“Harsh,” he said. “I’m gonna whip some up. Sure you don’t want any?”
She folded her arms on top of the table and rested her head on them. Nat wasn’t a crier—as Nash had so eloquently pointed out last night—so she didn’t know spending hours blubbering into her pillow meant she’d wake with a headache that rivaled any hangover she’d ever had.
“I’m ignorin’ you now.”
“And I’m missin’ work for you, so show me some love.”
“Don’t pretend like that’s a big deal for you. You own the company.”
“Correction,” he said, stabbing a fork in her direction. “I co-own the company. With your sister, I might add. Take a minute to think about how much she loves that I’m skippin’ out when we’re already on a tight schedule.”
“So, what you’re sayin’ in she wears the hard hat in that relationship?”
Nash flashed her a grin and poured the eggs into a skillet. “How about instead of talkin’ about my relationship, we talk about yours?”
“You know all about my relationship with her because I’mcertainshe fills you in on every little detail.”
“Cute,” he said flatly, clearly not finding it cute at all. “You know damn well I’m talkin’ about yourmarriage.”
She sat upright and dropped her hands into her lap, twisting her ring around and around her finger. She hadn’t wanted to leave it for Asher when she’d gone. Hadn’t been able to bring herself to do so. Actually, it went a little deeper than that. The thought of removing it, never to wear it again, filled her with so much dread, her stomach had churned because of it.
“The marriage was fake, Nash. Y’all talked about that, right?”
“He told me what it was supposed to be, but I can guarantee you that’s not what it turned out to be.” He picked up his phone for the hundredth time in the past ten minutes.
“Why do you keep checkin’ your phone?” she snapped. “If you were worried about me runnin’ late, we’d already be on the road.”
Never mind that she didn’t actually have to be at the airport for thirty-six hours, and he’d already called her on that. It just made her antsy to be in Havenbrook when she wasn’t with Asher, and that was a shocking thought. Maybe that had been the problem every other time she’d visited without him—that she hadn’t had him to ground her. To calm her storm and let her settle into her skin.
Nash walked over carrying two plates full of eggs and set them on the table. “You sure you want to do this?”
“Eat these eggs? No, I already told you that.”
“Fucking hell, Natalie. You are the biggest pain in my ass.”
Her mouth dropped open on an incredulous huff. “Did you justNatalieme?”
“Damn fucking right, I did. Quit bein’ so obtuse. You know I’m talkin’ about you and Asher and what a mistake y’all’re makin’.”
She blew out a breath, her shoulders sagging as she rubbed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “Rory already tried this this mornin’, you know.”
“Oh, this mornin’ when she was off and runnin’ before six?”
“Yes…?”
“You have no problem sleepin’ the night before a flight and hate wakin’ up before noon.”
“I hate scrambled eggs, and yet you insist on feedin’ them to me. What’s your point?”
“Some reason you couldn’t sleep?”
“I slept just fine.” If crying into her pillow could be counted as sleep. “I’m finally goin’ to Ireland. Why wouldn’t I be thrilled?”
“I don’t know, but you’re clearly not, so you should probably ask yourself that question.”
She was just rusty, was all. Because it’d been so long since she’d traveled, she needed to get back in the swing of things. It had nothing to do with the gigantic Asher-shaped hole in her heart she was going to have to walk around with for the rest of her life. She needed to get used to it, so she might as well start now.
“Nash, please. Can we just go?”
