She shook off that line of thought, remembering that she wanted to focus on the present. “Evan in the house?”
“Yes, he and the rest of the kids are having freshly baked cookies and a Toy Story marathon.”
Grace laughed. “Was that Evan’s idea?”
“No, Cheyenne’s. But I think she might have done it because of Evan.”
“Hmm, determined little girl.”
“Not wasting time going after what she wants.”
Grace met Nathan’s eyes, and a thrill zipped through her at the intensity in that gaze. Could he possibly be having thoughts similar to her own?
He led one of the horses into its stall then closed the door and motioned for her to follow him out of the barn. “Do you have plans for tonight?”
“No, not really.”
“What would you say if I suggested a picnic, just you and me?”
Her heart fluttered. “Yes.”
His eyes widened. “That was easier than I thought.”
She couldn’t help smiling. “I feel good today, and I think I have you to thank for that.”
He raised an eyebrow and gave her a rakish grin. “Really?”
“Don’t get too cocky about it, though.”
He laughed, and she loved the sound, could imagine listening to it every day without it getting old.
“All I meant was that I feel better having everything out in the open.” Well, not everything, but she couldn’t divulge how she was pretty sure she was halfway in love with him all over again. How she’d maybe never stopped loving him despite how he’d acted in the days after they’d made love.
His expression grew serious. “You’re really okay? The doctors got everything?”
She nodded. “Trust me, I made them check more than once.”
“I’m glad.”
They were simple words, but something about the way he said them, so full of a gut-deep truth she never expected, made her go warm all over.
“Wait here,” he said. “I’ll be back in five minutes.”
“I need to tell Evan where I’m going.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll tell Mom, and she can tell him. They’re probably only halfway into the first movie anyway.”
“Okay.” She supressed a very girlish giggle as she watched Nathan walk toward the back door that led to the kitchen. She hoped no one could see her because she took the opportunity to fully appreciate the nice things the man did for a pair of jeans. He gave them purpose.
This jittery excitement was how she’d felt that night when she’d crawled out of her bedroom window to meet him at that party. Only this time, she didn’t have to worry about getting caught.
A man of his word, he was back within five minutes, a wicker picnic basket in hand and a blanket draped over his arm. After they slid into his truck, he headed up a road that led off in the opposite direction from the cabins.
“Where does this road go?”
He glanced at her, a knowing smile on his face. “It’s a surprise.”
A few minutes and several winding turns later, he pulled up in front of a small house, about twice the size of the cabins. It dawned on her where he’d taken her.
“This is your home?”
“Yes, but that’s not what I wanted to show you.” He got out of the truck, taking the basket and blanket with him. She opened her door and joined him. He took her hand and led her around the edge of the house and down a path that led into a wooded area.
When they emerged on the other side, Grace gasped. Far below in the distance lay Blue Falls, the lake, and the falls. “Oh, Nathan, it’s beautiful.” She let go of his hand and walked to the edge of the ridge.
“I thought you might like it.”
She looked over her shoulder at him. “I’m surprised you didn’t build your house here, where you could see this every time you looked out.”
“I didn’t want to mar the view of the hills from town.”
Grace turned more fully toward him. “You really aren’t the same person you used to be.”
“I’m guessing that’s a good thing.”
“In some ways. Maybe we’ve just both grown up.”
He nodded and stared out toward the lake for a few seconds. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry.” He placed the basket to the side then spread out the blanket.
Grace sat as Nathan started pulling food out of the basket: ham-and-cheese sandwiches on thick sourdough bread, homemade potato salad, a jar of baby gherkins.
“Hey, these are my favorite kind of pickles,” she said as she scooped a gherkin out of the jar.
Nathan smiled. “Evan might have said something about that while looking in the fridge.”
“I hope he’s not making a nuisance of himself.”
“Not at all. Mom loves feeding him.”
Grace took a bite of the pickle and considered whether she really wanted the answer to the question rolling around in her head. “Does your family think I’m awful for not telling Evan the truth?”
Nathan shook his head. “Not awful, but we all want you to reconsider. I think you’re underestimating Evan.”
“You say that after only knowing him a few days.”
“Sometimes it’s easier to see something if you’re more removed.”
Grace drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. “Is this why you brought me out here, to hound me about telling Evan the truth?”
“No. I wanted to spend time with you.”
Grace met Nathan’s eyes, tried to see beyond the surface. She wished, so much, that she could take him at face value and not worry about ulterior motives.
“Listen, no matter when Evan gets told the truth, you and I are going to stay in touch. Don’t you think we ought to get to know each other better?”
She considered his words for several seconds before nodding.
“Now, how about we eat and enjoy the sunset?”
Grace accepted one of the sandwiches and a small container of potato salad. She watched as the sun dipped lower toward the horizon, casting a gorgeous orange glow across the surface of the lake.
“All the times I came out to the ranch to tutor you, I never knew it held so many beautiful spots. Here, the meadow where I found your mom painting.” Or maybe all of her attention had been directed toward the boy who needed tutoring.
“Now you see why it means so much to Mom and Dad. This place gets in your blood.”
“I don’t think it’s just your parents in love with this land.”
“There was a time I thought I would leave, after I finished school. You know, the whole ‘I’m going to be different than my parents’ thing.”
“Oh, yeah, I know it well.” It was the first time she’d ever been able to find an ounce of humor in the division between her parents and herself. Maybe she was simply finished dwelling on it, ready to leave it firmly in the past.
“When it came time to actually make the decision, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t imagine anywhere else I’d want to be more. Ryan left for a while, but came back. Simon has his job in law enforcement, but he can’t break all the ties, either.”
“That type of attachment seems so foreign to me. Even when we lived here, I didn’t feel it. I felt I was always apart from everything and everyone around me.”
“I think I probably knew that.”
“Is that why you asked me to that party? Pity?”
“The truth? I’m not sure. Maybe. I mean, I thought you were kind of pretty, but you know how stupid boys can be. I was a prime example. I remember that I didn’t think you’d actually come to the party.”
It shouldn’t have hurt, especially considering all the worse things she’d lived th
rough, but it did.
“It wasn’t meant to be cruel, but I’m still not proud of it.”
She stared at the weave of the blanket between her feet. “It was a long time ago.”
“I’m still sorry.”
“I guess we both have things to be sorry for.”
“I suppose.”
They ate in silence for a couple of minutes, Grace working through feelings both current and past.
“I just have one other question, and then I want to leave our past in the past and move forward,” she said.
“Okay.”
“Why did you make love to me that night?”
Nathan let out a long, slow sigh, picked at a fuzzball on the blanket. “I’d had too much to drink.”
Grace’s heart constricted, but she plunged forward. “Was that the only reason? I just happened to be handy?”
“No.” He shook his head as if trying to clear cobwebs. “You were nice, even if you were shy. Pretty, though I’m ashamed to say I would have never admitted that to my friends. If circumstances had been different…” He shrugged. “I honestly don’t know.”
Grace swallowed past the lump forming in her throat. What had she expected him to say? That he had harbored a secret love for her, too? Her life had never been a fairy tale, so why she’d thought maybe it would start now, she had no idea.
“Why did you let me? I wasn’t so drunk that I wouldn’t have stopped if you’d asked me.”
“Because I was in love with you.”
“And you expected what, that having sex would make me love you back?”
Grace shifted where she sat and battled the urge to walk away. Maybe catharsis from the past was way overrated. Nathan reached over and grasped her hand, a gentle gesture she couldn’t imagine his younger self offering.
“Probably somewhere deep down, that’s exactly what I hoped,” she said. “I wanted to matter to someone as something more than a free babysitter or another body to work and bring home money.”
Nathan’s hand tightened a bit on hers, not enough to hurt but enough that she realized her words affected him.
“Your tutoring money, they took it?”
“Yes. We weren’t allowed to have money of our own. It was expected for us to work and help support the family.”
She glanced at Nathan in time to see his jaw tighten. It warmed her heart to see that he was angry on her behalf.
“It doesn’t matter now,” she said. “I’ve come to realize that hanging on to all the old anger doesn’t do anyone any good. They will never change, but I can. Them tossing me out was probably the best thing they could have done for me. I got Evan back, an education, a good life. I’ve conquered cancer, for goodness’ sake. If that’s not something to be happy about, I don’t know what is.”
When she finished speaking, she noticed a different look on Nathan’s face. It startled her because it looked a lot like how she’d wanted him to look at her when they were teenagers.
“You’re an amazing woman, Grace Cameron.”
She felt the blush crawl up her neck and fill her face, so she tried to hide it by taking another bite of potato salad and directing her attention to where the sun now sat three-quarters of the way below the horizon.
“You ever notice how fast the sun seems to set when it gets to the horizon? You can almost see it actually move,” she said.
“Yeah.”
The silence between them grew awkward, at least for Grace. She searched for something to say, but came up with nothing.
“Grace?”
“Hmm?”
“You think we could start over?”
“I told you, it’s all in the past now. No sense in rehashing it again.”
He scooted closer to her, seated himself so that he was facing her. “That’s not what I mean.”
The feel of Nathan’s hand caressing her cheek caused her breath to lose its way, flustered by an unexpected turn. “What are you doing?”
“What I should have a long time ago.” He kissed her as he slid his fingers through her hair to the back of her head, pulling her closer.
There was something different about this kiss, something deeper. Her natural defenses threatened, but they were overshadowed by a swell of joy. Whatever happened afterward, she was going to indulge in this moment. So she kissed him back with all the love she’d once held for him, maybe still did.
HE WANTED HER. WITH every part of his body, Nathan wanted Grace. And at least for the moment, she seemed to want him, too.
The sun was long gone, and soon the last light of the day would join it. In the fading light, he lay Grace back on the blanket and kissed her more deeply. When her hands ran up his back into his hair, flames licked at his body. His heart thudded wildly, and other parts of him came to life.
He slid his hands underneath her T-shirt, up her slender rib cage to the bottom of her bra. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he expected her to protest. When she didn’t, he edged even higher and caressed the part of her breast above her bra.
“You’re so soft,” he whispered against her lips.
“And you’re not,” she said, her breath ragged enough to tell him she was feeling just as hot and bothered as he was.
He laughed. “Is that a problem?”
“No.”
Nathan nibbled at her ear. “Good to know.”
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d kissed a woman so much, or when it hadn’t been nearly enough. When Grace’s hands found their way up the back of his shirt, he was the one to moan.
She stilled where she lay halfway beneath him.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Her big, beautiful eyes stared up at him. “I know I should stop, but I don’t want to.”
“Me, neither.” He kissed her, lightly this time. “You said it, we’re different people now. It’s not like before.”
She didn’t say anything for so long he wondered if this entire outing had been a mistake.
“What is this about?” she asked.
It took him a couple of moments to realize what must be tormenting her mind. He caressed her cheek. “I can assure you this has absolutely nothing to do with Evan.”
“You’re sure?”
He edged closer so that she could feel exactly what she was doing to him.
“Grace, if we had never had a child, I would still want to make love to you right now. And I’m fully prepared to show you how much.”
Chapter Twelve
A week ago, Nathan’s words might have scared Grace. But now? Every part of her body was screaming, “Yes!” Everything was out in the open. He swore this had nothing to do with Evan, and even if it did she wouldn’t let it affect her decision. But she wanted Nathan, wanted to make love to him when she wasn’t a shy, moony-eyed, sheltered girl.
He slid his hand under her bra, and the feel of his calloused palm rubbing across the tip of her breast made her gasp. His lips blazed a trail from her ear down her neck.
She guided him back to her mouth and kissed him so deeply she thought she might become a part of him. Her hands found their way to the buttons on his shirt and started flicking them open. As soon as they were free of their confines, she pushed his shirt apart and ran her hands over his chest.
“You’re killing me,” he said, his breath warm against her wet lips.
She smiled. “I doubt that.”
Not to be outdone, he tugged at the bottom of her shirt and had it off her so quickly it could qualify as a magic trick. Before she could wrangle her whirling thoughts, he’d undone her bra and disposed of it, as well.
For a moment, a sliver of worry taunted her, but then his warm, wonderful mouth captured one of her breasts and she forgot eve
rything but the tugging, aching sensation radiating out from her breast to every part of her body.
Caution and common sense took flight as Grace lost herself to the sensations coming at her from all directions. As she fully indulged in these new feelings—ones she hadn’t even approached when she and Nathan had made love before—the rest of their clothes joined her shirt and bra.
Grace ran her fingers over the taut, warm skin of his shoulders and back. Heavens, he was beautiful to behold. She lay with Nathan, skin to skin, a dream come to real, breathing life. A shiver ran through her.
“Are you cold?” he asked as he kissed the curve of her jaw.
“Not in the least.”
He chuckled and shifted in a way that made his desire even more obvious. A little gasp escaped her just as her gaze met his.
“Is this okay? I know I’m late asking that question, but I should have asked it the first time.”
His words, his honest concern touched her in a place so deep she hadn’t known it’d existed until that moment.
“Yes. This time, I think we both want it.”
“I know I do. And this time, it’s not alcohol or stupid teenage hormones talking.” He ran the tip of his forefinger across her lips. “It’s all me.”
Grace slid her hand slowly down Nathan’s back to his hips, applying a needy pressure there. “It’s not all you.”
Nathan captured her mouth again, and Grace gave herself over to pure sensation. There would be time enough to think later, but not now.
His hands found all the right places to send her into higher and higher planes of enjoyment until finally it wasn’t enough. She whispered into his ear. “Make love to me, Nathan.”
“With pleasure.” It was part human response, part animal growl.
She grasped his shoulders as he spread her legs with his knee and proceeded to fulfill her command.
MAKING LOVE TO Nathan again had blown all of Grace’s fantasies away. But it was the gentle and protective way he’d wrapped the blanket around them and how he now held her close to him that had Grace on the verge of shedding happy tears.
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