Текст книги "Lost and Found"

Автор книги: Kelly Jamieson

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Chapter Seven

Nate blinked rapidly, and Krissa couldn’t drag her eyes away from his face. Those eyes pulled at her like a receding wave in the ocean and she swallowed.

“I’m going to change and then go do my shopping.” She set the bottle on the table. “If you still want to come, we could go get some lunch somewhere.”

“Nah, never mind.”

She blinked. “Oh. I thought you wanted to come with me.”

He rose to his feet. “I changed my mind.”

He turned his back on her and walked stiffly toward the stairs.

Disappointment flooded her. She’d been looking forward to having company while she did her grocery shopping. “What’s wrong, Nate? Are your eyes bothering you that much?”

“They’re fine,” he snapped without turning. “Just leave me alone.”

She stood there, watched his retreating back. Ooookay. Rude prick. God, she was surrounded by grouchy testosterone.

Then she felt ashamed of that thought. He wasn’t a prick. Just like Derek, he had big problems. And didn’t want to talk about it. Fine.

Besides, she’d been a bitch herself last night. Guess she deserved that. They were all behaving badly.

She went to her own bedroom to change out of her plaid shorts. She pulled on a short denim skirt and a T-shirt, brushed her hair. As she slicked some gloss on her lips, she heard a knock on her door.

The door was open, so she just turned. Nate stood there hands in his pockets, dark glasses shielding his eyes. She looked at him. Waited.

“I…uh…I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier.”

She nodded, twisted the cap back onto her lip gloss and dropped it into her purse.

“I would still like to come,” he said. “If you don’t mind some unpleasant company.”

She swallowed a laugh. “I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully, slinging her purse over one shoulder. “If you’re going to be an asshole I’d rather do my shopping alone.”

“I’ll behave.” The corners of his mouth tipped up.

“Okay, then. How about lunch?”

“Could we go to Darby’s?” She smiled at the hopeful note in his voice. “I get cravings for their bacon mushroom cheeseburger.”

She laughed. “Then you should have one. Come on, let’s go.”

They sat on the outdoor deck at Darby’s in the shade of a huge fig tree, enjoying the quiet neighborhood with only a faint hum of traffic in the background. Krissa plunged her straw into the glass of iced tea she’d ordered.

“Lauren liked it here, too,” she remarked, extending her bare legs under the table. Her foot bumped Nate’s, his legs much longer than hers. “Sorry.” She shifted her feet in her flip flops away.

He said nothing.

“You must miss her.”

“I don’t want to talk about Lauren.”

She blinked. She, too, wore sunglasses now. “Why not?”

Was it still that painful for him to talk about her? It had been over two years since she’d died. Surely he should be moving on by now.

“I just don’t want to.” His voice was hard.

“But it would be good for you…if you can’t get past it, talking about her might help. You must miss her.”

“No. I don’t.”

Astonished, she stared at him, her glass of tea half way from the table to her lips. “You don’t miss her?”

He shook his head, gave the menu his attention. Then he snapped it shut. “Don’t know why I’m even looking at that. I already know what I want.”

“Bacon mushroom cheeseburger.”

“You got it.”

Krissa looked at her own menu, decided on a spinach salad and they ordered.

“Nate. What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

He knew exactly what she meant. The lack of eye contact was driving her crazy, but she felt his understanding. “Lauren. Why don’t you miss her? Why don’t you want to talk about her?”

He sighed. “It’s a crappy story, Krissa. You liked Lauren. I don’t want to spoil your memories of her.”

“Well, you definitely can’t say something like that and then not tell me what you mean.” She sipped her drink. “What would spoil my memories of her?”

Nate turned his face and looked across the street at the small used book store. “Just drop it, okay.”

“No.”

It wasn’t like her to push for an uncomfortable conversation. She normally tried to avoid that. But she had to know. That morning when they’d been talking about Lauren, something had made her feel funny, something Nate had said. And his reaction didn’t seem normal to her. He should be at the point where he wanted to talk about his wife—sharing happy memories. But clearly he wasn’t.

“I want to know,” she said softly, leaning forward. “Truly, Nate, it will help to talk about it. I told you about wanting to have a baby. I’ve never told anybody else that, except Derek.”

He tipped his head to the side as if thinking about that. “Nobody?”

She moved her head side to side. “Not even Cameron.”

He gnawed on his bottom lip. “Well, I’ve never told anybody this, either.”

Something tightly coiled inside her softened. “I won’t tell anyone else.”

“Yeah.” He paused, studied the glass of Coke in front of him, took a deep breath. “After Lauren died, I went through her stuff. I found her journal. She wrote in it all the time, but it was personal. I probably shouldn’t have read it, but I wanted to connect with her one last time…to know her thoughts and feelings. That must sound crazy.”

“No. Not at all.” She ached for how he must have felt. “I think it would feel like talking to her…one last time.”

Their eyes met and held. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “That’s it. Anyway, I started reading the most recent stuff. About…well, stuff. Anyway.” He cleared his throat. “She’d been having an affair.”

Oh. Dear. God. Krissa stared at him, mouth open. “Oh, Nate. Are you sure? That can’t be.”

“Unless her journal was fiction, I’m sure.”

“Who was it?”

“I have no idea. She never mentioned a name. She called him ‘my lover’.” Krissa heard the disgust in the rough tone of his voice. “She wrote about what they did.” His voice deepened even more. “Where they went. What they talked about. How guilty she felt, but yet she couldn’t stop seeing him. It started when I was away in Thailand for two months.”

Krissa remembered that trip. She’d wondered at the time how Nate could leave his wife for that long, but believed their marriage was strong enough to handle a couple of months. After all, many couples spent much longer periods of time apart. “That’s awful.”

He lifted a big shoulder, turned the glass of Coke between his hands. “It was shitty, yeah. Here she’d just died and I was all broken up inside about that, and then I found out she’d been cheating on me. Our whole life for months before she died was a lie.”

Krissa closed her eyes against the pain she felt for Nate. She knew the agony of wondering if her husband had cheated, and even though he hadn’t, she could imagine how painful it would be. “It must be even worse that she’s dead. You can’t even ask her about it…why she did it.”

“Yeah.” He was silent. She sensed there was more but she didn’t press this time.

“Derek doesn’t know about that?”

“No. And please don’t tell him. I’m a big enough loser with my eye problems right now.”

“But he’s your friend. You could talk to him about it…”

“Maybe some day. He’s got enough problems.”

“Oh, Nate.”

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” he growled, the corners of his mouth turned down. “I know how pathetic I am, but I don’t like the world feeling sorry for me.”

“It’s not like that. I am sorry…sorry that you had to go through that. That you’re still going through it. But I don’t think you’re pathetic. Not at all.” She tried a smile. “I think you’re an amazing, strong man, Nate.”

He snorted, turned away again.

The waiter arrived with their lunches.

They talked about other things while they ate, but Krissa couldn’t get her mind off the fact that Lauren had cheated on Nate. It was shocking. Hurtful. And Nate was right—it did change her feelings about Lauren, all the pretty memories she had of her friend. She and Lauren hadn’t been best friends or anything, but because Nate and Derek were such good friends, they’d spent a lot of time together. She’d thought she knew Lauren, and learning this about her made her feel betrayed too. God. It must be a thousand times worse for Nate.

Nate accompanied her to the grocery store, and they discussed choices of steaks for grilling that night, what size of shrimp to buy, what kind of mushrooms would complement the steaks. “I want shiitake mushrooms,” she decided, but when they looked in the produce department there were none. She asked the produce manager.

“Sorry, ma’am, we’re out right now. Should get some in tomorrow.”

Krissa pouted briefly. “We’ll stop at another store on the way home.” She loved good food, loved to cook and especially loved to feed people, so debating shiitake versus oyster mushrooms was so much fun she could almost forget the mess her life was in.

“Are you going to marinate the steaks?” Nate asked, pushing the cart for her down an aisle.

“I was going to use a rub…I make a really good one.”

“What’s in it?”

She told him the seasonings she used and he made approving noises. “Sounds good. Should we get some wine?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Nate knew wine, too, and they lingered over selecting a red and a white. Then he insisted on paying for the wine and half the groceries.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “I’ll let you buy the wine, but not the food.”

“I’m costing you guys money.”

“We can afford to have a guest for a while.”

“I can afford to contribute.”

They looked at each other and burst out laughing. “Tell me how much you make,” she challenged him. “And I’ll tell you how much I make.”

He grinned. “Never mind. I’m sure you’re raking it in.”

She grimaced. “Not. Derek makes way more than I do. My business is just new. I’m doing okay, though.”

She started lifting items out of the cart and piling them on the checkout counter. Nate leaned into the cart too, to help, his shoulder brushing hers.

“I know you’re doing more than okay, with the prices of those photographs. And it was in the news how much you made off that deal with House and Home.”

He grinned. “Yeah. That was sweet. After I made that deal, I was able to travel wherever I wanted, do what I wanted. And the prices my images are selling for still blows my mind.”

He placed the steaks on the conveyor.

“That show in L.A. you mentioned…is it a sale?”

“Yeah. At Gallery 228. A new dealer. Generally I do really well at those shows.”

She nodded. She felt…proud. It had taken Nate a while to find his way, too, though not as long as it had taken her. When she’d met him and Derek, Nate had been running a business renting bicycles at the beach. He’d done well, had lots of flexibility and was outside a lot, as he loved to be, near the ocean. When he and Derek weren’t doing triathlons, he’d played around taking pictures, displaying them every Sunday at the Arts and Crafts show on Cabrillo Boulevard, selling the odd one. Selling photographs was tough in Santa Barbara because of the big photography school. Everyone was a photographer. She was so happy it had turned into such a successful career for him.

“So, the money’s good…but you love it, don’t you?”

He paused, a bottle of wine in each hand. “Yeah. I love it.” He set the wine down.

“Your eyes are going to get better,” she said softly, putting a hand on his forearm. Strong, bare, soft with dark hair. She felt the muscles tighten beneath her fingers. “I know it.”

He nodded, reached into the cart again, removing his arm from her touch, and she moved through the checkout, pulling her wallet out of her purse to pay.

When they stopped at another grocery store, they, too, had no shiitake mushrooms. “Damn.” Krissa stood there, arms folded. “Well, there’s one more place we can try.”

“Do we have to have shiitake? How about oyster mushrooms? They have those.”

“I want shiitake.”

He shrugged. When they had no luck at the next store, Krissa could have screamed.

Nate put his hand on her back and rubbed. “Hey. Mushrooms are not an important thing.”

His touch and his words calmed her. He was right. She was just being her usual stubborn self. She shook her head, and they selected mushrooms from the types available at that store.

Nate helped her carry the groceries into the house and put them away in the kitchen. Then he sat at the counter while she mixed up the rub for the steaks.

As she pressed the spice mixture into the meat the phone rang.

“Want me to get it?” Nate asked.

“Sure.”

He grabbed the cordless phone. “Hi. Hey, Derek.” He listened, looked at Krissa. “Okay. What time? Yeah. I’ll tell her.” He pressed the button to disconnect and set the phone down.

Krissa’s stomach tightened. “He’s not coming home for dinner, is he?”

Chapter Eight

Nate nodded. “That happen a lot?”

“Oh, yeah.” She sighed. “I’m used to it. Good thing he called before I got his steak ready.” She picked up the third rib-eye and put it into the freezer.

“He said he won’t be home until about ten. Client meetings.”

She nodded, washing her hands at the sink.

“How ’bout I open that wine?”

“Sure.”

She handed the corkscrew over to him and while he opened the Pinot Noir she got out glasses. He poured some into each and she sipped it.

“Very nice.” She nodded, sipped again, enjoyed the puckery tannins, the fruity berry taste.

“Mmm.” He looked around. “You going to grill those steaks outside?”

“Yes. It’s a gas grill, it’s easy to use.”

“Just say when, and I’ll help. I’m pretty good with a barbeque.”

She smiled. Since he’d been back, he’d seemed so different than she remembered. This was the first glimpse she’d had of the Nate she recalled. He’d always been so much fun—wild, spontaneous, always smiling and laughing. The laugh they’d shared that afternoon had been the first smile she’d seen cross his grim face. His deep-set eyes and straight, grim mouth gave him a forbidding look that one smile banished. Yeah, she’d felt sorry for him earlier, but he was so not the loser he felt like. He was smart, funny, talented. And gorgeous. “I like you, Nate.”

He turned a startled face to her. “Uh…thanks. I…uh…like you too.”

She grinned. “People don’t say that to each other often enough. You tell people you love that you love them, but you never tell your friends that you like them.”

He studied his wine. “So I’m your friend?”

“Of course you are. You’re Derek’s friend, so you’re mine too.”

He said nothing, just kept looking at his wine glass and she sensed the discomfort he felt. This Nate was different—closed off, unavailable and brooding.

“We should get those steaks on,” she said brightly.

They grilled the steaks and the mushrooms and Nate whipped up a vinaigrette dressing for the salad Krissa put together. They sat out on the deck to eat their meal in the evening sunshine, Nate with his back to it.

“How’re your eyes? Better than this morning?”

“Better. They’re always sore and sensitive, but sometimes not so bad.”

“Have they improved at all since you got sick?”

He shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

She nodded, cut a piece of steak and popped it into her mouth. Just the right bite of black pepper, heat of cayenne, warmth of garlic.

“This is good,” he remarked. “Really good steak. Mushrooms are good too.”

They were—earthy and smoky. Heat crept into her cheeks. “Sorry about earlier. I get the idea I want something and I have to have it.”

“I know.” He smiled.

She reached for the bottle of wine and poured the last of it into their glasses. “I love food.”

“Good thing you’re skinny.”

“I’m not skinny!”

“I mean…I thought girls liked to be skinny.”

She frowned. “Slim, maybe. Slender. Skinny sounds…bony. Ugly.”

“Okay, good thing you’re so slim.”

She smiled at him. “That’s better.”

“You’re not bony. And you’re definitely not ugly.”

Their eyes met and held, his just visible through the dark lenses. She felt her cheeks heat, and bent her head, letting her hair fall over her face. “Thanks. You’re definitely not ugly either.”

He groaned. “When you say it, I realize what a lousy compliment that is.”

She lifted her head. “You’re fun to be with, Nate.”

And she really meant that. He’d taken her mind off her misery, and his mild flirting made her feel better about herself. Not like a failure, a nagging wife, a woman who would never be a mother. She actually felt good.

“Strangely enough, I’m having fun, too,” he said slowly. “And I thought I came here to wallow in self-pity.”

“This is the Pity Palace, right now.”

He laughed again, a dry, dusty sound, and she had a feeling he hadn’t laughed a lot in the last couple of years.

He helped with the dishes after dinner and they wandered into the family room. Krissa clicked through the many channels on TV until she found a movie they both wanted to watch. Shortly before ten o’clock, Derek arrived home.

He’d been drinking, she could tell immediately, smelling it on him, but he wasn’t drunk. But then, she’d been drinking, too, she and Nate having finished off the bottle of Pinot Noir and started in on the Sauvignon Blanc.

“Long day,” he sighed. He yanked his tie down and then off, undid the top buttons of his shirt. He sat down on the couch beside her, Nate having moved to the arm chair across from the sofa when Derek had come in. Derek put his arm around her and pulled her against him, kissed her head. “How was your day?”

“Good.”

“Really?” He drew back and looked at her. “You’re not mad still?”

She sighed, pasted on a smile. “I’m okay.”

“Love you, Krissa.” He hugged her and kissed her mouth.

She closed her eyes. She loved him, too. He was her husband. For better or for worse. How could she leave him?

But she couldn’t deny the aching sadness still lingering deep inside her.

Nate watched Derek embrace his wife and kiss her, and shifted in the armchair. He’d almost been hoping she’d still be pissed at Derek. He deserved it. He should have been home with his wife.

For some reason, Nate was annoyed at his friend. He’d hurt Krissa. And then he didn’t even come home for dinner. Again.

Hell, it was none of his business. If Krissa was okay, he shouldn’t be worked up about it anymore either.

Krissa snuggled into Derek’s side, closer, and Derek put both arms around her. One hand stroked her hip and she rested her cheek on his chest, her hand on his shoulder. Then Derek slid his hand to the back of her thigh and lifted her knee across his lap. With a sigh, Krissa’s hand moved to Derek’s neck and she tipped her head back to look at his face.

“I’m sorry, babe,” he whispered. Nate could barely hear him. He wanted to look away from the increasing intimacy of their pose, but couldn’t. From behind his dark glasses, he knew they couldn’t really tell if he was looking at them or not. He faced the television screen but could see them.

Derek bent his head and kissed Krissa again, and Nate watched her mouth open beneath Derek’s. Nate’s groin tightened, heavy and full. The kiss deepened, Krissa’s hand on Derek’s cheek, his hand on her ass. As they kissed, mouths shifting, he could see tongues touching and licking, heard soft breaths and soft, wet suckling noises.

Someone groaned—he wasn’t sure if it was Krissa or Derek—and Nate’s cock swelled. Jesus. Had they forgotten he was there?

His cock throbbed beneath the fly of his jeans, and he altered his position in the chair again. He swallowed, but still couldn’t drag his eyes off the vignette of the couple making out in front of him.

Their mouths parted, wet and shiny, and they looked at each other. Krissa blinked, caressed her husband’s face. Derek nuzzled her neck, kissed her throat.

Krissa’s eyes drifted to Nate and widened. “Oh.” She pushed at Derek. “Derek. Stop.”

“Mmm.” He licked her throat and she quivered.

“Stop, Derek. Nate’s here.”

“S’okay,” he murmured. “He likes to watch. Dontcha, Nate?”

Derek lifted his head and sent a wicked smile Nate’s way.

Nate’s skin burned and tingled all over and his cock pulsed. He wanted to touch himself. He wanted to see more. He wanted Derek to touch Krissa. Hell, Nate wanted to touch Krissa.

He swallowed a groan but didn’t answer Derek, who had returned to kissing and sucking the soft flesh of Krissa’s neck and shoulder. Her head fell back.

“Derek…” her voice trailed off.

Touch her. Nate could see her breasts swelling beneath her thin T-shirt, begging to be touched. Christ, if Derek didn’t do it soon, he was going to.

Derek did it. His hand slid up over Krissa’s flat stomach under the T-shirt, and cupped her breast.

Nate was going to explode.

Krissa gave a soft moan that sounded like the word “no” but if it was, Derek ignored her, caressed her breast, the T-shirt riding high and exposing her smooth tummy.

Fuck. Nate was either going to whip his dick out and jerk off right there in front of them, or he was going to burst. Gritting his teeth, he rose to his feet and almost staggered out of the room.

“I’ll give you two some privacy,” he muttered, and headed to his room.

He tore off the sunglasses, not bothering with the light in his room, and fell onto the bed, hands fumbling at his zipper. He shoved his jeans open and down, pulled out his aching cock and fisted it. He groaned into the soft darkness, the pull of his hand gratifying, relieving. He slid his other hand under his T-shirt, rubbed his chest as he thrust into his fist. Then he lowered his hand to cup his balls, squeezed, and pumped into his hand only a few times before he came, white hot streams of semen spurting onto his belly.

He lay there panting, staring at the ceiling.

Derek was only half right. Nate did like to watch. But Derek liked to watch, too.