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She shrugged and took a sip of her coffee. “Colleen showed me some photos online of you at charity events and so forth.”
“I’m hardly a society butterfly. Those damn photographers would spring up on me on the way to the office mail room if I gave them the opportunity,” he mumbled, looking a little sheepish at her choice of topic.
She hid her smile. “I couldn’t help but notice that none of the women you were escorting ever showed up more than once.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Oh. So you’re wondering if I ever get serious about a woman, is that it?”
She met his gaze across the table. “I’m getting the impression you’re one of the Great Uncatchables.”
He stared out the window. For the first time since she’d known him, she got the impression Nick was uncomfortable. “I’ve had a couple relationships that fit into the ‘serious’ category.”
“What went wrong?” she asked with a small, mischievous smile.
“Nothing at all. The relationships just weren’t meant to be in the long run.” He leaned back and placed his arm along the back of the booth, examining her. “Are you ribbing me?”
She laughed, taken aback by his blunt question. His mouth tilted in amusement. Seeing his smile caused a rush of warmth to go through her.
“Believe it or not, I am. I tend to tease a lot. You’ve only been a witness to my grouchy side in the past, unfortunately.”
His smile lingered on his lips. “I used to hear you sometimes before I’d enter Linc’s room and you were with him,” he said quietly. “I was a little shocked that the prickly female I always seemed to encounter was the same teasing, charming one I heard talking to Linc.”
Their gazes clung.
“I’ll admit to being a little jealous,” he said. “What about you though. I’ve sort of gotten the impression you’re one of the Great Uncatchables yourself.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, laughing. She toyed with her water goblet. “There was one man,” she admitted after a pause.
His smile faded.
“You don’t know about him?” she asked cautiously. “I thought maybe from your background investigation...”
He frowned and tossed his napkin onto the table. “I recall two or three names of men you’d dated, but the man who reported to me didn’t make it sound like anything serious. I didn’t realize that only one of the men would have qualified as an answer to my question,” he replied.
“His name was David Sandoff. He was a navy surgeon. And as it turned out, he didn’t really qualify as a serious relationship at all.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Oh, probably the fact that I found out he had a fiancée in Brooklyn the whole time he was with me,” she said, smiling ruefully. She glanced up from fiddling with her dessert fork.
“What an ass,” he said.
“You took the words right
out of my mouth,” she murmured, flattered by his irritation. “It was all for the best. My dramatic discovery coincided with my tour of duty ending in Afghanistan. I moved to Germany days later,” she said, shaking her head in disgust at the memory.
“Do you think if he hadn’t been an unfaithful jerk, something might have come from the relationship?”
She shrugged. “I doubt it, to be honest. My brother Marc says I have wanderlust. I don’t like to stay in one place too long.”
“You don’t want to settle down,” he clarified.
She looked at him. “People usually want to settle down in a place they can call home.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
“You have The Pines now to call home,” he said quietly. “You have Harbor Town, too, if you choose it. It sounds to me like your mother would agree with me on that.”
She gave a polite smile as the waiter approached with their dessert, glad for the distraction to mask her uncertainty.
