AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Bertha will be pleased that I’ve taken her advice,” said Nick leaning toward her. “Go enjoy yourselves. That might as well have been her and Henry’s life motto.”
Conscious of Nick’s shoulder only inches from her own, Candace murmured, “It sounds like they were happy together—they had each other.”
“Yes, they have each other.”
Nick shifted, stretching his legs out, and Candace couldn’t help but notice the way the fabric of his dark trousers rippled as his thigh muscles bunched. She looked away quickly, feeling her cheeks warm. At least with Nick sitting next to her, thankfully he wouldn’t notice.
He gave a contented sigh. “This is the life. From now on, I’m going to listen more to Bertha. I haven’t done enough enjoying—or living—in the past dozen years.”
“In those years you built up a successful business, married a woman who loved you, fathered a baby. Isn’t that life?”
Nick didn’t answer. Instead, after a long pause, he slung his arm around the back of her chair, and said, “So what do you do to enjoy yourself?”
Now it was her turn to fall silent.
“My sister told me that you’d recently come back from traveling abroad when she met you at the hospital.”
There was a certain irony that she’d been caught in a lie by his sister. The convenient catchphrase to explain away the months of absence while her pregnancy came to term. Now that easy fiction had come back to haunt her.
“I wasn’t traveling,” she said at last. To her relief, just then a waitress arrived with pen and pad to take their orders. Nick’s hand slid off the chair back, and rested on Candace’s shoulder. She was very conscious of the warm weight against her skin. The shoestring shoulder strap of the ivory sundress offered no protection from his touch as his fingers played idly, brushing against her, causing shivers of desire to ripple.
After the waitress left with their orders, Candace changed the subject. “Bertha seems very fond of you.”
“She’s known me a long time. Henry, her husband, employed me when I landed in trouble as a teenager for playing hooky from school.”
“I got the impression you lived nearby?”
His fingers stilled, and Candace breathed a sigh of relief.
“Yes,” he said with clear reluctance. “I lived with my grandmother—she had a vegetable garden and used to send me to buy seed from the center.”
Getting personal information out of Nick was like trying to get blood from a stone. “And your parents?”
He shrugged. “They moved to live in Kenya when I was ten years old. They took Alison with them because she was only a baby. My grandmother thought it would be better for me to stay with her and get an education. It might’ve been better if I’d gone with my parents—I would certainly have gotten into a lot less trouble. Henry’s offer of a summer job probably saved my grandmother from shipping me off to Africa to avoid expulsion from school.”
He must’ve missed his parents. Candace’s heart ached for him. “Did you see them often?”
“No, they’ve never been back to New Zealand—they still live in Kenya,” he added as she started to ask. “But Alison came back for my grandmother’s funeral, and she chose to stay on.”
Candace wasn’t letting him off the hook. She wanted to know more about what made Nick Valentine tick. “You’re very close to Alison.”
Lifting one shoulder, he let it fall. “She’s my sister.”
No confessions of endless devotion. But what had she expected? Yet she’d seen the way they teased each other and the clear bond of affection between them.
“Nick, why do you always want me to think the worst of you?”
A flush crawled along the side of his neck.
There was a long pause before he replied huskily, “Perhaps it’s safer that way.” He dropped his arm off the back of her chair, moved his chair around until he sat opposite her, then added, “Here come our appetizers.”
“That’s right, change the subject,” she muttered, incredibly annoyed for some reason that she couldn’t fathom.
The waitress set down their orders, then moved an ice bucket beside their table and placed the bottle of wine in the ice. Candace refused the offer of wine, and dug silently into the bowl of chowder she’d ordered.
When she’d finished, she set down her spoon and asked, “Do you ever talk about important stuff?”
“What important stuff?”
Candace gave an impatient sigh. “You’re a master at this, aren’t you?”
