Learning to Love Again (11 page)

NICOLE WALKED OUT OF HIS BEDROOM AND stood hesitated in the doorway to the kitchen.

“Coffee?”  He held a mug out to her.

Nodding, she stepped over and reached out to take it.

He leaned in and gave her a gentle kiss before letting go of the mug.  “I’m sorry we have to hurry out of here, but I have a patient scheduled for nine-thirty.”

She glanced at the clock; it was already after eight.

“I can call Carly…” she started to offer, but he shook his head.

“I want to drive you home.”  He reached over and laid his palm against her cheek.  “Are you okay?  Your ribs and your back aren’t bothering you, are they?”

“I’m fine.”  She lowered her eyes.  “It’s all so new.  I’m not sure…” She felt him tense as her voice trailed off and her eyes flew up to his.  “I mean, I’m not sure how to act.  I’ve never had to do the morning after thing.”

“Ah, well let’s see if I can help you along.”  He reached over, took the mug of coffee out of her hand, placing it on the counter, and then pulled her into his embrace.  “First, you say ‘Good morning’, and then you give me a kiss.”  He paused and she reached up and gave him a soft kiss on the lips.  He smiled down at her.  “Then, for future reference, you should offer to make me breakfast while I shower and get ready for the day.”  Laughing, she shoved at his chest and pushed him backwards.

“Since I’m the guest, you should be offering to fix
me
breakfast.”  She told him, picking up the coffee mug and taking another sip.

“Stay the night with me Friday, when I don’t have to be at the office the next morning, and we can discuss whose job it is to make breakfast.”  He grabbed his bag off the counter and with a hand at her back, guided her out the door to his truck.

“So, what are your plans for today?”  He asked, as he drove her back towards Mitch’s and Carly’s.  He reached over and took her hand, holding it against his thigh while he drove.

“There’s one more contract I need to finish reviewing for Jack and Mitch, and then…I don’t know.  Relax in a tub, maybe?”  She shifted in her seat and shot him a rueful glance.  “What about you?”

“Office hours until about five, and then I am on call at the hospital tonight.”  He gave her hand a squeeze.  “This means I won’t get home until late and will get paged countless times for every stubbed toe that comes into the ER and I won’t get any sleep.”

“Do you have to stay there?”

“No, it’s not like when I was in Residency.  I can have a life now.”  He grinned over at her.  “Are you trying to invite yourself over tonight?”

“You could call me later, and we could maybe discuss the possibilities…” She traced a circle on his thigh with her fingernail.

“Stop that.”  He grabbed her hand, giving her a grin. “You don’t know yet what your touch does to me.”  He brought her hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to her palm.  “We’ll have to wait and see how the day goes.  It never seems to fail:  I’m on call, and everyone within a five mile radius of the hospital breaks a bone.  I’d hate to make plans with you and then have to cancel.”

She smiled her understanding, and they rode the rest of the way in relative silence, listening to the radio.

“Damn,” she muttered under her breath as they pulled up in front of the house.

“What?”  Jason had opened his door and was stepping down, but turned around at her voice.

“There’s a welcome party.”  She jerked her head towards the porch.

He glanced over and groaned.  Jack, Mitch, and Carly were all enjoying their morning coffee on the front porch, and all three of them were grinning.  “Can’t I just come to work with you?” She slid across the seat to get out on Jason’s side, buying herself a few extra seconds.

“I wouldn’t get any work done.  I’d be too busy trying to get you into the exam room so I could live out the fantasy I had that first day you were in my clinic.”  He tapped the tip of her nose with his finger.

“You were fantasizing about me?  I thought you hated me,” she wrinkled her nose at him.

“I thought you hated
me.
  I had to act tough, show you that I was over you, and all of that crap.”  He leaned down and kissed the tip of her nose.  “Come on.”  He grabbed her hand and they walked up the porch steps together.

“Good morning.  You two must have been up early, for him to drive over here to pick you up and take you on a drive this morning.  We didn’t even hear his truck,” Mitch greeted them.  “And out pretty late last night for us not to hear him drop you off.  I like the outfit, by the way.”

“Shut up.”  She stuck her tongue out and sat down in one of the porch chairs.  “Any coffee left?  He wouldn’t let me finish mine.”

“How barbaric,” Jack handed her an empty mug from the table beside him and looked over at Jason.  “You should always let a lady finish…” he grunted when Carly hit him on the shoulder, saving Jason the trouble.

“Be nice, you two,” she instructed.  “Jason, sit down.  Can I get Maria to bring you out something to eat?”

“No, thanks, Carly.  I need to get going.  Unlike some people around here, I have work to do.”  He slapped Mitch on the back, and then leaned down and kissed Nicole.  “I’ll call you later.”  He went back down the steps to his truck, and with a small wave, drove off back down the lane.

Mitch waited until the truck was out of sight, and then turned to his cousin.  “Well, looks like you two are getting along okay.”

“That would be one way of putting it.”  Nicole agreed, taking a sip of her coffee, refusing to meet his eyes.

Jack came to her rescue, asking her if she had a few minutes to talk to him about something.  She nodded and she and Jack stood up and walked inside, borrowing Mitch’s office.

“What’s up?”

“I brought over the contracts for you to sign to lease out those 15 acres to Paulson for winter grazing this year.”  He handed a stack of papers over to her.

She took them and laid them aside, looking back at him with a raised eyebrow.  “You drove all the way over here this morning for a signature that isn’t needed until September?”

“No, Mitch and I had some ranch business to discuss, as well.”

Jack sat down in one of the armchairs, and she sat in the other, facing him.  Hesitating, he glanced out the window, and then back at her. “Nicole…” his voice trailed off.

“Go ahead.  Carly and Mitch had their say the other night,” she resigned herself for another lecture.  It shouldn't have surprised her, Jack wanting his say.  They may not be related by blood, but he had a protective streak five miles wide where she was concerned.

“It isn’t a secret in this family that your mother had some twisted ideas about how her marriage, and having you, held her back.  But sometimes, it’s worth the risks.  Look at Helen and Steve, or Mitch and Carly.  They gambled on love, and came out winners.”

“This from the man who dates women from out of town so that he doesn’t have to worry about them breathing down his neck?” Nicole pursed her lips and eyed him.

“I thought about it once, but got burned so badly, I never had the desire to try again,” Jack admitted, meeting her gaze.

“When?” she asked, shocked.

“Right before I left for my tour of duty.  She dropped me the first time she saw the scars and found out I wasn’t going to have the deep pockets she was counting on,” Jack shook his head, “It hurt for a while, made me bitter for a long while, but I moved on, a little worse for wear, but wiser.”

“Oh, Jack.  I never knew,” Nicole laid her hand on his arm, and he covered it with his own.

“All that shit happened at the same time…getting sent off to war and then shot up, coming home to recover and getting dumped.  I was just trying to survive at least one of them.”  He stood up and grabbed his Stetson off the table where he’d tossed it earlier and headed for the door.  “I need to get to town.  Don’t forget to sign off on that contract.”

After Jack left, she headed down the hall to her room, and ran herself a hot bath to try and soak away some of the soreness she was experiencing.  She glanced at the papers he’d given her and then set them aside, to be looked at in detail after her bath.  She eased herself into the tub with a slight grimace as the muscles in her thighs protested, and sighed.

What a night, she thought to herself, with a grin.  A replay of the night's events went through her mind.  She was still finding it hard to believe Jason wasn't high tailing it out of her life after what she revealed.  Here she was, the child of a murderer, and he was still talking about forever with her.  She knew they still needed to work through a few things and she needed to put more of her own past to rest.  But they had a chance, a real chance, this time of making it work.

Figuring out the rest of her life wasn't going to be a picnic, either.  Jobs in and around Waketon for out-of-work attorneys were pretty scarce.  She didn't need to rely on a steady paycheck, which was good, but she didn't want to burn through her portfolio or live off her family forever.

There was also the whole property thing.  When her father killed himself and her mother, she inherited everything they had.  The piece of land he'd owned was by far worth the most.  She'd tried hard to sign it over to her uncle, but he wouldn't take it.

“It's yours, Nicole.  When you're old enough to make the decision on your own, you can sell it.  But while I'm your guardian, you're hanging onto it,” he'd told her.

Sitting her down with his attorney, they had gone over every aspect of her inheritance.  The attorney was the one who suggested they lease the land, giving her some income from it to offset taxes.  Every couple of years, she debated selling the land but just could never bring herself to do it.  It was the only thing she had left of her father.

She rested her head against the edge of the tub, letting the hot water soak into her abused muscles.  It was time to move forward, she decided with a sigh.  Time to let go of the past and put it all to rest.

NICOLE HID OUT IN HER BEDROOM, LOOKING OVER the paperwork Jack had given her, until she was confident that Mitch would be out of the house.  Heading downstairs, she found Carly in the kitchen, making out a shopping list.  She set her stack of papers on the table, along with her purse, and moved over to the coffee pot, grabbing a mug and filling it, before turning to her friend.

“Hey.”

“Hey, yourself.  Feel better?” Carly gave her a knowing look before turning back to the spice rack.

“About a lot of things,” she admitted, grinning.  “Where is everyone?”

“Jack went to work, Mitch is out riding the fence line this morning, Maria is upstairs cleaning Helen and Steve’s room, and you and I are here in the kitchen,” Carly put down her shopping list, grabbed her glass of ice water and sat down at the table.  “You cheated me out of details the last time, so you’d better spill now!”

She laughed and sat down beside Carly at the table.  “We went to dinner, then he took me back to his place, and we talked.”  She blushed when her friend made a disbelieving sound.  “
We talked”
she emphasized, and then added “before moving on to other things.”

“It’s the
other things
I’m interested in,” Carly teased.

Nicole took a sip of her coffee before answering.  “We made out on the couch for a little bit, I said no, he started to bring me home, I let it slip that I had been having fantasies about him for years and he made me spend the night in his arms, just holding me,” she set her cup down on the table.

“Wow,” Carly leaned in and examined her friend’s face.  “And nothing happened?”

“Not last night, no,” Nicole looked away, blushing even more.

“You’re holding out on me!  What happened?”

“I woke up this morning before he did, and it felt so right to be there.  And I realized I’ve let my mother’s screwed up views rule my life long enough,” Nicole felt as if her face were on fire at this point.  “He woke up and, well…”

“You did it!” Carly supplied for her, grinning like a maniac.  “Was he worth waiting all your life for?”

“Carly!”

“Listen, honey, I’ve had to listen to all the women in this town for the last few years talk about him and we have all wondered.  Now I have the chance to get the goods, and I want details!  You can trust me; you know I won’t go around telling tales.”

Blushing, Nicole fiddled with her coffee before answering.  “Yes, he was worth the wait.”

“So, are you going to see him tonight?  What’s next?”

“We didn’t make any definite plans.  He’s on call tonight, so he said he’d call me later,” she finished off her coffee.  “For the first time in a
very
long time, I am letting myself think about what I want and need to be happy,” she stood up and took her empty mug over to the sink.  “Now, on that note, I need a small favor.”

“Anything,” Carly leaned back in her chair, still grinning.

“I need to borrow a vehicle, and I need to know where Mitch keeps my keys.”  She swallowed hard.  “It’s time to go deal with my past and those ghosts.”

Carly stood up and walked over to her, giving her a warm hug.  “Do you need me to go with you?”

“Not this time.  I need to do this on my own.  But thank you,” she shook her head as she reached for her purse and the papers she had set down.

Carly grabbed her own purse off the counter.  “Here, take the truck.  You’ll find the other keys in the top drawer of Mitch’s desk.  They’re labeled,” she handed a set of keys over to her.

Nicole headed to Mitch’s office where she found the keys right where Carly had told her they’d be.  Today was a day for new starts and she was determined to start putting the past where it belonged, once and for all.  It was just a few short miles to her destination.  She drove slower than normal, not in any hurry to get there.  Steve had padlocked the gate to help keep out trespassers, so it was a bit of a hassle to have to stop and open the gate, drive through and then stop and get out to shut it again.  She drove up the dirt road to where the house used to sit, only the slab of the foundation now standing.  She sat in the truck, staring at the slab, and let the memories in for the first time since she was fifteen.

Climbing out of the truck, she moved over to the slab and sat down on what used to be the front porch steps.  The house had been destroyed by a tornado five years after her parents' deaths.  She'd been relieved when she'd found out; at least she didn't have to feel guilty for not wanting to live there.

She couldn't remember ever being close to her mother.  Even as a very young child, she knew to either go to her aunt or her father with any problems.  Her mother was too busy getting her hair done, or her nails, or going shopping, to be bothered with a child's problems.  There had been many mornings, even before she was old enough for school, she could remember riding over to her aunt's house with her father.  Since he was the foreman for Uncle Steve, it had been easy for him to drop her off in the mornings and then bring her home at night.

She and her father had been close. He used to sit with her on these very steps, she remembered.  Everything she knew about baseball, he had taught her.  Every milestone, every sporting event, every school event she ever had, he was there for her.  She still missed him, she realized.  Even as hurt and angry as she was for what he'd done to her world, she missed him.

Nicole pushed herself to her feet and climbed back into the truck, driving out across the range, remembering and reliving her youth.  She drove out to the creek, where it widened and formed an area deep enough for swimming and fishing, remembering when her father had taught her to do both of those there.  There was an outcropping of rocks and a small grove of trees that offered some shade from the heat of the August sun.  Making her way to the rocks, she pulled herself up onto one of them and sat down, watching the water as it rippled from the slight breeze.

She leaned back on her elbows and studied the terrain around her, contemplating her choices.  Option number one was to stay in Waketon, build a new house on this land, and see what happened between her and Jason.  For option number two, she could sell the land and move back to the city.  That option would include finding a new job, continuing the life of the dedicated career woman that she had so carefully constructed, and not risk losing her heart any more than she already had.

She thought back to the conversation she had had with Mitch a few nights ago.  "Figure out what you want," he said, as if it were the easiest thing in the world to do.  Of course, he'd included in that conversation that she could either learn from her past of be miserable like her mother.

“I wish I knew what to do, Daddy,” she murmured, looking out over her father’s beloved land, with a heavy sigh.  “I hope I don’t disappoint you.  I just want to be happy.”  Only the sounds of the birds in the trees answered her.