Home Sweet Home (9 page)

A
s nervous as Andi was about spending another night with Nate—especially knowing that they were going to be having “the talk”—she had to smile when she realized where he was taking her.

“I haven’t been to a football field since high school,” she told him. The new coach was already putting the kids through their paces when she and Nate arrived at the field. “Funny, it looks exactly the same.”

Nate grimaced. “No kidding. We’re in desperate need of an overhaul. But hey, it still does the job. And the kids still love it. The town still shows up every Friday night. One day we’ll get there with something a little shinier.”

Looking more carefully, she saw that the bleachers had seen better days, way better if the rust stains on the seats and beams were anything to go by. The goalposts were pretty darn beaten up, too. The seed of an idea flashed into her mind, and Andi made a mental note to think more about it later.

She took a seat on the least dented row only to jump up with a small shriek. It was like sitting on an ice cube. The wind had picked up since they’d left the store, too, and she barely held back a shiver.

“I didn’t expect it to be that cold.”

“Let’s try this instead.” Nate laid out the blanket he’d brought onto the seat. “I should have known you’d be cold, that you wouldn’t be dressed for the weather.”

Sitting down on the blanket, Andi suddenly felt self-conscious, like her dress was all wrong, the same dress she’d put on that morning for an extra dash of confidence, to try and ground herself in who she really was. Only now she was a greenhorn who didn’t know how to be “dressed for the weather.”

“If I’d known this was where we were going, I would have changed into something else.”

Obviously reading between the lines, Nate said, “You look really pretty, Andi. I’ve always loved you in blue.” But even as he complimented her, he looked irritated. “It’s my fault. I should have thought this through better.”

He tucked the blanket up and over her shoulders and around her lap, until she was completely cocooned in thick wool.

“Fortunately I did think to bring this.” He pulled a thermos of hot cocoa out of his bag and poured her a cup.

When was the last time a man had worried about her? she found herself wondering as she burrowed one hand out from under the blanket to grab the cup. When was the last time a man had cared about something as simple as whether she was warm or thirsty?

“Hey Nate, awesome to see you out here!” one of the kids called out. “Any chance you can come run some drills with us?”

Nate grinned. “Howie, meet Andi.”

The teenager said hi, and she remembered being that young once, when the entire world was her oyster.

Neither she nor Nate had any idea that it would all implode in the blink of an eye.

“We’re just here as spectators tonight, Howie,” Nate told him. “I’ll work with you guys later in the week, okay?”

But the truth was Andi needed a little space, a little time to catch her breath and figure out an ironclad way to control her reaction to Nate.

“Go run drills,” Andi said.

Seeing the way the boy’s eyes lit up—Nate was clearly his hero—made her feel even more confident that she was doing the right thing by sending him out onto the football field.

“I’m here for you tonight, Andi. Not them.”

But she didn’t want to hold him back. Not when she knew that these kids were far more important to him than she could ever be.

“I’m fine. Really. It’ll give me some quiet time in the great outdoors. With helping out at the store, I haven’t had much of that since I’ve been back.”

Heck, she hadn’t had much of that since she’d left at eighteen. She spent most of her time inside either her office or apartment, usually in front of a computer.

For the next hour she watched Nate yell, laugh, and run with the team, and for a moment she was seventeen again, watching him, so young, so beautiful, as he would catch a touchdown pass, grinning up at her in the bleachers as she sat just like this, under a blanket with a thermos of hot chocolate.

But she wasn’t seventeen anymore. And not only was he a man who had weathered far more than he should have—she was also making the mistake of finding him a thousand times more beautiful.

She loved the way he focused completely on the kids, singling them out one by one, clearly forgetting that she was sitting in the bleachers. She loved watching how the boys almost seemed to grow bigger from Nate’s attention, whether it was his hand on their elbow as he corrected a throw or because he’d just showed them exactly how to evade the defense.

Nate had a very rare, very special gift: he made you feel like he cared. Her father had done that, too; every politician did, but it was different with Nate.

Andi didn’t like the way her thoughts were going, didn’t like admitting to herself that her father’s attention almost always came with an ulterior motive. Whereas Nate simply cared because of who he was.

That was why she had fallen in love with him so long ago.

And why she was having so many problems with her feelings now.

Because how was she supposed to resist the one person who had always been irresistible? Even when they were kids, Nate was the only person who had ever made her think about staying in Emerald Lake. He was the only one who could have made her even consider giving up her dreams.

She shifted so suddenly on the bleachers that the blanket half fell off of her lap.

Oh no.
That’s what this feeling was. It was happening again. All over again. Just one night with him at the Tavern—a night where he hadn’t even liked her very much—had her crumbling, about to deviate from her carefully laid plans.

No, she couldn’t go there. Falling in love with him the first time had been easy, so natural.

But doing it again would be beyond crazy.

Losing him once had hurt bad enough.

It would destroy her if she let herself fall back in love and then lost him again.

It was just a matter of mind over heart. She needed to make sure she thought with her head, not with the erratically pulsing lump behind her breastbone. She just needed to remember that if this project for the Klein Group went well, she would not only keep her job but might even have the chance of making the leap to partner in the near future.

Still, when practice ended and Nate jogged back over to her, the wild urge to leave, to run, to flee took her over. She could be on the road in minutes, leave her bags behind in her mother’s house, head back to the city and never come back to Emerald Lake. She could bury herself in work and forget all about
one night.

This was precisely why she rarely came back to Emerald Lake. Once she drove across that thin blue line into the Adirondacks it was as if everything inside of her twisted up, turned inside out.

Calm down, Andi,
she told herself, taking control of her runaway heart with an iron fist.
He doesn’t want anything from you anyway. Especially not your heart.

Nate reached into his bag and pulled out containers of food. “Courtesy of the diner.”

She eyed the food suspiciously. “How can that be from the diner? It actually looks good.”

He laughed, the sound warming her more than she wanted it to. “Janet took it over a few years ago.”

“You’re great with those kids.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you hear all the yelling I was doing? Bet the little punks are real happy they asked me to run drills tonight, huh?”

“They were. They know that you yell because you love them.”

“I remember when I took the job. I thought I was just there to teach them sports. But that ended up being the smallest part of it. Mostly they just want someone to talk to—or to care about them enough to tell them they’re acting stupid. Not all of them have someone at home to expect great things from them.”

Silence fell between them, but she didn’t reach for the food. Neither did Nate.

“Look,” he said, and she knew what was coming. The dreaded talk. “I’m really sorry for what I said to you that night when we were eighteen, Andi. You were just trying to help, and I—” He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have lost it like that.”

She knew exactly which night Nate was talking about, right after his father had died and she’d rushed home to be with him. The night he’d asked her stay and she’d told him she loved him, that she would help him any way she could, but she just couldn’t stay.

And then he’d yelled at her and said they were through.

Shocked that the memory could hurt just as much now as it had then, all Andi could say was, “I’m sorry I wasn’t more helpful, Nate. I wish I had been. You don’t know how much I wish that things had been different.”

“Me, too, Andi. I wish they’d been different, too.” He paused, then said, “Can I say one more thing, Andi?”

She wasn’t sure she could handle one other thing. Not when it was just the two of them out here under the stars, and he smelled like soap and freshly mowed grass and Nate, and she was holding the blanket in a death grip so she wouldn’t reach out for him and tell him that she was still scared and hurt and sorry she’d let him down, but that he’d let her down, too.

“What’s that?”

“Thanks for giving me another chance tonight.”

Was that what this was? A second chance? For her to pitch her idea to him? For them to save their friendship? Or was it something bigger than either of those things?

“Same here.”

“Well, that wasn’t too hard, was it?” He couldn’t mask the sound of relief in his voice.

Unable to shake that unsettling feeling that the reason it wasn’t hard was because they’d barely scratched the surface of their past, Andi made herself smile back.

“Okay then, I’m ready to hear your side of things on the condos. After all, this is your night to convince me I’m wrong.”

Only expecting words, she was surprised when he took the cup of cocoa from her hands. “Close your eyes.”

She just sat there, not able to follow his instructions so quickly. Not when there was so much trust involved in his simple request to close her eyes.

She’d always trusted him. The problem was, she wasn’t sure she trusted herself anymore.

“Here,” he said, moving so that he was sitting on the row behind her. “I’ll make it easy for you.” His hands came down over her eyes.

Warm. He was so incredibly warm.

“Breathe, Andi,” he said, his voice low as it whispered across her skin. “I just want you to feel.”

Oh, she was feeling all right. Too much, in too many forbidden, off-limits places. And with her sight temporarily taken away, all of her other senses came into high alert.

“I never forgot this smell,” she admitted softly. She took one breath and then another, letting the fresh, sweet night air fill her lungs. “Fresh cut grass. The sap on the maple trees. The wind blowing in off the lake.”

She wasn’t stupid. She knew this was part of his plan, to make her feel everything she’d pushed out of her life. She just couldn’t see the point in lying about how much it affected her. Everyone had always thought she was so smart, whereas they’d been fooled by Nate’s big muscles, his charming smile. But Andi knew firsthand just how smart he was.

Smart enough to come at her not with facts and figures but with sensation. And emotion. And memories.

The same memories she was trying to close off, shut down.

“I always liked knowing you were in the stands,” he said from behind her. Her eyes were closed now, but he didn’t pull his hands away from her face. “What do you bet one of those boys on my team has a crush on one of the girls in the stands? From one generation to the next.”

Danger. They were heading straight for the danger zone. She could feel it, skin on skin, his heart starting to beat against her back as he leaned into her and said shockingly simple things that played havoc with her insides.

She put her hands over his knuckles to slide his hands away from her eyes. But even though she was trying to put space between them, she found herself lingering over his touch a moment longer than was strictly necessary.

Nate knew he was overstepping the line, but his problem with resisting Andi was getting worse, not better. He hadn’t brought her here tonight so that he could touch her, so that he could bring it all back to the two of them again. But he hadn’t been able to help himself. Not when she was so easy to be with. Not when she was so adorable, looking out at him from beneath the big blanket.

Damn it. He needed to stop this insanity. Hell, he should have known he was still lying to himself again this morning when he had told himself they could put the past behind them and keep their focus on the condos tonight. Not to mention what he’d said—or hadn’t—at the Adirondack Council meeting that morning. When they asked him if there were any building plans the council should be aware of, he’d said no. He hadn’t even told his assistant, Catherine, about Andi’s plans yet.

For some reason, he couldn’t stop himself from protecting Andi. Even though he was damn sure it was going to come back to bite him in the ass later.

Moving off the seat behind her, making sure to put her out of reaching distance, he said in a gruff voice, “Tell me about the store. Tell me how it’s been working there these past couple of days.”

“It’s surprisingly engaging.”

“Why surprising?”

“You know I never planned to have anything to do with the store as an adult,” she said. She held up a hand and added, “But before you jump all over me again with the whole ‘You’re not from here anymore’ rant, the truth is there are so many more facets to running Lake Yarns than I ever realized.”

“I’m an ass, Andi,” he said again, wishing he’d never said those things to her.

“Yes, we’ve already established that,” she said in a crisp voice. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring it up again.” She shook her head. “Okay, I’m officially over it. For good.”

He didn’t believe her, not when he could still see hurt flickering in her eyes.

“Tell me about the facets.”