His Surprise Son (6 page)

Her response was so quiet he had to strain to hear it. “I know.”

Surprise made him straighten. “You’ll meet me again?”

“Do you remember Hooligan’s restaurant in Trillium Springs?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll be there in one hour.”

“All right,” he agreed, and then impulsively, before he could think better of it, he asked, “Izzy, are you in a relationship with the sheriff?”

Her hesitation lasted longer than before. “No.”

Good.
He thought it, decided not to say it. “See you in an hour.”

As he ended the call and stood, he felt a rush of anticipation in his body, the kind he hadn’t felt in a long time. The kind he used to feel just before he’d leave his house and head to the diner, knowing she would be there.

Chapter Six

H
ooligan’s was about thirty minutes away from her home in Thunder Ridge, but after hanging up with Nate, she’d changed clothes and left her house immediately, because she’d wanted to arrive first, get a table and look as if she was calm and in charge of the situation.

She sat facing the door, an iced tea she wasn’t sure she could swallow on the table in front of her.

Holliday and Derek had left before Nate phoned, and she hadn’t told either of them she was meeting him. Derek would have said she was nuts; Holly would have commended her for her courage, but courage had nothing to do with why she sat at the heavily laminated wood table way in the back of the restaurant. When he’d said they weren’t finished, everything inside her agreed. She wanted to see him again.

When Nate walked in, she thought she was ready, but the first sight of him made her pulse increase unsteadily and perspiration rise to the surface of her skin. His physical appearance was still powerful. A black T-shirt hugged his broad shoulders, skimmed across his still-flat belly and disappeared into pale blue denims that perfectly outlined the glorious V of a
very
fit body. He wouldn’t be solid muscle unless he worked out, a fact that made her squirm a bit in her aqua sundress. Lately, other than the occasional myocardial-infarction-inducing bike ride, she’d talked herself into believing that work, housekeeping and climbing the bleachers to watch Eli’s track meets provided all the exercise she needed.

As he gazed around, clearly expecting her to be seated toward the front of the restaurant, she took a more objective look at him than she’d gotten the past couple of times they’d seen each other. The impossible thickness of his black hair had been one of the first things she’d noticed when he’d started coming to the deli during his senior year of high school. Her own hair was a nondescript brown, straight and fine. Unfortunately, Eli took after her in that department. And Nate’s face—it was worthy of a sculpture, with angles and lines that seemed to be a deliberate attempt on the part of Mother Nature to create something flawless. The decade and a half since his teenage years had been good to him. Or maybe he lived an easy life unlikely to leave its imprint in signs of fatigue or stress.

A passing waitress stopped to talk to him. Nate’s answering smile transported Izzy to the past, when the kindness and concentration he’d shown her had made her feel special.

“Man, I was a cheap date,” she said beneath her breath, in no hurry for him to notice her this evening. If she could have, she’d have sat there indefinitely, observing the man who, when still a boy, had changed her life so profoundly.

When finally he spotted her, his attention became laser sharp, and the waitress’s smile fell.

Nate headed in her direction. Izzy knew she’d be lying to herself to say she wasn’t excited by his single-minded focus. The anxiety roiling in her stomach turned into a frisson of...
just admit it, Izzy
...pleasure.
Drat!

Yeah, that’s how you reacted fifteen years ago, too, and we know how that turned out.

She’d taken psychology and early-childhood development courses in community college; she knew that neglect in childhood led to a desperate search for love wherever and however one could find it. She was over that, thank you very much.

Straightening her back, she reached for her iced tea, intending to take a nonchalant sip, but got no further than her fingertips touching the moist, icy glass. Nate’s expression—so focused, so intense—made her breath come shallow and fast, no matter what her brain told her.

He slipped into the booth across from her, never breaking eye contact. “Thank you.”

She didn’t have to ask,
For what?
His wry smile said he knew she hadn’t wanted to meet him.

After an answering nod, silence stretched until the waitress arrived with a menu.

“Are you eating?” he asked Izzy.

“I already had dinner.”

“So did I,” he told the waitress, then deferred again to Izzy. “Dessert?”

She shook her head. “No, thank you.”

He considered her, then looked at the waitress, taking note of her name tag. “Kimmy,” he said. The younger woman’s instantaneous smile conveyed that she thought Nate was yummier than anything on the menu, making Izzy glad she had changed out of jeans and a T-shirt, at least, for this meeting. These days her confidence came from the inside out, but she nonetheless found her toes curling self-consciously inside the flat, comfy sandals she wore. Did she even own a pair of heels anymore?

“Do you have hot-fudge sundaes?” Nate asked Kimmy.

“I make a great hot-fudge sundae,” she replied, her smile promising that she did other things really well, too.

“I’m sure you do, but here’s what I’d like,” Nate said. “Three dishes. One with ice cream, one with hot fudge and one filled with whipped cream. Can you do that?”

Kimmy shrugged. “If you want. We put crushed toffee and a cherry on top, too. Do you want those in a bowl?”

His eyes held Izzy’s as his lips curved. “Not necessary.” He passed the menu to Kimmy. “And I’ll take a coffee, please.”

As Kimmy left to fill the order, Izzy felt heat rising to her cheeks.
He remembered.

“It took a full month of ice-cream sundaes for me to find out that all you really wanted was the hot fudge and whipped cream.” Amusement sparked in the silver-blue eyes.

Izzy’s fingers played with the damp napkin beneath her iced tea. “Back in the day when I could eat anything I wanted, yeah. I’m more careful now.”
More careful about everything.

“From where I’m sitting, it looks like you could eat a bathtub full of hot fudge and whipped cream, and your figure would be just fine. You always were too hard on yourself.”

His voice still sounded like silk slipping over skin.

“So. You look good,” she said. “Happy. How’s your life been? Did you get everything you wanted?”

His brows rose slightly. Her tone had been clipped, oddly businesslike; she could hear it and wished she didn’t sound so cold, but her voice did that when she was nervous. The time was rapidly approaching when she would need to decide one way or the other whether to tell him about Eli. She needed to find out some things first.

Nate leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table, fingers loosely linked. “Good question. In fact, I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. Did I get everything I wanted when I was eighteen?” He pondered. “It’s taken a while to realize that what I wanted before I met you turned out to be different from what I needed.”

She looked at him quizzically.

Kimmy returned with Nate’s coffee. She set down a little dish of nondairy creamers, and Izzy knew what was coming next.

Grimacing, Nate apologized. “Sorry, I should have told you before so you wouldn’t have to make two trips. I like cream,” he clarified. “Or milk. Whatever you’ve got. No rush, though. I can wait until you bring the dessert. Oh, and two spoons. Did I say that before?”

“No, but I guessed.” She glanced at Izzy, the envy plain on her face.

You’re too young for him
, Izzy thought.
You’re too young, period. Go to college, have a career and then figure out your love life.
It was the advice she gave Eli, sprinkling it on him like salt on popcorn, hoping to coat every little kernel in his brain. Kimmy walked away, dejected, but perked up when a group of twentysomething young men came in looking for a table.

Nate followed Izzy’s gaze. “You think she’s older than we were when we met?”

Surprised that he’d had a similar train of thought, she answered, “Yes. I hope so, anyway. She’s probably closer to twenty, don’t you think?”

“Hard to tell these days. Seems like people mature earlier all the time.”

Finally, she felt like smiling. “Hate to break it to you, but that answer makes you sound old enough to be her father.” She inwardly cursed herself for her careless verbal slip.

An answering curve quirked his lips. “Sometimes I feel old enough.”

Izzy continued to fiddle with her napkin. She wanted to ask whether he had kids, but that would invite the same question in return, and she needed a lot more information before she decided what to divulge. Carefully, she responded, “So you think kids grow up too quickly these days, hmm? Have you had some experience with that?”

“Last summer, I coached a football league for a group of ten-to twelve-year-old boys who were considered ‘at risk’ in their schools. We spent as much time talking as scrimmaging. Most of the boys wanted girlfriends or claimed to already have one. They weren’t even teenagers. I don’t remember reaching that stage until high school.”

“Interested in sex for the sake of sex?”

Nate’s eyes narrowed. “No. Restless, confused about the future. Hungry for a connection they don’t even know how to define.” He nodded toward her hands. “That napkin’s a goner.”

Izzy looked down. The damp napkin beneath her iced tea glass had all but disintegrated beneath her nervous fingers.

Lifting her glass, Nate placed his dinner napkin beneath it. “Better?”

“Thank you.” Clasping her hands, Izzy set them in her lap. If anxiety could be measured on a Richter scale, she’d be at a ten-plus by now.

“What makes you think I was interested in sex for the sake of sex when we were together?”

Uh...you never said
I love you
. You didn’t want me to come with you when you left. You didn’t want our baby. You started dating another girl two months after you got to Chicago. Take your pick.

“Nate, it was all so long ago. I don’t know what you wanted,” she said. “I was just referring to teenage boys and what they’re like. Boys fall in lust, girls fall in love.” Quickly she added, “Or we
think
we’re in love. After a while, you realize you were looking for a feeling. Young romance—it makes you feel like you’ve conquered the world and all its dragons.” She shook her head. “Adolescence is such a confusing time, isn’t it? Hormones are raging. We’re vulnerable. And we dive into something that seems wonderful and powerful and crucial to our happiness, and it isn’t until later that we realize the relationship we thought was so important wasn’t even real.”

“You think our relationship wasn’t real?” The friendliness had gone out of his eyes. “I don’t want to make you relive a difficult time in your life, Isabelle, but if you think I was interested in sex only for the sake of sex when we were together, you’re dead wrong.”

“It was a long time ago, Nate. It doesn’t matter anymore—”

“Would you stop saying that?” Catching his raised voice, he leaned forward and spoke more quietly. “It matters.”

She wanted to believe him. She wanted it way too much. “I’m not saying you were insincere.” She tried to make her shrug easy-breezy. “I prefer to be realistic these days, that’s all.” She leaned forward, too, hands flat on the table instead of fiddling nervously. “Being pregnant at seventeen was tough. But the hardest part was you and I being on such different pages when it came to what to do about it. I kept hoping for a different outcome than the one that was obvious from the start. I was living in fantasyland.”

“How so?”

“It was my personal Cinderella story. In my version, the girl in rags gets pregnant, goes to the ball anyway in a gorgeous maternity gown, and her feet aren’t too swollen to fit into the glass slipper. She marries the prince, they raise the baby in the castle and the kingdom is at peace. The end.” She infused her smile with as much irony as she could. “Fantasyland. A nice place to visit, but you’d have to be delusional to think you could live there.”

Nate’s expression didn’t change much, but when he spoke, his voice was so deep, so intimate that it felt briefly as if they were alone. “I should have been more careful with you. Right from the start.”

“What does that mean?” she asked when he simply watched her instead of continuing.

“I wasn’t interested in sex for the sake of sex, but I did want to make love to you. You were beautiful and sexy and smart and funny. Still are.” He cocked his head. “Except for the ‘funny’ part. You seem more...staid now.”

“Staid!”

“I said ‘seem.’ I haven’t decided for sure.”

She felt an angry flush creep beneath the neckline of her sleeveless dress. That hardly sounded like a compliment.

Nate grinned. “Settle down, because I have more to say. You can swear at me later.” Making sure she held his gaze before he continued, he said, “I knew before we met that I was leaving for college. I wish I’d gotten to know you without having sex. I wish I’d protected you in that way, because you were different from everyone else. Inexperienced—in a good way. The world had already hurt you, and you were willing to give it another chance...with me. I don’t think I ever told you how honored I was that you trusted me. I wish I’d taken better care of that trust.”

Izzy’s lips parted. Shock widened her eyes.

“When you realized you were pregnant, the guilt kicked me in the gut. But the fact is I was a lot guiltier about what I’d just done to our futures and to my parents’ trust than about what I’d just done to you. I was young, and I was an idiot—that’s my only excuse. You already know that. What you don’t know is how much I regret leaving you with my parents. They’re good people, and they cared about you, but I should have been here. Before they told me about the miscarriage, I’d already decided to come back and see things through with you. It doesn’t change anything now, and maybe you won’t believe that, but I want you to know. For whatever it’s worth at this late date, I want you to know I’m sorry. And that I’d planned to come home.”

* * *

Nate watched a fine sheen of perspiration cover Izzy’s silky skin. Her chest rose and fell with each breath. He waited. He’d said it, finally unloaded as much of the truth as he had a right to give her. He wasn’t sure what he expected as the outcome. Relief for her, perhaps, if there was any lingering resentment. Closure for himself, because now he’d seen her, spoken his piece, and it was over.

At seventeen, Izzy had been one of the least cynical people he’d ever met. And that in itself had been a miracle. Nate could still recall several details about the one time he’d met her mother, Felicia. Usually after a date Izzy would insist that he drop her off at the mouth of the dirt road leading to her home. One late night, however, he’d ignored her protests, driving instead to the front door.