Here to Stay (6 page)

Nathan braced himself for her rejection
before he reached out and touched her rigid shoulder.

Paige shrugged away, then turned to face him.
“What would you like me to say in response to that?”

“Nothing…I mean, I just wanted you to know
that I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Sure you did. That’s why you said all those
things.”

He closed his eyes and sighed long and loud.
Why should she make this easy for him? He had been a total ass.
“Okay,” he muttered and opened his eyes. “I wanted to hurt you.
Satisfied?”

His insides twisted as Paige’s gaze slid
slowly down his body. Nathan wondered if she was even conscious of
the act. When her eyes paused on his half-open fly, his groin
tightened and heat flooded his loins. His breath stalled in his
chest. She shouldn’t be looking at him like that. Not right now,
when he was too weak to fight the hunger for what he knew he could
never have.

She fastened her gaze back on his and folded
her arms solemnly under her breasts. “You took advantage of me and
you know it. How could you…” She hesitated and moistened her lips
before she began again. “How could you have…?”

“Made love to you?” he offered. She flinched.
Anger swirled, replacing the queasy feeling in Nathan’s stomach.
She was as cool as ever. Paige, the reasonable…the attorney at law.
Daddy’s little girl. Using her legal mind to dodge questions. “I
was out of my mind with grief. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
And I
was still in love with you
.

“Well, at least you got the ‘not thinking
clearly’ part right.”

“Let’s drop it, okay?” Nathan took a deep,
steadying breath. His brain throbbed inside his skull. He wasn’t in
any condition to be getting ticked off right now.

“No. I won’t drop it.” Her hands went to her
hips. “When are you going to admit you’re as much to blame in all
this as me—maybe more? After all, you’re the one who got
married.”

Nathan cocked an eyebrow. She was angry—good.
He had never liked being angry alone. And she was definitely
propelling him in that direction. “You left me, Paige. You were too
busy listening to daddy to care about me.”

“My father is not the issue.”

Nathan smirked. “You don’t get it, do you,
Blondie—”

“Don’t call me that,” she ordered. Her blue
eyes blazed with indignation.

“Your daddy has always been the issue. If you
didn’t live under his thumb, you could see it. Dear old dad is the
one who ensured that you went away to that fancy school. His sole
motivation was to keep you away from me.” The same old bitterness
he always felt when he thought about Paige’s father reared its ugly
head. Why couldn’t he have a reasonable conversation with the
woman? Hell, he couldn’t even have a reasonable thought about her!
“And look how well it worked.”

“As I told you before, you don’t know
anything about me now. You have no idea where I work or live.
Nothing. You know nothing!”

“I know that you chose your daddy over me. I
know that.”

Paige shook her head. “You really believe all
of this is my fault and you’re the innocent victim.”

“Close enough,” he told her, his jaw
clenched. Damn, his head hurt.

“I guess we don’t have anything else to
discuss, then.” Her eyes remained on his for a moment before she
pivoted and headed toward the door.

Every ounce of his anger and bitterness
suddenly drained away, leaving Nathan weak and hurting. The guarded
expression he had seen in her eyes before she turned away worried
him. Was she ready to give up? Go back to Memphis and never come
back? Isn’t that what he wanted? No matter how much she had hurt
him, Nathan couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing her again.
These past five years had been pure hell.

“Is that how you really want to leave it?” At
least the question had stopped her departure. He had no idea what
he’d say next. In his present condition, he was lucky his brain
even worked at all.

She turned to face him. The pain he saw in
her eyes tugged at his battle-scarred heart. “No, Nathan, it’s not.
I wanted us to be friends…to work all this out.”

Her choice of words resurrected the pain and
bitterness a hundredfold. “Friends,” he muttered, stepping toward
her. “Like it used to be.”

She nodded, her features drawn in wary
anticipation. He saw her ready herself to make a dash for the door.
Paige knew better than to be afraid of him, yet, somehow, she
seemed to be.

“You want me to forget the dreams we
shared…forget what we meant to each other? Can you pretend it never
happened?”

“Nathan.” The muscles of her neck worked as
she swallowed tightly. “Why can’t we just get past all that and go
from here? Be friends.”

“I can do without friends like you,” he
snapped.

She wavered under his angry glare. “I have to
go,” she whispered. When she got to the door, she stopped, reached
down and picked up something. Nathan frowned and then groaned
inwardly. Even frowning hurt.

Paige considered the necklace she had picked
up, the black pearls clicking together. Nathan stopped breathing.
She lifted her gaze to his. Disgusted, she flung the necklace at
him. The pearls hit him square in the chest, then fell to the
floor.

“Why would you need friends like me when you
have friends like Celine?” Paige glared at him for the space of a
heartbeat before she stormed out of the room.

Nathan closed his eyes and tried to think. If
he could only turn off the jackhammer in his head. He didn’t answer
to Paige. Why would she care what he did? What did she want from
him? Better still, what did he want from her? He had no idea. The
only thing he knew for sure was that he didn’t want to hurt her.
And he’d done a bang-up job so far. Maybe they could be friends.
Too much time had gone by for anything else. Being friends might
just work. Right now Nathan had to get some caffeine in his
bloodstream before he died from his hellacious hangover.

Chapter Four

“Your Honor, my client has no prior record
and holds down a part time job. He’s an honor roll student. Refusal
of bail could prove devastating to him academically as well as
financially,” Paige countered the DA’s request to withhold bail for
her client.

“Your Honor, the State has reason to believe
Mr. Jefferson might flee,” urged the young, handsome deputy
district attorney.

Paige turned and swept a measuring gaze over
her adversary. “Perhaps, Mr. Myers would like to share with this
court his compelling reason to make such a request?”

“That’s my line, counselor,” the judge chided
Paige.

“Sorry, your Honor. Just thinking out loud.”
She smiled apologetically.

“Perhaps you’d like to share with this court
your compelling reason for making such a request, Mr. Myers?”

Paige bowed her head and tried to hide her
grin. Judge Mattson had always been her favorite judge. He was one
of the few who still had a sense of humor.

“Your Honor, the State has learned that Mr.
Jefferson has made statements to several of his friends that he
intends to avoid testifying.”

“Are these witnesses present this
morning?”

“No, your Honor, they are not.”

“Request to withhold bail is denied. Bail is
set at one thousand dollars.” Judge Mattson banged his gavel.

“Court is adjourned.”

“All rise,” the bailiff called.

Paige smiled at Calvin Jefferson, who
proceeded to give her a big hug. Beatrice, his grandmother, reached
over the bench and pulled Paige against her bosom.

“Thank you so much, honey,” she whispered,
tears threatening.

“Everything is going to be fine, Beatrice.”
Paige drew back and smiled reassuringly at the older woman dressed
in her Sunday-go-to-the-meeting clothes. Beatrice had been like a
mother to Paige since her own mother’s death, and she had been more
than happy to take care of Jesse as well…at least when Elliott
Weston was away.

“Thank you, Miss Paige.” Calvin grinned
widely.

Paige gave her eighteen-year-old client a
speculative look. “Myers better not know what he’s talking about,
Calvin.”

“Don’t worry, Miss Paige, I won’t let you
down.”

“I’ll make sure of that,” Beatrice put in
firmly.

“You can make the bail?” Paige asked
Beatrice.

Beatrice smiled and patted her hand. “Don’t
worry none about that. Your daddy has always paid me fairly. I got
the money to take care of my boy.”

“Okay, see you in two weeks then,” Paige told
them.

Calvin nodded before disappearing with the
guard; Beatrice followed to post the bail. Paige packed up her
briefcase and steeled herself for the wrath of her opponent. Myers
was new and ambitious. His political aspirations gave her the
willies.

Myers met her in the center aisle, a
statement in taste from his styled blond hair to his Armani suit
and handmade Italian shoes. “You’re making a mistake, you
know.”

“You really think Calvin will run?” she
asked, wondering how he could be so sure of himself about her
client. Especially since Paige knew her client personally.

“Yes, I do.”

She nodded and suppressed the smile that
yearned to make its presence known. “I’ll guess we’ll just have to
wait and see, won’t we, counselor?”

“We will indeed, Miss Weston.” Myers gave her
a curt nod and started to walk away.

“I plan to push for change to youthful
offender status,” Paige called after him. She’d get one last jab
before he got away.

Myers turned back to her and raised one
aristocratic eyebrow. “Don’t waste your time, Paige. I won’t go for
it.” With that said, he strode away.

Paige sighed and shook her head. She wanted
to shake him and tell him that Calvin Jefferson was a good kid. His
grandmother had served as both mother and father while holding down
a full time job. For as far back as Paige could remember, Mrs.
Jefferson had worked as the cook and head housekeeper in the Weston
home. Though she’d never met Calvin until his unfortunate run-in
with the law, Paige knew he was innocent. His grandmother’s word
and Paige’s own instincts couldn’t be that far off the mark. Calvin
deserved a break. Somehow she had to make Myers see that.

Paige started toward the exit. The silent
presence on the last bench, near the courtroom door brought her up
short. She blinked twice to make sure she hadn’t imagined Nathan
Blackrope. He stood and walked in her direction.
Nope
. No
figment of her imagination could move like that.

“What are you doing here?” she asked,
surprised as much as annoyed. The image of black pearls ricocheted
through her mind.

“I’ve never seen you in the courtroom, I was
curious.” He rotated his black hat in his hands. “Pretty
impressive.”

Paige acknowledged the compliment with a slip
dip of her head. “Windborne?”

“She’s terrific and so’s her little filly.”
He smiled, which melted some of the ice between them.

Paige breathed a sigh of relief. “I’ll call
Robert.”

“I already did,” he said. Nathan’s gaze
settled heavily on hers. “Look, I thought we could have lunch.
Maybe try and actually act civilized around each other.”

“Civilized?” Paige bristled. “The only person
acting uncivilized is you,” she told him tersely. “First you break
into Robert’s house in the middle of the night and—”

“I did not break in. I had a key,” he
reminded calmly.

Paige shook her head. “Whatever. You say all
kinds of hurtful things to me and then you flaunt your girlfriend
in my face.”
Good gravy!
She hadn’t actually meant to say
that last part, but anger had overruled her better judgment.

Nathan shrugged. “Trinity’s a small place.
There aren’t that many places to go out. Can I help it that I took
my date to the same place you took yours?”

“Silas Dutton is a friend, not a date.” She
clamped her mouth shut. Paige would not say another word on the
subject. She didn’t care if Nathan Blackrope had ten thousand
dates! And she wasn’t about to give him the impression that she
did.

“I had no idea you were so concerned about my
social life.” He grinned.

Too late, the impression had been made. “I
couldn’t care less what you do, Nathan Blackrope.”

“Is that a fact? Then what’s all the fuss
about?”

Paige willed herself to stay calm. “I hope
you enjoyed the show, but I have places to go and people to
see.”

“I guess that means you don’t want to have
lunch with me?” Disappointment shadowed his handsome face.

“It was nice of you to come, Nathan, but I
really have to run now. I have another appointment and then I have
all those chores back at the ranch.”

“You don’t have to worry about the chores, I
sent over a couple of my hands to do them.”

“I told you I didn’t need your help with the
chores.” When would he learn that no meant no?

“You did need my help, you just wouldn’t own
up to it. Since James will be back tomorrow, it’s a dead
issue.”

“I’m glad James is better.” Paige would never
admit it to Nathan, but her aching muscles rejoiced at the idea of
having James back. “I really do have to go.”

“Paige, I’m sorry about yesterday, last night
and this morning. I never meant to hurt you.”

He looked so sincere, and she desperately
wished she could believe him. But he’d let her down before. The
image of how he had looked that morning, nude and sprawled across
the unmade bed flitted through her mind. Her eyes had reveled in
rippling muscle and glistening skin. The memory made her knees
weak. She would never forget the way all that hair looked spread
across his pillow. No man should look that good. Especially not
this man.

“Why don’t we forget the whole thing
happened?” she offered. She had to get him out of here. Besides,
why should she be angry that he had a beautiful woman spend the
night with him? He was single, unattached. She fought back the
gigantic wave of hot, green jealousy that rose instantly at the
thought of the redhead.