If it had been her grandfather he would have used the inside door at the foot of the steps to the basement.
It might be Holly.
Nati had called Holly this morning. She knew that Holly was spending the day with her parents and that they had a no-cell-phone policy during their visits. When Nati had reached voice mail she’d left a quivery message that she needed to talk to Holly later. She hadn’t heard back from her, but it would be like Holly to recognize the distress in her voice and just show up.
Really, really hoping that it was Holly, Nati went to the door and opened it.
But it wasn’t Holly.
It was Cade.
Which, in Nati’s state of mind, was the worst-case scenario because just one look at him standing there tall and handsome, dressed in jeans and a cashmere crewneck sweater, made her want to throw herself into his arms all over again.
But she didn’t. She held fast to the doorknob and whispered an apprehensive, “Cade...”
“Hi,” he said, somehow managing to infuse that single word with warmth and comfort and understanding. “I’m not who you wanted to see, am I?”
There was no sense pretending any differently so Nati gave him a dour shake of her head.
“I know. The whole way over here I thought about things from your perspective and I finally figured out why you left the way you did this morning.”
Oh, she didn’t want her grandfather to overhear that! If the window directly above her door was cracked even slightly and Jonah was at his sink, he would.
She put an index finger to her lips as she stepped back, allowing Cade inside, all the while keeping her distance from him.
She didn’t ask him to sit down. She didn’t offer him anything to eat or drink. She merely stood there, wishing like mad that he didn’t look—and smell—so fantastic. That she didn’t want him the way she did.
He closed the door and came closer, but not too close, before he went on.
“Initially I thought that I’m probably your first since your divorce and maybe that shook you up. Then it occurred to me that this wasn’t about sleeping together...” He held both hands out, palms up, moving them like scales weighing two evenly matched quantities. “Pirfoys, Camdens, to you I probably seem as treacherous as Doug Pirfoy was.”
“More.” The word came out on its own.
Cade nodded, studying her, so sympathetic she thought he could see her fear.
“To be honest,” he said, “until just a little while ago, I had my own stuff from the past to hash out, too. But you don’t have anything to do with that. I needed to keep you separate, to just think about you, who and what you are. And when I did that, I knew I was wrong to ever lump you in with anyone else. What we have together—and can have together—is something completely new.”
He went on to say good things. Wonderful things. About Nati. About what he wanted from now on.
“I want you, Nati,” he finally said point-blank. “It already feels like I’ve known you forever. Like you were just out there, made for me, and waiting for me to finally find you. You and I are supposed to be together—I’m so sure of it that I can feel it all the way to my bones.”
Oddly enough, that didn’t come as a surprise to Nati because she felt it, too.
Which only made it all the more difficult for her to stand her ground.
But she had to. He was still who he was. And she’d had the day to relive the lessons she’d learned. Lessons that had left her scarred and scared. That had led her to the conclusion once and for all that Cade was like her food allergy—no matter how incredibly good the strawberries might taste, if she ate them, she’d break out in hives, she wouldn’t be able to breathe, and she might not live through the indulgence.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I’ve been down this road before. And I know you mean what you’re saying right now. But I also know about people who are used to getting what they want, who can have anything they want, do anything they want. I know that they just keep wanting something else and doing something else, that—”
“That was your ex—”
“And all the friends who lived the same kind of life he did—”
“But it isn’t me,” Cade insisted. “I get up every morning and go to work like everyone. I work five days a week. I have dinner with my family every Sunday. I’m not Doug Pirfoy looking for the next thrill or the next mountain to climb or the next conquest—”
“The next conquest is what your whole family history is about,” Nati said. “Building, expanding, taking over—you wouldn’t be where you are without it.”
“Okay, in business, sure, but that’s just business and it’s not what I’m out looking for every minute of my life. It’s not me as a person. I’m not all about the next challenge or thrill. I’m just what you’ve seen of me—I want to be with you, come home to you, wake up with you in the morning, live an ordinary life with you—”
“An ordinary life,” Nati scoffed. “Maybe for now. But the rest of the time? I know better. An ordinary life isn’t having your name in the newspaper every other day. It isn’t hanging out at a country club where only the elite are allowed. It isn’t charity galas, and the private planes I’m sure you have at your disposal, or the army of people I’m also sure are at the ready to grant your every wish and whim just because your name is Camden.”
“Yeah, sure, all of that is there, Nati. But you need to judge me separately from it. You need to judge me separately from the ex-husband who happened to live like that, too. I’m just looking at you,” he said, his cobalt-blue eyes steadily on her. “And I need you to just look at me, to let the rest of it fade away and just see me!”
She did just see him and it was every bit as amazing a sight as it had been since that first day in her store. And it made her eyes flood with tears for no reason she could fathom.
“I see you and a huge family that’s ultimately only loyal to you, and a legion of lawyers that I’d have to come up against if it didn’t work out,” she said. “And I can’t be the little guy going up against the giant again. I can’t be in a place where some perfect stranger—some lawyer—is telling me that I did something wrong and that’s why I lost my baby. I won’t be.” Her voice cracked and she could no longer prevent those damn tears from escaping, and she hated that all she wanted was for him to put his arms around her and hold her.
“Nati...” he said so sadly, stepping towards her, his arms out to do just what she wanted him to do.
But she stepped back, out of his reach.
“No,” she said as firmly as she could from behind the tears. “I’m just getting my life back together. I won’t let it be swallowed up by the Camdens the way I got swallowed up by the Pirfoys—”
“I’m not asking you to do that. I’m just—”
“No! We’re done. Last night was...it. It was the end. It was all there’s going to be.”
Nati shook her head, fighting not to sob. She gave him a wide berth as she went back to the door and opened it.
“We’re done,” she insisted in a voice that was soft and sorry but left no doubt that she meant what she said.
“No.”
“Yes.”
She opened the door even wider to let him know she wanted him to go.
For a long time he didn’t. Nati could only look at the floor because she was too afraid that one glance at him would sink her resolve.
Then, in a low, gravely voice, he said, “This is wrong. We belong together...”
“It’s not going to happen,” she said.
“Because you’re not letting it happen,” he accused.
“No, I’m not.”
Another moment passed before he finally walked out of her apartment.
And that was when Nati really broke down.
Chapter Elev
en
“This is kind of outside your usual territory...” Nati observed from the passenger seat of her grandfather’s car.
It was Friday night and Jonah had insisted that Nati let him take her out—first to dinner at his lodge, then somewhere else that he said was a surprise. Since his retirement he rarely ventured too far from Arden but here they were now, on the highway headed for downtown Denver.
“I can still get around,” he said as if she were challenging him. “I used to cover all kinds of territory when I was painting houses.”
“I know, but I just thought my surprise would be ice cream or a movie or something...”
“You’re too far down in the dumps for ice cream or a movie to lift your spirits. Holly and I have been trying things like that all week and it hasn’t helped.”
“I’m sorry,” Nati said, recognizing that both her grandfather and her best friend had been rallying around her since Sunday’s fiasco with Cade. Nothing had helped. The truth was that she somehow felt even worse over things coming to an end with Cade than she had when she’d finally gotten through her divorce.
“I don’t know why it is,” she went on, “with the divorce there was some sense of relief, but this... It’s dumb. It was nothing with Cade and here I am—”
“Holly and I can both see that it wasn’t nothing,” her grandfather said as he exited the highway and then drove along Spear Boulevard into the Cherry Creek area. “We think there’s even more here than there was with Doug—”
“I married Doug.”
“But you wouldn’t even go out with him for the first year he chased you. This one... With this one, there’s a lot more or you wouldn’t have been so red, white and blue.”
“I’ve been patriotic?” Nati asked, confused.
“Your eyes have been red from crying all the time, your face is as white as a ghost, and your mood is more blue than I’ve ever—ever—seen it.”
Nati laughed weakly, “Ah, I get it—red, white and blue. I didn’t realize I was such a mess.” That was a lie; she was actually more miserable than she’d even let her grandfather or her friend know. But she’d been doing her best to hide the evidence of the river of tears she’d cried this week and the fact that she could barely eat or sleep.
Jonah reached over and patted her knee. “Don’t worry, you were still the best-looking woman at the lodge tonight. But look at you—black pants, a gray sweater—you look like you’re in mourning. And Holly and I can see how sad you are,” he said as he turned off Spear onto a street that Nati suddenly recognized.
Things got more alarming when he pulled into the drive that led up to the Camden family home.
“What’s going on?” Nati demanded.
Jonah came to a stop at the front of the house and turned off his car engine, removing the keys from the ignition before he said, “Georgianna called me.”
That was a surprise.
“Oh, no...”
“It’s all right. It was nice. We had a long, long talk. We cleared the air, we laughed, we reminisced—it was really good.”
Nati glanced over at her grandfather. Was there an underlying affection in his tone? “You didn’t mind talking to her?”
“An hour and a half on the phone, like two teenagers—it was fine.”
Or maybe better than fine?
But Nati didn’t have the oomph to get into that. Besides, there was something more pressing—they were parked in front of Georgianna Camden’s house!
“What are we doing here?” she asked, taking only slight comfort in the fact that there were no other cars in sight so it was unlikely that Cade was also there.
“Georgianna asked me to bring you. She wants to talk to you.” And as if that put an end to any discussion, Jonah got out of the car.
Nati had a bad feeling about this.
But what was she going to do, sit there like a stubborn child and refuse to go in?
Cade’s car isn’t here, she told herself.
Maybe the elderly woman just wanted to talk to her about the hope chest. Maybe she hadn’t liked the work Nati had done on it.
Even though she knew it was crazy to be wishing for a complaint about her work, it was preferable to anything else the other woman could have to say to her.
She got out of the car for her grandfather’s sake, but not without saying, “I don’t like this,” as they went up to the front door.
It opened before either of them had gotten anywhere near the doorbell. And there stood Georgianna Camden in a casually snazzy little outfit of gray slacks and a mandarin-collar tunic. Nati had the impression that GiGi had dressed up for her first meeting with Jonah after so many years.
Maybe I’m just the excuse they used to see each other... Nati thought as she stood aside and watched their reunion. The two clasped hands and exchanged a warm greeting filled with compliments about how handsome Jonah still was and how Georgianna was even more beautiful after all these years.
When they’d finally fawned over each other long enough, only reluctantly releasing each other’s hands, Georgianna Camden turned to Nati and greeted her with a hug that Nati didn’t see coming.
“I asked Jonah to bring you,” the older woman said. She locked elbows with Nati, guiding her and Jonah into the formal living room where she urged them both to sit and then sat herself—on the elegant coffee table in front of the sofa, as casually as if they were in a cabin in the woods rather than a Cherry Creek mansion.
“My grandson is crushed,” she said then. “He’s putting up a good front, but I’ve never seen him as unhappy as he’s been since you showed him the door last Sunday.”
So she knew....
Nati had no idea what to say to that.
Georgianna continued before she could respond anyway.
“It took some bullying, but he finally told me what happened between the two of you and why you don’t want any part of him. Or us. And that’s when I knew I had to give you a little talking to.”
And there Jonah was, sitting beside Nati with a delighted smile on his face, as if he just couldn’t keep his eyes off the older woman.
Nati wondered if lack of food and sleep this week had put her into some kind of coma and maybe she was just dreaming this whole thing.
“Cade also told me about you and the Pirfoys,” Georgianna said. “Believe me, I know plenty of people like that, but I’m here to tell you that I’d kick any one of my grandchildren right in the seat of the pants if they behaved like your ex-husband did.”
Georgianna leaned forward to confide, “I’ll tell you the truth, after those two gold diggers tried to squeeze Cade and he told me he was only sticking to women who didn’t need his money I worried about what he might bring home. The last thing I want is some snooty little debutante as a granddaughter-in-law.”
Or maybe I’m just punch drunk, Nati thought when that made her laugh.
“This family has money,” Georgianna went on. “There’s no denying it. It’s a fact. But no matter what, the family comes first. Believe it or not, it was even like that with H.J., in his own way.”
The silver-haired woman cast a glance at Jonah then went back to focusing on Nati. “Your grandfather and I had a long talk and he understands that even all those years ago, when H.J. took over the mortgage on the Morrison farm in Northbridge, it was, in H.J.’s way, an act of love. Hank had his heart set on me and H.J. was too afraid that if he didn’t put some distance between me and Jonah, I might choose Jonah instead of Hank. And Hank’s happiness was the most important thing. Cade’s happiness is one of the most important things to me. And you are the key to Cade’s happiness.”
Nati still didn’t know what to say.
“He’s a good boy, my Cade,” Georgianna said, not seeming to need any response from Nati. “And you don’t have to worry that he’ll let a
nything or anyone come before you, or that once he has you, he’ll put you on a shelf like a toy he’s lost interest in. I’d shoot him myself if I saw him act like that. But that’s just not who he is. And yes, I understand you’re worried that you’ll get swallowed up by us. I’ll admit to you that that’s what happened to me when I first married into the Camden family. That’s why I wanted to talk to your grandfather and get you both here tonight...”
Georgianna smiled at Jonah before turning back to Nati.
“Your grandfather has forgiven me for what was done way back when, and we agreed that if you became a part of this family, your grandfather would come right along with you. In fact—”
Yet another glance was exchanged between the elders, yet another smile that made Nati even more suspicious that something had been rekindled between them.
“I’d expect Jonah for Sunday dinners every Sunday right along with you,” Georgianna said. “Your friend Holly—Cade told me about her—she’d be welcome every Sunday, too, just the way any friend of any of my grandchildren is welcome. The more the merrier—that’s always been the policy around here. When I left Northbridge I felt isolated from my own family—I’m guessing you felt that way living in Philadelphia—and I didn’t like it. Family is family—I’d treat all your relatives like they’re my own. And I hope that you’d do the same. I’d even get my feelings hurt if you had some shindig and didn’t include me.”
Nati smiled, imagining Georgianna Camden whooping it up in her little basement apartment.
The older woman sighed and frowned then, as if she didn’t like the next part of what she had to say.
“Jonah filled me in on what you went through divorcing those airline people,” she said then. “There were certain similarities between the way they treated you and the way the Camdens treated the Morrisons.”
Nati glanced sideways at her grandfather. “You had a lot to say,” she said with some surprise.
Jonah shrugged.
“Those kinds of things would never go on now,” the elderly Camden continued. “What we give, we give freely. It does not come back to bite anyone in the backside. And I can promise you that if you and Cade got together and—God forbid—something happened that put an end to it, that would be between you and Cade. It wouldn’t be you against the lot of us. You might not believe it after tonight, but I stay out of my grandchildren’s business.”
Corner-Office Courtship Page 17
