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“I’m sorry about Jessica,” she said, trying to work up the courage to ask what she really wanted to know. What on earth had possessed him to ask a cold fish like Jessica to marry him? Had he really been in love with her? Was he still in love with her? It had only been a week. Of course he was still in love with her! No one got over someone they were in love with in just a week.
“I’m not sorry.”
She stopped walking. “You’re not?”
He stopped walking, too. “Strangely, I haven’t thought of her much all week. I’ve concluded that it means that I d
on’t miss her. Which leads to me believe that I wasn’t really in love with her. I think she was more like a habit. We dated for three years and we were highly compatible in a lot of areas. Plus, she has an extremely high I.Q., which I thought would bode well if we ever had children. Which, I wanted, but,” he frowned, “she never actually committed to. So, no, I’m not sorry at all.”
He began to walk again, but Lauren stayed frozen in her tracks. “Highly compatible in a lot of areas? Extremely high I.Q.?” She started to laugh. “Are you kidding?”
When he realized she wasn’t keeping up with him, he backtracked to his former spot. “No, I’m not.”
“And that’s why you asked her to marry you?”
“Well, the sex was good, too.”
“Geez! Do you always say exactly what’s on your mind?”
“No.” His gaze dropped to her mouth. “Sometimes I do exactly what’s on my mind.”
And then he kissed her.
Nate Miller was kissing her. And it wasn’t a brotherly kiss. Or a bumbling first kiss. Or a semi-drunken kiss. It was a toe-curling ass-kicking kiss that nearly made Lauren swoon. His mouth was firm on hers, and then this tongue, hot and persistent, made its way inside. And heaven help her, but she’d never felt anything like this before.
Maybe it was because no one had kissed her since she was eighteen—no one new, that is. After eleven years of marriage, she knew each and every one of Tom’s kisses. But this kiss spoke to her. It reached down inside her, asked her a question, and demanded that she answer. It was direct and no-nonsense. Just like he was. Her arms wrapped around his neck and because she’d ditched those heels she had to get on tiptoe but she still couldn’t properly reach him. So he bent over, his arm circling her waist, and crushed her against him. His chest was surprisingly hard. And God, he smelled good.
“Hey, kids! Mom’s waiting for you in the parking lot!” A voice, sarcastic and full of humor at the same time, brought them both spiraling back to earth.
Nate broke the kiss. “Damn it,” he muttered. “That’s Lanie.” He dropped his arm from her waist and steadied her by the elbow.
“Oh…I…” She shook her head. How could he talk after that kiss? Or form a coherent thought for that matter?
They walked back to the boardwalk, picked up their shoes and slowly made their way back up the stairs where Lanie was waiting. “That looked pretty cozy,” she said.
“Not now,” Nate warned his sister.
“Sure, okay, kill the messenger,” she joked.
“I think I can drive home,” Lauren said.
“Absolutely not,” Nate said. “It’s not worth the risk.”
She supposed he was right, but now she would have to get in his sister’s car with him, and even though her house was a short drive away, it would be…what? Awkward. What had happened back there on the beach? They’d kissed! She’d kissed Nate Miller, and somewhere deep inside, Lauren had the strange sensation that nothing would ever be the same again.
Mimi sat at Lauren’s kitchen table, drinking a cup of coffee. Pilar and Shea were there, too. The four of them had spent the past three hours putting up flyers around town. Mimi For Mayor was everywhere. “Bruce Bailey is going to get his ass kicked,” Pilar predicted gleefully. But Lauren was having a hard time concentrating on the upcoming election.
It had been two weeks since The Kiss. And Lauren had seen Nate a total of five times. Once, the next morning when his sister Lanie came by to pick her up so they could get their cars from The Harbor House parking lot. She’d picked up Lauren first, then made a point of going to Nate’s. “Oh, look! He only lives two blocks over. What a coincidence!”
So now Lauren knew where he lived—a neat little stucco house, complete with a white picket fence. And of course, because of the night he’d given her a ride home after that awful date with Ted, he also knew where she lived.
Twice now, she’d seen Nate running early in the morning. Once, he’d run by her house (on purpose, or what that his regular route?). The other time, she’d gotten up at the crack of dawn to drop Henry off at Tom’s to go fishing and he’d been running along Beach St. She’d almost gotten in a wreck. Nate had the nicest legs she’d ever seen on a man. Long and lean and muscular.
Then there was the time she saw him at The Bistro and instead of the “nod” he’d actually stopped to talk to her, although she was in a rush because she had to pick up Henry, so they hadn’t done much more than say hello.
Awkward. Awkward. Awkward.
And then there was the last time, when he’d dropped by Can Buy Me Love and that had to be on purpose because you didn’t just “accidentally” go into someone’s place of business without expecting to see them. But before she could say more than a weak “hello” he’d gotten paged and had to go back to the office.
