Chapter 41
NATE
We said goodbye to her parents early on Saturday morning. They dropped us back off at the quiet airstrip. The jet’s engines were already humming as they warmed up.
“Thanks for coming out, Nate,” Pete said, shaking my hand with the same kind of warmth he’d been showing me since yesterday.
Kate’s mom hugged her twice before letting go, and I couldn’t deny that seeing them obviously having reconciled was a relief. From what I knew about her—as Emma—she’d always had a good relationship with her mother.
Although we hadn’t gone into any identifiable details about our families, she’d often told me about shopping trips with her mom and their brunch rituals. Girly getaways and having their nails done together.
That kind of bond was sacred. Especially to someone like me, who’d lost my mother much too early. Part of me had been afraid that the pressure they’d put her under to marry me had put an irreparable crack in that relationship, but I should’ve known better.
It would take more than that, I supposed.
When they finally broke apart, the morning was still cool and pale, the sky barely awake. Kate took my hand as we boarded, squeezing my fingers tight and turning to wave at them before the door was sealed behind us.
“Are you okay?” I asked as she settled into the seat across from me, tucking one leg underneath herself like she was already at home anywhere I happened to be.
She smiled, and although I could see she was a little sad to be leaving them so soon, she didn’t seem devastated or anything. “Yeah, I’m fine, but for interest’s sake, would it have mattered if I wasn’t?”
“It’s still the weekend,” I said. “We could’ve stayed with them until tomorrow or even Monday morning. If you ever miss them or you’re homesick—”
“I know, Nate,” she said, her voice surprisingly gentle. “Thanks, I’m sure that time will come, and when it does, I’ll tell you if that’s what I need, but I’m actually pretty happy to be leaving.”
“You are?”
She held my gaze for a beat before she shrugged. “It turns out I might like this being in our own little bubble thing we’ve got going on at the moment.”
“I like it too,” I admitted as the jet started taxiing. “Actually, that’s an understatement. I’m kind of fucking loving it.”
She laughed. “I love that you say stuff like that to me now.”
I grinned as we took off, feeling good, lighter than ever and cautiously optimistic that she and I had finally really turned a corner. The deal was done. There would be no more negotiations, nasty surprises, or deadlines hanging over us, tightening like a noose.
Plus, Kate was sitting across from me, staring openly with genuine warmth in her eyes—and not for CB. For me. As Nate.
“What?” I asked finally when she was still staring as we reached cruising altitude.
“You’re smiling,” she said.
“I do that sometimes.”
She rolled her eyes. “Not like this.”
“Maybe I’m just happy.”
She studied me for another second, then smiled too. Her dad’s voice echoed faintly in my head as I looked back at her, the women in this family tend to err on the side of dramatics.
I liked that, though. Or rather, I liked her dramatics, that fiery spark that had drawn me to her before I’d even known who she was. I grinned, deliberately coy as I leaned forward. “I have something to show you. Something I think you’ll like.”
She gave my crotch a very pointed glance, a smirk curving on those full lips. “Well, I do like it, but you don’t have to show it to me right now.”
I chuckled. “It’s not that.”
“Oh. Damn.” She winked at me before narrowing her eyes. “If it’s not that and you’re actually serious about it, then what is it?”
“Something you’ll like.”
“That sounds suspicious.”
“It’s not.”
“That’s exactly what someone suspicious would say.”
I smiled. “It’s a surprise.”
She pursed her lips, one of her eyebrows slowly arching. “Do you have another secret girlfriend?”
“No.” I scoffed. “One secret internet persona per marriage is enough. This is a much better secret than that.”
“Is it a yacht?”
“Nope.” I hooked my ankle over my knee, enjoying having her all to myself again. “I do have one of those, but that’s not it.”
She sighed dramatically, slumping into her seat. “Well, that’s disappointing.”
The smile she tried to hide told me she was still pretty excited anyway. I chuckled. “I could’ve sworn you told me once that you loved surprises.”
“I do, but I feel like we’ve had enough of those recently to last us at least the next decade.”
I rocked my head from one side to the other, considering. “You’re not wrong, but this is a good surprise. It doesn’t come with another ring or any expectations at all, really.”
“You mean you’re not taking me to adopt a child we’ve been told we had to produce overnight?”
“Nope, but we should probably talk about that.”
“Adopting a child when we get back to Chicago?”
I exhaled deeply through my nose. “Well, I mean, not as soon as we land, but is that something you’d ever be interested in?”
“Yes.”
“You sound very sure about this,” I said. “You didn’t even have to think about it.”
“That’s because I already have. Many times.
” She looked back at me, chewing the inside of her cheek for a moment before she sighed.
“I had a lot of long, lonely nights to fill, Nate. My friends, coworkers, and it felt like just about every stranger I bumped into on the street were getting married and having babies.”
“Meanwhile, you were texting me.”
She lapsed into a beat of silence before she sighed. “Whenever we talked about running away together, which, if you really think about it, we did freakishly often for two workaholics, but yeah. Whenever we talked about it, I wondered after what our lives might be like once we got there.”
“Yeah, I might’ve had a few of those thoughts myself.”
“Well, mine were probably dirtier than yours.” She smirked.
“But I kind of figured after a few months of that, we’d eventually settle in and maybe, a couple years later, start a family.
Part of that thought process was wondering what that our family would look like. That’s why I could answer so fast.”
“First, your thoughts were definitely not dirtier than mine. I guarantee it.” My cock tried to join the chat then, but I ignored it. This was too important. “Second, I’ve also put a fair amount of thought into it and I would like to have a family one day. No pressure, though.”
“No pressure. Okay. I feel the same way. We’ll get there when we get there?”
“Yep.”
She smiled, then started talking to me about other things. Work. Funny stories about her friends back in New York. At one point, she stretched her legs out and nudged my foot with hers.
“Are you going to start training for the New York marathon with me when we get back?”
“Sure,” I said. “I actually didn’t know you were training for that.”
She grinned. “Well, not all of us insist on parading our sweaty, half-naked bodies around for our neighbors to ogle after a run.”
I laughed. “Fair enough, but I wasn’t doing it on purpose. I do like that you’re finally admitting you were ogling me, though.”
“Who wouldn’t?” she asked innocently, batting her eyelashes before explaining her training schedule to me.
When we finally landed, she glanced out the window and frowned. “This isn’t Chicago.”
“No, it’s not.”
She looked back at me, whiskey-hued eyes widening. “Nate, where are we?”
“Trust me.”
She sighed. “Historically, that phrase has gone very poorly for me.”
“Just come on.”
A car was already waiting for us when we deplaned. A driver collected our things and loaded them in the drunk while we got comfortable in the back. The privacy shield was up, so we were essentially alone as the car took off.
Kate kept looking out the window on the way, trying to piece together where we were from trees, stretches of road, and the occasional glimpse of water in the distance. Eventually, she turned back to me.
“Are we being kidnapped?” she asked.
“No, when you’re an adult, it’s called being abducted. And yes.”
“Okay, good. Just checking.”
I chuckled just as the roads started narrowing gradually, civilization thinning out into long stretches of forest and open land.
By the time we turned onto the private road, she’d gone completely silent.
Tall trees lined both sides, thick, green, endless canopies overhead.
The property was remote enough to guarantee the kind of privacy you couldn’t buy unless you bought a lot of land.
The house came into view slowly as we crested a gentle rise. It was big but not ostentatious. All wood and stone and wide windows. It sat tucked into the land instead of towering over it, surrounded by trees that had probably been there longer than any structure ever would be.
Kate stared at it as the car rolled to a stop. “Nate? I feel like now would be a good time to start explaining.”
“For real?” I smiled a little. “What, you don’t like it?”
“I don’t even know what it is yet, so, uh, what is this?”
“My place,” I said.
She looked back at the house, then at the trees, and finally, at the open land stretching out in every direction. “This is your place?”
“Yeah.”
We climbed out of the car. Gravel crunched under our feet and the wind sighed through the trees. The driver quickly moved our things from the trunk to the wide front porch, then nodded at me.
“Mr. Westwood, it’s been a pleasure. As always.” He tipped his cap at Kate. “Mrs. Westwood.”
She blinked rapidly but then visibly shook it off. “Okay, we’ll circle back round to how weird it is to be called that, but for now, do you care to tell me where we actually are?”
“Near the Canadian border,” I said. “It’s a huge property, so we’ve got lots of privacy here. Our little bubble. That’s what you wanted, right?”
She turned slowly, taking it all in. “It’s beautiful.”