Meeting Mr. Wright (11 page)

Amy laughs like she can’t believe what she just heard. “Oh, honey. No one’s woo-proof. We all like to be wooed.”

“Dad!” Nate shouts as he fans the tomato slices out on the cutting board.

Jack appears in the doorway seconds later, wrapping one arm around Amy’s waist. She places her hand atop his, and I find myself getting a little jealous of how cute they are. My parents could barely be in the same room together when they were married.

“Mom’s talking about wooing again,” he says, trying so hard to sound annoyed and failing miserably.

“He doesn’t need your advice,” Jack says, looking lovingly down at his wife. “He learned from the best.”

Amy throws her head back, laughing. “You are an expert wooer.”

“Someone please say ‘woo’ again,” Nate says with mock exasperation.

“Wooooooooooo,” Madeline yells as she runs past the kitchen door, and all four of us crack up.

“Let’s leave them be,” Jack says, gently pulling Amy away from the door.

“Clean up your mess, Nate.” Amy winks at me before she takes Jack’s hand and walks away.

“I love your family,” I say, stealing a small piece of bacon from the plate on the stove. Is there anything more delicious than bacon? Answer: no.

“You wouldn’t love them so much if you grew up with them.” Nate’s concentrating on spreading a layer of mayonnaise over a piece of toast.

I know he’s just teasing me and I wouldn’t expect anything else from him, but I want to tell him that growing up with them would’ve been better than growing up the way I did, with two parents who constantly screamed at each other until my father took off one day and never came back. But we’re having such a good time together, and I want to keep things light. So I take a deep breath and swallow the words that are right on the tip of my tongue.

Nate looks over at me, a sad smile on his beautiful face. “I said the wrong thing, didn’t I?”

I don’t know how he always manages to see the things that I’m trying to hide.

“No.” I shake my head, probably a little too quick of an answer to be believable. Still, I give him my best smile.

“Liar.” He bumps his arm against mine, and god…his smile just lights me up inside.

I feel like I should reply, but I wait too long and by the time I think of something to say, there’s been too much silence. It’s too late. Nate seems to have moved on for now, concentrating on finishing our dinner. He walks over to the refrigerator and pulls out a container of potato salad that he says he made earlier. He cuts the sandwiches diagonally and puts two dollops of the potato salad on each plate. He puts sprigs of parsley on each plate, trying to make it look fancy. Surprisingly, he succeeds.

“I’m impressed,” I tell him. Not that what he made is gourmet or anything, but because it’s simple and it looks delicious.

“Sandwiches are a staple of mine. I’m also really good at ordering pizza.”

He picks up the plates and I grab our drinks and we head out to a table on the back deck. Two sets of silverware are laying on pretty gingham napkins, and there are two jarred candles burning. I raise my eyebrow at him.

“It’s citronella,” he says quickly, defensively. “For mosquitoes.”

I can’t help the laugh that escapes me. “This seems kind of woo-y.”

He looks at me, and there’s something behind his eyes. Hope, maybe…I don’t know. But whatever it is makes it difficult for me to look away. “I thought you couldn’t be wooed.”

“Your words, not mine.” I shouldn’t have said that, but a small part of me is glad that I did. In order to keep my mouth occupied before I slip up and say more things that I have no business saying, I take a bite of the sandwich, which is just…delicious. I try the potatoes, and they’re awesome too. “You’ve perfected the BLT, Nate. And this potato salad is so good.”

“I’m glad you like it,” he says. “It’s my grandmother’s recipe.”

“Really?” Even though I just watched him make the food that we’re eating, I’m having difficulty reconciling this rugged man in front of me with the kind of person who talks about making potato salad from his grandmother’s recipe. I picture him in his kitchen at home, wearing an apron and whipping up some recipe from his childhood. The thought of it makes me grin.

“What, you don’t believe me?”

“I was just picturing you wearing an apron, that’s all.”

“I have one, you know,” he says as he spears a few potatoes with his fork.

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

“It has ‘Caution: Extremely Hot’ written across the chest.” He’s completely serious, but he’s smiling at me anyway.

I cover my mouth with my hand as I laugh, and his eyes linger on mine as my smile fades. Sometimes the way he looks at me is so intense that I’m not sure whether I should wrap my arms around him or run away.

“We should eat,” he says, nodding towards my plate.

We slip into an easy silence through our meal, occasionally teasing, occasionally making small talk. It’s not until we both finish that we have any semblance of a real conversation.

“That was the best sandwich I’ve ever had,” I tell him as I fold up my napkin and place it on the table.

“Ever?” he asks, looking a little surprised and a lot pleased with himself.

“Well, my mom did make me this grilled cheese once…but that was a close second.” I take a sip of wine and then lean back in my chair. “So, what do you do when you’re not making BLTs?”

“I bought my first house a year ago,” he says, pushing his plate away from him so there’s room for him to rest his elbows on the table. “It’s in a nice neighborhood and all, but it really needed some fixing up. I’m about halfway done now, but I spend a lot of my free time working on it. I recruit my friends to help me with the promise of free pizza and beer. I’ve become friendly with most of the people at Home Depot.”

“And you’ve managed to stay out of the emergency room,” I tease.

He laughs. “So far. When I’m not doing that, sometimes I head out to the lake near my house. I’ll send a text to my buddies, and half the time we wind up hanging out there. We go swimming, drink a little. What about you?”

“My life is boring compared to yours.”

“Doubtful. No home improvements to keep you busy?”

I shake my head. “I’ve been staying with my mom since the breakup. I intended for it to be temporary. I mean, it
is
temporary, I just haven’t…you know.” He’s just going to let me keep rambling, so I make myself stop before he starts judging me or something. “I read a lot, do market research. I like to bake, although I haven’t really been doing much of that lately. I work a lot. Like,
a lot
a lot.” I shake my head and take another sip of wine. “God, I sound pathetic.”

“No you don’t. You sound like someone whose life changed and you just haven’t caught up to it yet.”

I grin because that’s such a nice way of looking at it. I like the way Nate looks at life. I like the way he looks at
me
. “Thanks.”

I reach back and pull my hair up off the back of my neck. It’s a warm night—the warmest by far since I’ve been here—and I kind of want to go inside to get some relief.

“You know,” Nate says, leaning toward me and resting his elbows on his knees. “Gabby and Ben aren’t going to be back for hours. What do you have planned for the rest of the night?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. Nothing yet.”

With a mischievous glint in his eye, he asks, “Feel like going swimming?”

T
HE
W
RIGHTS
have an indoor pool, because Nate was right; this place really is a self-contained entertainment environment. The pool is fairly large, too, and I’m surprised I hadn’t noticed it here before. It makes me wonder what else Amy and Jack have hidden in this house. A movie theater? A bowling alley? I want to ask, but I’m afraid that the words would come out wrong, like I’m somehow making fun of their wealth. So I keep my mouth shut.

There are dim lights along the walls next to the windows, and the lights inside the pool are dim, too. The low lighting creates a romantic type of atmosphere that I’m not entirely sure that I’m comfortable with, and that’s not because I don’t want to get romantic with Nate, but more because I do. The more I’m around him, the more I want it. And that’s dangerous, that’s bad. That’s everything I promised myself I wouldn’t do, especially if I’m going to make it out of the next four days unscathed. I can enjoy myself when I’m with him, I just can’t let myself get in too deep.

“I like your suit,” he says, offering me a mischievous grin. Again, it’s like he knows what I’m thinking and wants me to stop thinking so much.

I look down at my simple red bikini, as if I’ve forgotten what it is that I’m wearing. “Thanks,” I tell him. “I like yours too.”

They’re blue swim trunks, nothing really special. But they hang low on his waist, and because he doesn’t have a shirt on I can ogle his abs, which are…incredible. I want to tell him that, but I don’t.

Nate quickly looks down, as if he’s forgotten what he was wearing too. “You’re lucky I decided to forego the banana hammock for you today.”

I laugh. “I appreciate that.” Although I’m sure if anyone can make that look good, it’s him.

The water in the pool is very warm, and Nate and I are standing together in the shallow end, the water close to our knees. I take a few steps forward and he follows suit, until we’re waist-deep. I skim my fingers across the surface of the water, enjoying the soft feel of it on my fingertips. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a pool, and this memory of my father and me swimming pops into my mind. Unlike most of the other memories I have of him, this one makes me smile.

“What are you thinking about?” Nate asks.

“My dad,” I tell him, not even stopping to think about whether sharing this would be a good idea. About whether I even want to. It seems my mouth has made up my mind for me. I want him to know, although I’m not sure why. “We used to go swimming a lot when I was a kid,” I say. Nate’s looking at me like I’m telling the most interesting story he’s ever heard, which encourages me to continue. “He used to do this thing where he’d crouch down in the water and I’d put my feet on his shoulders. He’d grip my ankles and then he’d pop up and throw me across the pool. It was fun.”

Nate smiles. I get the feeling that he’s glad I shared with him, but I can also tell he knows exactly what I’m talking about.

“Madeline likes to do that too.”

“A girl after my own heart.”

A few seconds later, Nate dives into the water and swims into the deep end, about ten feet away from me. When he comes up, he treads water.

“You should come down this way,” he says. “The water’s clear, so you can see we don’t have an eel infestation.”

I bring my hand up to rub the back of my neck. It’s so difficult for me to stay away from him, especially with the promise of his wet skin just waiting for me at the other end of the pool. I want to put my hands all over him, it’s almost like a sickness how badly I want it.

“Are you afraid of getting your hair wet?”

“No!” I yell, half laughing. Just to show him how not afraid to get my hair wet I am, I dive under the water and swim over, giving his foot a gentle tug before I surface right in front of him, so we’re facing each other.

“You look good,” he says, giving me one of those smiles that makes me feel like my heart tripped and flipped and fell on its ass.

“You are so smooth.”

“I’m not trying to be smooth. I mean it.”

I roll my eyes.

“Why can’t I just give you a compliment?” he asks.

I look at him for a long while, and I don’t know that I have an answer for him. I swim over to the side of the pool, because suddenly my heart feels so heavy that I’m not sure I can stay afloat anymore. Nate follows.

“Callie,” he says, very softly.

My back is pressed against the shiny blue tiles that line the perimeter, and I’m looking down at my hands, all distorted by the water. He grips the concrete edge of the pool, one hand on either side of my head. He’s got me boxed in, but I don’t feel threatened by it. He’s close, but I could swim away if I wanted to.

The thing is, I don’t want to.

“He really did a number on you, didn’t he?” Nate says, not even trying to hide his anger. “You’re still torn up over it.” And the way the words come out, they’re a statement of fact. I have to set the record straight.