teenager before she mentioned those kinds of things, and by then, too cynical about her wild ways. I was relieved each time she declined. She would have been miserable having someone to answer to.”
“Were you?” he asked quietly.
She blinked at him. “Miserable about answering to someone? No, not often. Greg wasn’t demanding of me. And I trusted him—my mistake.”
Emily seemed relieved when the sommelier approached to pour their wine, and Nate let the topic go. He hadn’t meant to start it anyway. Then the waitress arrived with appetizers they hadn’t ordered.
“Compliments of Mrs. Sweet,” she explained, smiling at Nate.
“Give her my thanks,” he said. “Is Joe around tonight?”
“Sorry, I haven’t seen him.”
Emily shook her head after the girl had left. “You’re a charmer even with the older women, but then I’ve seen that with the widows.”
He smiled and saluted her with his wineglass. After taking a sip, he said, “Since it looks like you might be disappointed again about Joe, I have an idea. I’m going to book a room.”
“Oh, no, Nate, we can’t do that.”
“Then you can explore to your heart’s content as a guest and not feel like you’re intruding. You’ll meet more of the family.”
She opened her mouth, then slowly closed it, as if she were considering the idea.
“And if you’re going to protest about money again, I don’t want to hear it. The rooms are all priced differently, and some are small but reasonable, especially since it’s still early in the season. The front desk can get us anything we need, like toothbrushes—and you won’t be needing anything to sleep in.”
He realized that making her happy was truly important to him, which was why he was so worried about doing something to hurt her. He finally had to admit that this was more than dating—he found himself wanting to tell her things about himself he’d never confided in another woman. He trusted her—but that didn’t mean he trusted himself.
Before he realized what he was doing, he told her about forgetting to order stock for the rodeo.
“So Josh thinks I’m overextending myself,” Nate finished tiredly. “And before you get all worked up, it doesn’t have anything to do with you. He’d been bugging me about this long before you came to Valentine Valley.”
She smiled briefly. “Whew. Guess you know me well enough by now to know I’d be worried about just that. But okay, if it isn’t me, then you need to look at yourself. If Josh believes you’re overextending yourself, then that means you’re doing more work than he does. So he’s a slacker?”
“Of course not! He works as hard as anybody. He’s just . . . enjoying pissing me off lately.”
“Then he thinks you do way more than you need to. Why do you go above and beyond?”
“I just . . . do what’s necessary to keep the ranch running. And I want my mom and dad to enjoy getting older rather than worrying about the little stuff.”
“Ah,” she said, tilting her head. “So it’s about your parents. You’re the oldest child. Makes sense.”
He sighed. “I don’t like that there’s a part of my mom that feels bad for me because of what her first husband did. She’s always saying that because we were on our own for a while, I learned way too early to do things myself, to . . . I don’t know.”
“Protect her? Help her?”
He shrugged.
“Or maybe there’s something else going on,” she said quietly. “You’re adopted, after all, and you weren’t an infant when it happened. But what if your problems are connected to Doug? You’ve been a great right-hand man to him.”
He frowned at her. “He raised me to be what I am. I’d do anything for him.”
“With all the stuff you coordinate around the ranch, are you still trying to prove how much you love him, love the ranching lifestyle?”
Nate opened his mouth, but an answer didn’t come. After a moment, he murmured, “I didn’t like how stressed the family became when I went to college. I always thought Dad believed I was choosing another life instead of his.”
“Did you want to?”
“Never, not once,” he said, shaking his head. But hadn’t there been moments since when he regretted being pulled away from a conference call about the breeding program he’d invested in, or a new method of getting organic produce into the most markets, just to do chores that other people could do? But he loved the satisfaction of those chores, of making the ranch succeed.