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“Okay,” I replied. “Hey, Nathan, I never… thanked you.”
“Thanked me?” he asked, surprised. “What for?”
“For making me feel… desired,” I said. “I came here feeling so low, and you… you made me feel incredible.”
“Shit, Gigi, you should feel amazing, because you are. I hope you never let anyone make you feel badly again.”
As we neared shore, with Julian and Reece close behind, Nathan slowed his rowing. I was glad, because we only had a couple more minutes to speak privately, and I wanted to relish the time. To be honest, I didn’t want to share the guys with the rest of Mom’s guests.
“You know, Gigi, I always liked how you called me Nathan rather than Nate. It was… nice.”
Wow. I had no clue I’d ever had any sort of impact on him. How dense was I?
On the other hand, maybe I’d missed all the clues, because there weren’t any. Nathan and his brothers had been stand-offish, I’d always thought because we had little in common. They ran with the school ‘populars,’ and I didn’t run with much of anyone. I wasn’t gifted in the ways of a well-socialized teenager. I was an awkward dork, about as uncool as they come.
The exact opposite of my stepbrothers.
If they’d felt any differently toward me, they sure hid it well. We barely ever spoke and the nights when the entire family sat at the dinner table together, if the guys looked my way at all, it was usually to make a face at me or roll my eyes at something I’d said. When our parents weren’t looking, of course.
“Nathan, why did you kiss me just now? On the island? I mean, if this was just a fun romp and some good sex that’s fine, but…well...”
He stopped rowing and our progress gradually came to a stop in the water. His brothers passed us, splashing us with their oars. “Gigi, listening to you when we were chatting on the bench, and then again on the blanket, was hard to take. There you were, talking about how down you were because some douchebag guy was too fucking stupid and blind to not realize that he won the lottery when he married you.”
Oh my god. Did he really just say that?
“Um, well, Nathan, that’s very nice of you to say—”
“Look, Gigi,” he interrupted. “I’ve known you since you were fifteen, and even then you were beautiful. And with each year, you grew more into the sweetest, sexiest, most beautiful girl I knew. By the time I left for college, I was thinking about you… a lot. That hasn’t changed.”
Had someone just whacked me in the head with something hard? Because it sure felt like it.
Nathan’s voice was so intense, his eyes so utterly convincing, that he took my breath away.
But I knew how guys like him were. Smooth talkers, able to get women to drop their panties with a few words.
I mean, shit, it had just worked on me, right?
“Do you tell all your women this?” I asked, trying to find some balance. Nathan had to be just giving me a pep talk, right? I mean, we’d already had sex. Great sex, but nonetheless he didn’t need to kiss my ass. Other than perhaps because he wanted to help his stepsister feel better about herself.
Or get laid again.
“Gigi, the reason I’ve had so many girlfriends—same with my brothers—is because we knew who the girl of our desires was. We just always thought she’d be out of reach.”
* * *
