henry was easy. But it wasn’t painful, either, probably because he was so distracted by all the talk. And the weird thing was, he kind of liked passing what he knew along to such a captivated audience.

  Frankie sat down on the other side of Henry, dangling her bare feet in the water. Nate stared across the boy’s dark head at her. She had a grin on her face while she listened to Henry
regurgitate what he’d learned, like a little tape recorder.

  Unexpectedly, Nate felt the urge to laugh as his own words drifted out into the summer air, spoken in a much higher octave and with a slight lisp.

  AT THE END OF THE NIGHT, Frankie turned off her desk lamp. Nate had gone upstairs already and she could hear him moving around above her. She sat in the dark for a few minutes, just listening to him.

  Sitting on that dock with Henry between them had been a joy and a torment. She could tell Nate had felt awkward because his voice had been strained and his back stiff. But by the time the boy’s mother had called him inside to change for dinner, Frankie could have sworn Nate was almost enjoying himself. That was the good part.

  The more awkward thing was that the scene made her think of having a child with him. She just couldn’t help testing the fantasy and seeing if it fit. And boy, did it ever.

  Well, at least in her mind it did.

  Except he’d already told her he didn’t want marriage or a family and one conversation with a seven-year-old about ichthyology wasn’t going to change all that.

  And hell, even if he did want to get down on one knee—and he’d given her no reason to expect that he ever would for anybody—there was still the little inconvenience of them being separated by hundreds of miles.

  Frankie went upstairs and got into the shower, thinking she needed to get away from her morose thoughts. The water pressure was pathetic, barely enough to get the suds out of her hair, and she wondered whether Alex was out of bed. Maybe now that the house was quiet, he’d ventured from his room and was washing his hair in the sink or taking a sponge bath.

  When she got to her room, Nate was in bed. His book was open on his lap, but his head was back against the pillows and his eyes were closed. With his cheekbones even more prominent than usual, he looked exhausted and as if he’d lost some weight. He’d been working so hard in that hot kitchen and they’d been…busy during the nights. Although she was also tired, from Alex’s disappearance and worrying about the business, at least she hadn’t had to cook a hundred meals every night on top of it all.