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Somehow, they made it out of the house and into the car. Harry was gray-faced, and his forehead was damp.
“We’ll be home in no time,” Cate said, starting the engine and pointing the air vents in his direction. “Why don’t you put your seat back?”
Harry didn’t say a word. His eyes were closed, but Cate wasn’t sure if he was really sleeping or playing possum.
At her grandparents’ house, she unlocked the door. “You need a nap,” she said, not dancing around the issue.
She watched as his lips formed an instinctive refusal. He wasn’t a man to behandled. But clearly, his knee was giving him fits.
“Only if you come upstairs, too,” he said, daring her to refuse.
“I’ll read in my room, so I won’t disturb you.”
“I’d like you in bed with me,” he said, “platonically, of course.”
“You don’t have to be sarcastic. If you want company, all you have to do is ask.”
“I thought I just did.”
She recognized his mood as volatile. He was on edge from visiting his challenging mother, and he was in a considerable amount of pain. Since theystillhadn’t been to the grocery store, she grabbed a water bottle from the fridge, along with an ice pack, and followed him up the stairs.
“I’ll change clothes and be there in a minute,” she said. “Here’s your medicine.”
He took the bottle, but he stared at her with moody, masculine discontent. “Aren’t you going to dole it out to me, nurse?”
“Why are you being difficult? It’s broad daylight. I think you can handle taking one pill.”
His shoulders slumped. “God, I hate going over there.”
“Then why do it?” Cate genuinely wanted to know.
“It’s usually twice a year. Three times at the most. I’m an only child, so I feel guilty if I don’t visit. She’s dysfunctional on her best days and hard to handle on others. But I was taught to honor my father and my mother. Since I have just one parent left, I’m stuck with her.”
Something about that wry explanation twisted Cate’s heart in ways she didn’t understand. For years, she had seen Harry through a single lens. He had been a mysterious figure in Atlanta. Jason’s cousin—a talented, wealthy architect who worked hard, and according to gossip, played hard.
Now, gradually, she was beginning to see the man he really was. Complex. Flawed. Kind on occasion, but with a sharp edge.
She escaped to her room and found a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. The temperature outside was brutal, and the house was warm. After she adjusted the AC downward a few degrees, she tapped on Harry’s door.
“Come in,” he said.
She found him on top of the covers with his leg outstretched, leaning against the headboard, hands tucked behind his head. Like Cate, he had changed out of his nice clothes. He wore loose-fitting gray shorts and a soft, much-washed concert T-shirt.
“Don’t you want to lie down?” she asked. He had put the ice pack on his knee, so she presumed he had taken a pain pill as well.
“I’m not sleepy.” His outthrust jaw dared her to argue.
Cate suspected he was spoiling for a fight only because he needed an outlet from the day’s difficult emotions. She understood, but she wasn’t in the mood for conflict.
Sixteen
Approaching the bed where a large, cranky man resided was the equivalent of invading a lion’s den. Cate decided to play it cool. Instead of sitting against the headboard as Harry was, she stretched out beside him and turned on her side, hoping he would follow suit.
“Tell me what you were like as a kid,” she said. It was difficult to imagine the man she knew growing up in that ridiculous house.
It was a shame narcotics were habit-forming because they made Harry’s guarded personality much more open. He scooted down on the pillows, no longer sitting upright, but not flat on his back either.
His eyelids were heavy. Now he laced his hands over his taut, flat abdomen. “Like any kid back then, I guess. My friends and I ran wild outside, both after school and in the summers—as long as my mom didn’t know I had slipped out through my bedroom window.”
