6. Madison
Through the open curtains, I watched Nate trudge back toward my cabin. He hadn’t bothered to pull on his coat and he walked with his head down against the whipping snow. I moved quickly to open the door for him because his hands were full. He was holding a large pot and smiled happily at me.
“It’s really coming down now.”
I desperately wanted to brush the snow from his hair and shoulders but I had a feeling that touching Nate Sullivan wasn’t something I’d recover from for a long time. “What’s that?” I asked instead, nodding toward the cookware.
“Famous Sullivan recipe.” He kicked off the wet boots that he hadn’t bothered tying and headed straight toward the kitchen. “My brother, Evan, takes a lot of pride in this stew. He always makes a huge batch and pities me with leftovers.” Nate placed the pot on the stovetop and looked at me with distress. “Shit. I should’ve asked if you eat meat or have any allergies or anything.”
“No allergies except for seasonal. Damn pollen. And I’m a carnivore.”
“Whew.” He flipped the knob until the burner sparked and then adjusted it to a medium setting. “It will take a little while for this to heat up.”
“Here.” I held out one of the drinks. “This should warm you up.”
Nate brushed a hand over his head, melting the flakes into his hair. The tips of his ears were as red as his cheeks. “Thanks.”
“So… you have a brother who makes stew and a sister who runs a bookstore. Any other Sullivan siblings I should know about?” It felt a little unfair to pry into his personal life when I’d been so adamant about avoiding discussing my own.
“Too many.” He shook his head at the thought. “I’m one of six biological kids. The oldest is Evan, the sponsor of our dinner. Next is my brother Brent. He works in politics and doesn’t make it back to Crestwood often. Then there’s Chase. He manages the guest ranch. I’m number four on the list. Harper is two years younger than me and then two years after her came the youngest sibling, Noah. Brent and Evan had a good friend growing up who became an orphan after a tragedy involving his parents. My mom and dad became Ronan’s legal guardian when he was fourteen and he became the seventh Sullivan kid.”
“Wow. That’s a lot of siblings.” I couldn’t imagine growing up in a family that large. “I just have one little sister and she’s eight years younger than me, so I didn’t exactly grow up with her. I was an only child for a lot of my childhood.”
“Sounds lonely.” Nate gestured for me to follow him into the living room where we were able to settle in more comfortably on the sofa. “Where did you grow up?”
It was a simple enough question, but I still hesitated before settling on telling the truth. “Alabama. A small town in the northern part, about thirty minutes away from Tennessee.”
“A southern girl?” Nate raised a skeptical eyebrow. “No offense, but your southern accent absolutely sucks.”
“Thanks.” I laughed and sipped my bourbon. “I had it schooled right out of me at my first acting job.” Those words just slipped out. Not a single one of them had been planned.
“When was that?” He didn’t sound at all surprised by my confession.
“I was ten. It was a cereal commercial.” I could still remember how excited I had been that day. “My mom put me into beauty pageants and stuff from the time I was a toddler. Then I got a couple of local modeling gigs and eventually an agent. Then the small acting roles.”
“You’ve been working since you were in diapers.” Nate’s eyebrows drew together. “That’s not much of a childhood.”
“I didn’t say it was.” I waited for the inevitable follow-up questions, but he stayed quiet. “Don’t you want to know why I gave up acting?”
A tiny smirk turned up his lips. “Madison, I know who you are. I’ve known since the moment you nearly scalded me with your coffee.” He reached over and flicked my hair over my shoulder. “You might have changed your look, but I’m not easily fooled, Madi Lee.”
“You knew? How?” I had never expected a man in his thirties to be the first person in Crestwood to recognize me.
“I have a niece. She’s twelve and absolutely obsessed with you. I’m starting to see why.” His eyes traveled down my neck again and I shivered when I remembered that I’d forgotten to pull on something over my skimpy top. The fire was blazing so warmly that I no longer felt the cold, but the tingle of Nate’s lustful stare was intense.
After the initial embarrassment, I decided to let him stare. Maybe I was enjoying the male attention or, more likely, I was enjoying his attention. “You haven’t told anyone, have you?”
“No offense, angel, but no one in my social circle would care. The only person who would care is my niece and I don’t tend to gossip with her about my neighbors.”
“Okay. Good.” I took another sip of bourbon and savored the slight buzz that was settling over me. “Are you annoyed that I wasn’t upfront about my past?”
“It’s not like I asked if you were a global superstar and you said no. You just didn’t talk about your past. That’s fine. I didn’t tell you the sordid details about mine either.” His gaze left my body and focused on his drink and his jaw clenched.
“Are you also a global superstar?” I teased.
“I’m not talented nor pretty enough for that.” He finished his drink in one big swallow and stood. “I’m going to check on the stew and get a refill. You want another?”
I nodded and handed him my glass. The sudden shift in his demeanor was a bit blindsiding. He’d gone from being surprisingly relaxed when discussing my history to putting up a wall at the mention of his own. It was beginning to occur to me that Nate might not be the easy-going, helpful guy I had initially thought him to be. It was clear he had a darker, more complex side.
“It’s looking good, but we should let it simmer for a while. It helps bring out the flavors.” Nate handed me a glass with twice the amount of bourbon that I’d been pouring. He noticed me noticing that. “My recent bartending job has given me a heavy pour. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’ll just drink slowly. I’m sure you don’t want to spend your night off taking care of a drunk girl.” Not to mention I didn’t trust drunk Madison not to say something horribly mortifying. I was embarrassing enough when I was sober.
“You can’t possibly be as bad as my sister. I swear that girl has two beers and she can’t stay on her feet.” This time when Nate took his seat on the other end of the sofa, I took a moment to appreciate the sight of him, long legs spread before him and the glass looking too small in his large hand. The scruff on his jaw hadn’t been there just a few hours ago and it made him look impossibly sexy. He was a magnificent specimen of maleness.
“Are you single?” I asked bluntly.
“Uh, yeah.” He chuckled nervously. “That obvious?”
“No, I just figured you wouldn’t be spending an evening with a random woman if you were in a relationship.” Then a logical thought occurred to me. I’d just assumed that the looks he’d been giving me implied a preference for women, but maybe I’d misunderstood. “Unless you, um, date men. They probably wouldn’t be threatened by me.”
“My life would be so much easier.” Nate wasn’t at all offended that I was addressing his sexuality. “I understand men. Women… not even a little bit. Hence still being single.”
“Right. Makes sense.” What was I saying? That it made sense that Nate was single? Because that made absolutely no sense. Nate was a nice guy who fixed things in his sister’s bookstore and fixed random women’s cars and made them dinner. He was unbelievably attractive and didn’t seem to know it. Nothing about a man like that being single made sense. “Since you understand men so well, maybe you can explain them to me.”
Nate’s feet shifted wider until the one closest to me was almost invading my space. It was a smaller sofa, but he was also a large man. “You don’t expect me to believe that you have trouble with men,” he scoffed. “A couple of weeks ago, Emma was telling me all about your breakup with some musician.”
“Mason?” I shook my head and laughed. “That wasn’t a real breakup. It wasn’t even a real relationship.”
“What? Then what was it and why was my niece so invested in it?” At 32, Nate had perfected his grumpy old man look.
“It was a PR relationship. We have the same agent and it was good for our brands.” I had been reluctant about the whole thing, but my agent had talked me into it.
Mason West was famous for being a good singer and a serial dater. He hooked up with a new semi-famous woman almost every week. That reputation had started to lose him some of his younger female fans. That demographic happened to love me, so our agent had set it up. I still wasn’t entirely sure what had been the benefit for me except that interviewers stopped asking me who I was dating as their first question. That alone was probably worth it since I hated answering that question.
“How does that work? You just lie and tell people you’re dating?”
“It’s more subtle than that. Our agent set up a public outing for us and then made sure the paparazzi would be there. Mason and I held hands on our way into the restaurant. He paid for the meal. Opened a car door when we were leaving and planted a kiss on me inside the car. Photos circulated and… boom. We were a couple.”
Nate grimaced. “That sounds so…”
“Transactional?” I nodded. “It felt that way the first time, but I’m used to it now. It’s just part of the job. Almost like an acting role. I just act like I’m the current guy’s girlfriend.”
“How far do you have to take it? You don’t sleep with them, do you?”
“That’s personal.” I narrowed my eyes. “Why shouldn’t I if I want to? Do you have a problem with casual sex?”
“No, but that’s not what we’re talking about. It would be more like… well, I don’t know. It just seems weird to me.” He frowned deeply as he stared into his drink again. “You deserve better than some boring sex with a fake boyfriend.”
“Who said the sex was boring?”
“I’ve seen that Mason guy. He looks like a human-shaped loafer. There’s no way he knows how to make a woman come.” When Nate looked at me, there was a dark anger in his gaze. “Am I wrong?”
“I wouldn’t know. I never slept with him.”
Nate nodded slowly. “Good. So, how many fake relationships have you had?”
“About five I think. I stopped counting.”
“And real relationships?”
I shrugged. “None.”
“None?” He quirked an eyebrow. “How is that possible?”
“What’s so hard to believe?”
He waved a hand at me. “I mean, look at you. You’re fucking gorgeous. There’s no way you aren’t turning down offers from men every damn day.”
“You think I’m pretty?” I joked, blushing fiercely from the compliment.
“Oh please. You know you’re hot, Madison.” He rolled his eyes. “If you weren’t so far out of my league, I’d have already tried to get you into that bed down the hall.”
“Did you sneak a couple of extra drinks?” I asked suspiciously.
“Maybe.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Honestly, you make me nervous, Madison.”
“I make you nervous?” I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Why? Because I’m always saying or doing something embarrassing?”
“No, because you’re… fascinating.” Those stormy gray eyes pierced straight into my heart. “I’ve met a lot of different women in my life, but I’ve never met one quite like you.”
“You barely even know me. I assure you, I’m nothing special.” Everyone around me had been telling me that my whole life, so it must be true.
Nate’s long fingers tapped against his glass. “Maggie told me that when she sent you the rental agreement for this place, you counter-offered a higher fee because you knew she was undercharging you.”
“She wouldn’t have made anything charging me that initial amount. It would barely have covered her expenses.” I had balked when Kaylie had sent me that agreement to sign.
“You’re right. Maggie has no idea how to be a property manager.” He took a slow sip of his drink. “All those books you bought at Harper’s store… You aren’t going to read all of them in the few weeks you are here, but you wanted to support a small business.”
“Maybe I am a voracious reader,” I protested.
“If you’d planned an intense reading vacation, I’d wager that you would’ve brought books with you. You didn’t. You bought them here and likely paid more for them than you would have if you’d bought them online.”
I had no idea just how closely he’d been paying attention to me.
“You left me a $20 tip for one drink at the bar.” He smirked. “My drinks aren’t that good, Madison.”
“That was for the company.” I wasn’t enjoying this game. “Look, Nate, I make a lot of money. A lot. I don’t need to be stingy or worry about having enough money to cover my electric bill. But I know that isn’t true for other people, so I try to be generous. It’s not a big deal.”
“No, it’s not,” he agreed. “It’s everything, Madison. Being kind to people. Thinking of others. Recognizing that you are fortunate and that others might be less fortunate. Not everyone in your position would think about that.”
“People in my position have a lot of people going out of their way to make sure they don’t have to think about those things. That wasn’t always my life. I grew up poor. I had days that I went hungry and weeks where our house didn’t have electricity.” I hadn’t planned to tell Nate any of these things, but the words just kept flying out of my mouth. “That’s not something you just forget about when you suddenly have ridiculous wealth. I know how much a $20 tip could mean to someone.”
He leaned back in his seat and his gaze drifted toward the fireplace. “You know, Emma is probably your biggest fan. She went to your concert in Denver a couple of months ago and pretty much hasn’t stopped talking about it since. I made the mistake of asking her one time why she was so obsessed with you and she spent the next hour telling me every detail she knew about you. She never mentioned your childhood.”
“That’s because I never talk about it.”
“You just did.” There was nothing smug in his tone and the look he gave me was one of curiosity. “Why did you decide to tell me?”
“Because you make me nervous, too.” I held up my glass. “I chugged one of these while you were grabbing the stew from your place.”
“I don’t want you to feel nervous around me.” His eyes narrowed and his lips tipped down. “Why do I make you feel that way?”
What was the polite way to tell someone that you spent a good portion of your day and night picturing them naked and inside you? “I don’t get out much,” I said lamely. “Or, I do, but not around normal people. Since I was about fourteen, I’ve really only been around other people in the entertainment business. Actors, agents, makeup artists, managers, directors… Every part of my life has been about work. I don’t know how to talk to men like you, or men in general really.”
“You do alright.” The smile he gave me was breathtaking. It was the first time he’d smiled like that in my presence and I wondered if he had any idea the effect it had on people.
“That’s a real smile,” I whispered.
His eyebrows shot up. “What?”
“You smile all the time, but it always looks force. Or, pained? It looks like you’re doing your best imitation of a genuine smile.” I ducked my head shyly, embarrassed to admit that I’d been watching him so closely. “That smile you just gave me was real and it was perfect.”
His lips parted and then clamped back together. He kept staring at me like he was trying to figure me out or mentally dissect me.
“Sorry. That was probably a weird thing to say.” I tucked my hair behind my ear and pretended to be fascinated by the glass in my hands.
“It wasn’t weird. It was alarmingly accurate.” His hard exhale had me looking at him from the corner of my eye. “I think I’m still adjusting to the normal world, too.”
“Maybe we could help each other,” I suggested. “You can teach me how to interact in social situations and talk to men without sounding like an idiot. In return, I’ll find as many ways as I can to get you to smile.”
“It sounds like we would have to spend more time together. Maybe even venture into public together. Are you sure you want to commit to that?” he asked doubtfully.
I didn’t have to think about my answer. “Yes, I’m sure. It will be good for me to step out of my comfort zone.” I almost sounded like I believed that. “Unless you don’t want to be seen with me. I would understand if that’s the case.”
“You would – ” He gaped at me. “What?”
“I know that I’m probably not your ideal companion. You already said you think I’m too young and na?ve. Our lives are so different that we likely don’t have much in common. Plus, I’m sure you don’t usually hang around women for fun unless you’re, you know, sleeping with them.”
“Madison, stop talking.” He shook his head and scoffed. “Is that what you think of me? That I only want one thing from women?”
“Well, I mean, that’s typically been my experience with men. Though, I suppose those men may not be the best representatives of the entire male populace, especially considering they are a minuscule sample of a much larger population.”
Nate groaned. “Shit, I don’t have a choice. It’s obvious you desperately need my help. You talk like a nerdy professor when you get flustered.”
“You make me sound pathetic.” I couldn’t even be insulted because his assessment of me wasn’t wrong. “Unless… you have a thing for nerdy professors? Should I threaten to fail you if you don’t succumb to my demands?”
That smile was back, setting my heart aflutter and stealing my breath. “I couldn’t say no to you even if I wanted to, angel.”