Welcome to Paradise: Welcome to Paradise, Book 1 (8 page)

They lay there kissing for a long time until Nate reluctantly rolled off her and headed into the bathroom. He returned with a wet washcloth then proceeded to clean her off while she watched him with a bemused smile. “Always the caretaker,” she teased.

He shifted in discomfort. “Doesn’t sound very manly.”

“It’s a perfectly acceptable thing to be,” she assured him. “I remember the way you used to take care of your brothers, how you looked out for them. I thought it was really sweet.”

And sexy, she almost added. Yeah, it had definitely been sexy watching eighteen-year-old Nate toss a football with the fourteen-year-old twins or helping eleven-year-old Austin with his math homework. Nate had been the eldest, their role model, and he’d taken the job seriously, especially since Henry Bishop had been as terrible a parent as Charlotte’s mother.

But Nate, despite the fact that everyone thought he was a bad apple because he rode a beat-up Harley around town, had been so good to his brothers. He’d been good to
her
.

Anger bubbled in the back of her throat. And then he’d taken everything good he’d ever said and done and turned it into something ugly.

Unable to fight the burning in her gut, she slid up into a sitting position, nearly banging her skull on the headboard of the bed.

“You okay?” Nate asked, concern lighting his eyes.

“No,” she choked out.

Screw pretending she’d forgiven him. Lexie Price had been right—she
was
playing games, and after this latest round of amazing sex, Charlotte couldn’t hold her tongue anymore.

“Why did you do it?” she blurted. “Why did you throw me away like a piece of garbage?”

Chapter Six

Nate hadn’t been expecting the question or the sudden cloud of resentment that turned Charlotte’s light green eyes into a dark forest green. He tossed the washcloth onto the nightstand and warily got to his feet, reaching for the jeans he’d discarded on the floor. As he pulled the denim up his legs, he saw that Charlotte wasn’t making any move to get dressed. She just sat there cross-legged, buck naked while her long red hair fell past her shoulders, barely covering her breasts.

“I need to know,” she said, her voice coming out in a whisper. “I know I said I was over the past, and a part of me really is, but I still want to know why you did it.”

A sigh rolled out of his chest. Moving back to the bed, he sat down at the edge and met her agonized gaze. “I did it so you would leave town.”

Irritation flashed across her face. “Yeah, I got that. You didn’t want me around.”

“No,” he said quickly, “I… What I meant was I did it so you would go to Julliard.”

Her annoyance dissolved into confusion. “What?”

Nate fiddled with a loose thread on the bedspread. “You told my mom you were thinking of staying in Paradise instead of going to college. I couldn’t let you throw your future away.”

“
What
?”

“You hated it here,” he burst out. “I knew from the start that I wanted to live here, to help my dad run the pub and live a quiet, uncomplicated life. But you wanted bigger things. You
deserved
bigger things.” He swallowed. “When my mother told me what you said, I knew exactly why you’d said it. You were going to stay for me, weren’t you, Charlotte?”

With wide eyes, she nodded.

“Well, that wouldn’t have been fair to you. You were born to sing, baby, and not in a church choir in front of people who were too stupid to appreciate you. So I lied.”

“You lied,” she echoed dully.

He nodded.

“About everything?” She bit her lush bottom lip. “You lied about being bored with me? About not liking the…the sex?”

“Every word I said was a lie.” His throat tightened. “Making love to you that first time was the best experience of my life. Fuck, I loved you.” His next words slipped out before he could derail them. “I’m not sure I ever stopped loving you.”

Her mouth fell open. She went silent for so long, he wondered if she’d fallen asleep with her eyes open or something. A part of him couldn’t believe she’d actually bought the lies, but he had been pretty damn convincing. He’d chased the love of his life away so she could accomplish her goals, but from the shocked and slightly annoyed expression on her face, he got the feeling she didn’t appreciate the gesture.

“So let me get this straight,” she finally said. “Your mother told you what I said, and so you just went ahead and made a decision about our future—without having the decency to talk to me about it first?”

He gulped. Shit, when she phrased it like that, it sounded bad. Not as bad as, say, sleeping with her and then
dumping
her, but bad just the same.

“I made a mistake,” he admitted.

“No kidding.” She shook her head in disbelief. “What about the sex? Why on earth would you sleep with me for the first time when you planned on breaking up with me?”

“I…I lost control.” Frustration boiled in his gut. “God, Charlotte, it wasn’t like I had some kind of master plan. I honestly didn’t expect things to go as far as they did. I just wanted to kiss you goodbye, but then…then we were on that blanket, and I couldn’t help myself.”

She scowled at him, causing him to raise his hands in surrender. “I know, that’s no excuse,” he said with a sigh. “I was young and stupid, okay? And I really thought I was doing the right thing by letting you go. I just kept thinking about that dumb saying—if you love someone, let them go.”

“But you didn’t even give me a choice!” She looked so annoyed he experienced a burst of shame. “Yeah, I was thinking of staying, but if you’d told me back then everything you just said now, maybe I would have still left. Maybe we could have worked out another solution, done the long-distance thing.”

“Or maybe you would have ruined your life, for me,” he countered.

“For love,” she corrected.

“You would have been miserable if you stayed here.” He found the courage to stroke one of her bare knees, and to his surprise, she didn’t shove his hand away. “Your name needed to be on all those albums in my living room. Your music needed to be on people’s CD players and iPods. You know that, Charlie.”

“Maybe, but I also needed to be with you.”

His heart squeezed. “You’re with me now,” he pointed out. Then he slid closer and cupped her chin with his hands. “I’m so sorry, Charlotte. I was young and I made a huge mistake. I’m willing to own up to that. But I just want you to know that I’ve grown up. I realize now how badly I handled the situation. For the past fifteen years, I’ve been so damn miserable, wondering if you’d ever be able to forgive me for what I did.”

“You were miserable?” she echoed.

He nodded, wanting so badly to tell her about how many relationships he’d screwed up, but he didn’t feel comfortable bringing other women into this private moment between them. It was true, though. He’d dated after Charlotte left, but never truly opened himself up to anyone. Until Evelyn—but that was an angering memory he didn’t want to dwell on right now.

“I was miserable too,” she confessed. “Every man I was with…I always ended up comparing him to you.”

Lord, he knew the feeling. “I guess it’s pretty obvious then that we never really got over each other.”

“Get over you?” She sighed. “I don’t think I can ever get over you.”

His heart soared. “Does…does that mean you forgive me?”

After a long moment, she nodded, her green eyes flickering with resignation. “I do…I forgive you, Nate. But… What are we doing here?”

“Making up for lost time.” He dragged his thumb along the seam of her lips. “Which I’m willing to keep doing for as long as you want.”

Something he couldn’t decipher moved across her face. “You want a relationship?”

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

Another flicker in her eyes, one that might have looked like guilt if he didn’t know better. “My career is important to me,” she said.

“It’s important to me too.” He bent his head to brush his lips over hers. “I would never interfere with your career. If you need to live in New York for part of the time, then that’s fine. We can make this work, baby. I know we can.”

He knew that what he was saying was far too premature. She’d only been back in Paradise for a couple of days, after all. But he couldn’t stop the words from exiting his mouth. Charlotte Hill was the only woman he’d ever truly loved, the only woman he could picture spending his life with. He’d already let her go once—he wasn’t sure he could do it again.

“Nate…”

He was surprised to see a lone tear leak out from the corner of her eye. “Don’t you cry on me,” he said roughly. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I…” Her throat bobbed as she gulped. “I was thinking about why I came here…and…”

Her reply was a bit odd, but he couldn’t figure out why she was suddenly so upset. He didn’t like either. He’d never been good with tears. Quickly pulling her into his arms, he rubbed her upper back and murmured, “All that matters is that you’re back. You have me, Charlie. For as long as you’re here, for as long as you want to be, you have me.”

She tilted her head up to look at him, her green eyes swimming with both joy and dismay. “I want you,” she murmured back. “I don’t know about the future, but right now, I want you.”

Grinning, he took her hand and brought it to his zipper. “Then take me.”

With a responding smile, she unzipped his pants and did just that.

Charlotte woke up with the most colossal weight of guilt bearing down on her chest. She couldn’t even believe she’d fallen asleep, though three hours of slumber didn’t really count as a good night of rest.

She’d made a big mistake. Coming here to seduce Nate, planning to break his heart…there was no way she could go through with any of that now that she knew the truth.

Nate had broken up with her so she would be able to live her dreams.

The thought still filled her with shock. All these years she’d hated him for what he’d done, and now she wanted to kick herself for believing the lies so easily. Why hadn’t she stuck around to get the truth from him? Why had she been so willing to believe that he had actually meant everything he’d said to her?

Because you were an insecure idiot
.

Yep, that about summed it up. Being ostracized by her peers and whispered about by her elders had succeeded in stripping away her confidence. When Nate dumped her, claiming he didn’t even like her, a part of her had thought,
It’s about time
. Somehow, she’d never believed someone as wonderful as Nate Bishop could actually fall in love with her.

“Idiot,” she mumbled to herself then experienced a wave of gratitude that Nate wasn’t in the room to hear it.

She’d heard him heading downstairs an hour ago but had been too exhausted to climb out of bed. The faint sound of typing came from below, making her deduce that he was on his laptop. He’d mentioned last night that he was slacking on inputting the pub’s expense reports into the database on his computer.

Although she was wide awake now, she wasn’t quite ready to go downstairs and face Nate. Everything he’d said to her yesterday—the truth about the breakup, his desire to have her in his life despite her hectic career—it all buzzed around in her mind like a nest of restless hornets. A part of her was still annoyed with him—why hadn’t he just told her the damn truth instead of pushing her away? But she couldn’t fault him for making a stupid mistake, not when she’d made a pretty big mistake of her own. She had to tell him the truth about why she’d come back. Sure, she could probably forget about it, never mention it and Nate wouldn’t be the wiser, but Charlotte knew they couldn’t move forward until she lay all the cards on the table first.

A lie had been responsible for their breakup, and she couldn’t, not in good conscience, let a lie begin this new relationship.

And she wanted a relationship with Nate. Badly. She’d been so lonely for so long. She’d been empty. Nobody had ever been able to compare to Nate, and now that she had him back, she didn’t want to let him go. She wanted to hold on to him for as long as she could.

Which was why she decided to take the coward’s way out and tell him the truth tomorrow.

Padding down the stairs wearing the button-down shirt Nate had discarded on the floor last night, she found him in the small study tucked off from the living room. “Morning,” she said softly.

He glanced up from the laptop and shot her a smile that curled her toes. “Morning. Want to get some breakfast at Betty’s?”

“Sure. But I was thinking of going for a run first. Can I rummage around in your drawers for something that fits?”

“Sure.” His head was already turning back to the screen. “Stay on the path though. Wild animals are always roaming this area.”

“Yes, sir.”

With a smile, she headed back upstairs where she slipped into a worn gray T-shirt with the Paradise Panthers football logo on the front then found a pair of basketball shorts with a drawstring that she managed to get tight enough that the shorts stayed on her hips.

It was a surprisingly cool morning for July, and when she stepped outside, goose bumps rose on her bare arms. She took off on the path Nate had indicated and soon sweat coated the front of her shirt. Charlotte’s ponytail swished back and forth, and she was so focused on running the guilt right out of her body that she shouted out in surprise when a black-clad figure stepped out from behind a patch of trees.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” came a rough voice.

She collected her breath and looked into a pair of eyes so dark they were nearly pure black. The man who’d blindsided her was a few years younger, probably mid to late twenties, and the sex appeal rolling off his lean body actually caused a response in her own. Her nipples peaked against her bra, and she awkwardly crossed her arms as she demanded, “Do you make it a habit of scaring total strangers?”

“Sometimes, but you’re not a stranger, are you?” His voice was deep, insolent even, and those black eyes swept up and down her body, making her feel self-conscious in the oversized clothes she’d borrowed from Nate. “You’re Charlotte Hill.”

“And you are?” she asked coolly.