"And this," Nate swung me around and pulled me through the third door. He flipped on the light and the room's contents came into view. "This is my music room."
I don't know what I'd been expecting, but it wasn't a music room. My laughter rang off the low, sloping ceilings. A drum set dominated one corner, opposite a baby grand piano. There were a few slouchy, battered armchairs and no less than four guitars, both electric and acoustic, scattered around the room.
"Wow," I teased as I stepped further inside. I flicked my fingernail against one of the drum's cymbals. The faint note floated between us. "This is impressive. How in heaven's name did you get the baby grand up the stairs?"
Nate smiled slowly, pleased with himself. "With difficulty and help. And a few muttered prayers. Do you play?"
"Oh God no," I said with a laugh. "I'm the least musical person on the planet, I'm afraid. Not for lack of trying though. I was forced into a few years of piano lessons as a child."
He gestured towards the piano. "Help yourself."
I shook my head so vigorously my curls bounced against my cheeks. "Oh no, trust me. It was so long ago, I don't remember a thing about it."
"You're not giving yourself enough credit," Nate chided.
I shook my head again. "No, you don't understand. I was like, seven, and I was so bad my piano teacher begged my mother to let me quit. Apparently I was wasting everyone's time."
Nate took my elbow and propelled me towards the piano. "And you don't remember anything you learned?" He sat down on the piano bench and patted the empty space beside him. Warily, I sat down on the narrow bench. We were thigh-to-thigh, and hip-to-hip.
Instantly my hands spread to cover the keys, just as they had more than twenty-years ago. "Middle C?" I offered as my finger hovered over the centre key.
Nate's smile was beatific. He nodded. I pressed the key down, the ivory cool and smooth beneath my finger. The note sang crystal clear in the quiet room.
His hands covered my own, his long fingers curling down to envelope my own. "E-G-B-D-F," he murmured as he pressed each of my fingers down in turn onto the note in question. "That's the treble scale."
"Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge," I echoed, amazed that the silly little mnemonic had stayed with me all these years.
Nate chuckled in my ear. "Precisely. See? You remember."
"It doesn't matter anyway, I never practiced. And I was awful at keeping time," I confessed.
"Well that's easy," Nate reached past me to the little pyramid shaped wooden box perched on the top of the piano. He wound the key on the side, opened it, and set the weighted arm inside swinging. Instantly it began to tick a loud, steady rhythm. "It's a metronome. It keeps the time so you don't have to." He pressed my fingers down, over and over, to the rhythm laid out by the instrument. When he removed his hand from on top of mine, I kept up the repetition of the five notes, each to the tempo of the metronome.
"Perfect four-four time," Nate teased.
I let my fingers stop and the room grew quiet. I was all too aware of the man beside me, of the warmth of his body in the otherwise cool room. Unsure of what came next, I curled my hands on my lap
"When did you learn piano?" I asked softly.
"I don't remember a time when I didn't," Nate replied. He stretched his hands out over the keys, flexed them, and began to play. "I began on the piano before I could read. I was seven when I begged my parents to let me learn guitar too. They insisted I learn classical guitar first — the electric guitar and the drums didn't come until almost high school."
I watched mesmerized as his fingers moved up and down the keys, beautifully, confidently, playing out a piece of classical music I was ashamed to not know the name of. He didn't need even need sheet music. Nate's body swayed to the tempo, his leg against mine moved and flexed as he pressed the pedals, dampening the notes when he needed to before letting them soar free.
He played perfectly. I could hardly breathe with the wonder of it all. It made my chest ache with the loveliness of it.
"Thank you for playing for me," I whispered when the song ended and the last, lingering note had died away.
Nate turned his head to look down at me. A gentle smile sat at the corner of his lips. "No, thank you. It's been a long time since I've had anyone to play for."
"I've heard you before, you bring your guitar to Rhi and Joe's all the time," I reminded him.
He shook his head. "That's not the same. That's just silliness, just for fun."
This means more than that.
He didn't say it, but the words sat in the small space between us. I shivered.
"Look," Nate said in his low, richly timbered voice. "About what happened downstairs by the fireplace..."
I held up my hand. "Please don't ruin it by apologizing."
Nate's answered chuckle reverberated down to my toes. "Apologize? I wasn't going to apologize, sweetheart." He paused and gave me a slow smile, one filled with intent. "I was going to do it again."
He captured my lips with his own, just as gently as he had downstairs.
I wanted more, of course, but I reined myself in and let Nate lead. His mouth slanted over mine, soft and hot, with just enough insistence to remind me that there was something burning more fiercely beneath the surface. I moaned into his kiss and Nate answered by cupping my cheeks in his capable hands. When our lips parted he hovered close.
"You are so lovely," he murmured. He brushed another brief kiss across my lips, hardly more than a whisper of skin against skin.
I didn't know what to say. There was a sizable lump in my throat that wouldn't let me speak. Instead, I just smiled up into Nate's brown eyes. I was totally wrapped up in the moment -- any protests I might have had seemed to have fled the moment Nate touched me.
His hands moved gently to brush the curls from my face. He stroked one yellow ringlet with a small chuckle. "I knew there was a reason I met you."
"And what reason is that?" I breathed.
"So I didn't have to be alone any more."
All the air left me with an audible gasp. It was all happening too fast, the situation was sliding rapidly out of my control. I hadn't come to Nate's for this, had I?
I think he sensed the panic racing through me because he kissed me again, a little less cautiously than before. When his tongue teased against my bottom lip I thought I might fall over from both the shock of it and the pleasure.
It was wrong. I knew it was and I think Nate knew it too. He was so taut sitting beside me on the uncomfortable piano bench, so careful not too stray too far over the invisible line he'd drawn for himself.
Gently, slowly, Nate deepened the kiss and against my better judgement I found myself welcoming him with enthusiasm. I'd never been kissed quite like that before -- with a sense of wonder and reverence that made tears prickle at the edges of my eyes. How could it be wrong if it made me feel so wonderfully special?
I tried to enjoy the stolen moment while I was in it, because I knew I'd be wracked with guilt later. But really was there any punishment worse than wanting Nate and not being able to have him?
With a gasp I pulled away from the scalding heat of Nate's mouth. My heart felt like it was in my throat. I didn't move too far away though, just far enough that Nate's brown eyes came into focus. He watched me watch him and I knew he could see how much I wanted him. My need was reflected back at me, just as evident on his own face as it had to have been on mine.
Oh, I was going to burn in hell for this.
And then, as if I needed proof that I'd be punished for my transgressions, the lights went out. The music room was plunged instantly into an ominous, gloomy half-light. I jumped. Nate reached for my hand.
"Don't worry," he assured me as he pulled me to my feet. "It does this all the time." He lead me through the maze of instruments and back out into the hall. "The power goes out anytime there are more than three flakes of snow. Truthfully, I'm amazed it's lasted this long." We navigated the stairs carefully. Esther was waiting at the
bottom to lead us into the living room where the fire still burned cheerily in the hearth.
Nate and I moved to the window and pushed aside the curtains. I gasped. He whistled lowly.
What had begun earlier that morning as a gentle dusting of snow had at some point grown into a full-fledged blizzard. I couldn't see more than a few feet from the building. Even the bright light from the lighthouse was hardly more than a blur through the mass of wind-whipped white. Somewhere out there my car was buried in the parking lot. I shuddered to think of the state of the road.
"What am I going to do?" I whispered. I craned my neck, trying desperately to see if perhaps there was a break in the clouds somewhere outside my immediate line of vision. There wasn't. It was an endless wall of white.
"There isn't much you can do but wait it out," Nate answered.
"Here?" I squeaked. "Alone? With you? In the dark?"
Nate chuckled. "Seems like it."
I closed my eyes and wobbled a little on the spot. There was a headache forming between my eyes. I pinched at it with the hand not being held by Nate.
"I won't take advantage of you," Nate teased. "I'm perfectly trustworthy, you know."
It wasn't Nate I had a problem trusting.
"What will people say?" I whispered.
"No one will know. I'm the only person who lives down here; if the road is impassable they'll never know the difference."
I considered the logic in that, but there was still a lot of fear nagging at me. "Someone will find out," I muttered. "They always find out. You have a reputation to protect."
"I am so damn sick of worrying about my 'reputation'," Nate growled in a tone tinged with uncharacteristic cynicism.
Surprised, my gaze flew up to meet his. There was a dark scowl on his face, one which did little to mar the handsomeness of his features. I'd never heard him swear before.
"I should think you'd be used to it by now," I whispered. "It sort of comes with the territory."
He sighed heavily. "I know. It's not something I can turn on and off when it suits me, no matter how much I'd like to wish I could."
"So what are we going to do? I can't stay here, people will assume the worst."
Nate turned his attention back to the snow-buffeted window. It was mid-afternoon, but the storm had turned the world so dark it easily could have been hours later. "I can't let you drive back to the city in this. You'll never make it."
I laughed softly. "I am a good Canadian girl from Montreal. I can drive through snow storms. It won't be the first time."
He shook his head. "They only plough my road on Sunday mornings. I can get stuck out here for days at a time during a storm. A wrong turn on the road and you can end up in the sea. No one comes this way during the week; there would be no one to help you if you needed it. I can't let you risk it, Adele. It's too dangerous."
A million worries and complications crowded in my head, pushing out any ability for rational thought. I knew traveling blizzard-drifted back roads was dangerous, but it seemed a safer alternative to being snowed-in with Nate.
He clasped my shoulders and gave them a reassuring squeeze. "Adele, sweetheart, this is the twenty-first century. What I do or don't do in the privacy of my own home is no one's business save my own. You're not about to be branded with a scarlet letter.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but Nate rushed forward.
"Let me worry about it, okay? I'm perfectly capable of being responsible for my own actions. You don't need to protect me."
"I need to protect myself," I whispered without thinking.
Nate chuckled warmly and kissed my forehead. "Not from me," he promised.
I weakened. It only took one step to fit myself against Nate and the solid comfort of his body. His arms went around me, as I knew they would. He rested his cheek against my hair.
"Oh sweetheart, what did he do to you?"
The question burned and the answer caught deep in my chest and wouldn't be forced out. If I gave the words the opportunity to break free I feared they would pour endlessly from me and I'd be unable to stop them from bringing back years of pain and torment with them.
"He betrayed you," Nate murmured. His hands stroked my back gently. I nodded into his neck.
"He lied to you, made you promises he had no intention of keeping."
It wasn't a question. I nodded again.
"The funny thing is," I croaked as my voice broke in my throat. "The funny this is that wasn't what hurt the most. The betrayal, the lies, the broken promises.... I almost think I could have lived with them, if only he hadn't ignored me."
Nate stilled and I squeezed him harder around the middle, so thankful to have something to hold on to. "When we met he charmed me, seduced me, married me, and then promptly forgot all about me." I nestled further into the warmth of Nate's body and the solid comfort he so generously offered.
"In the beginning he made me believe I was his world and then suddenly I wasn't anymore and I don't know why. I don't know what I did wrong. It was like I'd become invisible to him and nothing I did or said changed that." I shuddered with the memory of it and for a brief moment the loneliness crashed back around me until Nate kissed the top of my head.
"Oh sweetheart, I'm so sorry."
"There's nothing for you to apologize for."
I could feel Nate smile into my hair. "I know, but I still feel like I should -- on behalf of my gender perhaps. I don't suppose he ever apologized."
My mind flitted back to that final confrontation with Harry, that last day when I'd railed and stormed and announced our marriage was over. Even then with me flying in his face he seemed unfazed -- he'd looked through me rather than at me.
"No, he never did."
"Asshole," Nate muttered, surprising me again with the vehemence of his invective. I drew back to look up into Nate's face. His expression was grim, his brown eyes so dark they were almost black.
"Is it wrong that I'd very much like to punch him in the face right about now?"
I laughed. Nate could do it too, I knew. Harry never was much of a scrapper. He rarely got that passionate over something.
"Not wrong," I conceded, finally smiling. "But considerably un-reverend-like."
Nate's beautiful mouth twisted in a grimace which was somewhat tempered by the humor-filled creases at the corners of his lips and eyes.
"Pity that. He deserves it."
I couldn't agree more, but I was weary of the topic. I promised myself I was going to try to let all the hurt Harry caused go -- he'd taken enough from me -- my virginity, a decade of my life, my faith in the institution of marriage, my hopes for a family... he'd taken so much and I didn't want to give him any more. Especially not any of my precious moments with Nate. He and I were cocooned snugly in the little white house, buried in snow, safe from the wind and the world. I wanted to forget Harry forever. He didn't belong between Nate and me.
I glanced up to find Nate watching me with a gentle smile. It had been a long time since I allowed myself to be so open with another person. I doubted even Lilly and Rhiannon could guess the depth of my hurt. With Nate, however, it had been easy to unburden my still aching heart.
"You should have been a priest," I teased. "You make an excellent confessor."
Nate chuckled. "It's not a confession if you're the one who's been wronged," he reminded me. "And anyway, I would have made a lousy priest."
I smiled, feeling suddenly flirtatious. "And why is that? I mean, apart from not being Catholic and all?"
Nate's hands, his wonderful, slim, capable musician's hands, caressed slowly up my back, under my hair, and over my neck. Gently he cupped my face and bent his head to brush his lips softly against my own.
"Because I couldn't do this."
He kissed me again, more deeply, drawing a moan from the depths of my chest. His tongue flitted against my own before he gave my lower lip a teasing nip. "Because I couldn't think of you the way I do, want you the way I do."
"No, certainly not
," I gasped. He'd turned the tables on me, and now I was the one hearing his confession. It left me dazed. "How do they manage it, I wonder?"
Nate gave a low chuckle. He brushed his thumb over my bottom lip. It still tingled from his kiss and the sensation shot sparks down to my toes before pooling between my thighs.
"Oh," he drawled thickly, "I suppose they pray extra hard for God to take those desires from them."
"And you?"
"I think there are some desires that we should have, so when we act on them properly and respectfully, treating them like the precious gift they are, when we act on them with that in mind I think it brings us closer to Him."
Just His Type (Part Three) Page 5