“Yeah,” she said softly. “I think you’ve got it.”
Her sweet smile was interrupted by the ding of her cell phone. She reached for it and read something on the screen, then she looked up at East.
“I, uh, I have to get going.”
He glanced at the clock and realized she had plans still. “Yeah, your date is soon.”
She glanced at her phone. “Yeah.”
“Well.” He clapped his hands together and smiled, but it felt like his chest just had a metric ton of gravel dumped on it. “Thanks for your help.”
She got off his bed, and the moment her feet hit the floor, he knew, he was losing something—someone—he couldn’t hang on to.
“Anytime,” she said.
Chapter Twelve
Family dinner was nothing new. Ever since they’d all moved out, Natalie’s mother still insisted that once a month all the kids have dinner at the St. Clair home. Matt had been in Connecticut the last several months, but she and Easton always made it. It felt like old times with her and East and her mom around the family table.
Well, like old times except that when she took her seat across from East, she was now looking at someone she’d seen naked.
Yeah…that was different.
Not bad. Not good. Well, it was good in some ways. Seeing East naked was better than good. But it was not good that she kept thinking of that, causing her heart to race and her palms to sweat while he was sitting right there and her family was around.
She adjusted in her seat and chanced a glance at him.
He simply passed along the mashed potatoes, and winked at her. She felt heat flush her cheeks. It was more than just having seen him naked. She’d really seen him, at least in flashes, the real East he kept hidden from everyone else. Last night when he’d had her in his bed, she’d felt something shift. But worse, when she went to leave, and he’d told her he needed help—everything in her body stopped and responded to him.
She couldn’t remember feeling like this with anyone else before. It was as though her body and her emotions were conspiring against her with the simplest equation: East needs help equals Natalie gives it. That speech he’d delivered, the way it had seemed so heartfelt, it had hit her like gravity had doubled.
She took a bite of food and looked at East again, wondering how he seemed so calm all the time. Wondering what that flash of pain behind his eyes was—
“So, have you found a date yet?” her mother said, snapping her back to reality.
“Jesus, Mom, I just sat down,” Natalie said quickly.
“Watch your mouth, young lady,” her mother said. Her cheeks flamed with embarrassment that East was witnessing this. Not that it was anything new. But now that she’d been with him, she hated the idea of coming off like a kid again, of being scolded for not being the perfect St. Clair daughter. He’d really seen her in the past few days, the real Natalie, and she didn’t want them to lapse back into their old roles, where she was nothing more to him than Matt’s little sister.
“I wasn’t kidding about Harrison, Natalie. I’ll call him,” her mother threatened. And with the wedding approaching, she was running out of time.
“I know you will, Mother,” she said. She stabbed idly at the pork chop on her plate.
“But I ran into Michelle at her shop yesterday. I was getting shoes for the wedding,” Lemon-Anne said, her face beaming with pride. All Natalie could feel was embarrassment that she was clearly a disappointment to her mother because she wasn’t like her brother. Wasn’t madly in love with the perfect person and getting married. Wasn’t a gorgeous, elegant debutante who ran a ladies’ charity or something. Natalie hoped briefly that the wedding talk would distract her mother from scolding her, but of course, that would have been too good to be true. Lemon-Anne’s eyes went back to Natalie. “Michelle said that you had a date. Did it go well?”
Natalie’s gaze flashed to East, and he glanced down.
“The other night? Yes, it was fine.” That was stretching the truth. The moment she’d had East buried inside her, that had been more than fine. That had been perfect. “Drinks with Match.com guy” had been as disastrous as all her other attempts. Will from Charlotte hadn’t stopped droning about…what had he even been talking about? Mergers or something. She hadn’t known it was possible to be that bored. Especially after the intense excitement she felt whenever she was with East.
Her mother smiled brightly, and East looked up from his plate to hit her with a steely stare. She couldn’t read his expression. Was that…anger? Excitement?
“Well, tell us about this mystery man. Was he a gentleman?” Lemon-Anne placed extra emphasis on that last word. Nobody but a true Southern gentleman would be good enough for a St. Clair girl, of course.
Natalie didn’t know what to do, but her mother was pressing for details, and she wasn’t about to admit to yet another failure in front of her family and the man she couldn’t stop picturing naked. So she fudged a little.