“I know all about wanting to be alone, so you can come here whenever you want,” Johnny told him, slinging an arm around Jess’s shoulders. “This one here might try to talk your ear off, but—”
There was a soft tap at the door followed by the creak of it opening. Before Nate could raise an eyebrow at his sister, ask who they were expecting, or even turn, he caught sight of the grimace on Jess’s face.
“Are you …?” Nate didn’t even get to finish his sentence.
“Sarah,” Jess said with a smile, nudging him on the way past. “I was just about to tell Nate that we were expecting company for dinner, and here you are.”
Nate looked at Sarah, at the frozen expression on her face, and then surveyed the room. He should have realized when he’d arrived that something was up. The table was set with pretty napkins that he was certain wouldn’t be used on a nightly basis, and even Brady was dressed nice, not in clothes dirty from an afternoon playing outside.
“Nice to see you again, Nate.”
Sarah’s soft voice pulled him from his thoughts. He had no place being rude to her, giving her the silent treatment, so this was going to have to be his chance to redeem himself.
“You’ve already seen Sarah since you’ve been back?” Jess asked.
“I found Sarah under my tree this morning,” he told his sister, still not taking his eyes from the woman standing in the entrance to the room, cake held out awkwardly in one hand, bottle of wine clutched in the other.
“Nate, please don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your manners.”
Nate laughed. Jess sounded just like their mom. Bossy but saying her words with a smile so it sounded less like an order than it was. He crossed the room and took the plate from Sarah, giving her what he hoped was a warm smile. “Sorry,” he muttered.
Sarah looked up, her amber eyes lighter than he’d remembered, her cheeks pink like she was as embarrassed as he was. Nate turned before he stared at her any longer, trying to ignore the way her dark auburn curls brushed her shoulders, or the low scoop-cut of her T-shirt.
“The cake looks, ah, great.”
Sarah laughed. “It should do! It’s the second one I’ve made today.”
Nate looked over his shoulder to see his sister take the bottle of wine and follow him into the kitchen. Brady was talking flat-stick to Sarah, already dragging her by the hand to the sofa.
Jess prodded him in the back.
“Ow!”
He got a soft kick to the calf in response. Clearly his sister didn’t care about him being injured. “It seems a little convenient that you’ve only just come home and yet you managed to find Sarah sitting under your tree already. Is that why you showed up here tonight?”
Nate crossed his arms over his chest as Jess moved around to stand in front of him. “Give me a break, Jess. Maybe I should have just stayed home.” He was tempted to wave them all good-night right now and leave them to their dinner, and that was before his sister had started to interrogate him.
“All I’m saying is that Sarah’s been hurt enough this past year without you coming here and doing the same. Again.”
Nate closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He wasn’t ready for dealing with this kind of thing, not yet. He didn’t have the thoughts inside his head in order, hadn’t dealt with what was troubling him, so he couldn’t take on anyone else’s troubles.
Besides, it was she who’d been sitting under his damn tree!
“I would never hurt Sarah, you know that. And I’m not interested in her that way, not anymore.”
Jess shook her head. “You’ve hurt her before, Nate, and anyone can see the way you two still look at each other.”
She was wrong. Jess was way off the mark with that comment. “Do you want me to go?” he asked.
Jess set down the bottle of wine she was still carrying and marched him into the living room. “You’re not going anywhere, Nate. It’s about time you came back to your family.”
Nate groaned. Maybe he should have gone up to the main house, after all. If he was going to make an effort, Holt might have been easier to spend an evening with, and his new wife would surely have been easier on him than Jess was.
Sarah was struggling to engage in conversation. Heck, she was struggling to breathe, so it was no wonder she couldn’t speak! Nate was sitting quietly on the other side of the table, his eyes still stormy but without the anger she’d seen flashing there earlier.
“Sarah, would you like some more?”
She locked eyes with Jess, who was staring at her with a smile on her face. Sarah tried hard not to blush, but she’d been caught out watching Nate and now everyone was looking at her. Even little Brady had stopped his chatter.
“Maybe just a little,” she murmured, focusing on spooning more of the chicken and rice dish onto her plate. “It really is great, Jess. I’ll have to get the recipe from you one day.”
Nate chuckled. “I think you’ll find that there’s not a recipe as such.”
Sarah relaxed as the burning heat receded and left her cheeks at a more comfortable temperature. “Sounds like there’s a story behind this dish, then?”
Nate straightened and leaned forward slightly, the first time he’d actively engaged without his sister prompting him. Everyone else was silent.
“Mom made this for us when we were young, even though she always moaned about how many chickens she needed to fill us all.”
His smile made Sarah grin straight back at him. It was so nice to see that flicker of … Nate. Him being like this reminded her of how he’d been years ago. Before everything had changed.
“We used to beg her for this every birthday, special occasion, you name it, even when we were growing up,” Jess continued, rising and dropping a kiss to her brother’s head as she passed him. “She never did have a recipe for it, because she’d tasted something similar in a Chinese restaurant and this was her trying to replicate it.”
Sarah looked at Nate again. There was a frown starting to drag the corners of his mouth down, but she could see he was trying hard not to pull away from them.
“When Mom died, when I could have thought of so many things, I thought about this,” Nate told them, shaking his head as he pushed his fork around his plate. “One of the first things I thought was that I’d never eat her chicken and rice again. Stupid, I know, but I was so damn hungry at the time, sick of eating crap food where I was posted, that I could almost smell the chickens roasting in her oven. Could see myself sitting in her kitchen as she cooked up a storm around me.”
Sarah couldn’t help it, she reached across the table for Nate’s hand. He didn’t resist, and she needed to touch him. Needed to comfort him when he was so clearly lost. She should have been angry with him, but right now all she could feel was his pain.
“When she confessed to not having an actual recipe, I started to watch her every time she made it,” Jess said, taking over the storytelling. “I used to cook it for Dad sometimes, to remind him of her, and now I can cook it for all of you when we need a little pick-me-up.”
Sarah had no idea how she’d ended up sharing a meal with Nate after all these years, being part of his family again. She moved her hand away from his, but not before squeezing gently.
The look he gave her, the powerful way he seemed to stare straight through her, sent a soft tickle down her back, and she didn’t look away.
Right now, it was like a glimpse of what could have been. If Nate had come home, if