Nick hadn’t had any intention of bringing Emma up here, to the Spartan quarters he’d called his for over a year. He’d been about to go back downstairs to check on her and Mike when his agent had called.
He didn’t like talking to Hannah. Didn’t like being pressured about his work. Didn’t like any reminder of the life he’d led back in Vancouver, the one in which he’d been too busy enjoying his low-level fame as a hot new artist, too busy wining and dining and bedding sleek city women to pay attention when his mother needed him.
He knew he was still grieving. He knew it was hard for another person to understand why he’d changed his lifestyle so drastically, and he’d never intended to have a woman up here, asking questions he didn’t want to answer. Yet he found that he didn’t mind lying here with her, wrapped around each other in the dark.
“Thank you.” Emma sighed contentedly, burrowing in even closer. He liked the way she nuzzled her lead into his neck.
“Not sure I’ve ever been thanked post-sex.” He smiled into her hair as she laughed softly.
“I meant for downstairs. For standing up for me. Then for giving me space.” Pressing a kiss to his neck, she rolled away, settling on her back. He could just make out the lines of her slim frame in the dim light. “I…I can’t explain how strange it is. Seeing myself in a complete stranger.”
“How did you find out?” Normally he despised pillow talk of any kind, not because he was cruel, but because it just wasn’t part of the deal that he offered up front. The life he’d carved out here didn’t have a place for lasting, intimate relationships.
With Emma? He wanted to know. He wasn’t sure what, exactly, to do with that, so for now he just went with it.
Reaching for his hand, twining her fingers through his, she explained about the marriage certificate, anger faint but clear in her words.
“I thought my life was one thing.” Her voice was soft. “The rug was pulled out from under me, and now I wonder if it’s not meant to be something else.”
There it was—the slightest tendril of unease. He opened his mouth to tell her that this—whatever this was—couldn’t evolve into much more. Couldn’t become a relationship the way she likely thought of it.
That could make her leave, and he might be confused about his feelings, but he knew he didn’t want that. He didn’t want to hurt her, either. He should say something.
He opened his mouth to do just that, but instead of what he’d expected to say, he found himself talking about a subject he hadn’t spoken about with anyone for a year.
His mother.
“This place isn’t much to look at, huh?”
Her pause was full of unspoken words. “I did wonder at the lack of a flat-screen. Don’t all males have one of those? The bigger, the better?”
“I thought it was women who wanted things bigger.” Rolling onto his side, he laid his palm over her chest. The steady thump of her pulse calmed him. “And I actually do have one of those in storage, just haven’t had a chance to drag it up here.”
“There goes the starving artist image,” she teased. He stroked his hand over her skin, still savoring the steady thud thud thud.
“The simplicity is by design.” His mouth was dry; he wished desperately for a glass of water, but didn’t want to leave the warm cocoon of the sheets to get it.
She waited, her patience a balm on his skin. The last thread of hesitation snapped, and the flow of words started.
“In Vancouver I had—have—a condo. A big one, right downtown. Art district.” Damn, he wanted that water, but he wanted to keep his hand on her pulse more. “My career had taken off. I had money, I was making a name for myself. More friends, more women than this former geeky art student knew what to do with.”
Pausing, he waited for the inevitable pissy comment about mentioning other women while he was in bed with her. It didn’t come.
“Anyway. I was caught up in that, and other—relationships—fell by the wayside. Some friends that I’d had since elementary school stopped calling. More than that, though, I didn’t return my mom’s calls that often. Missed a couple of visits back home.”
“Where’s home?” Mimicking him, she placed her free hand on his chest, stroking gently.
“A place called Saskatchewan. Know where that is?” He didn’t expect her to. Canada only had ten provinces and three territories, most of them big, but the rest of the world didn’t seem to pay too much attention.
“Let’s see. There’s Toronto. Vancouver. And the North Pole. That’s all Canada has, right?” Her voice was wry, teasing. “I know where Saskatchewan is. Right above Montana and North Dakota, yes?”
He was impressed, but didn’t comment on it. “Anyway. That’s where I’m from. That’s where my mom, Sarah, still lived. My dad died when I was a kid, and I don’t have any siblings, so when I moved to Vancouver she was alone.”
Again, he waited for a comment, and again, Emma simply listened.
“Mom was always prone to…well, as a kid, I thought of them as her dark times. Now I know she was depressed.” Grief was familiar, a mouthful of bitterness that clung to his tongue no matter how much he swallowed. “I was so full of my new life that I didn’t realize that she didn’t really have any friends, either. She was just alone out there. Reaching out to me, but I was always too busy to visit, or to call her back.”
“I found out after that I hadn’t spoken to her in a month, but to me it felt like no more than a weekend. I was in my own little world.” His pulse started to pick up the pace—thudthudthud—as he got to the part he had trouble examining, even by himself and in the dark. “She had no one. No one to realize that she was planning to kill herself.”
“Nick.” Emma’s fingers dug into his chest. “Oh, my goodness.”
“There was a lake by our house. She walked into the water and didn’t come back out.” He heard the words, knew he was saying them, but detached himself from the emotion. “I had no idea until the police called me.”
“Nick.” He expected judgment, wanted it, even. “Oh, Nick.”
“I don’t know if I could have stopped her. I really don’t.” He heard the defensiveness in his voice and tried to tone it down. “The fact remains. All those things that I thought were so great—the house, the career, the friends and women. Even without them I might not have been able to stop her, but I could have at least let her know I cared before she died. I’m not sure she understood that, not at the end. I sure didn’t give her any reason to.”
“I don’t know what to say.” Emma’s voice was soft.
“There isn’t really anything to say.” He smiled, but knew the expression was twisted. “I moved here to try to live a different life. A simpler one.”
“How did you wind up with my—with Mike?”
He hesitated. In all likelihood, she had no idea about Mike’s own tendency toward depression, so he couldn’t tell her that heading out here had both served his purposes and also allowed him to do some penance—to keep an eye on the friend prone to the same illness he hadn’t noticed in his own mother until it was too late.
“We were friends. I knew he lived on an island and spent half his time wandering around in the trees. Seemed like a good fit.”
The silence stretched out for moments, minutes…he couldn’t judge, he was so tense, waiting for her reaction. When it came, it wasn’t what he’d expected.
“Thank you for telling me.” No judgment. No disgust. None of the things he felt for himself.
Using their intertwined fingers, he pulled her to him, tugging her up onto his chest so that she was sprawled across him. There he hugged her tightly, enjoying her squeak of surprise.
And holding her just like that, they fell asleep.