I nodded. “Yes. I think so.”
I could hate the port. I could hate Judd Mathers with every fiber of my being. I could even hate the version of Colt that brought the nightmare to my door while he thought about money. But I couldn’t hate the man sitting across from me withhis sleeves rolled to his elbows and those eyes that hypnotized me.
If I hated him, I couldn’t fall back in love with him.But I can’t hate him. I’ve never been able to hate him because part of me has always and will probably forever love him. And that sucks because it will hurt if and when he shatters my heart.
“I know you hate what I did but I promise you, it’s not quite as nefarious as it sounds,” he said. “It’s easy to look at a picture and see people and places and not allow myself to feel what those people do. But I thought about our ranch in Texas and what it would feel like to lose it. I get it. I can’t believe I was such an asshole not to think about it before. I brought Judd to your door and I’m so sorry.”
I accepted his apology. I believed he was genuine. It didn’t solve the problem, but I believed he would be on our side and work to be part of the solution.
“Can we talk about Mathers later?” I asked. “I don’t want to spend the whole night on it.” I looked at him over the rim of my glass. “I’d really like to just sit here with you for a while. Catch up with an old friend like normal people. I’ve given that man too much of my time and energy as it is.”
He relaxed, his smile returning. He reached across the table and took my hand. His thumb moved slowly over my knuckles, back and forth in that way he used to do when we were sitting on the beach in the middle of the night. We’d had great sex, but it wasn’t always about the sex. Sometimes, we just held hands and that was more intimate than the physical act.
“I’d like nothing more,” he said.
And just like that, the night changed.
The server refilled our glasses and brought the food. We talked. Really talked. Not about business or the port or the mess waiting for us tomorrow. We talked about the summer Cody had tried to teach half the bonfire crowd to line dance on the beachand nearly concussed himself tripping over a cooler. The funny part was Cody didn’t know how to line dance.
“Remember he said Garth Brooks taught him?” Colt asked with a grin. “Everyone thought that since we were from Texas, we must know all the country stars.”
“Oh, I remember you had me convinced you lived next door to Jason Aldean.”
He winked. “I have met him.”
“Remember that night we snuck out and watched the meteor shower?” I asked. Just thinking of the night sent goosebumps over my body.
“You were terrified your father was going to get up to watch it and find you missing,” he said.
I nodded. “He loved watching that stuff. If there was a comet or an eclipse, he had us on the beach to get the best view.”
“Those are good memories,” he said.
“Becca and I try to do that stuff with her kids,” I said. “When I have kids, I want to raise them here and show them all the things my parents showed us.”
And oh my God, I was talking about children with Colt.What the hell!
Colt looked into my eyes. “I think this is a great place to raise a family.”
The words hung in the warm air between us, caught somewhere between a hypothetical and a confession. Heat climbed up my neck. I reached for my wine glass just to have something to do with my hands.
“Right,” I said. “Great place for a family.”
He was still looking at me with those sea-green eyes like he could see every dirty thought I had about him. I wanted to crawl under the table. I had just talked about having children with the man I was desperately trying not to fall back in love with. While sitting on a beach with nothing but candlelight. The mostromantic setting possible. My self-preservation instincts were clearly offline for the night.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was just talking.”
“Don’t apologize,” he said.
“I was rambling.”
“Summer.” He looked at me, making my breath catch. “Stop.”
I took a breath and let it out slowly and looked at the water instead of at him. The other tables had emptied out around us without me noticing. At some point the evening had swallowed us whole and the rest of the world had gone home. We spent so much of our time alone, it felt normal.
I looked back at him. He was still watching me. He wasn’t smiling or laughing. Just looking at me as if he couldn’t believe I was real. It was the look that always made me feel like I was the only other human on the planet.
I cleared my throat. “So.”
