by Gina Wilkins
Casey placed his hands on her arms, rubbing slowly up and down as he gazed into her face. “I know you said you didn’t want to talk about us until after your meeting with Schroeder…”
“Casey—”
“Is this really goodbye?” he insisted. “You’re just going to go back to Nashville and forget about me?”
“I’m not going to forget about you,” she told him quietly. “Ever. You got me through a very rough time. I will always appreciate that.”
“You still think of me as a nice diversion?” he asked roughly.
She couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “You know it was more than that.”
“But you’re still leaving.”
“I have to, Casey. You know I have to clear my name. And you have a career to get back to in Dallas.”
His hands gripped her shoulders. “You were more than a diversion to me, Natalie. A hell of a lot more.”
She moistened her lips. “You said yourself you’ve been going through a tough time. You’ve been questioning your career and your goals, and you’ve recently broken up with your girlfriend.”
“You’re not a rebound affair, either,” he said roughly. “Damn it.”
“It’s just not a good time for either of us to try to make this into more than we’ve had,” she whispered.
She was sure that when he got home, back with his family and friends and the career he wanted despite the doubts he’d encountered lately, he would be relieved she hadn’t tried to hold on to him. Besides, she knew herself too well. If she succeeded in getting her position back, or even if she found a job with another firm, it wouldn’t be long until she was right back to her old ways of working too long and too hard, letting everything else in her life take second place to her career. That was no way to maintain any relationship, much less a long-distance one.
All of which sounded very logical. Very believable. But she suspected that the main reason she was running from Casey was fear—as much as she hated admitting that, even to herself. She’d been let down by too many people she had trusted lately. She wasn’t ready to take the risk of being hurt that way again while she was still stinging from the last time.
It would hurt less to break it off now than to wait until his passion fizzled in the reality of too much distance and too little time.
“I’ve got to go,” she said, steeling her resolve. “I’ll call you tomorrow, I promise.”
He nodded grimly. “Drive carefully.”
“I will.”
He lowered his head and kissed her until it was all she could do not to melt into a puddle at his feet. She had to put a hand on the car to steady herself when he finally drew away. “It wasn’t a diversion,” he said again, gruffly.
She looked into the rearview mirror as she drove away. Casey stood there watching her leave, his hand on the head of the dog who sat rather forlornly at his side.
For only the second time since she had been fired from her job, Natalie felt tears escape her eyes and trickle slowly down her cheeks.
Chapter Fourteen
A s far as Casey was concerned, January was the cruelest month of the year. The holidays were over, leaving only scattered, once-festive, now-droopy decorations behind. The weather was almost unrelentingly gloomy, with gray skies, cold rain, occasional thunderstorms. Night fell early, so that it was usually dark by the time he got home from work.
Since his return from Tennessee seven weeks earlier, he’d thrown himself into the job with a renewed dedication, putting in long hours, showing up at the office for at least part of every day of the week to make up for all his time away. His superiors seemed reassured now that he had gotten his personal issues settled and he was prepared to be the valuable asset to the firm that they’d always expected him to become.Even in the relatively short time that had passed since he’d returned, he’d accomplished a great deal in billable hours and out-of-court settlements. Because money had a way of soothing all fears in this business, he figured any remaining concerns about him would soon dissipate.
Tugging at the silk power-tie knotted at the throat of his tailored dress shirt, he walked off the elevator on his condo floor and sighed wearily. He’d had a great day, work-wise. Accomplished a real coup of a settlement with a case that could have stretched on for months. He should have been celebrating, but instead he was just…empty.
The feeling would go away, he assured himself. It was probably caused by the gloomy weather lately. Or post-holiday malaise—not that he’d particularly enjoyed the holidays this year, though he’d made an almost superhuman effort to conceal that from his family and friends.
He stopped walking when he saw someone sitting on the carpeted floor beside his door. “Aaron? What are you doing here?”
He didn’t bother asking how his cousin had gotten into the secured building.
Aaron looked pointedly at his watch. “New superhero movie? Seven o’clock? The two of us were going to catch it tonight while Andy was busy with that surveillance job?”
“Oh, damn. I forgot. I’m sorry, I—”
“Forget it. Throw on a sweatshirt and some jeans and we’ll go grab a burger.”
“Yeah. That sounds good. Give me ten minutes.” He unlocked his door and preceded his cousin inside.
“So how did your day go?” Aaron asked casually, glancing around Casey’s immaculately decorated, fashionably neutral living room.
Casey pulled off his tie and shrugged out of his jacket. “It was good. Negotiated a very profitable settlement that could have gotten sticky.”
“Congratulations. That must have felt good.”
“I guess.” He was already unbuttoning his shirt as he headed for the bedroom.
Aaron tagged after him. “You don’t sound exactly elated. Tired?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” Bone tired, he thought, pulling a pair of jeans and a Texas Longhorns sweatshirt out of the closet. Soul tired. Heart tired.
“Dude, you’re killing me.”
Tossing his shirt on the bed, Casey looked questioningly at his cousin, who was leaning in the bedroom doorway. “What are you talking about?”
“I can’t stand to see you this glum. You’ve been this way ever since you got back from Tennessee, though you’ve done a really good job of hiding it.”
Casey tugged the sweatshirt over his head. “I’ll get over it.”
“Get over what?”
“You’re the one who started this. What do you think?”
“I think you didn’t really want to come back from Gatlinburg,” Aaron said bluntly.
Turning his back to the doorway, Casey swapped his suit pants for comfortably faded jeans. “Does anyone ever really want a vacation to end?”
“It’s more than that, Case.”
Turning back to his cousin, Casey released a long sigh. “I miss Natalie,” he admitted, the first time he’d said it out loud since he’d parted from her almost two months earlier. “I even miss the dog.”
“Have you tried calling? Natalie, not the dog.”
“I haven’t spoken to her since she called to let me know she’d gotten her position back with the firm in Nashville.”
“How do you know she isn’t missing you, too?”
“She’s the one who said it wouldn’t work between us. If she’d changed her mind, she knew how to reach me.”
“So you’re just going to spend the rest of your life trudging back and forth to work, pretending to be happy?”
“Give me a break, Aaron. I’m trying, okay?”
Aaron smiled sympathetically. “You’re trying too hard. It shouldn’t be this difficult.”
“So what do you think I should do?” Casey challenged, seriously hoping for an answer.
“I think you should figure out what it takes to make you happy. And then do it.”
“You make it sound so damned easy.”
“I never said it was easy. Heck, I’m still trying to decide what I want to do for the rest of my life. I just know it’s got to be something t
hat makes me look forward to getting up in the morning. Something I can be proud of. Something that reflects who I am and what makes me happy.”
Aaron had always been the more philosophical of the cousins. The one more prone to expressing his thoughts and emotions. The one who was always the most curious about what was around the next corner, most open to experience and change. Which probably explained why he’d tried half a dozen different jobs already in his short working life, Casey thought wryly. But Aaron always seemed to know what he wanted, even if he hadn’t quite found it yet. Casey realized he should try a bit harder to emulate his younger cousin. He needed to figure out once and for all what he wanted—and then go after it, despite the risk of disappointment or failure.
But did he really have the courage to walk away from his life here again? For good this time?
There were patches of snow on the sides of the roads when Natalie drove up the mountain toward the cabin. She was lucky that the temperatures had been high enough the day before to melt the snow on the roads, though she’d been warned to keep an eye out for icy spots in the shade.She was also fortunate that the cabin had been available for this impulsive weekend visit. She wouldn’t have put it past her aunt and uncle to rearrange any existing reservations on her behalf, but Aunt Jewel had assured her that they really had gotten a cancellation for the cabin. She’d sounded delighted when Natalie said she’d like to spend a couple of nights there to celebrate her thirtieth birthday.
Natalie felt a little guilty for treating herself to a solitary birthday celebration. Her mother had wanted her to come to Mississippi for the occasion, but she had demurred. After all, she’d spent Christmas there with her mother and stepfather, and though she’d had a pleasant enough time, she wasn’t eager to go back so soon.
Instead, she was going to spend her thirtieth birthday torturing herself with painful memories, as she had been for the past lonely weeks. She’d spent entirely too much time looking at the photographs she had taken of Casey, missing him, wondering if he was missing her. She’d rubbed the little broken-heart-shaped rock she’d picked up by the creek until she’d practically left fingerprints embedded in the smooth surface. And sometime during the past month or so, she had decided it was time for a major life change. She needed an evening of relaxation, a quiet walk in the woods, and a soothing soak in the hot tub to brace herself for all the questions to come.
Except for the random patches of snow, the cabin looked exactly as she remembered it. She bit her lip as the memories swept over her, making her wonder if she had made a mistake coming back here.
She slid out of her car and shut the driver’s door, deciding to bring her bags in a little later. She had taken two steps toward the front door of the cabin, when the sound of a dog barking stopped her in her tracks.
Surely that wasn’t…?
Drawn irresistibly toward the sound, she rounded the end of the cabin and looked toward the stream at the back of the property. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw the reddish-brown and white dog loping toward her, his tail wagging in frantic welcome. “Buddy?”
The dog stood on his back legs, propping his front feet against her as he tried to lick her face. Laughing, she leaned down to hug him, not even caring that he was getting mud all over her jeans and coat. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, as if he could answer. “I hope you haven’t run away again.”
“Actually, he’s with me.”
She looked up slowly, her heart starting to pound so hard it made her a little dizzy. Keeping a hand on the dog to steady herself, she straightened, looking at the man who smiled at her from only a few feet away. “Casey.”
“Hi, Natalie.”
“I…can’t believe you’re here. I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I know. I hope it’s a good surprise.”
“But—how did you know?”
He laughed briefly. “Do you really have to ask? Molly told me you were going to be here.”
“Oh. Of course she did. So, why…?”
He took a step closer, his eyes locked with hers, the expression in his eyes achingly tender. “Damn, but I’ve missed you,” he said roughly. “I was planning to come to Nashville next week to see you, but when Molly told me you were coming here, I knew this was the right place to find you again.”
“You were coming to Nashville?” She was having a hard time thinking clearly, probably because of the shock of having him near her again. So close she had only to take a couple of steps to be in his arms. Almost quivering with the desire to take those steps, she asked, “Why?”
“Because I’ve missed you so much it’s been tearing me apart. I had to find out if there was any way I could change your mind about giving us another chance. You thought I was in a vulnerable place the last time we were together, maybe on the rebound, not in a position to know what I wanted. And maybe I wondered if you were right. Maybe that’s why I left without fighting harder to change your mind, because I needed to know for sure what I wanted.”
He shook his head firmly. “Well, it’s been almost two months now, Natalie, and my feelings haven’t changed. I still want to be with you. I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to convince you of how good we are together, even if it means moving to Nashville and finding a position there while you make up your mind.”
“That…wouldn’t do you any good,” she said unsteadily.
His eyes darkened and he seemed to brace himself for rejection. “You’re telling me there’s no chance?”
She swallowed, shaken by the raw emotion she saw in his face. “No. I’m telling you I don’t live in Nashville any longer. Or I won’t, after my lease runs out at the end of next month. I’ve already turned in my resignation at the firm.”
Frowning, he asked, “You quit?”
She nodded. “I quit.”
What might have been hope brightened his eyes again. He took another step closer. “Why?”
“Because I wanted more out of life than working myself into the ground to satisfy people who had been so willing to believe the worst of me. People who didn’t really care about me outside the money I could make for them, who only accepted me back among them because they were afraid I’d cause trouble for them if they didn’t. I still want a rewarding and satisfying career, and I want it to be in the field I’ve trained for—but I don’t want that to be the only thing in my life. I want more.”
“Funny,” he said huskily. “I’ve been thinking much the same way lately. I’m tired of being a drone in a corporate hive. I want to walk my own path.”
“Is that path wide enough for two?” she asked in a whisper.
He closed his eyes for just a moment, then opened them again and reached for her. “Oh, yeah.”
She emerged from the kiss a long time later, flushed and tousled and happier than she could ever remember. “I was going to come to you,” she confessed. “I debated whether to call you or just show up in Dallas, but I’d finally decided on the latter. I wanted to see your face when I asked you if you still felt the same way I did.”
He looked delighted by her admission. “You were coming to Dallas?”
“I already have the plane reservations.”
Laughing, he hugged her tightly. “You can use them, anyway. I want you to meet my family.”
The thought of meeting all those people he had described to her made her mouth go dry, but she nodded. “I’d like to meet them.”
He covered her mouth with his again. Buddy bounced around them, happily welcoming them back.
After finally emerging for air, Natalie smiled down at the dog. “He seems happy to see us.”
“He is. Kyle said he’s given them no problems and he seemed content enough living with them, but he went nuts when he saw me. It was almost like he was asking what took me so long to come back for him. He seems to feel the same way about you, judging by how happy he looks to see you.”
“I’m glad to see him, too.” She ruffled the dog’s silky ears. “I missed you, Buddy. M
aybe you’ve turned me into a dog person, after all.”
“Hey, Nat?” Casey asked, his voice husky again.
She smiled besottedly up at him. “Yes?”
“I’m freezing. Want to go inside?”
“Okay.” She reached up to stroke a fingertip down his cheek. “We could check out the hot tub again. Just to make sure it’s still working correctly, of course.”
“I’ve always liked the way you think,” he murmured, catching her hand and placing a kiss against it. He tucked her snugly against him as they turned together toward the cabin, then looked back over his shoulder. “Come on, Buddy.”
Natalie rested her chin on her crossed hands on Casey’s bare, still rapidly rising-and-falling chest, gazing thoughtfully up at him. “So,” she asked, “where are we going to hang our shingle? Texas or Tennessee? Or somewhere in between?”He opened his eyes with a rough laugh. “You want to talk about work now?”
She smiled. “It was just a passing thought while we, um, recover our strength.”
Stroking her hair, he lifted his other arm and slid his hand beneath his head, getting comfortable. “It doesn’t really matter to me where we are, as long as it’s together. Either way, one of us is going to have to get licensed to practice in another state.”
“That’s true.”
After a moment, he said, “You know, I’ve actually been giving this some thought the past few days, ever since I came to the conclusion that I wanted to make a big change in my life. A change that included you, of course,” he added.
She smiled.
“You know I’m close to my family. I’ve never lived more than a few miles away from my parents, my cousins.”
“Texas, then,” she said with a shrug. It truly didn’t matter to her, she realized in a sort of wonder.