thinking it’s pretty damn hypocritical of me to sit here and say that I was accused of taking advantage of Lincoln when I was young, and then turn around and do the same to you,” he said quietly. “But it’s different, Deidre.”
“How?”
“Because I did build a record of service to Linc, his company and it’s employees. I silenced all the naysayers, many times over.”
“How am I supposed to compete with that, Nick?” she asked, frustrated.
“I’m not asking you to. All I’m asking is that you spend time with me, allow me to get to know you … form my own opinions.”
“Haven’t I been doing that tonight?”
“Yeah, you have. And I appreciate it. More than you know.”
Deidre wondered if she’d ruined their peaceful evening with her emotional outburst when he suddenly stood.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to sound so angry—”
“Don’t apologize. I’m not leaving. I just thought of something, that’s all. It arrived yesterday.” She stared at him, bewildered, when he waved at the front door. “I’ll go and get it. It’s in the car.”
Her confusion had only amplified by the time he returned a minute later, carrying an opened cardboard shipping box. Deidre hurried to finish clearing the coffee table of the remnants of their dinner, making room for him to set it down.
“What is it?” she asked a moment later when she’d returned from the kitchen, her eyes glued to the box.
“Open it,” he encouraged.
She knelt next to the table while he sat across from her on the couch. She peeled back the box flaps and peered inside, seeing dozens and dozens of black-and-white and color photos. Excitement pulsed through her. She reached for the five-by-six photo of a woman smiling at the camera, an exquisite arrangement of white hydrangeas and roses on the table before her, sunlight flooding through the window behind her.
Recognition clicked in her, rapid and absolute.
“It’s Lily DuBois,” she whispered.
“Let me see,” Nick requested gruffly.
She turned the photo. He gave a small smile.
“Yeah. That’s Lily.”
“You knew her?” Deidre whispered.
He nodded. “I knew both Lily and George, Linc’s father. George was a rancher. He owned a huge spread between Tahoe and Carson City. When they got older, Lincoln bought a house for them in South Lake, and they spent most of their time there.”
“What were they like?” Deidre asked as she withdrew another picture, this one of Lily in the arms of a large, suntanned man with silver-gray hair and a winning smile. She studied every nuance of the couple’s faces, hungry for the tiniest details. Lily and George DuBois—her grandparents.
“The two of them couldn’t have been more different, but they were perfect for each other. George was a lot like Linc, bigger than life, personable, a natural horseman, smart and methodical when it came to business. Lily was reserved. Elegant. A sweeter lady never lived. She was English, did Linc tell you that?”
Deidre nodded, now studying Nick like she had the photographs, so eager for any tiny morsel of knowledge about people and a history she’d never known.
“Lily never lost her accent. It made her seem so refined, but never standoffish. Her warmth was her hallmark. She loved flowers and used to show her roses in competitions. The one thing both Lily and George had in common was the love of the land. Lily was always in her garden, George with his horses.”
Deidre continued to dig through the photographs, peering at the faces of people she’d never known, but who somehow seemed familiar to her. There were photos of Lincoln as a young man, tall and whipcord lean, deeply tanned from his days working on his father’s ranch. She saw Lily working in her garden, always wearing a white straw hat to protect her skin from the sun.
“Here’s a picture of one of Linc’s Christmas trees,” Nick said a few minutes after he’d begun to join her in examining the photos.
Deidre came around the table and sat next to him on the couch. There was the magnificent pine tree arranged in the picture window of the great room of The Pines. Standing before it was Lincoln, perhaps at around forty, looking fit, handsome and happy. Next to him stood his mother and father. George had his arm around a tall young man, wearing jeans and a sober expression.
“That’s you,” Deidre whispered as she studied the image of a teenage Nick. He’d been very handsome and intense, even as a boy. A strange feeling went through her, seeing Nick standing there with Lincoln’s family—her
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