Home Sweet Home (18 page)

And then Andi leaned in and kissed him softly, so softly he had to groan against the slow sweep of her tongue as it slid against his.

This kiss was different than her other kisses. Sweeter, steeped in pure emotion.

He slid her down to her feet, and she stepped back from him, holding his gaze all the while, her eyes full of heat and something he wanted to believe was love as she slipped his robe off of her shoulders.

He drank in her naked body in the stream of moonlight. Her beautiful face looked different, too, softer, more vulnerable.

She took the hem of his long-sleeved T-shirt into her hands, pulled it up his torso, off his arms, over his head. He forgot how to breathe, forgot almost everything but the light scratch of her fingertips against his skin as her hands found the button of his jeans next, deftly undoing it and then the zipper.

She was stripping his clothes off, but it felt like so much more, like she was stripping away the layers, the defenses he’d built up around him so many years ago.

And then before he realized it, she was on her knees.

“You don’t have to do this, Andi,” he managed in a voice so low he wasn’t sure she would hear him. But she was already taking him into her hands and then her mouth, and he couldn’t do anything but thread his hands into her hair, couldn’t hold back a groan of deep pleasure.

He knew what she was doing, that she was trying to replace his nightmares, trying to destroy his demons with the feel of her skin, her hands, her mouth.

If he were a better man, he would make her stop, tell her that he could deal just fine on his own. If he were a stronger man, he’d pull himself away from her sweet lips and take care of her pleasure first.

But Andi had always been his weakness.

And then he lost the thread of his thoughts, everything except the “I love you” that came a heartbeat before he could no longer form words. The muscles in his arms and legs were still shaking when he reached down and pulled Andi up off of her knees, dragging her tightly against him.

Her lips were tilted up into a wicked little smile. “That was fun.”

He couldn’t believe he was grinning, couldn’t believe he was actually feeling playful on a night when the nightmares had come.

He picked her up and plopped her back on the bed, her laughter choking off midstream as she realized what he was planning. “You didn’t think you could get away with that only going one way, did you?”

Her eyes were big. Aroused. He didn’t wait to let her answer before putting each of her legs over his shoulder and dipping his head down between her thighs. Her breath came out in gasps as he took her where she’d just taken him.

But it wasn’t enough. He needed all of her. Beneath him. Wrapped all around him.

Moving up to the side table to pull out a condom, he felt her hand on his arm.

“Please. I don’t want anything between us. I’m safe, Nate.”

Even though he knew she had to be talking about her body as she reached for him, her arms coming around his neck, her legs around his waist, he wanted to believe that the word
safe
had another far deeper meaning.

And as their kiss began at the same moment that he slid into her, as every touch, every kiss, every slow slide of his body against hers felt like pure, sweet love, Nate told himself he was doing the right thing having faith in her.

Andi would keep his heart safe this time. She had to.

Because even though he’d somehow managed to live without her for ten long years, Nate could no longer imagine how he’d done it…he simply couldn’t imagine any other world, couldn’t even think of his life, his sister’s life, her mother’s life, her grandmother’s life without Andi in it.

Somehow, some way, he had to believe they’d find a way to make it work.

T
he following day Andi was on the verge of throwing down the Fair Isle sweater she was about to murder, when Dorothy walked into Lake Yarns.

“Just looking at Fair Isle gives me the hives.”

Assuming she was there to ask about her grandmother, Andi said, “Grandma is doing lots better. The doctor said he expects her to make a full recovery.”

“I’m so glad to hear it,” Dorothy said. “I’ll have to give her a call when I get back home to let her know how well you’re doing on the sweater.”

Dorothy picked up the sleeve Andi was obsessively working on, running her fingers over the surprisingly even stitches.

“My mother made me try Fair Isle when I was a little girl. In retrospect, I can see that I was far too young for the challenge.”

Andi felt strangely possessive over the pain-in-the-ass sweater. She wanted to pull it out of the other woman’s hands when Dorothy didn’t let go of it soon enough.

“You know, now that I think about it,” Dorothy said, “there’s something to be said for a challenge, isn’t there? Perhaps I should try again. Perhaps I should refuse to give up before I get it right.”

It was the same thing Andi had said to Madison, reinforced from one generation to the next and then the next again.

“It isn’t nearly as difficult as it looks,” Andi said. “Believe me, I panicked when I first read the pattern.”

“It always surprises me how much life is like knitting.” Dorothy’s hand was soft and warm across Andi’s. “How things always seem so much more complicated than they really are when you finally sit down to work them out.”

After Dorothy bought a bagful of yarn, leaving Andi to sit behind the register in the strangely silent and empty store, she couldn’t help but feel unsettled by Dorothy’s words.

Andi looked around Lake Yarns, amazed that one weak moment in a meeting had turned her life upside down and brought her here. Two weeks ago she’d been in an office building, wearing a suit, crunching numbers; not helping women select knitting projects, not ordering new yarn off the Internet because she couldn’t resist the colors and recommendations from other knitters, not obsessively working on her grandmother’s Fair Isle sweater whenever she had a free minute to herself…and definitely not reliving every moment in Nate’s arms.

Andi had always known what success meant to her. A big, important job with a big, important company. But being with Nate had her rethinking her definition of success. Not just with regards to her career, but to her entire life.

She was uncomfortable with the kind of thinking she’d started to do in the hours after he’d said “I love you,” didn’t like the idea that the way she’d lived her life for so long could possibly have been wrong.

Because it wouldn’t just mean she was failing during the last couple of weeks.

It would mean she had always been failing.

The threads of thoughts inside her head all tangled up, Andi bent her head back over her grandmother’s sweater. Thankfully a welcome feeling of relief came by the end of the row. By the time she’d done half a dozen rows, everything fell away but a picture inside her head of Nate wearing this sweater.

“Did you guys used to date when you were kids?”

Sitting in the passenger seat of Nate’s truck as they headed off to the hospital again that evening, Andi jumped at Madison’s unexpected question.

Nate’s hands tightened slightly on the steering wheel, but he was smiling as he looked back at his sister in the rearview mirror.

“We sure did.”

“So why did you break up for so long?”

Andi’s heart all but stopped at the implication that they were no longer broken up. Oh god, she knew she’d let it go on for too long. She was afraid enough of breaking Nate’s heart again when she left. It made her sick to think she was going to break Madison’s too.

“Well,” Nate said slowly, “sometimes it takes two people a long time to see things clearly.”

Andi’s breath caught in her throat. She knew he would never try to trap her into staying in Emerald Lake with him, and yet even that one sentence made her feel like the bars were coming down in front of her. Made her feel like the lock was being turned on a prison she hadn’t meant to set foot inside.

And then Madison was saying, “Everyone is wondering why you want to get rid of the carousel, Andi.”

Boom!

So that was what being kicked in the stomach felt like.

“I don’t want to get rid of it, Madison.”

Nate’s sister frowned in confusion. “But aren’t you trying to build something over it?”

Wow, neither Nate or the guy who had cornered her after her father’s commemoration had made Andi feel this bad about the condos, like she was dirt on the bottom of a boot for even suggesting bringing these buildings to Emerald Lake. Clearly, guilt was much more effective when it was created completely unintentionally.

And darn it, what was it about sitting in Nate’s truck with the two of them that always messed so badly with her insides?

“I thought it was just a piece of junk,” Andi finally admitted.

“You’re kidding, right?” Madison couldn’t seem to wrap her head around Andi’s statement.

“Unfortunately no, I’m not. When I decided on the building site, I didn’t realize how important the carousel was to people.”

“Me and my friends love it,” Madison told her. “That was always our special rainy day place when I was little.”

Nate’s lips moved up in a smile at the memory. “Rainy days with a four-year-old.” He mock-shuddered. “That carousel was a lifesaver.”

“We always stayed dry on the merry-go-round because of the awning,” Madison explained to Andi. “We would pretend we were in the circus, that we were stunt riders on the horses.”

Then she said to her brother, “Hey Nate, if Andi gets rid of the merry-go-round, can we put it in our backyard?”

“No, Mads,” he said, his love for the little girl in the backseat rounding out every short word. “We cannot put it in the backyard.”

But Madison’s idea got Andi thinking. What if they moved the carousel? Sure, she couldn’t foresee having the money to actually rehab it—not yet, anyway—but maybe they could find a good home for it, at least. Someplace kids could still play with it and pretend that they were in the circus, just like Nate’s sister and Andi’s long-lost great-aunt had.

Stuck at a surprisingly long light in Lake George, Madison’s eyes got big as she looked out the window at a huge entertainment complex. “Look, they have an arcade!”

The blinking lights blinding her, Andi said, “No kidding. I’ll bet they can see that neon sign up in space.”

“Can we stop here on the way home from the hospital?”

Nate snorted. “No way. You still have homework to do.”

Madison’s mouth went flat and her arms came across her chest. “I wish we had an arcade at home. It’s so boring sometimes.” She shoved her earphones into her ears and cranked the music up loud enough that everyone in the car could hear it.

Feeling Nate tense beside her, Andi tried to comfort him by saying, “It’s perfectly natural for any kid to want what they don’t have, Nate. You know, the grass is greener and all that.” When he didn’t respond, she added, “You’re doing the right thing, raising her at the lake where everyone knows and loves her.”

“I know I am. But one day she’s going to be old enough to make her own decision about where she wants to live. And it breaks my heart to think it might not be here with me.”

Andi wanted so badly to make him feel better by saying, “
She’ll choose the lake. She’ll want to stay with all of her friends, with you.
”

But she couldn’t. Not when she hadn’t chosen that path herself.

And not when she knew that Nate couldn’t possibly control his sister’s desires and dreams. Those would have to be all her own, even if Madison’s choices sometimes hurt the man who had given up so much to raise her.

The three of them knocked softly before walking into Evelyn’s room, and when they didn’t hear a response, Andi’s heartbeat kicked into overdrive as she automatically assumed something must be wrong.

But when she flung open the door, her grandmother was sitting up in bed with a finger over her lips.

“Your mother is sleeping,” she whispered.

Andi would have swapped places with her exhausted mother in a heartbeat. But she knew how important it was to Carol that she stay close to her mother. It was better for Andi to run the store.

Still, there was one big reason to celebrate: Evelyn’s fingers were flying with her needles again. Which had to mean she was feeling better.

After they had all given her a kiss, Madison immediately focused in on her knitting. “What are you making, Mrs. Thomas?”

“Something very special.”

Andi had never seen a pattern like the one Evelyn was making, a long oval that almost looked like fabric it was so painstakingly created. It wasn’t a scarf or sock or the front or back of a sweater. Andi supposed it could be a strangely shaped shawl, but even that didn’t seem quite right.

Madison moved closer and Evelyn put the intricately knitted white silk yarn into her small hands.

“Wow, it’s like a spider’s web. How did you ever figure out how to do this?”

“It isn’t nearly as difficult as it looks,” Evelyn said. “However, it does take a great deal of focus. You can’t give up on it when the going gets rough.”

She was talking to Madison but looking at Andi.

Andi filled her grandmother in on the comings and goings at Lake Yarns, taking out her phone to make some notes on various issues that had crept up in the past couple of days. When the nurse poked her head in to tell them that visiting hours were over for the night, Andi went to kiss her grandmother good night.

Nate moved to her grandmother next, whispering something that had Evelyn’s eyes widening, her cheeks crinkling into a wide smile.

A few minutes later when they were back in the truck and Madison had her headphones back on, Andi said, “It was so good to see Grandma smile. What did you say to her?”

“I’ll tell you later, Andi. I promise.”

Andi drank in the perfect lines of his face, the shadows of stubble across his chin that had darkened throughout the evening. She couldn’t remember a time she hadn’t wanted to be with Nate. Five or fifteen or nearly thirty, she had always been drawn to this man sitting beside her.

“Tell me what you said, Nate. Tell me why she smiled like that.”

His eyes were on the dark road, lit only by his headlights, and yet she could feel his entire focus on her as he said, “I told her I knew exactly what she was knitting. And who she was knitting it for.”

Within seconds, Andi felt her throat close up, her breath getting caught inside her chest. Because suddenly, she knew exactly what her grandmother was knitting in her hospital bed out of the finest white lace.

Grandma Evelyn was knitting a wedding veil. For her and Nate.

Clearing her throat, trying to focus on something else—anything but that white lace that Andi swore she could almost feel coming down over her head—she said, “The town hall meeting is tomorrow night. Everyone’s going to get a chance to give their opinion about my project. Including you. Why don’t we talk about it now while we have the time?”

“The town hall meeting can wait until tomorrow night.”

“But we have time to talk about it now. And we haven’t discussed the project since—” She swallowed hard. “Since Loon Lake.”

“You’re not going to back down, Andi. I know that. I have never underestimated you. I’m not starting now. I know you’re going to give a hell of a presentation to the town. And I know you’re going to wow a good number of them, too.”

How could she find any space to put between them when he wouldn’t even let her cut the ties that bound them together with an issue that they were on the opposite sides of?

And that was what had her finally saying what she should have said all along. “I need you to take me to my house tonight, Nate.”

She had to end this.

Now.

Nate didn’t argue with her; he just took her home. Madison was already asleep in the backseat, and Andi didn’t know what to do, what to say when they pulled up in front of her house.

“Nate, I—”

“You need time, Andi.” His eyes were dark as he undid his seat belt. “Take it.”

He came around the car, a gentleman as always, and opened the door for her. Knowing she shouldn’t feel as if he was kicking her out of his truck—not when she’d been the one to insist on coming back to this big house she’d grown up in—she climbed out on shaky legs.

But even though she knew the smart thing would be to walk up the brick pathway to her mother’s front door and close herself off inside the big, empty house, Andi couldn’t stand the thought that she was being a coward and running from him.

She’d been a coward before, she saw that now. She couldn’t stand it if she repeated history.

“Nate,” she began, not knowing what to say or how to say it. “You’re my best friend. You’ve always been my best friend. And making l—” She faltered, not used to taking about sex.

Taking a shaky breath, she tried again. “Making love with you is wonderful.” No, that wasn’t good enough. Not even close. “Beyond wonderful. Better than I remembered. So much better. But I can’t do this. I can’t be what you need me to be.”

And she couldn’t say the three words he needed to hear, couldn’t possibly admit to loving him again.

“I shouldn’t have stayed with you that first night. I should have been strong enough to sleep alone.”

“Andi, sweetheart, I wouldn’t have let you sleep all alone in that big empty house that first night.”

She took a breath to try and corral her thoughts so that she could make sense of them. But he was so close. Too close. And his words were soft in the fall chill, wrapping around her like a warm blanket, the warmth she’d been craving so long.

“I can’t control myself around you anymore, Nate. It’s not fair for me to keep pushing you away every morning just because I’m not strong enough to resist sleeping with you every night.”