Page 41 of From Our First

But I didn’t think I could.

“Myra.” Nate brought me out of my thoughts. I looked up at him then, peered into his kind eyes, even filled with worry, and felt as if no time had passed. Yet decades stretched between us.

“I was just admiring your home,” I said after a moment.

“Oh.” He frowned. “You’ve been here before, at least with the others. But I never really showed you around. You want to see?” he asked.

If it would delay the inevitable questions and the possible fight, perhaps I should say yes.

I nodded, and he looked surprised for a moment before holding out his hand. I looked at it, and he swallowed hard before letting his arm drop.

“I’d love to see your home. I mean, I walked through here, but I was really only in the backyard for the barbecue.”

“That’s right. And you probably went right by here and through the kitchen to the deck. I have a whole other set of rooms. Speaking of, I need to go check on somebody. It’s been a little too quiet.”

I frowned and then followed him as he jogged towards an office area, where Daisy was currently chewing on a blanket.

“Daisy, what did I say about blankets?”

He went down on his haunches and held out his hand. “Drop it.” Daisy froze and blinked up at me, not paying attention to Nate.

“No, me. Drop it, Daisy.” She dropped the blanket and then padded over to him, looking as proud as punch as she licked his face.

“Good girl.” He laughed. He picked her up as if she weighed nothing and cuddled her close. Something inside me twinged a little bit. He was way too damn sexy with that puppy in his arms. And I needed to stop having those kinds of thoughts.

“Daisy, meet Myra. Myra, this is Daisy.”

“Hello.” I held out my hand. The puppy sniffed it, licked it, and then gave me a little doggy smile. “Oh, she’s too cute.”

“And she knows it. I’m going to put her in her octagon for a bit because she’s been a little rambunctious, and I don’t want her running through the house breaking things while I show you around and we talk.”

“Are you sure you have to?” I asked, hating that he had to put her in time-out because I was here.

“We are in training, and she’s still learning her boundaries. Both of us are. Macon left a list.”

I laughed at the thought of his vet brother laying out directives. “He would know best.”

“So he tells me. Often,” he said dryly. He set the puppy behind a white gate in the shape of an octagon, and I looked around at all her toys neatly put away except for a few for her to chew on. She had a bed, water, and a blanket inside the crate.

“It looks like she has everything she needs.”

“And probably more. She’s my first, so I’ve been really bad about spoiling her. Plus, she has enough aunts and uncles who give her things. It gets a little insane. But she’ll have enough toys to chew through for the next year—or four.” He let out a breath, sounding as nervous as I felt. There was comfort in that, even though I knew the inevitable was coming. “Anyway, upstairs is the guest bath, a couple of bedrooms. My master bedroom is on the other side of the house.”

“It’s a beautiful home, Nathan.”

He jolted, and I cursed myself. I had been so good about not calling him by his full first name recently, and yet I had done it to my friends, and now to his face. He didn’t like it when I did, because it reminded him of before. And I didn’t like it that the word sounded so familiar and was so comfortable on my tongue. I didn’t need that reminder.

I met his gaze, trying to find some sense of normalcy in a situation that was anything but ordinary. “I truly love your home. It’s very you. It has all kinds of places to read, and lots of photos of your family.”

Nathan put his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “I work from home, so I do my best to make sure I have places that are for work and those for reading. Sometimes they blend, but I do my best to keep them separate. The photos and things are all Arden’s doing.”

“Oh?”

“After the accident, we realized that my home wasn’t very homey. It was pretty much a place for me to sleep after long hours at work. So, when I bought this place after the settlement, Arden made sure it was a home, rather than just a place to rest my head.”

“I’m so sorry you were hurt.”

He swallowed hard. “And I’m sorry I hurt you.”

---