All Through The House (15 page)

No wonder the decision that should have been gut-wrenching
had been so unexpectedly easy. The house, once everything to him, was cold
comfort without Abigail.

Of course, there wasn't any reason he couldn't still have
both. She would love the house. He'd already picked out a bedroom for Kate, who
could have the small one in the turret beside his own—the bedroom Abigail would
share with him. What little girl wouldn't want to live in a room shaped like an
octagon, with its own miniature balcony? This beautiful old house, full of
nooks and secrets, would hold the same enchantment for her that it had for him,
when he was a child outside looking in.

Restless, he left his dirty dishes in the sink. Damn it,
when could he see Abigail again? Even tomorrow was too far away. He found
himself beside the telephone without even thinking it through. He knew her
number by heart.

He was grateful when she answered herself. "I miss
you," he said, without preamble.

"I...miss you, too," Abigail said softly, before
her voice became muffled. "No, Katie Rose, it's Nate. Just give me a
second, okay?"

“I won't keep you," Nate said, suddenly resenting
fiercely the knowledge that he was on borrowed time, that Kate waited
impatiently for him to quit bothering her mommy.

"That's okay," Abigail said. "I'm glad to
hear your voice."

"It's been so long since you have."

"Um." He could hear her smile. "A whole
hour."

"Too long." Nate meant it. He'd never known love
meant such hunger for even small signs of reciprocity. This morning he'd had
her legs wrapped around his waist, and here he was already desperate for even
her voice.

"My mother's putting dinner on the table," Abigail
said. "I had better go."

"Okay." He hesitated. "Lunch Monday or
Tuesday?"

"Sure. No, wait. Tomorrow is really booked, and Tuesday
I have a young couple taking their lunch hour to look at houses. Can we make it
Wednesday?"

"Sure," he said easily. "I'll call you."

Nate waited until he'd hung up the phone to swear. Three
days. He wanted her now, not three days from now for a too brief and casual
lunch date.

He turned on the baseball game and made a pretense of
watching for a couple of innings. When a Mariner hit a double and stretched it
into a triple with a spectacular slide, and Nate didn't give a damn, he snapped
the TV off with the remote control.

Work. It had been his refuge and his passion these last
years, never failing to intensely absorb him, and it wouldn't fail him tonight.
He was down to the detail work on a small office building here in Pilchuck. The
cement would be poured this week and it would rise fast after that. He'd kept
the cost per square foot low on this project, in part by half burying it in
earth bunkers. He had compensated for lost natural light with a couple of
strategically placed skylights and an open design that took advantage of what
light there was. The heating bills would be rock bottom, which pleased the
group of investors, and the design sloped naturally into a hillside, appearing
both modern and intrinsically Northwest. Now that they were at the construction
phase, he could foresee a couple of snags, which he would do his damnedest to
head off.

Somehow his double bed never did seem very attractive that
night. He had already begun to picture Abigail sharing it with him; now, after
this weekend, he knew what she would feel like in his bed, too. Silky and
leggy, passionate and gentle. He wanted her sigh and her chuckle, her touch and
her trembling. He wanted her.

Of course, there was a solution. He just wasn't sure she was
ready to hear it yet.

Wednesday lunch was too short. "I missed you,"
Nate said roughly. Again.

Abigail's gaze melted, lighting his fires.

He reached across the table to grasp her hand, probably too
tightly. "Damn it, don't look at me like that in public."

Humor curled the corners of her mouth. "Why ever
not?"

"Do you want to find out?" Nate let her hand go to
grab the bill. "Let's get out of here."

She rose, too, setting her purse strap over her shoulder.
The smile still trembled, but she said, "I have to get back anyway."

After tossing a few bills on the counter, Nate steered
Abigail out of the Monte Cristo Cafe. He was tempted to let the hand splayed on
the small of her back slide a little lower. He knew how the subtle curve of her
bottom would feel under his fingertips. The fabric of her straight skirt was
nubby but still silky, encouraging his hand to linger. But the pickup was
parked right in front; Pilchuck was still slow-moving enough not to require
duels to the death for a parking space.

In the truck he laid his right arm across the back of
Abigail's seat and turned to face her. He jerked his head toward the sidewalk
and the few passersby. "See anybody you know?"

Startled, she glanced out her window. "I don't think
so. Why...?"

His mouth cut her question off. She tasted as sweet and
tangy and tart as a good apple pie. Nate closed his eyes and savored the
intimate contact with the woman he loved.

When he reluctantly lifted his head at last, Abigail's face
stayed tipped up and her lashes didn't flutter open for several seconds. With
one possessive hand he brushed dark hair back from her forehead and cupped her softy
rounded chin.

He heard the gruffness in his own voice. "That's what you
get for looking at me like that."

"I should do it more often," she said huskily.

"Anytime." Just as reluctantly he dropped his hand
to the ignition key and turned it. The truck roared to life and he looked over
his shoulder before pulling out of the parking space and shifting into second.
The silence on the short drive to her office was comfortable, if thick with
unfulfilled desire. In front of the old house Abigail and Meg had converted
into their real-estate office, Nate parked and set the hand brake.

"I'm going to be out on a job site tomorrow and
Friday," he said abruptly. "Let's have dinner Friday night."

Abigail felt a pang of real regret. "I'm afraid I
can't, Nate. Kate's preschool is having a program. She gets to sing 'You Are My
Sunshine,' her all-time favorite. I'd invite you..." she added lightly,
"since I know that's just what you have in mind..."

"You know I'd like to go," he interrupted.

"...but," she continued, "I was only given
two tickets, and Kate's grandmother is planning on going. The room isn't very
big." Why was she apologizing? Abigail wondered.

A hint of a frown drew Nate's brows together. "Saturday
night, then," he said.

"I have to work this weekend." She'd never felt
less like it.

"I do, too, but the crew will pack up and go home at
five on the nose. I could pick you up by six."

"I mean all weekend." She found herself watching
him a little anxiously. Surely he would understand. "Usually Meg and I
split Saturday and Sunday, but Meg's going to see her daughter in Yakima. I
promised to take the whole weekend. That's going to make me pretty unavailable
to Kate, anyway. I don't see how I can possibly go out, too."

The frown deepened into furrows between his eyebrows.
"That's crazy," he said impatiently. "Surely you have somebody
who could cover for you at work."

Abigail answered with careful reason. "Nate, you're in
the business. You know what real estate is like. To strike out on our own, Meg
and I have to pay the price of long hours. Right now we don't have enough
traffic to justify taking in other agents. And we can't afford to put a closed
sign out, either. People see an ad, drive by a house with one of our For Sale
signs, they want information right away. If they don't get it from us, they'll
go elsewhere."

"Damn it."

The tension in her stomach coiled tighter when he lifted
both hands from the steering wheel and then slammed them back on in a gesture
of frustration.

"Do I need to get in line?" he asked, the muscles
in his jaw knotted.

She didn't look him in the face, but instead focused on his
hands, which gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white. Abigail
had a frightening sense of deja vu. Her ex-husband's voice was a whisper of
remembrance. I want to come first in your life. I want to know how badly you
need me. I want to know that when I need you, you'll be there for me. Fool that
she'd been, it had sounded romantic, passionate. And so she had dropped
everything when he called, when he "needed" her.

But not again. Never again.

"I love my job," she said straight out. "I
had a life before you appeared in it, Nate. The fact that I know you doesn't
make my business any less important, or my daughter any less important. If you
can't understand that...."

He growled something in the back of his throat and kissed
her again, just hard enough to shock something inside her awake even while a
core of anger formed. Abigail jerked her head aside and opened her mouth to let
him have it. She was forestalled, even stunned, by Nate's expression. His eyes
were clear and rueful, his mouth twisted.

"That was unforgivable." His voice was even
rougher-edged than usual. "I don't know what the hell I was trying to
do."

"Coerce me?"

He rubbed his neck, as though it were stiff. "Would you
believe, seduce you?"

Without softening, she said, "I'd believe it."

He took her by surprise. "You were right. I guess for a
minute there I didn't want the rest of your life to exist. Except
Kate-who-rhymes. I'd never unwish her."

Abigail took a deep breath. "Real estate is hard on
relationships," she admitted. "Some people take it up because it's
flexible. They figure they can take days off when they want, put in hours that
suit them. Those are the kind of people who don't make it. Did you know that
something like ninety percent of the business is conducted by about ten percent
of the agents? Nate..." This was hard to say, but she couldn't put it off.
"I need to be a success like I've never needed anything else in my life.
If you can't handle that…."

For an agonizing second he didn't answer, just held her gaze
with curious intensity. Finally he nodded, though his mouth twisted again.
"I can handle it. As long as you promise to make time for me."

Relief washed through her with such force that she almost
sagged. "I can do that. Maybe we can both compromise."

"Compromise?" His deliberately humorous tone eased
the tension. "I don't know about that. It never was my strong suit."

Though her throat still felt tight, Abigail tried to match
his effort. "Not even for me?"

Nate pretended to think. Then, "What the hell. For you,
anything."

"That has possibilities," she murmured.

Nate's eyes narrowed, then lifted to glance in the rearview
mirror. "You expecting someone?" he asked.

She took a look over her shoulder. "Afraid so."

"Hell. Well, I've got to get back to the site, anyway.
I'll let you go."

She couldn't leave like that. "You know, I do have
Monday and Tuesday off."

"I don't," he said. "But if we can make it
dinner...."

Abigail hoped her smile didn't look as shaky as it felt.
"You bet."

"Monday? Six o'clock?"

"I'll be waiting," she agreed. Conscious of the
woman and teenage girl who'd climbed out of the car behind Nate's pickup,
Abigail opened her door without giving Nate a chance to reach for her. Assuming
he had intended—and still wanted—to. "See you," she said saucily.

Nate waited until she was safely down from the high seat and
had slammed the pickup door, waving a casual goodbye, before he finished her
sentence aloud.

"Yeah, I'll see you," he said. "But not soon
enough."

*****

As it turned out, he saw Abigail far sooner than he had
expected. Since Saturday was already a wash as far as he was concerned, Nate
had agreed to a lunch date with an attorney who'd invested in the office building
that had seen its messy start that week.

Charming the customers wasn't his favorite part of the
business, and he left it as much as possible to John. This was one of the few
times John had run out of patience.

He had slammed the phone down. "Can you believe it?
Appleton wants reassurance! I have a bloody foul-up over in Everett, and this
guy wants to know why the damned foundation here in Pilchuck doesn't look the
way he expected!"

Nate looked up from his spiral notebook. "What's it
supposed to look like?"

John uttered an obscenity. "Who the hell knows? Who
cares?"

Nate took his feet off his desk and sat up, the chair
squeaking. "I'll handle Appleton. What's the foul-up? Anything I can
do?"

They talked about the problem for a few minutes, long enough
to return John to his usually unflappable self. Nate was stuck with Appleton,
though, a short bouncy young attorney who reminded Nate unpleasantly of a nurse
who'd had the night shift the one time he had been hospitalized. "Time to
take our temperature!" she would say brightly, at some godforsaken hour of
the morning.

Nate hadn't been surprised to hear that Appleton specialized
in wills and probate. He'd have looked laughable defending some sleazeball in
court.

They were following the waitress to a seat at Weller's, the
local version of Denny's—decent food quickly—when Nate saw Abigail. The back of
her head, to be precise. It was her voice that caught his attention, that and
the emphatic gesture of her graceful hands. Her dark curls were caught up in
some kind of knot on top of her head, though a few strayed. For an instant,
Nate felt pleasure, just because he could anticipate her delighted smile, the
way the timbre of her voice would change for him, the promise in the depths of
her green-brown eyes.

And then he saw her companion. The man was maybe forty, big
and smooth, auburn-haired, his suit expensive. His dark eyes rested warmly on
Abigail's face as he listened to her.