Nash’s fork clattered onto his plate. His mouth dropped open.
Harlow had a child? When? With who?
He blinked a couple of times to clear away the shock.
It didn’t leave.
Harlow. Davis. Mother and son.
Harlow, his buddy and friend, had a child and he hadn’t known about it.
A weed of suspicion sprouted. He uprooted it, tossed it aside like so much crabgrass.
He’d telephoned Harlow to be certain she wasn’t pregnant. Twice. She’d claimed no aftereffects of that one night they’d both regretted. Afterward, Sterling, his agent, had followed up and concurred. Harlow wasn’t pregnant.
According to his agent, she’d even been dating another guy.
The last thought hit him between the eyes.
She’d been dating someone else.
Had the jerk run out on her and left her son without a dad?
He latched on to the thought but didn’t ask Harlow for clarification. None of his business.
Still, he wondered. And he was more than a little angry that some guy had mistreated Harlow.
The worrisome suspicion snuck back in.
He hoped it wasn’t him.
No, it couldn’t be.
Harlow would have told him. He was sure of it. They were best friends. They talked about everything.
Or once had.
He’d let that friendship fade, an action he regretted now that he’d seen her again and been the recipient of her company and nursing care every day for the past week.
He hadn’t known he missed her, but he had.
He liked Harlow Matheson. She was real and totally unimpressed with his success.
In fact, during those few days of his illness, Harlow had been as stiff as concrete. He figured she hadn’t quite forgiven him for ghosting her, as she called his four-year silence. He understood, didn’t hold it against her, though he did regret being the cause of her coldness.
Gradually, as they spent time together, Harlow had loosened up. He’d had to work at it, teasing her and making light conversation even when he hadn’t really felt well enough to keep his eyes open. But he’d wanted to see her smile, hear her laugh. He’d needed her to be his buddy again.
Sometimes she’d catch herself and stop laughing as though ashamed of having a good time in his presence, but each day she became more like the girl he remembered.
Only this girl had matured into an attractive woman.
Very attractive.
He blinked away a thought that had pressed at him all morning. Yes, he’d jogged over to retrieve his horse. But more than that, he’d wanted to see Harlow.
She looked country girl good. Wholesome. Pretty. Real.
There wasn’t a fake thing about Harlow Matheson.
There he went again. Woolgathering about his nurse and neighbor.
Must be a remnant of the fever. Had he suffered brain damage?
He cleared his throat. “Davis seems like a sweet kid.”
“He is. The best thing in my life.”
“Good. I’m glad.” There it was again, that urge to ask about the boy’s father.
Part of him wanted to know. Another part didn’t.
If he was a father, he owed Harlow more than he could ever repay. Now that his money was gone, he couldn’t even help her with finances.
But if some other man was the father, wouldn’t it be insulting to Harlow for him to ask?
Hadn’t she all but admitted the other guy was Davis’s dad?
While he wrestled with the options, Harlow rose from the table and went to the cabinet above the sink in the long eat-in kitchen.
“Would you like a glass of milk or something easier on the stomach?” she asked.
He’d barely touched the strong coffee.
“Milk sounds good. I don’t have any at the house.” She knew that. She’d brought the groceries, another favor he owed her for.
She poured the milk and returned the carton to the fridge, her back to him.
“In case you’re wondering, Davis’s father and I were only together for a short time. Things didn’t work out. We broke up. He left us. No regrets, though. He may not have wanted me or a family, but he gave me Davis.”
Nash didn’t know whether to be relieved or furious. He hadn’t been the one to break her heart, to leave her with a child to raise alone. But someone definitely had.
Harlow’s heart pounded with such force, she wondered if Nash could hear it. As she placed the milk glass in front of him, her hands trembled the slightest bit. Afraid he’d notice, she quickly reclaimed her chair and twisted her fingers together in her lap.
She couldn’t believe she was having a civil conversation in her own kitchen with Nash about their son. The son he didn’t know about.
She hadn’t lied. Everything she’d told him about Davis’s father was true. She and Nash had been together a very short time. He’d never wanted her or a family. He’d wanted success and he’d gotten it. And he’d left. All true.
If Nash guessed anything in her statements was amiss, he didn’t question them.
“So, you’re doing okay? You and your son?”
“We’re more than okay. Mathesons survive and thrive no matter what life hits us with.”
“Good. Good. I’m glad. I’m sorry about the guy, that he hurt you.”
You should be, you jerk. “As I said, Davis is happy and healthy and I’m fine. That’s all that matters now.”
Nash picked up the milk glass, stared at the white liquid but didn’t drink. “Gus wasn’t using a cane when I left for the NFL. What’s wrong? Are his knees giving him trouble?”
Poppy’s knees. Safe ground. She stopped strangling her fingers, forced her shoulders to relax.
“They’re worn out, and it infuriates him. Even at eighty he thinks he should be able to do everything he did at forty.”
Absently running his thumb back and forth on the moist glass, Nash frowned. “Does he need surgery?”
Harlow forced an easiness she didn’t feel into her tone and offered a mental prayer of thanks that the subject had moved to something other than Davis.
“Yes, but he refuses.” She drawled the next words in imitation of her grandpa. “No one’s cuttin’ on him. If the good Lord don’t fix him, he’ll stay broke.”
She didn’t mention the fact that Poppy couldn’t afford the medical bills and refused to shackle the family with additional debt.
Nash chuckled softly, a warm, friendly, affectionate sound. It seemed out of place on a man who’d ignored her for so long.
“That sounds like Gus. What about Monroe? She was in the navy when I left. Was she wounded?”
“She mustered out after a fire aboard ship.” Thinking about the heartache and suffering her sister had endured made her own problems seem small. “She’s been through a lot in the last couple of years. Please don’t mention the scars to her. She’s very self-conscious about them.”
“I wouldn’t.”
He wouldn’t have in the past. That he was still the same thoughtful guy messed with her head. How could he show compassion about Monroe’s scars, and yet care so little about the disaster he’d caused? Was he too embarrassed to bring it up? Too ashamed?
Yet, he was rich. She’d heard about his multimillion-dollar contract last year. Everyone in Sundown Valley had talked about it for days. If he really cared and if he had a conscience, he could repay them every penny they’d lost.
While her brain stuck on the financial loss like Poppy’s old-time records that played the same song over and over driving everyone to distraction, Nash went right on being too friendly.
“Is the leg injury military related too?” He placed the milk on the table, his enormous fingers covering half the glass.
She couldn’t help but stare at his hands, hands she’d always admired. They were beautiful in a manly kind of way, the tops smoothly tan and threaded with thick veins and sinew. A narrow, nearly invisible scar ran between the thumb and index finger, courtesy of a hay hook years ago, adding to his rugged appeal.
She’d heard football commentators call them soft hands because of his uncanny ability to vacuum a torpedoing football out of the air, but there was nothing else remotely soft about Nash Corbin.
He’d always had the longest, strongest fingers of anyone she knew. Hands that could once also wrangle a rowdy steer, tenderly pat her back or smooth her hair when she cried.
She missed those hands.
Why had he tossed their friendship away? Was he so ashamed of that one final night together that he’d decided not to think about her at all?
The hurt pushed in, stirring good memories and bad.
She couldn’t let it affect her again.
Dragging her eyes away from Nash’s hands, she latched on to his question about Monroe.
A little spot in her heart continued to grieve the loss.
“Remember that old shed out behind the barn where we store junk?”
“Sure. I helped you and Gus drag all kinds of useless farm equipment and a broken appliance or two out there.”
That’s right. He had. Back then, he’d been willing to help around the farm. Poppy claimed it was because he was an only child and he needed the company of other kids.
“Poppy always thought he’d figure out a way to fix that stuff.” She smiled, affection for her grandad pushing out more of her tension. “That’s Poppy. A born fixer.”
Except he hadn’t been able to fix her broken heart or the financial disaster Nash Corbin had brought on the family.
“So.” Nash patted the tabletop twice, dragging her gaze back to his beautiful, powerful hands. “What does the shed have to do with Monroe’s broken leg?”
She forced her eyes up to meet his. What she saw was the boy she’d known before, not the ogre he’d become in her mind, and that confused her.
“The shed floor rotted. She fell through. Compound fracture. Surgery, pins, the whole enchilada.”
“Ouch.” He grimaced. “I feel her pain.”
“I guess you do. How’s your shoulder?”
A troubled expression drew his dark eyebrows downward. He touched a spot along his right shoulder. “Not rehabbing as quickly I’d like.”
Harlow reached for her coffee mug, thankful her fingers no longer shook. She’d skillfully diverted his attention away from Davis’s parentage. Hopefully, his curiosity was satisfied and the subject was closed. They could share a conversation now and then while he was here, even joke and laugh together about some silly thing they both remembered. All the while, she’d keep praying for him to leave sooner rather than later. Leave her and her son in peace, as he’d done for the past four years.
If the lost money pressed at the back of her brain and her tongue, she had to keep silent or disappoint her grandpa. She’d disappointed him plenty in the past.
“The stomach virus, or whatever it was, must have set back your shoulder’s healing time,” she said, impressed by how neighborly she sounded.
“Yeah. Yeah. Probably.”
She could see he was concerned about the slow progress. The boy with the big dreams would be devastated to lose that dream now that he’d achieved it. In spite of everything, Harlow felt bad for him.
Talk about conflicted! Her feelings vacillated from loathing to pity to old-time buddies so fast she could suffer whiplash.
“Didn’t you say it’s only been a couple of weeks since the surgery?” she asked. “Give yourself some time. Now that your belly’s better, you can focus on rehabbing the shoulder.”
“Yeah.” His scowling forehead slowly smoothed. “Thanks, pal.”
Before she realized what he was about, Nash stretched a big, beautiful hand across the table and squeezed her fingers. Her hand disappeared beneath his.
She’d always loved when he’d grab her small hand in his giant one to pull her along on some adventure. She’d gone happily, willingly, wherever he led, confident Nash would take care of her.
She’d learned the hard way to take care of herself.
“You always knew how to make me feel better. Don’t know what I would have done without you this past week.” He squeezed again, gently, his strength leashed, but present. Even after a bout of illness, he was a powerful man. “I’ve missed you, Harlow.”
Heat burned up her neck and over her face. She swallowed hard, trying to hide the emotion banging around in her chest, a difficult task for a redhead.
He’d missed her.
Her heart squeezed harder than the pressure of his hand on hers.
She’d missed him too. So much. So terribly, terribly much.
No. No. No. Not a good idea.
Maybe she’d contracted his illness. She had to be delirious to think like this. Nash had devastated her family. He was the enemy.
Except he was also Nash. The only man she’d ever loved.
Until he’d turned that love to loathing.
She had not missed him. She would not allow such thoughts to enter her head. She wanted him to go away and never, ever return.
Didn’t she?
Fighting the avalanche of confusion, Harlow slid her hand from beneath his, quickly rose and carried her plate to the sink. Behind her, Nash’s chair scraped. Metal clinked against pottery as he joined her with his dishes.
If he thought anything odd about her quick departure, he said nothing.
They stood side by side. Like old times. After his comment about missing her, Harlow half expected him to say, “Let’s run away. See the world. Ride elephants and climb Mount Everest.”
She’d respond with something equally as impossible. “Swim the English Channel. Build an igloo in Antarctica.”
Escaping Sundown Valley had been their running joke, especially when he and his dad were at odds over ranch work.
Except he’d done it and she hadn’t.
He bumped her side with his. “You never replaced the dishwasher?”
The old machine was one of the appliances he’d helped drag to the shed.
She shrugged. “Dishes are easy to wash. There are plenty of us to do it without needing a machine. As Poppy says, manual labor is good for body and soul.”
The excuse sounded good to her. In actuality, they hadn’t had the money to replace it after the mess Poppy and Nash had made of their finances.
“Fair enough. You wash, I’ll dry?” One dark eyebrow lifted, his shiny brown eyes alight with warmth and friendliness.
Yes, like old times. Except too much muddy water had flowed under the bridge between then and now. Nash may think they could go back to the way things were before, but Harlow knew they couldn’t.
“Dish towels still in this drawer?” He put his hand on the outdated drawer pull.
Water sputtered from the faucet as she turned the taps to fill the sink. “Yes. Plenty of things around here have changed, Nash, but not that.”
“I hope none of the good things.” He pulled a towel from the drawer, bumped it closed with his hip and reached for the first clean dish.
Stop being so nice, she wanted to yell. Just stop and go away. My head is so messed up now, I’m dizzy enough to fall down.
And falling was the last thing she could afford to do.
Getting her heart stomped four years ago was a lesson she couldn’t, shouldn’t, forget.
The water pressure faded to a trickle. She turned the taps off, waited a few seconds, then turned them back on. The water sputtered, coughed, then seemed to find its footing and poured full force from the faucet.
“What’s up with the water?”
“Cranky old pipes, I suspect.” She scratched her nose with one shoulder. “I hope it’s nothing serious.”
She handed him a shiny white plate. He swirled the towel over it.
“With Gus’s bad knees and Monroe on crutches, looks like you’re carrying most of the workload these days.”
“I can handle it.”
“Give me another day or two to shake this bug, and I can help out while I am here.”
Stop being nice.
“You have a bum shoulder.” That wasn’t the only reason, but the excuse should work.
It didn’t. “I have to rehab anyway. This is my second surgery on this shoulder. Remember the one in college?”
“Of course, I do. I helped you get back in shape.” As soon as she spoke, she wanted to bite her tongue off. Waxing nostalgic, pretending nothing had changed between them was a fool’s game. She would not be his fool ever again.
“Right. You did. So, we both know what I can do and can’t during rehab.” He winked. “I still have one good arm to hold you with, darlin’.”
At the reference to a Sam Elliott line from Poppy’s favorite old western, Harlow laughed in spite of herself. He was teasing. The phrase was not a reference to romance.
“Poppy watched that movie again three nights ago. He even has Davis quoting Doc Holliday lines. ‘I’ll be your Huckleberry.’”
Nash backed away, expression surprised. “You don’t let a toddler watch that, do you?”
“Of course not! But Poppy quotes the lines often and Davis mimics anything his grandpa does or says. He’s wild about his Poppy.”
“Your boy is fortunate to have a good man like Gus as a role model.”
“Can’t argue that.”
She offered him another plate and he caught her eyes. “I’m sorry about Davis’s father, Harlow. You deserved better.”
Her hand froze on the plate, her gaze locked on Nash’s sincere brown eyes.
Two minutes of civil conversation, certain she’d circumvented any more talk of her son’s parentage, and here it was again.
Nash really needed to go back to Florida.
Before she could formulate a sensible reply, her cell phone jangled in her back pocket.
Jerking away from Nash and the truth she hid from him, Harlow dried her hands on the side of her jeans and extracted the ringing phone.
It was Poppy.
“Sis.” His voice sounded strained and frighteningly breathless. “I need you to come out here. We got trouble.”