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She brushed past Cam and walked down the hallway and then out of the club. She stopped under the streetlights and looked back toward the rooftop. She thought she felt Nate watching her but she knew that couldn’t be right. He had already moved on.
Nate watched Jen exit the club and walk slowly up the street to her car. He’d done this every night since they’d been apart. He couldn’t stand the thought of anything happening to her. On the nights that he couldn’t be here he asked one of his brothers to watch out for her.
Even though they’d broken up, he couldn’t let her go. He couldn’t get her out of his mind. She haunted him constantly and it was all he could do not to run back to her door and beg her to forgive him. To tell her he’d give her everything he had even though he couldn’t love her.
He heard footsteps behind him and turned to see Cam walking toward him. “What did she say?”
Cam just shook his head and leaned against the railing at the edge of the rooftop area. “I think you need to talk to her yourself.”
Nate pushed his hands through his thick hair. “Do you think I don’t want to? I want to go to her but I’m afraid I’ll say anything to get her back. And I don’t want to steal her future the way that jerk Carlos did.”
“You aren’t going to do that. That young woman knows exactly what she wants. She’s staying here, I suspect, to be near you.”
“What?”
“Yes. She knows that she’d have a different life if she took the job that Russell offered, but that’s not important to her. In fact, she told me that the only thing important to her is family and building a life here in Miami.”
Nate turned away from his brother. He was tempted to go after Jen right now. But he knew that he couldn’t. He knew that if he went now he would have no idea what to say.
“I want her back, Cam.”
“Then get her back, Nate. There is no reason for the two of you to be so miserable apart.”
“She’s miserable?”
“I doubt she’s slept in the entire time since you broke up. She’s thinner than she was before and she spends every waking hour here at the club rehearsing for the anniversary celebration even though now we aren’t sure we are going to be able to have it since the community board is throwing every legal obstacle in front of us that they can.”
She was pouring herself into dancing again but this time the ones to benefit would be the Stern brothers and Luna Azul. “I didn’t want that for her.”
“What did you want?”
Nate tipped his head back and looked up at the starry sky. “I want her. I need her in my life, Cam.”
“What’s stopping you from having her?”
His own stubbornness, he thought, and the fact that he was afraid to admit the most important thing of his life.
He loved her.
That was it. He’d known it for a while but had been afraid to define what it was he felt for her. He wanted to pretend that he could control his emotions. Could control how he felt about her but now that they were apart, he’d come to realize he wanted her even more than he’d thought he could.
It wasn’t just the physical side of things, though he did long to hold her naked in his arms again. He wanted to make love to her over and over again to reinforce the bonds of love between them. But he also just wanted to sit quietly with her in the morning as they started the day.
“I need your help,” he said to Cam.
“Um, what the hell do you think I’m doing by talking to Jen at midnight?”
“Shut up, Cam. This is serious. I need to get Jen back and the only way I’m going to do that is to prove to her that I love her.”
Cam nodded. “Tell me what you need.”
“I think I need to do this right. I’m going to ask her to marry me. I want to make up for the way I acted when she told me she loved me.”
“Again, Nate, what can I do?”
Nate didn’t know. He was still trying to figure everything out. And he was operating from a place of fear. What if it was too late, and she’d already decided he wasn’t worth her time? What if she’d fallen out of love with him?
He needed to stack the deck in his favor. “I need her sister and her nephew on my side.”
“I don’t think I can help you there.”
“I know you can’t. Will you ask our party planner, Emma, to help you plan the perfect dinner up here under the stars?” Nate asked. The event planner would know what a woman wanted. “Tell her I want the perfect romantic fantasy that every woman has for the night she gets engaged.”
Cam didn’t seem too happy about the request, but he nodded. “I’ll do it.”
