Haven Creek (11 page)

“I must have had my head in the sand, because it was a long time before I realized Kim was snorting and freebasing coke. She claimed it suppressed her appetite, and the only way she could continue working was if she didn’t gain weight.”

This revelation shocked Morgan. She’d read about the supermodel’s infidelity, but not her substance abuse. “What did you do?”

“There wasn’t much I could do. I told her to get clean or we were through. She checked into a private rehab near the Santa Ana Mountains, but left after two weeks, declaring she’d kicked the habit by going cold turkey.”

“Had she?”

“I didn’t follow her twenty-four seven, but it appeared she was telling the truth. Her publicist told the media she’d checked into the posh center because of exhaustion. Everyone seemed to believe it because she was so frightfully thin. I managed to get her to put on some weight, and her agent signed her up for several modeling gigs overseas. This time she didn’t want me to go with her. Kim’s manager promised me he would look after her. I got a job building movie sets to keep from going stir-crazy. We’d celebrated our third anniversary when I told Kim I was ready to start a family. She asked that we wait a year because she had been selected as the spokesperson for a major cosmetics company and it would entail some traveling.

“I agreed to wait the year, but then the news broke that she’d been sleeping with her manager. When I finally got to confront her she didn’t lie about it. In fact, she admitted that she’d been sleeping with him before we met, during our engagement, and, of course, after we were married. But he wasn’t the only one. It was as if all the venom poured out when she revealed she never wanted children.”

“Had you told her you wanted children?”

Nate nodded. “Yes.”

“Would you have married her if she’d told you she didn’t want kids?”

“No. First marriage and then children is what I consider a normal progression.”

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you.”

“I’m not sorry, Mo.” His eyes seemed to pin her to her seat. “It’s my past and something I don’t intend to repeat.”

Morgan hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath. “You can’t be turned off by all women because of one bad one.”

A flash of white shone in his face when he smiled. “Trust me. I’m not turned off by women. I just don’t plan to marry again.”

The voice in Morgan’s head told her to let it go, but she ignored it, saying, “Don’t you think you’re being unfair? You may meet someone who might become the perfect wife and mother for your children. Are you willing to forfeit personal happiness because of one selfish woman?”

Nate’s smile didn’t falter when he said, “Are you angling for the position?”

Heat stung her cheeks. “Of course not! I told you before that at this time in my life I wouldn’t be able to balance marriage and a career.”

He leaned closer. “What about two or three years from now? Do you think you would change your mind?”

Morgan thought of her wish list. There was nothing on it that pertained to marriage and children. Still, she said, “I probably will.”

“It’s something…” Nate’s words trailed off when the waiter set coasters on the table, then their drinks. Reaching into his pocket, Nate tipped the man, who surreptitiously pocketed the bill.

The waiter smiled. “Thank you. Would you like to order from the menu or would you prefer the buffet?”

Nate winked at Morgan when she mouthed, ”Buffet.”

“We’ll have the buffet,” he said to the waiter. As soon as the man walked away, Nate suggested, “Why don’t you go first while I wait here?”

Leaving her tiny purse on the table, Morgan got up and joined those who’d lined up near the tables groaning with trays of hot and cold food. A voice came from behind her. “What brings you out, Mo?”

Turning, she smiled at someone she hadn’t seen in a long time. “Hey, you,” she said to a man who’d gone to school with her. Dylan Hoyt had left the Creek after graduation and joined the army.

The skin around Dylan’s dark blue eyes crinkled when he smiled. “Don’t you think I deserve more than a ‘Hey, you’ after all these years?” He extended his arms and Morgan moved into his embrace. Hugging her tightly, he landed a kiss close to her mouth. “Now, that’s better. How have you been?”

The four-inch heels she was wearing put her head level with his. “I’m good. How about you?”

“I’m home on an extended medical leave. I got shot during an ambush in Afghanistan. I spent a couple of months in a military hospital in Germany before they sent me back here. My mom’s been bugging me to go out on a medical discharge, but I love the military.”

She stared at the dirty-blond stubble on his cheeks, through which she detected tiny scars. “It’s not easy to please everyone when you feel you have to follow your passion.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling her. She claims I need to stay in one place, settle down and get married, and of course give her some grandbabies.”

Morgan smiled. “That’s sounds familiar.” Even though her parents were grandparents of four and were expecting their fifth, they’d professed to want at least ten. “How often do you come here?”

“This is my first time since I’ve been back. I ran into Jesse, who told me he welcomes all active military. We get to eat free, which includes two drinks.” A flush darkened his face. “That’s an offer I’d be a fool to refuse.”

“You have to know how patriotic everyone on Cavanaugh Island is. Practically every home on the island flies an American flag.” She always put up her flag on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Veterans Day.

Dylan nodded. “I would’ve been back in time for the Memorial Day weekend reenactments if my paperwork hadn’t been held up.”

“Are you here alone?”

“No. Robyn’s here with me.”

Morgan glanced around to see if she could spot the Charleston native Dylan had dated off and on for years. As she moved along the line Morgan was greeted by several other Creek and Cove residents who congratulated her on her new venture. She finally picked up a plate and flatware, filling the plate with an assortment of salad greens and hot and cold hors d’oeuvres. Nate had drunk half his beer by the time she returned to the table.

Rising to his feet, he stared at her plate. “Everything looks delicious.”

She smiled. “It is. The chef is awesome.”

“I’ll be back,” Nate drawled in a spot-on Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation.

M
organ slapped at Nate’s hand when he attempted to spear a piece of calamari from her plate, but she wasn’t fast enough. He popped the morsel into his mouth. “Go get your own,” she said.

“There wasn’t any left when I got there. Where are you going?” Nate asked, rising with her as she pushed back her chair.

“I’m going to tell Jesse to have the kitchen staff put out some more.”

“Sit down, Mo. Please.” He exhaled when she complied. “I’ll make certain to get some the next time we come.”

Morgan gave him a long stare. “You want to do this again?”

“Of course. Good music, delicious food, and a beautiful date. That makes for an awesome trifecta.”

Propping her elbow on the table, Morgan supported her chin on the heel of her hand. “What happened to your ‘Please come with me one time as a friend’?”

“Do you remember everything I say?” he asked.

“Just about.”

“Don’t tell me you have a photographic memory.”

“Just about,” she repeated. Pressing his fist to his mouth, Nate smothered a curse. “I heard that, Nate,” Morgan drawled.

“Must I monitor everything that comes out of my mouth whenever I’m around you?”

“Of course not. The only thing you have to remember is not to say something you don’t actually mean.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Nate angled his head. His initial reluctance about going to a club vanished within seconds of walking into the Happy Hour. There were similarities and distinct differences between it and the clubs he’d visited in the past. In other clubs, it hadn’t mattered whether the music was rap, pop, or techno, it was always loud. The music at the Happy Hour was loud, but not so loud that he couldn’t hear what Morgan was saying. Here, the clubbers were mostly college students and professionals in their twenties and thirties looking to unwind at the end of the week.

The food, music, and camaraderie all paled in comparison once he thought about the woman who’d accompanied him. Her beauty and intelligence aside, Nate found Morgan outspoken and unpretentious. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her when she’d stood in the buffet line, but he’d experienced unease when she hugged Dylan Hoyt.

He didn’t want to think of it as jealousy, because that emotion had never been a part of his personality. It hadn’t bothered him when Kim wore next to nothing on the runway, because it was a part of her profession. Not only was she selling the garment, she was also selling her body. He’d lost count of the number of times she’d reminded him that her body was a hanger from which to display a designer’s garment. He also accepted the fact that men gawked at her, but only because there was little he could do about it. Nate believed he knew who his ex-wife was when he married her. Once she disclosed the number of men she’d slept with, though, what she’d become rocked him to the core.

He shook his head, as if to banish all thoughts of Kim. What he didn’t want to do was think about his ex. Thinking and talking about her was like reopening a wound that had healed. Nate stood and rounded the table, offering Morgan his hand. “May I have this dance?” The band was playing one of his favorite songs.

Morgan rose gracefully to her feet, looping the strap of her purse over her body. “Yoo-hoo! Na-than-iel. I’m coming, baby!” she said teasingly as he led her out to the dance floor and eased her into a close embrace.

Pulling her even closer, he fastened his mouth to the column of her neck. “Why did you have to bring that up?”

She giggled. “Don’t forget you still owe Trina a dance.”

He swung her around and around. “That’s not going to happen, because she believes I’m your man.”

“The truth is you’re
not
my man.”

“What if I were, Mo?”

Easing back, she met his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“What would you expect from a man if you decided you wanted a relationship?”

“That’s easy. He has to be willing to let me be me.”

Nate was taken aback by Morgan’s response. “What about fidelity?”

“Isn’t that a given?” She’d answered his question with one of her own.

They swayed in unison, their feet barely moving. Tightening his hold on her waist, Nate buried his face in her short, curly hair. The curves of her tall, slender body fit perfectly against the contours of his physique; their bodies were molded together like puzzle pieces. The scent of her perfume complemented her sensuality. It was subtle, hypnotic, and wholly alluring.

“Not with some couples.”

“It is with me,” she said quietly, her moist breath sweeping over Nate’s ear. “I know firsthand what infidelity feels like, and I don’t have to tell you it cuts like a knife.”

“If I were your man I would never cheat on you, Mo.”

Morgan’s fingers dug into his shoulder blades. “And I wouldn’t cheat on you. But that’s something we don’t have to worry about.”

“Why?”

Her mouth grazed his jaw. “Because we’re friends, Nate.”

He smiled. “Why do you sound so confident about that?”

“Because that’s what I want,” Morgan countered.

“What about what you need?”

Morgan stopped swaying, her eyes meeting his. “It’s never about need, because it interferes with my focus.”

Nate wanted to laugh. He never would’ve predicted he would find himself attracted to a woman who wanted friendship without the entanglement of a commitment, and at this time in his life he wanted
and
needed the same.

He lowered his head and brushed a light kiss over her parted lips. “We’re now officially friends.”

This was the second time that night Morgan questioned her sanity, asking herself if she could maintain a friendship with a man who reminded her of why she’d been born female. Even when she’d experienced her first sexual encounter, it’d been Nate’s face and not the one of the man sharing her bed she’d fantasized about. It had been Nate’s mouth kissing and tasting her exposed skin. It had been his hands that made her aware of areas on her body she’d come to recognize as erogenous zones. And it had been fantasizing about Nate during lovemaking that helped her physically transition from girl to woman.

Crazy or not, she had to remind herself that she was no longer that wide-eyed, hero-worshipping girl who hung onto Nate’s every word and took a corridor that led away from her classroom just so she could bump into him in the hall. Even if he didn’t speak to her, Nate would always nod or smile. The one time he said she looked pretty, Morgan believed she’d been hallucinating because she had worn a dress she’d relentlessly hounded her mother to buy for her. It was a simple sundress in a sunny yellow with crisscrossing straps that bared her back. A pair of black patent leather ballet flats with a grosgrain bow pulled the winning outfit together. It was at that point that her infatuation with the honor student turned to love. Not only had he acknowledged her, but he’d also thought her pretty.

Morgan knew at the time that Nate was too old for her and that her parents would never permit her to date an eighteen-year-old boy, but that didn’t stop her from filling up the pages in her diary about what he wore, what she’d overheard him say, and what she felt when she found out that he was dating Chauncey. Morgan hated Chauncey; she thought she was hideous and wished her dead. Years later, when she reread what she’d written, she got down on her knees and prayed to God to forgive her. Fast-forward nineteen years: Now Nate had asked whether they could see each other, albeit as friends—but it was tantamount to dating, to an ongoing relationship free of commitment.

As much as Morgan would’ve wanted the situation to be different, she knew that whatever they would share had to be commitment-free. That way there would be no pressure and no hard feelings. Any illusion of falling in love, becoming engaged, getting married, and setting up a household with a husband had fled. As a professional businesswoman, her focus was on growing her business. Kara had entrusted her with a multimillion-dollar historic restoration and preservation venture, which she planned to see to fruition. It was a challenge Morgan sought the first time she’d visited a historic site, one that was not far from Newburyport, Massachusetts. She’d dreamed of it, yet had no idea it would become a reality when she reached thirty-two years of age.

“Friends,” she repeated. Her response seemed to please Nate as he spun her around and around in an intricate dance step. “Wait a minute, Twinkle Toes. Don’t tell me you’re practicing for
Dancing with the Stars
.”

Nate dipped her low. “I’ll have you know I took dance lessons back in the day.”

“You’re kidding,” she said, staring up at him.

He eased her upright, then led her back to their table and seated her. “Nope. My aunt Lizzie had been a professional dancer. She’d come along when not many of our people could get roles in the movie musicals that were so popular in the forties and fifties, but with her so-called exotic looks she was able to get parts denied other black performers. She continued to work until she married my uncle. He was a Communist sympathizer who’d convinced her to attend several meetings with him. Her name was one of many that appeared on the Hollywood blacklist during the McCarthy witch hunts. Her career ended abruptly, and no casting agent would let her through the front door.”

Totally intrigued by the story, Morgan was unaware that she’d bitten her lip until she felt it throbbing with her pulse. It was then she realized she knew nothing about the Shaws other than that they had produced a long line of carpenters and furniture makers. “What happened after that?”

“Once the word circulated he and his wife were commies, my uncle was summarily dismissed from his job with a building maintenance company. The only position Aunt Lizzie could find was cleaning houses, and Uncle Phillip got by doing odd jobs. A woman who was a professor at UCLA and wrote articles for the
Daily Worker
under a pseudonym hired her as a live-in housekeeper and my uncle as a landscaper. When the woman discovered my uncle’s skill as a carpenter, she commissioned him to make built-in bookcases, furniture for the formal dining room, and several guest bedrooms. My uncle died from a ruptured aorta a few days after he celebrated his fiftieth birthday. Fortunately he’d taken out a modest life insurance policy, naming Aunt Lizzie as the beneficiary. She handed in her resignation, rented an apartment, and then set up a dance studio, offering lessons to neighborhood kids.”

Morgan heard the huskiness in Nate’s voice when he talked about his aunt having to give up teaching once she was diagnosed with an arthritic hip. That’s when he accepted the scholarship to attend San Diego State University and her offer to come live with her. On days when she was able move around without too much difficulty, she taught him to fox-trot, waltz, quickstep, tango, and rumba. She also taught him how to cook. He told Morgan how she would fuss with him about spending all his free time with an old woman when he should’ve been out with his friends, but as a full-time student who worked another twenty hours a week making cabinets, he’d been too exhausted to socialize.

A wry smile pulled down one side of Nate’s mouth. “Our roles were reversed when her arthritis worsened and I became the caretaker. After I graduated I tried convincing her to move to Las Vegas with me, but she didn’t want to leave her old neighborhood. She wound up in a skilled nursing facility after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and I made it a practice to visit her every weekend.”

“Where were you living?”

“Vegas.”

Morgan’s eyebrows shot up. “You drove from Las Vegas to San Diego every weekend?”

He nodded. “The two cities are only three hundred miles apart. The other residents would tease her, saying her son must really love her to visit so often. I played along with them after I heard her tell another patient I was her son. That’s when I started calling her Mama.”

“What ever happened to her?”

He stared at the flickering candle on the table. “I’d gone to see her for her birthday and she was lucid for the first time in weeks. We talked about when she met my uncle after he’d gone to see her perform in an all-Ne
g
ro dance revue when it came to Charleston. She talked for hours, and I listened. Then she said she was tired and wanted me to leave. I kissed her, told her I loved her, and said I would be back the following day. She said I was the son she’d always wanted. The nursing home called me six hours later to tell me she’d passed away in her sleep.” Nate closed his eyes, his chest rising and falling heavily. “It was the second time in ten years that I’d lost a woman I loved.”

Morgan placed her hand over his fisted one. “She’s at peace, Nate.”

He opened his eyes, the light from the candle reflected in his golden orbs. “I know that, and I try not to dwell on it.”

“I shouldn’t have asked.”

“Come on, Mo. If we’re going to be friends, then we should feel comfortable talking about anything.” His expression brightened. “Do you want another glass of wine?”

“No, thank you. If I have another glass you’ll have to carry me out of here.”

“I could carry you under one arm like a football.”

Resting her hands at her waist, Morgan glared at him under lowered lashes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t get huffy, baby. You’re hardly a heavyweight.”

Nate talking about her weight had aroused old fears and insecurities about her body—the ones she had when she was the brunt of boys’ adolescent jokes. “Maybe you’d prefer I look like Trina?”

Without warning, Nate’s face went grim. “Where is all this coming from, Morgan? I meant it when I said you’re beautiful. No, I take that back. You are
stun-ning
! In case you didn’t notice, more than half the men had their tongues hanging out when you stood up to go to the buffet table. Hoyt was cheesing so wide that if this place were any brighter, I know I would’ve been able to see his molars.”

Morgan hesitated, torn by conflicting emotions. Was Nate actually jealous? And if he was, did that mean he felt something that went beyond friendship? Or was it simply male posturing?