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The forty-five minutes he spent outside waiting were the longest of his life. They rivaled even that time when he waited for the doctor to tell him he could no longer play baseball. He knew then that Jen meant more to him than he wanted to admit.
He should drive away. Get the hell out of here and do something that was fun. He needed to go back to his playboy life but he couldn’t. Not while Jen was in there dealing with a scumbag.
He waited in his car until the cops escorted Carlos out of the building. It was over. He didn’t need to worry anymore about Jen.
He hurried inside and found her. She was visibly shaken and he wanted to pull her into his arms but he knew that doing so in the club in front of his employees and her coworkers wasn’t a good idea. So instead he took her to his home.
“Do you want to hear about it?” she asked, as they entered his apartment.
“No. I don’t. I’m glad he’s been arrested and I hope you never have to deal with him again.”
“Me, too. Thank you.”
“Justin did all the work on this one,” he said. “Go sit down while I pour us both a drink.”
“Make mine club soda. I have to pick Riley up from school this afternoon.”
Nate made both of their drinks nonalcoholic and came to sit next to her on the leather couch. “Why are you picking him up?”
“Marcia has a late appointment with one of her clients and the normal sitter isn’t available.”
Damn. He’d been hoping to have her to himself this afternoon but he forgot that with Jen came her family. She had commitments and a life that had nothing to do with him.
“Do you want to come with me? Riley wants to show you his baseball skills. He’s been showing off what you taught him at school.”
“Has he?”
“Yes, he talks about you a lot. Marcia said we’d been neglecting him by not having a man in our lives.”
Nate thought they probably had been, but two women wouldn’t think of having a guy around for a little boy. “I…can’t,” he said.
He wasn’t a family guy and it was time for Jen to realize that. Today had shown him how vulnerable he was where she was concerned and he needed to make sure she never knew the power she had over him. That kind of feminine power had ruined his father.
“Oh, okay. Are you available on Saturday?”
“For?”
“A beach party that Alison’s throwing for her brother. She’s got a house on Marathon Key. He’s being deployed again to the Middle East and she wants to give him a good send-off.”
“Alison from the club?” Nate asked. He thought that she was a dancer but he wasn’t sure.
“Yes, she’s my assistant.”
“I think I’d like to attend. Let me know what time it is.”
“I gave Alison the night off so she’ll be there all day. It’s a drop-in party.”
“We could take the yacht down to her place,” Nate suggested.
“That sounds like fun…do you think Riley and Marcia can join us?” Jen asked.
“I don’t think I can handle your entire family,” he said. To be honest, he knew he couldn’t. They made him feel uncomfortable in his own skin and made him wish…well he was a different man. The kind of man who could make Jen’s dreams of family come true.
She shook her head. “Well, okay then. I didn’t realize my family was hard to handle.” There was an awkward silence.
Jen left a few minutes later to go and pick her nephew up from school. As Nate watched her leave he was struck by the scariest thought he’d ever had. He imagined this was what life would be like if they had a child of their own.
He’d never considered having kids, though he knew that he might someday. But Jen was the first woman he’d met that he could conceive of as a mother to his children.
He quickly turned his attention away from that thought.
That Saturday, back on his yacht after a pleasant but long day, Jen relaxed in the living area in front of the plasma screen TV. Nate was watching the highlights of the Miami Heat game while she rested her head in his lap.
“Thanks for a great time,” she said. Realizing that most time spent with Nate was great. In fact, since the mess with Carlos, they’d grown so close that it was hard for her not to tell him she loved him.
Only her fears that he might not love her, too, and that he was still afraid of commitment kept her quiet. But she didn’t like to live her life hiding something as big as her love for him. She had started this new life when she’d met Nate and that life was meant to be better than the one she’d left behind.
How could it be if she was afraid to tell him that she loved him?
