His gaze moved over her face. “Why don’t we go into the living room? It might be a little warmer?” he suggested, nodding toward the interior of the cottage.
“All right,” she conceded.
She studied him while he removed his gloves and coat and draped his coat on the back of a kitchen chair. When he wasn’t dressed in a suit, he favored jeans and shirts that weren’t the classic cowboy variety, perhaps, but still possessed a Western flavor. They usually had snaps instead of buttons and fitted his lean, muscular torso to perfection.
When he glanced at her, she just raised her eyebrows in polite expectation, hoping he hadn’t noticed the way she’d been detailing his form. She led him into the living room. The sitting area before the flickering fire looked much more cozy and intimate than it had when she’d been there alone.
“Did Lincoln ever speak to you about whether or not you were interested in running DuBois Enterprises?” he asked after he’d stood before the fire for a moment.
“Yes.”
He turned and speared her with his stare. “He did? When?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. A month or so before he passed? He asked me if I’d ever consider taking up business. Then he asked me if I’d like to run his company. I thought he was kidding.”
“And what did you say?” Nick asked intently.
“I told him ‘no way.’ I have no interest in working in an office. Medicine is my career. I love being a nurse. Did Lincoln really ask you to get to know me better in that letter?” she blurted out, unable to contain her curiosity anymore. She’d been obsessing about Lincoln’s reasoning and state of mind all day.
“Yes. Why would I lie about something like that?”
She gave him a small, cautious grin. “Your reasoning escapes me, as usual.”
He laughed and turned toward her, one hand on the mantel. His silvery-gray eyes looked a little softer than usual. “My reasons are hardly Machiavellian.”
“I just can’t comprehend why he’d ask you to do it.”
“Maybe he trusted me. Maybe you should, too.”
She looked up into his face. He hadn’t moved, but he somehow seemed closer. “Why should I trust you when you clearly don’t trust me?”
“I haven’t decided yet whether I trust you or not,” he said.
A thought occurred to her. “Wait...don’t tell me that Lincoln actually asked you to investigate me in this infamous letter.”
“I’m not investigating you, Deidre. Don’t be so melodramatic,” he mumbled, exasperated.
“What else should I call it? You’ve admitted you’re here to determine if I’m the type of person who would coerce a sick, vulnerable man into giving me all his money.”
He sighed. “I’m here to understand you—and this whole situation—better. Linc’s impulsive actions don’t make much sense to me, given what I know of his character. He was an astute, methodical businessman. In order for me to get comfortable with the change, I need to get the lay of the land, so to speak. Linc’s request for me to get to know you has nothing to do with my concerns about the will. It’s a completely separate issue.” He turned toward the fire, clutching at the edge of the mantel with both hands.
“I still think it’s strange for you to stay in Harbor Town.”
“Just as strange as Lincoln giving half the control of his entire company to a woman who probably can’t even interpret a basic financial statement?” he wondered, giving her a steely sidelong glance.
Her spine stiffened. “Do you know what I think? I think it bothers you that Lincoln liked me so much.”
“Why should it bother me that he was so taken by you? I suspect many men are,” he said, holding her stare.
Her heart skipped a beat. She wasn’t sure whether to interpret his comment as an insult or a compliment. “Maybe it bothers you because you’re used to being the only one who had Lincoln’s complete affection and trust.”
He made a scoffing sound. “Linc gave his trust to many people, Deidre. Some of the officers of DuBois Enterprises thought he gave it a little too freely for their liking.”
“As in my case, I suppose.”
“Yes...and one other notable case,” he said quietly. She frowned, confused by his reference. He dropped one hand and stepped toward her, so that only a half a foot separated them. She held her ground and hoped he didn’t notice her pulse throbbing at her throat.
“It’s not an inevitability that we have to be enemies,” he said.
“It’s not inevitable that we have to be friends, either,” she said, staring at his chest.
“We might be friends, Deidre. Lincoln thought we could be, anyway.”
“You haven’t decided yet if I’m worthy of the title though yet, have you?”
Despite her cool sarcasm, his nearness made her blood race. Something about his voice affected her for some reason, especially when he said her name. When she’d first heard him speak, she would have taken his accent for typical Midwestern—blunt, clipped, no-nonsense. Every once in a while though, a slight twang would slide into the syllables, a glimmer of something that reminded her of horses grazing in the high desert of the American West, the stark, rugged mountains and clean alpine air that surrounded The Pines.
“Deidre?”
“Yes?” she asked uneasily, meeting his stare.
“I never got a chance to tell you I was sorry about Linc’s passing. Whether or not you’re his daughter, I don’t know, but no one could spend night and day with a person for months like you did and not be affected by the loss. Lincoln was certainly affected by you.”
“Did he tell you that?” She longed to hear his answer, to know every tiny morsel of information about the man who had been in her life for such a fleeting time.
Nick hesitated for a moment. “Yes,” he finally admitted. “But he didn’t have to. He couldn’t take his eyes off you when you were in the room with him.”
She smiled shakily, both warmed and saddened by his words.
“We hardly ever spoke privately while we were at Tahoe, so I also never got a chance to thank you for insisting Linc be taken back to the hospital for diagnostic testing. You were right in thinking something didn’t match up with his presentation and the diagnosis of multiple strokes. Because of your recommendation, we found out Linc’s dysfunction wasn’t just from his strokes. He had a brain tumor. You were right about that all along.”
The surge of grief that went through her gave her the strength she needed to face the fire, breaking his magnetic stare. She lifted her chin. “I guess you were always too busy being suspicious that I’m a conniving opportunist to thank me at The Pines.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. Maybe you’re right,” he conceded slowly. She glanced over at him in surprise. “Having Lincoln inform me that he had a daughter shook me up a bit. I’ve been trying to make sense of things, and I can see why you take me for a rude, single-minded jerk. Why don’t you turn the tables on me? Ask me anything you like.”
For a second, she just stared at him silently before she directed her gaze to the flames.
“How did you meet Lincoln?” she asked.
“I was paired up with him in a Big Brother program when I was eight years old. Who knows where I would have ended up if that hadn’t happened? Prison, most likely. Let’s see,” he paused, his gaze focused elsewhere as he delved into his memories. “I would have been in my sixth foster home placement in two years when I first met Linc. That summer, he hired