you going to the wedding, too?” Dennis asked.
“Yes, I am.” Nick raised an eyebrow at me.
“Cool,” Dennis said. “So how do you guys know each other?”
“Biblically,” Nick answered.
“Nick’s my ex-husband, Dennis,” I said a bit sharply. “I’m sure I mentioned it once. Possibly twice.”
“Oh, right!” He glanced at me, then back at Nick. “So why’d you stop?”
“Taking in the sights.” Nick pointed. About three hundred yards off the road, down the steep meadow, a black bear shuffled slowly along the bank of a clear, broad river. It stopped to sniff the wind, stood up on its hind legs, then dropped back down and continued. Coco whined, certain she could take the beast.
“Dude, is that a dog?” Dennis asked. I closed my eyes. If only Dennis were the strong and silent type…
“Black bear,” Nick said.
“Awesome.” To Den’s credit, the bear did sort of resemble a big, black Newfie. After another minute or two, it disappeared into the long grass.
The two men looked at each other once more. “So you’re the ex,” Dennis said.
“Yet I lived to tell the tale,” Nick confirmed.
Dennis gave a snort of laughter, aborted by my murderous look. He petted Coco, looking a bit like Dr. Evil stroking the hairless cat. Nick just stared at me, his eyes mocking, and my face grew hot. Dragging my eyes off him, I looked at Dennis. “Honey?” I asked brightly. “Want to drive?” I asked.
“I thought you didn’t want me to,” Dennis answered. Nick’s eyebrow rose knowingly.
“Would you like to drive now?” I asked, keeping a smile on my face.
“Uh…sure. Come on, Coco-Buns.” The pet name failed to reinforce Dennis’s heterosexuality, and I stifled a sigh as my boyfriend obediently walked back to the car and got into the driver’s side, letting Coco stand on his lap, her paws on the wheel.
I didn’t move. “I hear you approve,” I said to Nick.
“I hear you don’t.” He looked at me a beat or two, steadily. “Take off those damn sunglasses, Harper.”
With an exaggerated sigh, I obeyed. “Better?”
He didn’t answer, just stared at me with those gypsy eyes, and I looked right back. Twelve years’ distance, a career spent in court, staring down idiot lying spouses… Don’t mess with me, Nick. He seemed to sense it, because he looked away abruptly, back in the direction of the shambling bear. “Drinks later? For the sake of the kids?”
Do not be alone with him.
It was a line I often said to my clients. Seeing him alone would muddy the waters, stir up emotions best left untouched, possibly make you agree to things you shouldn’t.
I replaced my sunglasses. “Sure. Are you staying at the lodge?”
“Yes.” He had a way of saying yes, Nick did. Fast and sure and disproportionately hot, like he knew exactly what you were going to say and couldn’t wait to give you an affirmative. I’d forgotten about that. Crotch.
“Okay, then,” I said, and my voice sounded nice and normal. “I’m sure we can find a bar or something.”
It wasn’t until about a mile or two later, when I was sitting in the car next to Dennis, clutching his hand, that I was able to take a normal breath. That electric hum was downright painful now.
This was a horrible idea. Every aspect of this whole situation was wrong, wrong, wrong.
CHAPTER FOUR
LOOKING BACK AT MY LIFE thus far, I can’t say I exactly regret marrying Nicholas Sebastian Lowery. That being said, I knew he was trouble the very first day I met him. The very first second, even.
I didn’t regret it because I learned a lot. Well, my time with Nick confirmed a lot that I’d already believed. But when a man comes up to you in a bar and tells you you’re the woman he’ll marry, it’s a little…overwhelming. Plus, it’s not the usual come-on line often employed by college students. Even grad students.
I was a junior at Amherst, it was my twentieth birthday, my roomies had gotten me a fake ID, and we were breaking it in. The pub was crowded, hot and noisy. Music thumped, people shouted to be heard…and then I turned and saw a guy staring at me.
Just staring. Steady, unabashed, completely focused. Time seemed to stop for a second, and all those other people, they just faded away, as the dark-haired man…boy…just looked at me.
“You okay?” asked Tina, my closest college chum.
“Sure,” I said, and the spell was broken.
But the guy came over and sat at the table next to us and just kept looking at me, and—forgive the nauseating cliché—it felt as if he really saw me, because his concentration was so singular.
“What are you looking at, idiot?” I asked, giving him the sneer that had served me so well.
“My future wife. The mother of my children.” One corner of his mouth pulled up, and every female part I had squeezed warm and hard.
“Bite me,” I said, just about to turn away.
“Anything you want,” he answered, and then he grinned, that lightning-flash smile that said, Sure, I’m a jerk, but we both know I can get away with murder…and it was hard not to smile back. So I didn’t turn away. And I did smile.
“So when should we get married?” he asked, pulling his chair closer.
I checked him out discreetly. Nice hands. Beautiful eyes. Shiny dark hair—I was a sucker for dark-haired men. “I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth, bub.”
“Yet you’re ogling me,” he answered. “What are you drinking, wife?”
I laughed and said, “Crikey, the nerve. Sam Adams Octoberfest.”
I didn’t love my birthday, given my history with the date, but Tina had dragged me out with two other friends. All of us were in our junior year at Amherst, all of us receiving a stellar education at an extremely feminist-slanted college, all of us absolutely confident that the world held no boundaries, all of us planning to Do Important Things. And yet, those three friends took a respectful and almost envious step back. Look at Harper! Some guy is hitting on her! And he even used the M-word! Give her some space! Don’t blow it!
And though I now cringe to admit, I was swept off my feet, which came as quite a surprise to me. I guess that’s sort of the point of being swept.
Nick Lowery was unlike any of the pale, vague boyfriends I’d had up to this point (and I’d had many and loved none). He was, despite being only twenty-three, a grown-up. In school at UMass, getting his master’s in architecture. He already had a job lined up in June—a real job, not an internship,
