Her brow furrowed and lips parted, soft and inviting. “Hey.”
Nate had never felt so fucking awkward in his entire life. He would’ve rather stared down the barrel of a gun than meet the gaze of the woman sitting in front of him. Words lodged in his throat. Stuck to his tongue and adhered themselves to the roof of his mouth. Maybe his actions would speak louder than words. He took the cashier’s check he held in his hand and slid it across the desk toward her.
Chloe studied the check and her jaw took on a set that made Nate think his tactics were about to crash and burn. “What is this?” She waved the check at him. “You insinuate that I seduced you to get my hands on your money and then you drop a three-million-dollar check in front of me?”
Yup. Crash. And. Burn. Fuck.
The words Nate held back burst forth in a senseless rush. “Miranda was my fiancée.” Chloe’s expression softened somewhat and he continued on. “When she found out about my dad’s philosophy—the whole ‘be your own man’ thing—our relationship got shaky. I stopped by the house one afternoon and I caught them together in his office. I enlisted the next day to get away from the both of them. That and the hurt and embarrassment. For the next six years, I blamed him for my life being shitty, for every bad thing that happened to me. I didn’t want anything to do with him, Miranda, or that money that was so fucking much more important to her than I’d been. She chose my own father over me. For his money. So when Travis called that night, I freaked out.”
Chloe’s brow knitted but she no longer looked ready to chuck her stapler at him. “Nate.” God, it cut through him whenever she said his name with tenderness. “I had no idea.”
“The big, shameful family secret,” he said on a sigh. “It doesn’t excuse what I said to you or my behavior that night. I wanted you to know. That’s all.”
“And the check?” Chloe asked.
“You’re a good person and you do good things for people. I think you were right when you said that the money was my dad’s way of apologizing. Travis says that I should use it to carve out my own name and my own legacy and that’s what I’m doing. I don’t want to see you have to shut down. I want to take care of this foundation.” He brought his gaze to hers. “I want to take care of you. I love you, Chloe.”
*
He loves me. For days, she’d resisted the urge to pick up her phone and call him. To let him fill her mind and her heart with whatever excuse for his behavior that he wanted to give her. She never would have guessed the truth of it, though. Good lord. Miranda. Chloe had done extensive research on Byron Christensen when she’d courted him. Not even the best of the gossip mongers had known that the old man had run off with his son’s fiancée. No wonder Nate had harbored so much resentment. Who wouldn’t be emotionally scarred by that sort of betrayal?
Did that excuse the things he’d said to her though? Chloe didn’t know if she could easily overcome the hurt that still speared through her chest every time she thought about it. Lying somewhere beneath her own pain though, was an indignation that sparked her temper. “She did that to you and you were going to give her everything? How could you have even considered the possibility?” His brow furrowed at her infuriated tone. “Seriously, Nate? That woman doesn’t deserve a red cent of that money. Really, someone should kick her ass!”
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth and Chloe’s heart melted. A living work of art, there wasn’t an inch of him that wasn’t perfect. Not an inch of him she didn’t ache to touch.
Nate came around to the side of the desk. Chloe sat still as a statue, hands splayed out over the glossed chipboard surface. She didn’t trust herself to move. Nate reached out and traced over the tops of her fingers. From the corner of her eye, she caught his lids droop. “Chloe.” He said her name on a reverent sigh that sent her blood racing in her veins. “I miss you.”
His touch tortured and excited her. She missed him, too. So much that she ached. He went to his knees beside her and Chloe turned her chair to face him as though she had no other choice but to respond to his gravitational pull. He reached out, threaded his fingers through the mass of her hair and brushed his thumb across her cheek.