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 he’d never left, they could have been sitting around this table every week. But the one thing that wouldn’t change was that there’d be no little Nates sitting with them….
Sarah glanced at the food on her plate, the extra spoonful she’d only just added, and knew she couldn’t eat it. She stood to help Jess clear the table instead, needing a moment away from Nate. Away from the happy family scene that she’d been enjoying so much until her silly fantasy had taken over her thoughts.
It didn’t matter that Nate was home, and there was no point even thinking about what could have been. Because the truth was he’d made the decision that he didn’t want to be with her when he chose not to come home. And the perfect little family they’d often talked about when they were together? It wasn’t even possible.
No matter how badly she wanted children of her own, that wasn’t in her future any longer. There was nothing she could do to change that, and she sure didn’t want Nate to know about it, either.
“Do you want to cut the cake or shall I?” Jess called out.
Sarah hurried into the kitchen and took a deep breath, relieved to be away from the table even for a moment, before taking the knife and starting to slice into it. “I’m fine doing this, you go and sit down,” she told her friend.
She’d already eaten enough cake to make her stomach ache earlier in the day, yet her brain was trying to tell her she was ready for more comfort food already.
Sarah spun around with a plate in each hand before dropping one with a smash to the floor.
“Nate!” She’d run smack-bang into him, the plates bumping straight into his chest.
He bent to scoop up the fallen slice of cake with one hand, the other collecting what was left of the broken plate.
“I’m sorry, I …” Sarah didn’t know what to say, so she put the other plate on the counter and bent down, too, picking up the smaller fragments.
Nate’s hand hovered close to hers, so close she wished he’d touch her, to feel his fingers against her skin. Like a drug she’d long given up but was so overwhelmingly tempted to consume again.
“Everything
