Run: Beginnings (4 page)

              A warm smile brushed across Eric’s face. “I hope my attire is suitable for madam,” he teased with a quirked brow and glimmering eye. He had clearly noticed her gaping at him

              Natalie blushed. “Yes, of course! Come on in, please,” she said, opening the door wide. With Eric came a blast of the cold fall air. It was only the end of September yet this was the coldest weather Natalie had ever experienced in her sheltered city life. She wondered how she’d ever survive winter and the snow.

              Eric stood in the middle of the large family room with his back to Natalie, surveying the damage. The bones of the house were lovely. The wood trim was intricate and the rooms large and spacious. There were even some stain-glassed windows in the upstairs rooms. But the house hadn’t been maintained as it should’ve. The roof was a mess with large patches of missing shingles. The floors were scuffed and warped. The windows and walls had been erected before proper insulation had become standard, letting all the coldness of the outside to seep in. All this had led to most of the doors warping from the weather. Her bedroom door barely shut.

              Eric gave a low whistle. “You know, I told Doc Cadwell he needed to reno this house several times. But the old man was just too involved in medicine to see anything else beyond his clinic.” Eric looked up at the ceiling, squinting his eyes to evaluate something beyond Natalie’s understanding. “I never realized how much work really was needed.”

              Natalie shrugged. “Well, that’s why I just want to do the bare minimum for now. It’s too cold to be doing all the major rehab now. The snow will be falling soon and it’ll never get done in time. I just want to do what I can so I don’t completely freeze during winter.”

              Eric turned around and looked down at Natalie. His whole body seemed to exude a raw heat that instinctually drew Natalie in. There was something different about this man. It wasn’t just his height or his devilish charm. All of those things Eric seemed to use to throw Natalie off from something deeper within him. She could feel an energy, primal and potent, pulsing within him. What was it? What was he hiding?

              But she was startled out of her reverie as Eric’s large thumb swiped across her cheek. He looked down at his thumb then to Natalie’s wide eyed surprise, he put it into his mouth and licked it. “Mmm,” he said. “Is that gravy?”

              Natalie nodded, biting her lip to try not to laugh at how eager his expression had become. “Yes,” she said shrugging her shoulder towards the kitchen. “I thought you might be hungry and to thank you for helping, I made dinner. The roast is warming right now in the oven.”

              Eric grinned and clapped his hands together. “Well! With motivation like that, I’d better get started. Let me bring in my tools.”

***

              For the better part of two hours, Eric helped piece back together the house that Natalie now owned. She couldn’t believe the amount of work he was doing on her behalf. He had even promised to help her get started on the bigger projects in spring and to bring in some good construction workers he knew to help. For the first time in weeks, Natalie felt like she could relax a bit of the tension in her shoulders. She didn’t have to do it all alone. She had asked for help and the world had not crumbled and the oceans had not split like Eric had said. Instead she had only found gratitude, warmth, and comfort.

              “I think that should do for tonight,” Natalie suggested, putting away some of the unused wood into a corner. “How about some food?”

              Eric had taken off his coat and had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, revealing his muscular forearms. Wiping off some sweat, he nodded. “A home cooked meal by the little rabbit. Who could argue?” he grinned.

              As Eric washed up, Natalie set the table. She pulled out the roast, her salad, and some grilled tomatoes since she hadn’t been able find the asparagus she had originally wanted. By the time Eric sat down, she was pulling the cork out of the wine.

              “Wine?” she asked, hovering the bottle over his glass.

              “Just a little,” he said.

              Natalie poured less than she would normally pour for herself. She wondered if the man didn’t like to drink.

              Eric looked around the table, his eyes glowing with appreciation. “With a feast like this as a reward, I’d gladly take this house down brick by brick and rebuild it again.”

              Natalie laughed. “Well, do that in the summer then. I don’t fancy freezing my butt off in the cold while you dismantle my house.”

              Eric laughed and tucked into his meal with an eagerness that warmed Natalie’s heart. She loved seeing people enjoy her cooking. It made her happy to know that she had something to offer the man who had already done so much for her.

              Plates empty and bellies full, Eric leaned back in his seat and took a small sip of his wine. Natalie noticed he had been nursing his small glass of wine the entire dinner. She felt bad in pouring him something he clearly did not enjoy drinking.              

              Eric instead seemed to have other things on his mind than wine. He regarded her over the rim of his wineglass. “So tell me, little rabbit. I’ve been curious about something. What would bring a young hotshot doctor like you into such a backwoods town like Lowell?” he asked.

              Natalie took a sip of her wine. It was her second glass. She had felt conspicuous having a second glass when Eric hadn’t finished his first but Eric had been the one to see her empty glass and refill it. And she was never one to argue with wine.

              “Well, it’s not every doctor that gets to run her own practice,” she said quietly.

              Eric raised a brow. “Oh? And are all American doctors clamoring to open practices in the Canadian wilderness?”

              Natalie shrugged. “It’s a family practice. Dr. Cadwell wanted to keep it in the family.”

              Eric placed his glass carefully on the table and stretched his hands out in front of him, looking down at his long fingers. “
Dr.
Cadwell, is it? Not
Uncle
Cadwell?” he said. “Not a very affectionate family, it sounds like.”

              Natalie shrugged. Well. If he was going to be perceptive and nosey. “I needed to get away,” she said, holding her wineglass close to her as if it were a safety blanket.

              Eric looked up. “From what?”

              “From…from a mistake,” Natalie said, struggling to find the right words. She sighed when nothing came to her. “I was engaged.”

              Eric’s eyes didn’t flicker. “But you’re not married.” He didn’t make it a question. He knew she wasn’t married.

              “No,” Natalie agreed, taking a sip of wine. “I broke it off. He…Michael—that was my fiancé—he wanted to get married but I didn’t so I left. It was…complicated.”

              Eric said nothing but his expression was patient, calm. She knew he was waiting for her to get her bearings.

              “We had been together for four years. He was with me through most of medical school. I really loved him and thought we were definitely going to get married. We were just waiting for me to get out of school first.At least tha
t’
s what he said. But after graduation, things started changing. He started criticizing. He said I wasn’t making much of an effort with my weight. He started nitpicking on the way I would dress. But the thing was that with how crazy school had been and now work, I actually had
lost
ten pounds. But it wasn’t good enough for him.” Natalie looked down at the table, pulling her arms tight around herself. “He said it wasn’t good enough.”
Which meant
I
wasn’t good enough.

              Taking another fortifying sip of the wine, Natalie continued, “One night I came home early after a long shift at the hospital. I thought maybe we could go out to dinner together. I figured if we just spent a little more time together, we’d be fighting less. I went upstairs and heard the shower running. I knocked and then opened the door. I heard her giggle first.”

              Natalie felt the memory of that night come back in a stinging wave of betrayal and hurt. Tears prickled her eyes as she remembered the pain of realization. For a split second, she had seen the way Michael was looking at the giggling woman. The laughter and lust in his eyes had been so absent from Natalie’s life for so long, she almost had
n’
t recognized the look. “Michael was shocked to see me home so early. He hadn’t expected me. Obviously. I don’t who she was but obviously he knew her well enough to be sharing a shower. I didn’t wait for any explanation. I just left.”

              She had gone to Amber’s house, driving in a haze of tears, sobbing loudly in the car. The girl had been everything she was not. Blonde, beautiful,
thin.
She had felt so ugly and so unwanted. By the time she landed on Amber’s front door, Natalie was completely shattered.

              Later, the details had begun to trickle in. Her name was Candace. She was a coworker of Michael’s. Initially it had just been a casual friendship. But eventually, according to Michael, she had become more insistent, more flirtatious. And then everything had spiraled.

              “He came back later saying that he was sorry. That what he had done was unforgivable,” Natalie said, her voice sounding hollow even to her own ears. “He cried and said it had all been a terrible mistake and that he loved me.” Natalie sighed, looking away. “I know I should’ve just let the relationship die then. It was already broken. But I was so….Oh god, I’m going to sound so stupid but I was scared that no one else would ever want me again.” She said the last bit in a rush, the words squeezed together in one breath.

              Too ashamed to meet Eric’s gaze now, she continued, “And a week later he proposed. It was a short engagement. He insisted we get married as soon as possible. But throughout the whole time, I could see that he wasn’t really looking at me. He wasn’t
seeing
me
.
I think he was just doing what he thought was right. He hated feeling like he was the asshole. A lot of our friends had heard what had happened and were shutting him out. So Michael wanted to try and fix it. But even though he stopped criticizing me about my weight or my body, I could see it in his eyes and I could feel it in the way he touched me. Or really, the way he
did
n’
t
touch me. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized, I couldn’t live with that. I couldn’t live a life where I repelled someone. So I broke it off, grabbed a flight from LAX to Vancouver, and landed here.” Natalie placed the wine back on the table. With a faint smile, she finished, “And
that’s
how I ended up in backwoods Lowell.”

              Natalie couldn’t read the inscrutable expression on Eric’s face. She wondered if he was sorry he asked. No guy wants to hear a sob story. Especially after having had dinner. It’d cause indigestion. But instead of making a generic flippant remark about other fish in the sea or some such nonsense she expected, Eric suddenly stood up. She marveled at his natural grace. You’d think someone of his size would have a hulking gait to him but not this man. Not Eric.

              Standing, he extended a hand. Curious, she placed her own smaller hand into his large one. He gently pulled her up from her seat and towards him. Even in the dim lighting of the kitchen, Natalie could see the piercing yet tender glow in his eyes. A warm hand brushed her hair back from her cheeks. “I think,” he said quietly, the heat of his body warming her faster than any space heater could, “you are incredibly brave and beautiful, Natalie.” His eyes held her captive as he ran his hands down her arms, pulling her even closer to him. She was practically pressed against him now, her full breasts flattened against his rock hard chest. He tilted her chin up. “Not everybody could do what you did. Not everybody could pluck up the courage to stand up for herself.” Eric lowered his face, his warm breath brushing against her cheek. His lips were only an inch away from her own. Natalie could feel her heart bruising her ribs with its hyper speed beating. “But you’re not just ‘everybody,’ are you, little rabbit?” Even if she couldn’t see it, she could feel the twitch of a smile in his voice.              

              But before Natalie could respond, Eric’s lips swooped down, capturing her own in the most drugging and heated kiss she had every experienced. She could feel his lips molding her mouth to his. His tongue thrust into her mouth,
owning
it, exploring it, making sure every inch of her was completely his.

              Natalie ran her hand up his broad chest. Feeling her pulse race, she gave into the kiss, unable to stand against the wave of desire that flooded her once his lips had touched hers. Gripping onto his shirt tightly, she leaned into him, letting her body speak for her. Her skin had been tingling with electric nerves since Eric Mitchells had entered her house and having him pressed so close against her, she felt the sparks explode across her body.

              As soon as Natalie pressed herself to him, Eric immediately responded by wrapping an arm around her back, embracing her with a fierceness that made Natalie melt. He pulled at her lips, played with her tongue, and pushed her beyond whatever limits she had ever thought a kiss could break. Finally, with tremendous strength, Eric broke away. His breathing sounded just as shattered as hers. Looking up at him, Natalie knew that her own face was mirroring his expression of stunned silence at the amount of passion that had just flowed between them.