He gives me a sexy, half smile. “And yet you’re damn good at talking in circles. You would have been a hell of an opponent in court.”
“Oh no,” I say. “I hate the spotlight. I would have hated the way people would stare at me and be hanging on my words.”
“And yet your art puts you in the spotlight.”
“My art is the spotlight,” I say. “And that’s how I like it.” He turns us into the drive of the mansion. “And speaking of the spotlight. Because I’ve never brought a man here, everyone is going to be talking about the two of us.”
“Not even Macom?”
“No,” I say simply, saved from more when we pull to a halt at the front of the mansion.
But Nick still tries. “Just no?”
“Just no,” I say, as the valets open both of our doors, but my mind is already on the way my father hated the idea of me with an artist, and how much I was certain my mother would like me with Macom a little too much. Not for the first time, I wonder how my father would have justified forgiving that one.
I make small talk with the valets, and Nick rounds the car to join me, his hand settling at my lower back, and the heavy weight of their stares stiffens my spine. “They’ll get used to me,” Nick promises, and the fact that he knows what I feel, and that he’s made it clear he’s sharing that burden with me, is more impactful to me than anything else he’s done to this point. It’s not about sex. It’s not about legal matters. It’s about a small moment of time that he recognized as mattering to me.
We walk the steps and as we reach the top level, the doors are opened for us, and just inside the foyer, Kasey greets us. Tall, and silver-gray at fifty, he is a good looking man who is friendly, well-liked, and still manages to be reserved in his personal life. “Fair warning,” he says. “We have a bridezilla in the house. I’d recommend taking cover.”
I laugh. “You are a bridezilla expert,” I say and as he glances at Nick, surprise in the depth of his stare, Nick offers him his hand.
“Nick Rogers.”
“Kasey Gilligan,” Kasey greets, and the two men shake hands and exchange small talk that doesn’t last. Kasey’s walkie-talkie goes off on his belt. “Trouble in the garden,” a voice says.
“That’s about the bridezilla,” he says. “I need to go focus her on her vows.”
Guilt over his dilemma, and my weekend away, wash over me. “Do you need—”
“No,” he says. “I do not need your help. I’m quite capable of running this place.”
“I know that.”
“This weekend gave me hope that you might mean that statement.”
He leaves me no room to argue. In a blink, he’s gone and Nick glances down at me, arching a brow. “It’s not about how he handles the management of the winery. It’s about the challenges that were my mother, and now the bank.”
“Then let’s go talk about overcoming those things,” he says. “Because my hard limit was made with an artist.” He urges me forward and I guide him to the stairwell and a path behind it with a second stairwell leading down. The way he pushes me to paint, affects me in ways I’ll analyze later, alone.
Once we’re in the basement level, where there is a gift shop and a restaurant, we find our way to a rare vacant table among the fifteen that are mostly occupied, the floral tablecloths and designs in the center my mother’s choice.
“What do you recommend?” Nick asks, grabbing the menu on the table, and I wonder if he knows the way he fills the room, or the way men look at him with envy, and the women with desire.
“Any of the five quiche choices,” I reply. “The chef trained in France, and apparently, that’s a thing there. She knows her quiche.”
“Quiche it is,” he says right as Samantha, our waitress appears.
Nick turns his attention to her, and I watch, waiting for her gorgeous brunette bombshell looks to affect him, but if he notices, he shows no reaction at all. In fact, his hand finds my knee under the table, his eyes looking in my direction more than not.
And it’s only moments after we’ve ordered that, compliments of another waiter, we have coffee in front of us, and I find myself in the center of Nick’s keen blue eyes. “I can’t believe you’ve never been to Paris, considering the wine culture.”
“My parents went. I stayed home.”
Awareness that shouldn’t be possible flickers in his eyes. “They invited you. You didn’t want to go.”
“I wanted to go,” I say. “Just not with them.”
“How bad was your relationship with your mother?”
“I’d say it ranked about where you describe that of yours with your father.”
“And everyone here knew?”
“No,” I say. “We put on a good show.”
“But Kasey knew.”
“Kasey didn’t know until after my father died and I was forced to become the wall between the two of them. Honestly, it’s made Kasey and I closer. He loved my father and was confused by his relationship with my mother as well. I mean, my father was tough, charismatic and dynamic in business. His willingness to take my mother’s abuse was illogical.”
“Love is blind,” he says wryly. “Or so it seems.” He changes the subject. “I like Kasey, by the way.”
“He’s a good man,” I say. “And a friend.”
“How have you explained the bill collectors?”
“He knows there are probate issues, which knowing my mother as he did, does not surprise him.”
“So you aren’t going to lose him?”
“No. Not now. But I’m nervous about this dragging on too long and giving him cold feet.”
“I’d like to talk to him next week, if you’re okay with that?”
“Why?”
“I’m looking for any insight into your mother’s activities he might give me that, as an outsider, might stand out to me, and not you.”
“Of course,” I say. “That seems logical. I’ll tell him you’ll call, but you have your deposition, Nick. You need to focus on that.”
“I can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time, sweetheart. I do it all the time.”
Our food is set in front of us, and in a few moments, we are both holding forks and Nick takes a bite. “Well?” I ask.
“Excellent,” he approves. “No wonder you never learned to cook when you could eat here.”
We chat a moment and I’m struck by the easy comfort I have with this man in any setting. It’s not something I have with people and I’ve often thought that I stayed with Macom so long because I needed a connection to another human being. Not because I needed him.
“Tell me about the show Josh mentioned,” Nick urges, a few bites into our meal.
The show again. He’s mentioned it twice, and I haven’t even let the possibility of being in that show sink in yet, nor do I want to talk about it. “You listened in on the entire conversation between myself and Josh, didn’t you?”
“Unapologetically,” he says, his eyes challenging me to disapprove.
But I don’t. I feel envy instead at his ability to be frank and unapologetic about pretty much everything. Who he is. What he is. How he feels about his father. God. To be that free. What would it be like?