Part 21 (1/2)

He captured her hands. ”I phrased it badly before, but you really can't live your life for your family. Staying here and working yourself to the bone isn't going to bring your parents back.”

She stood up and he let her go. ”I know that.”

”Do you?” he prompted quietly.

Going over to a window, she looked out at the lake. She couldn't expect him to understand. He'd turned his back on his family because they couldn't accept who he was. Worse, he'd been burned tragically by his a.s.sociation with the Walker name. So there was little possibility he could appreciate how much her sister and Grand-Em and White Caps meant to her.

But then his words came back to her. If she lived her life only for her family, what did she really have that was her own?

h.e.l.l, maybe she was the one with the problem. Maybe she was totally blinded by the past. Incapable of seeing her future.

”Frankie, I'm not sure you get it.”

”Maybe you're right.”

And for the first time, she tried to peel away from her vow to her sister and her responsibility for Grand-Em and the weight of keeping White Caps going. She just breathed in and out while staring at the water, trying to let go of her regrets.

Knowledge came slowly, but it was the deep kind, the in-your-soul kind. White Caps wasn't just home, a relic to her family. It was also where she herself belonged.

She turned around. ”The thing is, I love it here. I truly do. I might have some fantasy about what life in the big city would be like, but the thrill of that would pa.s.s. When I was younger, when I was with David, it was different. I was different. But I've found my rhythm, I really have. And it's in the seasons of this place.”

How funny that she was just figuring that out now. Tonight.

”I don't want to stop seeing you,” he said, staring at her hard.

She closed her eyes. So it wasn't just business for him, not just casual s.e.x. She felt the bones in her body loosen and realized she'd been carrying around so much tension. There had been so many words unspoken, feelings unrevealed. Until now.

”Oh, Nate. I don't want things to end, either.”

She heard him rise from the chair, the wood creaking as his weight was lifted.

”I didn't expect to get emotionally attached to you,” he said in his deep voice. G.o.d, she loved that rumbling sound.

She looked up at him. ”Neither did I.”

He smiled and bent down, his lips brus.h.i.+ng hers. ”You know, there's an express train that runs from Albany to New York.”

”And planes fly back and forth all the time,” she murmured.

He kissed her and she eased against his body. He was so solid, so warm, his arms tightening around her, holding her close.

But even as she said the words, she knew she didn't believe in their future. Long distance was hard, especially when one person was starting a whole new business. And the other was trying to keep an old one afloat. Distance meant stilted phone calls and missed connections and messages left on machines. It meant exhausted conversations at the end of hard nights. And gradual loss.

She'd been through it before. And though Nate was nothing like David, the toll would be taken. In the real world, daily life was inexorable, capable of wearing away the best of intentions, the most ardent of hearts, like water over stone.

He pulled back. ”You look grim.”

She smoothed his cheek with her palm. ”Let's not talk about the future. Take me upstairs to my bed and make love to me.”

Nate stared up at the ceiling as Frankie slept.He had told no one about Celia. Even Spike didn't have the full story.

He'd kept what had happened to himself because it hurt to put words to the events. And because he so regretted not having read the situation better. He should have known by the disgusted look on Celia's face when he'd told her he wasn't a wealthy guy that she was capable of doing something awful. He'd just a.s.sumed that because she wasn't a rich man's daughter that she wouldn't care about money.

A fatal miscalculation.

Absently, he stroked Frankie's arm. She'd been so d.a.m.n supportive. But she was like that. Loyal. Fiercely protective of those she cared about.

She reminded him of Spike.

He thought about his friend and their plans. While Frankie had been out in the garden weeding this afternoon, Spike had called with bad news. The place they'd been talking about hadn't panned out because they just couldn't make the money work. It would be a terrible mistake to try and get a new joint off the ground while being too strapped with debt.

Nate knew what they were up against. Ninety percent of new restaurants closed their doors within a year. But if his first attempt didn't work, he was prepared to wh.o.r.e himself out to a celebrity joint for the next five years, ama.s.s another nest egg and try again. Spike was likewise too pigheaded to take failure seriously.

G.o.d, they'd waited so long to make their mark. They'd sweated over blistering hot stoves and flaming grills, had worked double and triple s.h.i.+fts through burned hands and backs that ached. They'd honed their craft and paid their dues.

Their shot was going to come. It just had to.

Frankie stirred in her sleep, letting out a soft sigh of contentment as she snuggled in close.

Nate closed his eyes. When she'd told him she didn't want to talk about the future, he'd known exactly what the bleak expression on her face had meant. She was a realist, not a romantic. And she knew what it took to be in business for yourself. You didn't have a lot of discretionary time for outside relations.h.i.+ps. Especially long distance ones.

As he thought about the future, Labor Day loomed on the horizon like a thief. Leaving Frankie was going to be hard.

Nate turned his head and breathed in the scent of her shampoo and her skin.

Leaving Frankie was going to kill him.

Chapter Fourteen.

T he next morning, Frankie knocked softly on her brother's door. ”Alex?”

The response was slow in coming, delivered in a low tone. ”Yeah.”She s.h.i.+fted the tray in her hand. ”I brought you a little breakfast.”

There was a grunt and a shuffling sound. The door opened.

His beard had grown in overnight, darkening his jaw and cheeks, and his hair was roughed up. He had on a pair of shorts that hung off his hips and there were bruises on his chest, black and blue ones dark enough to show through his tan.

”Thanks.” He took the tray, but didn't invite her in.

She watched with a hollow pit in her stomach as he put the food down on the bureau and limped back to bed. He was too big for the twin mattress, his feet hanging off the end, and he seemed equally out of place in the room. The America's Cup posters of his teenage years had faded, the model s.h.i.+ps he'd built with their father had sagging sails now. He was a man in a boy's s.p.a.ce and it struck her as odd that she'd never thought of redecorating his room. Although it wasn't as if she'd had the money.

And she supposed a part of her had wanted to keep it as it was. The remains of a brother she never really expected to come back home.

”Do you need anything?” She stepped inside and that was when she saw a bottle of scotch on the floor, within easy reach of his hand. It was half empty.

He eyed her darkly as if he didn't want her to come any closer. ”Nope.”