Nate had to admit, thathadbeen a good night. Of course his years in Durham had been full of good nights. Even if he ended up never using that English Lit degree for anything but impressing boys who liked sonnets. Ceremony wasn’t Durham, though, and Nate wasn’t twenty anymore.
“That was over a decade ago,” Nate said. “And I was a horny idiot.”
“Happy, though,” Max pointed out. He flashed the grin that had gotten more than a few men to follow him for a quick tumble. And the numbers had increased recently. Max wasn’t handsome. There was too much nose and too much jaw, and his hair was too thick for styling, but he had that gloss of growing up wealthy and sure of himself. It had gotten Nate into more trouble than he could easily list over the years, since the first time a ten-year-old Maxwell had poked him in the ribs, grinned, and suggested they do something stupid. “C’mon, Nate. I know your ex did a number on you, but—”
It was the wrong thing to say. It was pretty much always the wrong thing to say.
“Fuck you, Max.”
He put the half-finished cup of coffee neatly down on the counter and stalked out. The bar staff gave each other “this is awkward” grimaces as he passed them. Nate scored out the mental note he’d made about their gratuity, even though he knew he’d back down on that before HR drew up their paychecks.
“Nate,” Max called after him. “Hold on, okay? I didn’t mean to…. Shit.”
The doors into the gardens swung shut behind Nate and cut off anything else Max wanted to say.
It would be fine. Later on Max would apologize and stand Nate one of the crappy, local craft beers he insisted on stocking. Nate would forgive him, because it wasn’t as though bringing up an ex was a good reason to properly fall out with someone. And he might not be a silver fox yet, but he was definitely too old to make a new best friend.
It wasn’t even Max that Nate was angry at anyhow. Or his ex. Despite what everyone seemed to think, he wasn’t pining for that asshole like some Cookson romance heroine.
He walked through the hotel’s small, elegant rose garden. The bride’s shoes were sitting on the edge of the fountain, sparkly silver and damp from dew. Nate left them there for a second and walked to the edge of the garden so he could look over the wall.
The view crashed straight down gray cliffs dotted with seagulls to the decorative, deceptive white slice of sandy beach far below. It was only the start of May and a few sunbathing bodies decorated the sand, while out in the bay, someone was trying to drag a sodden parasail out of the waves. Nate leaned his elbows on the stone, rubbed his eyes, and waited for the hot bubble of anger to sink back into the pit of his stomach.
He spent most of his days planning other people’s weddings. There was the occasional festival and the village fair, but it was mostly weddings. He listened to meet-cute stories, wrangled bridesmaids, vetted speeches, and occasionally pulled off the impossible. To his clients he was charming, supportive, and made sure that the couple got the day they’d dreamed about.
But the happiest day of his client’s life was just another Tuesday for him. When he went home, he wanted to take his suit off, eat leftover pizza, watchFortitudeor something equally miserable, and be a grumpy, single bastard in peace.
It wasn’t too much to ask.
Or he didn’t think so. Everyone else in his life seemed to think differently. His friends kept trying to set him up on blind dates—or blind fucks in Max’s case—and since her cancer diagnosis, his mother was obsessed with the idea that she was going to die before he found someone… and that he’d then die alone and be eaten by cats.
“DO YOUeven have a cat?” Max asked.
It was eight hours later. Max was forgiven, Mary Sanders nee Black had her shoes back, and the beer tasted just as bad as Nate had expected. He slouched down on the sofa in Max’s office, one leg swung up over the worn leather arm.
“No.” Nate took a second sip of the beer, which claimed to be cranberry and rosehip flavored, in case the taste grew on you. If it did, it hadn’t so far.
Max kicked back in his office chair and put his feet up on the desk. A footstool was pretty much all he’d ever used the desk for. It wasn’t that he was lazy, but he’d never reacted well to being put somewhere and told to stay there. He couldn’t even talk on the phone unless he was moving, pacing out his conversations in laps of the bar. Why his dad had insisted on the office and then complained that Max was never in it, was beyond Nate.
“So,” Max said. He scratched his jaw with the base of his beer. “Does your mum think you’re going to turn into a crazy cat lady from loneliness? Or are cats just going to be drawn to your corpse from across the island once you’ve karked it?”
Nate shrugged. “No idea.” He kicked his foot absently, and his heel bounced off the side of the sofa. “Look, I knew it wouldn’t be easy having her come to live with me while she recuperated. But I thought it would be endless cups of tea and her constantly asking me ‘who’s that, then?’ in the middle of TV shows—not her obsessing about me getting married before she dies, which is apparently going to be any day now.”
That creased Max’s face into a frown, and he straightened up. The chair creaked under him as he shifted his weight. “Is she okay?” He sounded worried. “If Ally’s not feeling well, we should get her back to the hospital.”
Nate decided to blame the beer for the bad taste in the back of his throat. They weren’t kids anymore, and it was petty to be jealous that, in a lot of ways, Max got on better with Nate’s mother than he did. It wasn’t that Nate and his mum didn’t love each other—most of the time—it was just that Ally Moffatt and Max Saint John had all that “free-spirit, difficult relationships with their dads, think they know best for Nate thing” in common.
“Mum’s fine,” Nate said. “That’s the problem. Her brain used to be full of doctor’s appointments and drug regimes. Now she doesn’t have to worry about that, so she’s packed the space with paranoia and matchmaking.”
Max looked like that reassurance hadn’t put his mind entirely at ease, but he let it go. He gestured with the beer.
“C’mon, though. It’s not like she’s trying to make you marry a woman, and, I don’t know, study to be a divorce lawyer,” Max said. “She just wants you to be happy, and it’s not like you are.”
“I’m happy.” Nate tossed his hands in the air in frustration. Beer splashed out of the bottle and onto his wrist. It stained the cuff of his shirt, which only put him in a better mood, dammit. “I’m thrilled. I’m fucking ecstatic.”
“Yeah.” Max rocked back in the chair and folded his arms over his stomach with the bottle balanced on his belt buckle. His eyes glittered over his hook of a nose. “You really sound it.”
Nate rolled his eyes. “Okay. Not right now. Generally I’mfine.Right now, I’m just okay with my own company, you know?”
