Chapter 14
Chapter fourteen
Nat
Nathaniel Alder liked a lot of things: children, bread and butter, a cozy drink on a cold day. But kissing Thea Greene was the thing he liked most of all. And sitting here on the floor of the café that she had built in his building, holding her in his arms, was quickly becoming his new favorite.
“Nat…” she whispered, pulling away from him, turning her head to the side so that he couldn’t kiss her again. “We do have to talk about this.”
“What’s there to talk about?” he asked, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “I love you, and you love me, and we finally have each other again after all these years. I don’t see anything to talk about.”
Thea let out a slight giggle as he began pressing his nose against the spot on her neck where she was ticklish. Apparently, that hadn’t changed, and he loved it.
“Stop,” she said, batting him away. “I’m serious.”
“And I’m not.”
“I know you’re not,” she said with a groan, “but we do need to talk.”
“Or I could kiss you again,” he said, putting his finger under her chin and turning her face toward his with a smirk.
“Nathaniel Alder,” she said with a sigh of exasperation, “we need to talk before you turn into a cat again.”
Nat sighed and slumped against the counter. Of course she had to be logical. “Well, when you put it that way.”
“What are we going to do about you becoming a cat? Aside from talking to Guinevere, is there anything we can do? How did it even happen in the first place?” she asked.
He hadn’t wanted to tell her, since he didn’t want to scare her, but he wouldn’t withhold the truth from her now that she’d asked.
“There was a sorcerer coming into your café,” he said. “I didn’t like the looks of him, so I stopped him. And when I did, he cursed me—turned me into a cat.”
Thea grew pensive. “Until I watched you turn into a cat in front of my own eyes, I’d never really considered that magic was real.”
“My mom told me stories when I was growing up,” Nathaniel said, “stories about dragons and talking animals. And I suppose a part of me always thought those stories came from somewhere, but I also never thought that magic still existed—until I turned into a cat.” He grimaced. “And now I don’t know how to fix it.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Thea said, reaching for his hand and lacing her fingers through his. “We have the rest of our lives to figure it out.”
“I don’t want to take the rest of our lives to figure it out,” he whined.
Thea laughed. “I don’t, either. But we don’t have to figure it out tonight. We can work on it tomorrow.”
Oh. Speaking of tomorrow…. “We were invited to dinner tomorrow.”
Thea looked up at him, the question in her eyes.
“Roan wants us to have dinner with him and Abigail at the Lucky Goat tomorrow.”
Thea didn’t respond, just looked at him steadily.
“I think he wants to apologize more, and I think Abigail wants to get to know us better.”
“And they want me?” she asked.
He nodded. “He invited both of us.”
Thea pulled away from him, chewing on her lip, and reached for the broom. “We have to clean.”
She needed to think about it. That was fine. “We can talk while we work,” Nat said, pushing himself off the counter and taking the broom from her, beginning to sweep up around the café.
They quickly fell into the same rhythms from all those years ago.
“If only we didn’t have to clean up,” Thea said with a sigh.
“I’ll take cleaning up,” Nat said, “if it means I get to be here with you.”
Thea smiled as she passed him with an armful of dirty dishes.
“Yes, but will you still like it when it’s time to wash dishes?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
Nathaniel grimaced, his nose wrinkling in distaste. He didn’t enjoy washing dishes. If only he could blame his distaste for it on being a cat—but that had long been something he just disliked.
“If only your mother was here to do this for us,” he teased, but then his smile faded. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Thea shook her head. “I have to remember the good times. If I forget all of them, what will their legacy be? It has to live on in me, and if that means remembering both the good times and the sad, then I will continue to remember them.”
“She always was best among us at washing dishes,” Nat said, watching Thea as he swept.
“Yes, she was,” Thea agreed fondly. “She knew the rest of us hated it.”
“I think she just liked being able to flick water at your father.” Nat grinned. His memories of the burly Mr. Greene dodging water droplets flying his way from his wife’s fingertips was something he would never forget.
“She did enjoy that,” Thea said, laughing as she reached into the bowl of water and flicked water toward Nathaniel.
Fortunately, he was too far away for it to reach him. “You are just as much trouble as your mother was,” he said.
“I did get it from somewhere,” Thea said archly. “And I certainly didn’t get it from my father.”
“It’s a good thing I didn’t get much from my father, either,” Nathaniel muttered as he walked past her, his conversation with Roan at the river coming back to mind.
He’d known that his father was not the best of men, but hearing Roan admit that he had purposely kept him as far away from Nat and their mother as he could had been a startling revelation.
Thea paused, turning to look at him. Her gaze pierced right through him as she asked, her voice soft, “What does that mean?”
Because of course, she could hear the tension underneath his words.
“Roan found me at the river today,” Nat said as he walked back to the kitchen to put the broom away.
“He said that he bore the brunt of my father’s fits to protect me and Mother.
I remember some things…moments when he was home that I wish I could forget.
And I can see why it would make Roan the person he became—to have spent all his time in our father’s company. ”
“Abigail seems like she’s a good influence on him,” Thea said, still looking at him with those eyes that saw too much.
“I hope she is,” Nat admitted, grabbing a towel and slinging it over his shoulder as he made his way to stand next to Thea, ready to start helping with the dishes.
Ready to change the subject. “I hope she’ll influence him for the better.
I know firsthand how much a woman can change you,” he teased, flicking the towel at Thea.
“I haven’t changed you that much,” Thea protested.
“You turned me from a flirt who couldn’t stop talking to any woman I met to a man who only has eyes for you. I think that counts as being changed.”
Thea smiled in the way she did when a compliment truly made her happy.
He wished he could bottle up this moment and save it forever.
There was nothing in the world better than making Thea smile.
“You changed me, too,” she admitted. “I started actually looking on the bright side, occasionally. And we can’t forget the fact that I...I have been known to be more chipper now than when we first met.”
“You? Chipper?” he asked with a gasp as he took a wet bowl from her hands and began to dry it.
“Don’t make me say it again,” Thea said, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “I don’t like it, either.”
Nathaniel bumped her hip with his. “Chipper isn’t bad, you know.”
“Says you,” she muttered, flicking water at him once again.
“You better not do that again,” he warned, putting the towel down.
“Oh, really?” she asked, her eyes lighting up at the challenge. “What are you going to do about it?”
He responded by wrapping an arm around her waist, pulling her into him.
“I’ll just have to distract you from washing dishes,” he said, leaning down so that his lips were only a breath away from hers.
“Oh, really?” Thea asked, her voice high.
Nathaniel answered by closing the distance between them, his lips pressing into hers gently as her wet hands wrapped around his neck. Nathaniel did his best to ignore the cold water dripping down his back to focus on the woman in his arms.
Kissing her was worth the discomfort.
But then she pulled away, smirking at him.
“You shouldn’t distract me when I’m washing dishes,” she said, “or I’m likely to leave you alone with the job.”
Nathaniel took a step back, shaking his head, then picked up his towel again.
“Are you willing to go to dinner with me tomorrow?” he asked. “At the tavern?”
Thea took a deep breath and let it out, her eyes firmly fixed on the plates in her hand.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Even if I’ve forgiven him for withholding our letters, I don’t know that I’m ready to have dinner with him. But I would like to get to know him, for your sake, so I think it’ll be best to push through the discomfort and join you.”
“I think it will go a long way toward mending our relationship,” Nat admitted, “and I’m hopeful that having Abigail there will put him on his best behavior.”
“He seems entirely smitten with her,” Thea said, the corner of her mouth turning up. “I remember what the early days felt like, and I’m glad that your brother will get to experience that, too.”
“I’m excited to get to torture him relentlessly,” Nat said, grinning, “the way he did for many of my first—”
He broke off, glancing at Thea out of the corner of his eye. She had simply raised her eyebrow at him, as if to ask if he was really going to bring up other girls in front of her.
“I—I mean,” he said hastily, “I can’t wait to tease him about being head over heels for someone.”
Thea’s lips twitched as if she was hiding a smile or a laugh, but she only nodded her head and continued washing dishes.
They finished the rest of the day’s work in comfortable silence, stealing kisses nearly every time they passed each other.
This was everything Nathaniel had missed for ten years, and he could hardly believe that this was really happening. Surely this much happiness couldn’t really be his.
But all too soon, the work was done, and Nathaniel looked outside to see that it was quickly growing dark.
“I should go,” he said reluctantly. “I think I’ll go home to sleep tonight and see if Roan is there. If he is, perhaps we can talk more before dinner tomorrow. Or at least, maybe we can have a conversation without hating each other.”
“I’m so glad that you and your brother are working to put your differences aside,” she said gently, slipping her hand into his and squeezing it. “You know how much I’ve always wished that for you.”
“Because despite how much you like to pretend you’re a grumpy bear with no heart, you do, in fact, have one.” Nathaniel kissed the tip of her nose. “Good night, darling.”
“Good night,” she said with a smile, standing up on her tiptoes and wrapping her arms around his neck to give him a goodnight kiss that was well worth remembering.
“I will see you tomorrow at some point,” he said when she finally pulled away. “If I don’t see you before, then I’ll see you at dinner.”
“I’ll see you at dinner,” she promised.
“Good night,” Nat said, brushing an errant curl out of her face and tucking it behind her ear. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she added, leaning forward for one more kiss. “Now, get out of here so I can lock the door before we get distracted again.”
“But getting distracted is so much more fun,” he said with a grin.
“Yes, it is,” she said, laughing a little as she ushered him toward the door. “But I need to sleep.”
Ginger was waiting by the door, and he reached down to pet her under the chin before he left. Ginger stretched out her neck for better scratches.
Nathaniel laughed. “I know, that feels good, doesn’t it?” he asked.
Then he looked at Thea, who was watching the two of them, amused.
“It does,” he said defensively.
“I’m sure it does,” she said, putting her hand on his shoulder and giving him the tiniest shove toward the door. “Go—before we get distracted again.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, putting one hand on the doorframe and reaching out to snag her waist with the other, pulling her closer.
“Nathaniel,” she said with a sigh—but she didn’t stop him as he kissed her once more.
“I have ten years of kisses to make up for,” he said, growing serious for a moment.
“If it’s too much, tell me. I don’t want to be too much for you.
I don’t want to ruin this because I’m jumping all in before you’re ready for it.
I’ve been waiting for this for ten years, but if you aren’t ready, I need to know. ”
“I will tell you if it becomes too much,” Thea said, putting her hands on his chest and looking up at him. “I don’t want anything to come between us again. You and I are worth fighting for.”
“Yes, we are,” he agreed, dipping his head to steal one more kiss. “Now I really am going to leave. Good night, Thea.”
“Good night,” she said, smiling up at him in a way that made him even less prepared to leave her.
So he bolted out the door, knowing if he didn’t leave, he wouldn’t.
He paused after a few steps, looking back toward the café, and was rewarded with the sight of Thea holding Ginger in her arms, watching him leave with a smile on her face. He raised his hand in a wave, and she waved back, then drew the curtains shut.
Nathaniel laughed to himself.
They had both grown and changed…but some things were still the same.