“Thank you.”
He mumbled something she couldn’t quite make out before leaving.
Liberty turned onto her side and faced the window. The blinds were closed, but a sliver of light crept in from the sides of the slats. If she had a dollar for each time she made a bad choice, she’d be rich. When was she going to get her life together? She was smart, a hard worker, and resilient. Why did she always end up doing something stupid like getting drunk, only to snap her into reality this morning?
Thirty minutes later, the smell of coffee permeated the air and Liberty stepped out of the bedroom. She had freshened up, but was too tired to care that her clothes were wrinkled, or that she had to finger comb her hair into submission. Walking around without wearing any makeup made her uncomfortable, but she couldn’t continue hiding out in the bedroom. Tempting though it was to relax in Nate’s guest bed, she knew at some point she would have to face him.
Liberty headed for the stairs, her bare feet quiet against the plush carpet. Moving down the long hallway she passed two bedrooms and a bathroom before getting to the stairwell. At the opposite end was another room that she assumed was the master bedroom.
“Nate?” Liberty called out when she reached the main floor. The house was bigger than she had first thought. In addition to the rooms upstairs, there was an office, formal dining room and a living room from what she could see.
“I’m in the kitchen. Turn right at the bottom of the stairs.”
Liberty followed his voice and the banging of pots and pans down a short hallway. The delicious smell of food filling the air, made her hungrier, but not even the promise of food and coffee could calm her pounding heart. Talk about the walk of shame. How would she explain her behavior from the night before?
Might as well get this over with.
Liberty slowed as she walked by one piece of artwork after another lining the walls. The vibrant colors and intricate designs leaped off the canvas. Each piece more spectacular than the next.
“My cousin Christina painted those,” Nate said from the kitchen entrance, a dishtowel in his hands.
“They’re amazing. Is she a professional artist or is this something she does in her spare time?”
“As much as she charged me, she’d better be a professional.”
Liberty smiled and followed Nate into the kitchen. She took in the large space, that held a small dinette set off to the side and a breakfast bar that overlooked a family room.
“Have a seat.” He nodded his head toward the long breakfast bar.
Easing onto the bar stool, Liberty continued surveying her surroundings. The bright walls were a nice contrast to the dark floors and cabinets. Modern appliances rounded out the contemporary kitchen.
She glanced behind her and immediately fell in love with the family room. The dark gray walls, the floor to ceiling brick fireplace, and the oversized leather furniture looked inviting. But it was the wood ceiling panels with dark beams stretching the length of the room that really caught her attention. Instead of the sofa facing the fireplace, it faced the wall of glass on the opposite side of the room that provided a ton of natural light. The view outside included a deck that overlooked a moderate size yard.
“I hope you’re hungry.”
Liberty turned back to the kitchen and her stomach chose that moment to rumble, sending heat rushing to her cheeks.
Nate flashed a knowing smile. “I’ll take that as a yes. I wasn’t sure what you had a taste for, but I made a little bit of everything. Do you still take your coffee black with two sugars?”
“I can’t believe you remember.” Sorrow pierced her heart. She’d been married to her ex-husband for almost thirteen years and he could barely remember her birthday.
“I remember everything about you,” Nate said, setting a large mug in front of her.
His gorgeous brown eyes met hers and the heat that originally started in her cheeks spread throughout the rest of her body. How could one look, after so many years apart, make her still feel all tingly inside? The man had an effect on her that she couldn’t deny and he looked so good. Like each time she’d seen him, his mustache and goatee were perfectly groomed. Whether he was suited up or dressed casually, he made anything he wore look outrageously sexy. Even now, the way the blue T-shirt he had on stretched across his wide chest and molded around his muscular biceps had her mouth watering.
Nate cleared his throat, effectively breaking the temporary trance that she had fallen into. He cast her one last glance and swallowed hard before moving back to the stove. Maybe she wasn’t the only one impacted.
Liberty shook the thought free. No way he could be feeling what she was feeling. She looked a mess in her rumpled clothes, disheveled hair, and bare face.
The steam from her coffee billowed above the rim and she took a tentative sip of the dark liquid. Nate moved around the kitchen effortlessly. By the looks of the high-end appliances, fully stocked kitchen, and the way he wielded a knife, it was safe to say he spent a lot of time in the space.
How different would her life had been had she chosen the right man? Someone to come home to, who would actually be there. Someone who cared enough to listen to what she had to say. Someone who cooked for her.
“Let’s talk about last night.” Nate interrupted her thoughts. “I assume you didn’t know the man you were about to leave the bar with.”
Liberty felt like the stupidest woman on the face of the earth. She hadn’t eaten and then drank too much. The bits and pieces leading up to this catastrophe of the night before made her want to puke. What had she been thinking? Actually, she hadn’t been thinking. Going to the bar was an escape from her reality. Embarrassing herself by falling apart in Nate’s office, on top of all the stress she’d been under, had triggered her need to let loose.
Liberty looked up. The burning intensity of Nate’s gaze met hers, probably waiting for her to respond.
“No. I didn’t know him. Besides you, the only people I know in town are my sister, her fiancé and a few co-workers, though I don’t know them well.”
“Then why the hell were you leaving with the man, Liberty?” Nate snapped and then shook his head and cursed under his breath. “Sorry. It’s just that anything could have happened to you last night. I’m trying not to think about what that guy could have done to you.”
Liberty’s heart shifted in her chest at the angst in his tone. It had been so long since anyone, other than Demi, gave a crap about her well-being. Of all the people to show interest now, she never would have pegged Nate to be that person.
“I—I needed an escape,” she finally said honestly. “Going to the bar seemed like a good idea at the time. Please don’t think that’s my norm, Nate.” Even if they weren’t a couple, she didn’t want him to think the worst about her. “I have a glass of wine on special occasions, but I have never been drunk. I’m not a drinker.”
“You’ve never been drunk?” he asked, disbelief ringing in his tone.
“Never.”
An unreadable look flashed across his face, but instead of saying anything, he placed several dishes on the counter in front of her. She took in the stack of pancakes, eggs, hash browns, fruit, sausages and bacon. Even though she wasn’t a meat eater, everything looked good. As for the eggs, though she had incorporated them back into her diet, they still made her gag sometimes.
“This is a lot of food.”
“Just eat what you want and I’ll take care of the rest, but considering how much you drank last night, you might want to eat it all.”
There had been something in his gaze a moment ago that made her uneasy. Did he really not believe her?
“I know you don’t trust me, but I’m telling you the truth. What you saw last night was a one-time thing. I’m never getting drunk again.”
He sat next to her and after a short hesitation he said, “I believe you, but I’m a little confused.”
“By what?”
He piled breakfast items onto his plate, and Liberty rem
embered how much he liked to eat. Considering he didn’t have a lick of fat on him, she had no idea where he stored the food.
She added a pancake, and a little watermelon and cantaloupe to her plate while waiting for Nate to respond. She wondered if her stomach could handle this little bit.
“I realized yesterday in my office that there’s so much I don’t know about you. Since I still have questions, I started by Googling you last night.”
“You Googled me? Why?” The volume of her voice rose with each word. Disappointment clawed through her that he had resorted to looking her up online.
His fork stopped midway to his mouth. “What else was I supposed to do? You didn’t want to discuss the past. Then you had a meltdown in my office. Last night I watched you try to drink your problems away, and if that wasn’t bad enough, you almost left the bar with some asshole. Since you were in no condition to shed light on what was going on with you, I started with the internet.”
“What do you want to ask me, Nate?” She had already decided to answer any questions he had. That was the least she could do.
“Why the name change?”
Of all that he could have asked, she hadn’t expected that question first.
“Years ago, when I threatened to leave Isaac, he leaked lies about me to the media. He and his family are well connected in Chicago. During the divorce, he blackballed me around town to many of his business associates. I had been a paralegal, as well as a project manager at his family’s law firm. After leaving there, finding a decent job had been impossible. I wanted to start over, change my identity, and separate myself from him and his family in every way possible.”
“Of all the names you could have picked, why Liberty?” Nate asked.
“Because of the meaning. Living in Isaac’s world was oppressive, and had stripped me of my independence, self-esteem and anything else I could claim as my own. I wanted my power back.” Her words had more bite than intended as she pushed down the disgust she felt for Isaac and the disappointment she had in herself for giving him her power in the first place. “Liberty means the condition of being free within society from oppressive restrictions. Choosing that name was my own form of…of rebellion, I guess. I needed to take back the control I had given away.”
Nate nodded, as if satisfied with her response.
“When did you stop eating sausage?” he asked, taking the conversation in a different direction as he pointed to the plate of sausage patties. “There was a time when you would have eaten all of those, as well as the ones on my plate.”
Liberty laughed, something she hadn’t done often enough lately. There was a time she’d eat anything put in front of her, especially meat. “I’m a vegetarian now.”
The left side of his luscious lips tilted and that sexy mouth curled into a heart-stopping grin. Lust shot through her system and that thrill she used to experience back when they were dating was in full bloom. Everything about the man was hot.
“Now that’s a shock.” He laughed and she joined in. Her new way of eating had started over five years ago when she realized how much meat she consumed. She gave it up for a month and soon noticed how much better she felt physically.
Once they were finished eating, Nate went to the coffee pot and brought the carafe over to refill their mugs. The headache that Liberty had awakened with was now a dull ache. She didn’t know what had helped, the aspirin, coffee or the delicious meal.
“Come on. Grab your cup and let’s go to the family room.”
They sat on the sofa, and Nate set his mug on the cocktail table in front of them. After taking a sip of her drink, she placed her cup down.
“Your home is lovely. Did you decorate it yourself?” What she’d seen of the house, the décor fit Nate’s personality perfectly. At least from what she could recall of him. The person she experienced in his office the day before wasn’t who she remembered. But the man who had come to her rescue last night and treated her with kindness today was the man she had fallen in love with.
Nate chuckled. “Not hardly. There are too many women in my family who enjoy spending other people’s money and decorating homes. Most of the bachelors in our family have learned to come up with a budget, and get one of our aunts or cousins to fix our places up. My cousin Christina, who oversees the painting department at J & S, took care of the color scheme and painting. And Martina, she’s the big mouth who barged in on us yesterday, not only works in the office with me and Nick, but she’s a carpenter by trade. She remodeled the kitchen, added the built-ins.” He nodded toward the shelving units on either side of the fireplace. “And she built my back deck. My cousin Jada, the fashionista of the family, dragged me to every furniture store in Ohio. I may never move from this house just so I don’t have to relive the whole decorating experience.”
Liberty smiled, still looking around at his home from where she sat. “Well, they did an amazing job. Everything is so comfortable and inviting.”
Nate studied her before saying, “I’m glad you think so.” His deep, intoxicating voice sent a wave of something she couldn’t identify through her body. And the way he was looking at her…memories of what they once shared came crashing back with a force.
How had she chosen so wrong?
Liberty shook the thought free. Back then, helping her family was all she knew to do. She had chosen to be responsible and ended up sacrificing the love of a lifetime. She had chosen financial security over happiness. She had chosen Isaac over Nate.
The biggest mistake of my life.
“Why did you leave me?” Nate asked as if reading her mind. “Why did you throw away what we had for that asshole, Isaac?”
Chapter Nine
Nate hadn’t planned to start the conversation like that, but his patience had run out. If he was ever going to get over her betrayal, he needed her to explain to him what went wrong.
“I need you to know something. Something I should have made very clear before walking away from you that day,” Liberty said, moving closer to him.
There had been a lot she should’ve told him before that day, but Nate didn’t bother pointing that out.
“I never slept with Isaac when you and I were together. I rarely even saw him.”
“Then how the hell did you end up marrying the guy, Liberty? The not knowing how you could have fallen in love with another man while you and I were together is what’s bugged me the most.”
“I never loved him. Never,” she said with conviction. “I only really saw him when he came into the restaurant where I was working. We didn’t spend time together and he knew you and I were seeing each other. Every now and then he’d be outside of my dorm when I left for class or work. It was always a quick hi and bye. But… At the time, I felt like I had to marry him.”
She and Isaac had dated off and on during her freshmen and sophomore year of college. She hadn’t talked much about him, but Nate knew he was two years older, had a job waiting for him after graduating, and drove a brand-new Corvette. Nate hadn’t been intimidated by the guy, but he never thought Liberty the type to be swayed by material things.
Irritation gnawed at him. Suddenly he wasn’t sure he could sit through hearing about her and Isaac’s life together.
“This whole situation started with my family. My mother was diagnosed with sickle cell disease as a child, and had mild problems growing up,” Liberty said. “She didn’t really start having complications until after I was born. Even more so when she got pregnant with my sister, Demi.”
Nate listened intently, curious to understand what her family had to do with any of this. Liberty explained how her mother on occasion had a crisis when some of her blood cells became blocked causing severe pain. Doctors had been able to control the pain to a point, but her mother had spent a lot of time in and out of the hospital. All the while hospital bills continued to grow.
“Did you inherit the disease?” Nate asked. She had never been sick while they dated, except once when she had the flu.
“No
. I didn’t, but my sister has the trait.”
Nate released a sigh of relief, not realizing he’d been holding his breath. He and Liberty weren’t a couple, and technically her health wasn’t any of his business. Yet, that concern he felt for her the night before hadn’t subsided.
She fidgeted in her seat. Nibbling on her lower lip as if trying not to get emotional. “During each episode, my father refused to leave her side. Unfortunately, that meant he had a hard time holding onto jobs. With only a high school education, he barely made minimum wage. We were already living below poverty and their financial situation grew worse.”
Liberty stood. She walked across the room and gazed out the window. Seconds ticked by before she returned her attention to him.
“My sister called a few days before your graduation, telling me they’d been evicted. The three of them were living in a homeless shelter.” She stopped again, shaking her head. “My father was too proud to keep asking his family for help. Especially when they couldn’t understand why he took off of work whenever my mother was in the hospital.” Liberty’s voice cracked and she cleared her throat and took a few breaths.
Nate realized he hadn’t known her as well as he thought he had. They’d been so young and in love that nothing or no one else seemed to matter. Like most college students, neither of them had much money, but he had no idea her situation had been so oppressive.
“I felt so helpless. I was already sending home practically everything I made at my part-time job. It never seemed to be enough. The hospital bills were outrageous. I considered dropping out of school to get a full-time job, but I had one more year of school and was on a full scholarship.”
“Where was I when you got this call? Why didn’t I know about any of this?”
“I was finishing up a shift at work. Between me working, taking exams, and you getting ready for graduation, we hadn’t seen much of each other those last couple of weeks of school.”
“But we talked or texted every day.” Nate went to her, seeing how agitated she was getting as she rubbed her hands together, unable to stand still. Despite a sudden desire to comfort her, he stopped a few feet away to keep from pulling her into his arms. They needed to hash this out once and for all and touching her might bring an end to the conversation. “I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me any of this. I could’ve helped.”
Proposal for Love Page 7
