“It's okay,” Keira said, enjoying the flash of warmth in his too-cool blue eyes. “You can learn.”
They walked in companionable silence for a few minutes before she said, “The bears will be waking up soon.”
“Bears?”
“Oh, yeah. Black ones and brown ones. Mamas and babies. They'll be trolling through backyards and tipping over trash cans looking for food or trouble.”
“Bears.” He shook his head. “Can't imagine living somewhere I could expect to bump into a bear.”
“Funny, huh?” she asked, tipping her face up to the darkening clouds, “I can't imagine living anywhere else.”
“You were raised here?”
“Yep. Born in Lake Tahoe, raised here. We didn't have a clinic back then. Now our new moms don't have to take that trek over the mountain for medical help.” She grinned and patted his arm with her free hand. “And thanks to you, our clinic's going to be even better than it already is.”
“You've thanked me enough.”
“Not really,” she said, “but I'll let it go.”
“Thank you.”
“For now.”
He snorted.
“What about you?” she asked in the silence, “Where are you from?”
“Everywhere,” he said, turning his gaze on the wind-whipped water of the lake again.
“That's not an answer, just so you know.”
“I was born in Massachusetts. Grew up on the east coast.”
Amazing how the man could give information and still make it seem like so little. But Keira wasn't a woman to be dissuaded easily. She dug a little deeper.
“Your family still there?”
“No family,” he said shortly, and his gorgeous blue eyes squinted into the wind racing past them.
“I'm sorry.”
“No reason to be. You couldn't know.”
“Well, I am, anyway,” she said and squeezed his arm companionably. “My folks died when I was in college,” she said, thinking that maybe if she gave a little, he'd be willing to give a little, too. “They went skiing. Got caught in an avalanche.”
His gaze shifted to hers. “Now I'm sorry.”
She looked up at him and smiled. “Thank you. It was really hard. I still miss them so much.”
“I was ten,” he said. “Car accident.”
A few words, but said so tightly, Keira could feel the old pain still welling inside him. At least she'd been grown when she lost her parents. She couldn't even imagine how lonely and terrifying it would have been to be a child and lose the safety of your own little world.
“God, Nathan, that's terrible.”
“A long time ago,” he reminded her. “Had my grandmother. Dad's mom. She took me in.”
“That couldn't have been easy for her,” Keira said, then stumbled on a piece of wood jutting up into the rocky trail.
Nathan caught her by tightening his grip on her arm and keeping her steady. “It wasn't much of a hardship. She sent me to boarding school, and I was only home for a month every summer.”
“She what?”
He blinked at her, clearly surprised by her reaction. What kind of people farmed out ten-year-old kids to boarding schools? What kind of grandparent couldn't see that the child left in her care was in pain and needed more than the impersonal attention of someone paid to watch over him?
“It was a very good school,” he said.
“Oh, I'm sure.” A spurt of anger shot through Keira on behalf of a child who no longer existed. “No brothers or sisters?”
“Nope. You?”
God, he had been all alone with a grandmother too busy to give him what he must have craved. A sense of belonging. A sense of safety. Keira couldn't even imagine what that must have been like for him, and a part of her warmed up to his frosty nature a little more. After all, if he'd been so cut off as a child, how could she possibly expect the man to be open to possibilities?
He was watching her, waiting for her to answer his question, and so she gave him a smile that didn't let him in on the fact that she was really feeling sorry for the boy he'd once been.
“I have a sister. Kelly. She's younger than me and was still in high school when our folks were killed. So, I came home from school, watched over her and started running the family diner.”
He frowned. “The coffee shop in town?”
“You noticed it? Yep. The Lakeside was my dad's baby. It's small, but it's been good to us. Made it possible for me to get Kelly into college—well, the diner and a few good loans.”
“What about you?” he asked. “You didn't go back to school?”
“No,” she said, still irritated with his grandmother for some bizarre reason. “I meant to, I really did. But then Kelly was in college, and no way could we afford for both of us to go. And when she graduated, I'd already hired a manager for the diner and was running for mayor, so …” She shrugged.
“Your sister should have taken her turn in town to give you a chance to go to school.”
Keira shook her head. “No, she got a tremendous job offer right out of school and there was no way she could not take it.”
He was silent, but the quiet held a lot of disapproval.
“You could go back to college now,” he pointed out.
“Oh, yeah,” Keira said, laughing shortly. “Just what I want to do. Go to school with a bunch of kids. Sounds like a great time.”
“What's your sister doing now?”
“She's living in London,” Keira said, defensive of a little sister who didn't need defending. “She loves England,” she added with a wistful sigh. “She sends me pictures that make me want to pack my bags and go there for myself.”
“Why don't you?”
“I can't just leave because I want to. I have responsibilities to this town.”
He sighed, frowned and turned slitted eyes on her. “Is that a not so subtle hint?”
“I wasn't going for subtle,” she admitted, smiling up at him despite the glower in his eyes. “Just for a reminder about the responsibilities you and the others have to Hunter's Landing.”
“I'd never heard of your town until a month ago,” he reminded her, “and a month from now, I will have forgotten it.”
“Well, don't we feel special,” she mused.
“It's nothing personal,” he said. “It's just …”
“None of that really matters, does it? You agreed to the terms of the will and—” The toe of her boot caught under a root and she would have gone sprawling if Nathan hadn't steadied her again.
“You're dangerous,” he snapped. “Why don't you pay more attention to where you're walking?”
“Hey, I have you here to catch me.”
“Don't count on that.”
“I am, though,” Keira said, blocking his way by stepping in front of him before she stopped dead. “We're all counting on you. You and your friends.”