Connor left a message with Elaine telling her about the accident. He hated what had happened between him and Nadine, and he knew he had to confess it to her. It was the only way they could work on getting past his lapse in judgment. But he wasn’t going to tell her in a voicemail.
After calling his insurance company to notify them of the accident, he bought two bags of trail mix, a six pack of beer, beef jerky, and bait. Nothing was going to happen until Monday as far as the insurance claim would go, and they definitely weren’t going to get the work done up here in the boonies.
He’d rip the bumper cover all the way off Elaine’s Mercedes, send Nadine on her way, and go fishing in the pond. Besides, he needed the time away from his inquiring family and the noise of the city.
He dreaded returning to his truck though, and his gut clenched when he spied Nadine bent over her knees with her head in her hands. She was crying, and the one thing he couldn’t handle was a woman crying. It always made him feel inadequate and guilty. That was what he liked about Elaine. She didn’t cry, she got mad or she got even.
He hesitated, stood there a good half a minute before opening the door. Nadine didn’t look up or acknowledge him.
Good. He would simply drive her back to the cabin. Give her a bag of trail mix and a bottle of water, and everything would be okay.
Or, he could make a bigger mess by talking to her, and churn his heart with more turmoil, but maybe leave her in a better state of mind. She didn’t deserve to be caught between him and Elaine. She didn’t deserve to be hurt.
“Hey, ready to go back?”
She nodded without looking up.
“Look, all of this is my fault. You can blame me for everything. Call me names. Tell me I’m a jerk. I’m sorry I hurt you.”
“You didn’t hurt me. I’m an artist. I’m sensitive, but I’m not hurt.” She pushed herself up and turned her head so she looked out the passenger window, away from him.
“I’m hurt.” He surprised himself with his candor. But heck, he was going out on a limb—again. “I was hurt you wouldn’t let me borrow your phone. Guess I’m an entitled jerk, too. Assumed too much. I’m sorry.”
“You’re not a jerk.” She took a shuddering breath. “But you don’t have to feel sorry for me. I lived an entire lifetime last night in those few hours when I belonged to you. It’s enough.”
Gut wrenching pain thundered through him, grabbing his heart and shaking it.
“It’s not enough.” He pulled her into his arms. “It’s not ever enough. Love so deep it burns to the center of my soul. It’ll never go out. Can’t be snuffed out.”
“But it has to be killed.” She rocked in his arms as if the pain was too great to take. “It’s wrong, Connor. It’s entirely wrong, and I can’t live with myself.”
“Then let me be the one who’s wrong. Not you.” Connor felt tears welling in his eyes. Really? He was the man with the granite face. The fire chief who led men to face their worst fears. The eldest son of the eldest son of the Hart clan. The man who’d turned hurt into anger and had never shed a tear when Elaine had let him walk in on her supposedly sleeping with his best buddy.
“We’re both wrong.” Nadine hugged herself tightly. “I shouldn’t have agreed to come this weekend, and you should have told me to go away when I appeared at the door.”
“I don’t agree.” He clenched his teeth, straining against the pain wracking his heart. “I’d rather be wrong and love you, than be right and lose you.”
“I love you, Connor.” She turned her face toward him, sobbing. “Even if I lose you, I’ll always love you. It was written in my heart long before I was even thought of. That I would know and lose a love so great that I’d have to live many endless lives to catch glimpses of this love, a few hours each lifetime, that would have to be enough.”
“It’s not enough for me.” He practically growled as a grinding ache wrung his heart like a dishrag being squeezed dry. “I love you, Nadine. I didn’t know what love was until last night—with you. And I don’t intend to lose you—not in this life or the next.”
His lips crashed over hers, tasting the saltiness of her tears, and the sweetness of her breath. He loved her—but by loving her, he was hurting her. It couldn’t be helped. He was too weak to the do the right thing. He was too weak to let her go.
Loving her was wrong.
For the first time in his life, Connor didn’t want to be right.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Hearts, rainbows, roses, and bright blue skies danced behind Nadine’s eyelids as she and Connor kissed each other, lovingly, sweetly, breathing their vows of love between their lips.
This time the kissing didn’t seem wrong. It wasn’t the groping desperate sexual gasps of two strangers in the throes of lust. They had plenty of time. They were in love, and each kiss was a promise, paying it forward to a lifetime of happiness and joy.
Though not wrong, it wasn’t right either. Connor was marrying her sister. She should stop this before it went further. She flexed her hand on his chest, but was unable to push away.
If this was another moment that should last a lifetime, she could at least let it go a little longer.
“You okay?” He broke the kiss and stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. “Let’s not give up on what we’re feeling.”
She swallowed hard, knowing this was one of those momentous points in her life where she could step off one edge or the other and nothing would ever be the same again. Or maybe she’d already chosen, already entered the realm of the tortured zone, where colors, lights, sounds, and sensations were brighter, louder, more painful than humanly bearable, but spiked with incredible vistas of pleasure and reward, flames laced in sugar, piercing and clashing, where two hearts not only collided, but fused together like two bullets fired by enemy soldiers, saving both their lives in a slice of time so miniscule as to be impossible.
“I’m not giving up,” she replied. “Somehow we have to make this right. You don’t belong to me. You’re not free.”
“I want to be yours. I want to see how far this goes.” His usually cloudy blue eyes had cleared, shiny and bright, without the murk of gray that shielded the way to his soul. “As long as we admit it and are in this together. Swear to me you won’t deny this.”
“I can’t deny this, but I want to do the right thing.”
“Would you rather be right or real?”
“I want both.” Nadine put her hand over her heart. “I don’t want this cloud over us. I can love you from afar. Let you go back to Elaine until you figure it out. If this is real, you’ll come back to me. If it’s not, I’ll wait for the next life.”
“You won’t have to wait. As soon as I get back to San Francisco, I’ll go see her. She’s a reasonable woman. She won’t want to marry me if I have all these doubts.”
“Then let’s wait. Let’s go on being friends.” She tapped his lips and he kissed her finger by reflex. “Which means no more kissing.”
“I can live with that as long as I know you want to kiss me.” For the first time since she met him, his eyes twinkled and he grinned like a mischievous boy.
She kissed him on the cheek. “How’s that? I promise you I’ll always want to kiss you, but for now, no more lips.”
“And tongue.” He waggled his tongue in a teasing manner. Not that he had to remind her how skillful he was with it.
“Definitely no teeth.” She chattered her jaw playfully. “Guess that means we have to find something else to do.”
He picked up the shopping bag he’d set in back of the cab. “How about fishing? Want to catch our dinner?”
“I’d love to.”
“I love it when you use the word love.” He planted a kiss on the tip of her nose. “And I’m taking a raincheck for every kiss I’m missing.”
“Woof, woof.” Cinder hung over the rowboat and barked as Connor cast his line into the water. She wanted the red and white float bobber that he’d attached to the line, and was trying
to decide whether to jump in after it.
“Here you go, girl.” Connor rolled an extra bobber at her. “Nadine, how are you doing over there?”
“Ugh, still trying to thread this worm on the hook.” She held the hook high to keep Greyheart from being stuck with it, since the little kitty was determinedly climbing her to get to the worm.
“Cinder, stop that.” Connor yanked the dog back from the carton of live bait. His sudden movement rocked the tiny rowboat. It was a good thing no one else was on the pond, because they had to be scaring away all the fish.
Nadine seemed oblivious to the rocking boat, a picture of concentration with the tip of her tongue barely touching her upper lip. Connor hadn’t met many women who’d thread their own worm. Usually, they worried about their fingernails, the dirt and slime, and expected him to prepare the hooks, bait, sinkers and bobbers. Actually, the few women he tried to take fishing had used their seductive powers to lure him to bed instead.
He shook off the memories of his wild years—when Elaine had made him believe she’d betrayed him with his best friend and urged him to “sample the buffet table.” He’d had his share of female companionship, broken a few hearts, but he’d kept his own guarded and empty—always holding a candle for Elaine to return.
“I got it.” Nadine’s face lit with a smile and she dangled the hook with the worm threaded partway through. “Should I throw it into the water?”
“You have to cast.” Connor gave her the rod and showed her how to hook her finger on the line to bring the rod back and release it when the line was thrown out.
The bobber swung in an arc with the bait and shot, and just as Nadine was about to release it, Cinder jumped for the red and white bobber while Greyheart clawed at the line coming from the spinning reel.
The kitten and the puppy collided in midair and the line unraveled from the reel, forming a messy and impossible to detangle bird’s nest.
“Grey!” Nadine called at the same time Connor scrambled for Cinder. Too late. The two were knotted in the tangled fishing line. The more they moved and struggled, the more of a mess they made.
“Remind me again why I thought it was a good idea to bring these two along?” Connor chuckled and shook his head. They were definitely making memories with this fishing fiasco. “Hold them still while I cut them loose.”
The heat of the sun bore down on him as he and Nadine held one wiggly paw or another. The kitten mewed and hissed while Cinder tried to lick everything, including his knife, which he had to keep shielded with his thumb.
Frustration mounted, but Connor bit back strings of curse words. Nadine was giggling and enjoying herself.
“Hold still, you little darling,” she crooned to Cinder. “Aren’t you a sweet baby. Always getting into trouble. Grey, watch your tail, you little bugger.”
She smooched the little sweeties, as she called them, and calmed them while he slowly extracted them from the fishing line. She was so patient and gentle.
She’d make a great mother. The thought came unbidden to Connor, and once again, he was tempted to go through with the insemination. Except with Elaine in the middle, there could be no happy outcome. The poor little sweeties would be put in enrichment programs from birth and regimented on everything from diet, exercise, learning skills, and emotional development. Elaine wanted to raise superstar kids—not the ordinary kind that got bloody noses and played with mud pies.
“Did your father ever have a problem with you studying art?” he asked as he knotted his eyebrows at a particularly difficult mess of fishing line wrapped around Cinder’s hind leg.
“Not with me, because I’m not his real concern. He kind of enjoyed having me and my mother on the side. Seems he tried his hand at sculpture and pottery when he was a teen, but his parents squashed that by breaking his potter’s wheel and giving away his kiln. At least that’s what my mom says.”
“Interesting. Elaine had dreams of being a natural freak, living off the land and homesteading, making her own clothes, spinning her own thread, but one day, she told me her parents would disown her if she didn’t buckle down and apply herself to becoming a doctor.”
Nadine’s eyebrows furrowed and she nodded. “That would make sense. She and Michael were his real children, and he’d want them to be successful.”
“Your father doesn’t believe you’re successful?” Connor slipped Cinder’s back paw free, but she wiggled and got her front paw tangled.
“I’m not. Look at me. No college degree, can’t even get a job waitressing. I’ve been spoiled by him supporting my mother. I think he enjoys bragging about his dreamer daughter to his friends and hearing their horror at how much of a failure I am. It gives him vicarious pleasure to wonder what his life would have been like if he’d gone an alternative route. It’s probably why my mother loved him—way back when they were in high school.”
This tidbit was news to Connor, but then again, Nadine’s entire existence was a surprise since Elaine had never ever mentioned she had a half-sister.
“They were high school sweethearts? Your mom and dad?”
“Looks that way.” Nadine freed Greyheart from the last of the fishing line. “My mother’s family lost their farm in Tennessee, so she was sent to California to live with an aunt. They go way back.”
“Why are they breaking up now?” Connor swallowed a lump and held his breath.
“That part of his life flowed away long ago, but my mother didn’t realize it. The fact that my father is replacing Elaine’s mother with another doctor killed her hope of him ever returning to that dreamy young man he was before he went to medical school. He’s changed, and he never went back. A river doesn’t run uphill to its source. It’s only when the water evaporates into clouds and is blown by the wind that it ever goes to the little creek it came from. Maybe in his next life, his spirit will return, and there, my mother’s spirit will find her happy ending.”
“Maybe he was never the one meant for your mother.” A lump hardened Connor’s throat. Maybe Elaine was not meant for him, either. Maybe there was no going back to how it used to be. Water flowed downstream. It reminded him of that children’s book about a little boat which started happily in a small mountain spring, but ended up jostling down the river past polluted cities and dirty riverbanks full of litter and debris.
“Oh, look, you have a bite.” Nadine pointed to Connor’s rod which he’d propped up against an oar. It twitched and something tugged at the line.
He lunged for it, too late, and the entire rod flipped into the water and swam away, trailing a huge fish who’d gotten hooked.
“There goes our dinner.” Connor threw his hands up. Nothing was going right today, or everything was going exactly as it should be. A hearty chuckle escaped his mouth. “I think you jinxed me. Usually, I’ve got an ice chest full of fish and my sisters complaining about having to clean them.”
“Why do they have to clean? Are you a sexist pig?” Nadine laughed, holding her stomach.
“No, the rules are catch, clean, or cook. I always prefer the catching, and believe it or not, Melisa would rather clean and Cait would cook. Jenna, well, she never came out on the boat with us because she got seasick.”
“Looks like today there’s no catching, no cleaning, and no cooking.” Nadine grinned. “We had a great time, didn’t we? Next time you’ll be cleaning since I’ll be doing all the catching.”
His heart warmed to her words. Next time. It meant she was planning on doing this again, because she wanted his company. She’d gotten her hands dirty with the worms, gotten splashed by the oars, lost her sunglasses in the water, and had a spot of sunburn on her nose, but she was a great sport—a woman after his own heart.
“Since there’s no cooking, I owe you dinner,” Connor said, segueing his way into a date. “Let’s go back to the cabin and get cleaned up. I’m taking you out—as a friend, of course, and no kissing.”
She tilted her head and pointed to the corner of her mouth. “Well, maybe a little goodni
ght kiss if you’re real good.”
Cinder took that as an invitation and slathered her tongue all over Nadine’s face.
Lucky dog.
He picked up the kitty, and said, “I can’t promise her I’ll be good, but I’ve got you, love. Thanks for getting stuck in that tree for me.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
There was a single diner in the little town whose name was Joe’s, not very original. The most remarkable thing about it was the wooden bear statue standing in front of it, one paw raised and jaws wide open. Not exactly appetite inducing, although the scents coming from the grill watered Nadine’s mouth.
“Good to see you back in town,” a waiter greeted Connor when they stepped through the door. “Fish not biting?”
“Not even a fish story,” Connor said.
“Too bad.” The beefy man rolled up his sleeves. “Better luck tomorrow.”
“You bet.”
The waiter grabbed two menus and led them to a cozy booth in the corner under a mounted set of moose antlers, no embalmed head, thankfully.
“Does everyone know everyone here?” Nadine asked after they were seated.
“Pretty much. I met him down at the general store buying bait this morning. Are you enjoying it here? Being out away from the city?”
“I am. I’ve only been to the small town my mother’s from. There’s a diner at the crossroads of two state highways. Just a tiny little building, sort of like this one.”
Connor flipped over the one sheet menu laminated in plastic. “Hope you don’t mind having seven or eight items on the menu.”
“Hey, it’s more than what we would have had with our single fish.” Nadine glanced at the entrees. Being with Connor was so easy and comfy, except for the heightened sexual tension that kept her on edge. It was positively frustrating to be with him all day and not snuggle in his arms or enjoy his kisses.
Spring Fling Kitty: The Hart Family (Have A Hart Book 3) Page 13