trying to prove your loyalty to the ranch by being everything you think you should be. Josh knows you well enough to see you’re feeling torn.”
Nate stared at her thoughtfully. Were his problems at the ranch all because he knew deep down that he was being drawn toward the business end of the ranch, and he was fighting it? “Okay, Doc,” he said instead. “I’m not used to being dissected.”
“It’s good for the soul,” she insisted. “And after all, aren’t you the one who thinks he’s always doing the dissecting?”
He reared back, pretending she’d slapped him. “Ouch.”
They smiled at each other.
As her salmon and his steak were served, Emily studied Nate’s face, which she was growing to know too well. He wasn’t only the easygoing cowboy he presented to the world. He’d had heartache as a little boy, and she knew it was probably worse than he was saying. But she’d given him something to think about, and she wouldn’t harm the evening by pushing anymore.
So while they ate, she told him about his grandmother’s reaction to Leather and Lace, and the newest garage-sale treasure, a scarred old blanket chest, she’d found for her bedroom. She’d come to realize she loved decorating something to suit her own simple tastes, not Greg’s more expensive ones.
When Nate asked about the painting she’d been doing in the restaurant, she mentioned she was almost done, and they both got quiet. She didn’t want to think about the painting because when she was finished, she’d be selling and leaving. That was the plan, and it was a good one. But there was an ache inside her that didn’t have a name, something she couldn’t look at too closely.
After dinner, when she gasped over the dessert tray, and Nate mentioned to the waitress that Emily baked, she found herself being escorted back into the kitchen to see the area where the pastry chef worked. She almost turned down the tour, but her refusal might make Nate wonder why, and she didn’t want to explain the crazy idea she and Monica had been batting around, the one that kept reappearing in her mind just before she went to sleep, disturbing her dreams.
The pastry area was a separate room off the hot kitchen, with its own walk-in refrigerator and freezer, and a stand mixer as tall as she was. Utensils hung from hooks within easy reach. Stainless-steel shelves were filled with sheet pans and trays, every size base for cakes. The upper shelves overflowed with ingredients like sugars from around the world, and various imported fine chocolates. She gaped at them, imagining what she could create, suddenly longing to do so. She stood outside a glass-walled cooler filled with the finished products for the evening’s guests, sumptuous cakes and pies and chocolate decadence. Another set of shelves on wheels contained unrefrigerated pastries, scones, and breads. Nate seemed to keep studying her, and she felt uneasy and vulnerable. She hated worrying if every decision she made was the right one.
It was a relief when he took her to their room, with its fireplace and curtained four-poster bed. Their little balcony overlooked the mountains they couldn’t see at night, and she thought about the decadence of sitting there in the morning.
Nate came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. “You seem quiet.”
She glanced back at him, resting her hands on top of his for a moment. Then she turned into his arms and kissed him, not wanting to talk about anything else.
When Nate suggested a dawn hike to the hot springs up behind the inn, Emily practically had to be dragged out of the comfortable bed. But when she saw the little built-up rock pool along the bank of a tumbling stream, steam rising in the flickering light between the trees, she gave a little gasp. There was even a little bench, and an overflow of bushes and plants and flowers for privacy. Nate stripped and waded in, while she looked back down the path in indecision. But upon hearing his satisfied sigh as he settled into the hot water, she took off her clothes and joined him.
They relaxed for an hour, enjoying the sun and the steam and each other, before returning to the inn for breakfast on the stone terrace.
They’d only just sat down when Nate called, “Joe!”
Emily stiffened and turned her head to see a lean man wearing a white cowboy hat raise his hand to Nate and smile. As he walked toward them,