Payton closed her eyes, giving into the rush of open air around them as Nate blew south on the Drive headed for the Skyway. Her mind played in shadowed memories of leaf piles, Nate laughing at her side…and then as she drifted, lulled by the smooth hum of the engine, the memories became something else. A mix of then and now. A cross of memory and imagining blurred into one. The tastes and touches she’d only just learned coupling with their bodies rolling in a tangled embrace. The heavy weight of Nate pressing her down into a bed of crisp russet and plum foliage, the scent of woods and earth surrounding them.
His name broke her lips on a sigh. “Nate…”
“Yeah, babe?”
Payton jerked in her seat, the heat of embarrassment burning her cheeks even as another heat lingered deeper in her body. Her hands waved in the air as she cast about for some satisfactory explanation other than she’d fallen asleep and begun dreaming about him.
“I—I’m—how long do you think until we get there?”
“Forty minutes maybe?” he offered casually. “Plenty of time if you want to grab a little shut-eye.”
Stiffening, she managed one word. “What?”
“A nap. There’s time.” Dark lenses shielded his eyes from her scrutiny, but his mouth sat at that casual tilt so typical of him. He looked relaxed. Comfortable. Not at all as if he’d just busted her moaning his name in her sleep. Maybe she’d merely sounded drowsy.
That was it. Because he’d suggested a nap.
Easing down into the soft leather of the seats, she breathed deeply, trying to let go of the tension snapping through her body at the thought she’d given too much away. After a few moments, her limbs relaxed and her eyes drifted closed. And as fatigue overtook her, a low chuckle sounded from across the distance of her consciousness.
“Pleasant dreams, Payton.”
Once parked, Payton roused herself from what she only hoped was a quiet sleep and met Nate around the back of the car.
“Warm enough?” he asked, pulling an old blanket from the trunk.
The wind whipped at her hair, but the sun was still bright. Pulling her sweater tight around her, she nodded, peering up at the steep rise of the dunes before them. “I just need to wake up. And if I remember correctly, the hike up’ll get my blood pumping.”
“Needed that nap, huh?” Nate brushed a thumb beneath her right eye. “Puffy. Cute.”
Pulling back, she instinctively raised a hand to check. Puffy? Wonderful.
Clearing his throat, he stretched his arms out, rotating one shoulder and then the other. “Someone must have done a decent job of wearing you out last night.”
Only Nate would find a way to turn sleep-swollen eyes into a means of stroking his own ego.
It was a call to trash-talk if ever she heard one. “Not really. Pretty sure I slept through most of it.”
He laughed, already making his way up the rise. “You mean you were rendered unconscious. My attentions have been known to overwhelm.”
Payton struggled up beside him. “No.” Not to be outdone, she feigned a weary sigh. “I drift off when I’m bored.” Then fighting a gloating snicker, she added, “Can’t say for sure—I barely remember.”
She’d take that point.
Yes, sir.
With a swish of her hips and spring in her step, she pushed up the sandy incline, oblivious to Nate’s narrowing eyes or the calculating set to his jaw. In a motion too fast to defend against, he reached for her, one powerful arm pulling her into his chest while the other caught her knee to his hip.
Her breath was gone, her mouth agape. All misconceptions about scoring points swept away by the feral gleam in the blue eyes above her.
Straining for air, she gasped, “What are you doing?”
“Reminding you.” The gruff threat was her only warning before his lips descended in a brutal crush. The hand at her back snaked up to wind in the mass of her hair and pull her head back, opening her to the thrust of his tongue. Once. Twice. And her body was alive, pulsing with the need for more—
Except it was over and firm hands were setting her a step away.
A single brow rose in question, the seductive threat radiating off him in waves. “Now what were you saying about last night?”
Too stunned to even contemplate a quick-witted barb or smart-mouthed response, she gave him what he demanded. The truth. “It was incredible, and I’ll never forget it.”
“Good.” He winked, sweeping up the discarded blanket with one hand as he started up again. “No more reminders necessary.”
Payton stared in shocked disbelief at Nate’s retreating form, her indignation on the rise. “I thought we said one night!”
“We did,” he called back, barely bothering to turn his head to respond. “But if one night’s all I get, then, babe, you better believe I’m going to make sure you remember it.”
By the time they’d skidded down the beach side of the dune, Payton had her outrage, heart-rate and unwilling smile under control. The kiss had completely blindsided her, serving as an effective warning about going for the last word with a man whose drive to win apparently knew no limits of decency. But it also relieved her anxiety about Nate’s ability to handle the lovers-to-friends transition.
That was the kiss of a man unconcerned about his ability to turn it on or off. Which suited Payton fine. After so many years of watching every word, she didn’t want to censor herself now.
As they hit the damp packed sand, Nate offered a spot beneath his arm. She stepped into the warmth of his hold and they walked in companionable silence.
Gulls soared overhead, and children sprinted through the sand in the distance.
Nate pulled off his glasses and, tucking them into the V of his sweater, turned to her. The normal vibrancy of his eyes had gone brittle beneath the strain of his burden. She knew what was coming. An explanation for this cloak and dagger game with the press, the pretend affair that all too briefly turned real. He didn’t want to talk about it, but he would.
“One of the women I dated last year came to me pregnant.”
Her heart stalled in her chest as she imagined a child, a golden-haired, blue-eyed bit of Nate, new to the world. And a woman she couldn’t even fathom? “My God, Nate…”
What could she say? Congratulations? It hardly seemed as though joyous celebration were the theme of his disclosure considering the lengths to which he was going to shake the press off the scent of his secret. And yet, offering her sympathy seemed equally inappropriate. Questions rose fast and urgent within her, each more desperate to claw free than the one before, but she willed herself silent, waiting for him to go on.
“I was fairly sure she’d been with someone else after we’d ended things, but the timing she described…It was possible. She wanted to get married. Swore up and down the baby was mine. Only, I knew it wasn’t. Hell, I suspected.” He let out a heavy sigh, ducked and scooped up a handful of sand. Let the grains sift through his fingers. “Maybe I just wished.”
Eyes to the darkening waters of Lake Michigan, he straightened. “Whatever the case, I wouldn’t marry her. Not until I had a blood test to confirm her claim. She kept pushing. Didn’t want her child born a bastard. Didn’t want the risk of a prebirth DNA sample.” He shook his head, his jaw set off to one side.
Payton waited, her heart in her throat. Her mind blanked beyond anything but the words coming painfully from Nate’s mouth.
“In the end, she was born healthy. Not mine. Not that I’d had much doubt at that point.”
“Nate,