“I don’t need your worry or your care.” Nate closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I really don’t need your approval. So, if you don’t mind, you can leave now.”
The Colonel stared him down, eyes narrowed, jaw clenched. “Nathaniel, I—”
“You can leave now.”
A slow, sly smile pulled at the older man’s face as he made his way across the room to the door, his slightly lame gait more pronounced than Nate remembered.. “Well, son of a bitch, I never thought I’d see the day.”
“What day?” he asked. “The day I really changed?”
The Colonel put his hand on the door and opened it, standing to face the sunshine for a brief moment. “The day you fell in love.”
Maybe they both happened on the same day.
The Colonel stepped outside, and Nate opened his mouth to argue, then shut it again, along with the door. Inside, alone, Nate stood for one second, letting the adrenaline dump through him.
Holy hell, he’d stood up to his grandfather, and won. He’d broken that debilitating need for the Colonel’s approval, and he could breathe. He’d proved to Liza what he’d been trying to tell her: that he really was a better man.
Hadn’t she heard?
He turned, expecting her to come darting out of the hall, eyes bright with pride, arms extended, her heart soaring like his was. Now they would make love. And talk about Dylan and how they would...
But all he heard was silence.
“Liza?” He walked toward the bedroom, his pulse ratcheting up. “Liza, did you hear that?”
He stepped into the room to see the sliding glass doors that led to the back wide open, the sheer curtain fluttering with the beach breeze.
She hadn’t heard enough of it, because she was gone.
* * *
Liza darted across the Casa Blanca parking lot, clutching the too-large sweat pants she’d found draped over a chair in the bedroom. Nate’s shirt was buttoned all wrong, so the right side of the collar kept tapping her in the chin, and stones and shells jabbed her bare feet as she ran toward the sanctuary of her little blue Ford Focus. She shouldered her bag, eternally grateful she’d been in the habit of hanging it in the bedroom closet. Who knew she’d have to make an emergency getaway out the back door one day?
Twenty more feet. Just twenty more feet and—
“Liza!”
She froze, recognizing Nate’s voice even from across the resort property. Fisting her hands with a grunt, she used everything she had not to turn and look and melt and forgive. Because what he’d done was unforgivable.
“Liza, wait!”
She powered on to her car, already digging in her bag for keys.
“Liza, damn it, don’t leave!”
With one hand on the door handle and one grasping the sweats that were threatening to eliminate any possible chance of a dignified escape, she turned toward the sound of his voice. He was running full-out, still bare-chested and wearing jeans and no shoes.
He seemed to move in slow motion, calling her name, holding out his hand, desperation pouring out of him.
“Liza, please wait.” He slowed down when he got close enough to stop yelling, catching his breath from the sprint.
She shook her head and held up one hand. “Don’t, Nate. Don’t come at me with explanations and rationalization. You lied to me. You went behind my back and had that test done. And you called in your biggest artillery to get what you want.” She squared her shoulders and pointed her finger at his face. “You think some rich old Marine and his brood are going to take my child away from me?”
He let out a slow breath, his chest rising and falling. “He’s my child.”
Anger and fear ricocheted through her as she whipped all the way around. “You bastard! You would play that card?”
“I’m not playing anything, and I’m not a bastard.” He tunneled his fingers into his hair, shoving it back. “I had to know.”
“And not share that with me?”
“I had to know,” he repeated, his voice taut. “I was going to tell you the test results.”
“But you decided it made more sense to bring your grandfather in and, in fact, to have him control the test, which really makes me question its validity and...and…why would you do that?” She nearly sobbed out the question, but it didn’t matter. She was hurt and confused and furious and sick at heart. No use trying to hide all that.
“Because my family always comes first. Always came first,” he corrected. “That’s how it is, that’s how we stay together.”
“No, that’s how you all stay under the control of one old man who has fed the monster with billions of dollars.” She huffed out a breath. “What did you do, send him the swab I gave you?”
His only answer was a pained expression. “I thought—”
“I don’t care what you thought!” she fired back. “You could have told me. You could have trusted me. You could have”—not made me care about you—”shown your true colors and been an asshole for the last three weeks.”
“I have trusted you. And I have shown my true colors.” With each word, he came closer, rounding the last car in the lot that separated them. She backed into her car, not wanting the assault of his apologies or kisses or that big bare chest that covered a black heart.
“How long did you stay and listen to that conversation?” he asked.
“When he asked for Dylan, I left. Oh, maybe I heard the part about paying me off.” She choked her sarcasm. “From the king of ‘we never pay anyone to get what we want.’”
“You should have stayed longer. I sent him away.”
“Well, he’ll be back. No doubt with a legion of lawyers and a bottomless checkbook.”
“I made him leave, and I won’t let him use lawyers or dollars or anything to hurt you. I won’t,” he insisted. “Not you and not Dylan. I swear.”
She regarded him for a long time, mesmerized by the pain and sincerity in his eyes. “I’ve seen that look, Nate. That same look in your eyes.”
“What look?”
“The one that says you’re real and you mean this.”
“I am, and I do.” Encouraged, he closed the space between them, inches away now. “When did you see that look?”
She tipped her head. “Back there, in the villa.”
“Because that was real, and I meant what I said.”
“And you were five seconds and two inches from fu—”