Page 54 of Last Summer

“Why’d you pull it, Nathan? What happened?”

His gaze lifts and meets hers. “You’re angry.”

“No, frustrated. Okay, maybe a little irritated. I thought I’d killed the article, but it was you. Why?” she asks forcefully.

He nods at the recorder in her hand. “Hold that thing any tighter and you’ll break it.”

She looks at the recorder and wills her grip to soften. “Sorry.”

She pushes out a breath and pretends to read her notes. She’s frustrated she can’t remember anything from before and she’s taking it out on Nathan. The fact she’s so physically attracted to him doesn’t help either. It makes her wonder if she felt the same before. Did she act on those feelings? If so, does Damien know? It would explain why he was so adamant about her ditching the interview. But wouldn’t he have been more insistent? Wouldn’t he have told her she had an affair?

No, Ella reasons. Nothing happened between her and Nathan. She wouldn’t have done that to Damien.

She takes a calming breath and sets down the recorder. “I’m sorry,” she repeats.

“Apology accepted. Please, continue. I want to hear this.”

“All right.” Ella looks sideways at him, gathering her thoughts, her hands clammy. Nathan waits, watching her, which makes her more nervous. There’s the genuine possibility he’ll kill the article again once he’s heard what she plans to dictate. She wipes her hands on her thighs and speaks into the recorder. She keeps her gaze on the notes in front of her so that she can concentrate.

“When a person is placed on a pedestal, which I believe Nathan did with his wife and compared her to the two most important people in his life at the time, his parents, Stephanie had no place to go but down. I don’t think she could keep up with Nathan’s expectations of her.”

“I never expected anything from her.”

“You wanted your marriage with her to be what your parents had,” she refutes.

“Sure.”

“She wasn’t wired like them or you. You started to resent her for not being like your mom.”

“I loved Steph and my parents. I didn’t idealize them. I admired them.” His tone is defensive.

“You romanticized them. You did with me this afternoon, anyway. I can’t think of one flaw you told me.”

“They had plenty of flaws. Mom hated housework and she was horrible at math. Worst tutor on the planet. Dad drank too much, ate like crap, and watched too much TV.”

“Flaws, yes, but superficial. Stephanie’s from New York, right? She’d never been off Manhattan for any length of time longer than a few weeks until you met her at a dinner party.” Ella’s glad she read up on Stephanie, too. She was a friend of Nathan’s publicist, and Nathan had confessed in one interview that he knew the moment he met Stephanie that she was it for him. They married and then moved to Colorado, where they lived in the Rockies, about an hour from the nearest town.

“You can’t take a city girl and drop her in the middle of the woods and expect her to thrive on her own. You traveled a lot, and you left her alone in the mountains. She was lonely. She couldn’t hack the solitude you crave. She wanted to move back to New York and you wouldn’t go with her.” Ella had read all that in theNew York Post. The article ran around the time his separation from Stephanie went public.

“So there you were, married to a woman you would give the world to, and she despised the one thing you were passionate about. Your pursuit of the rush. Adrenaline is a powerful drug. I know. I got a taste of it when I ran marathons in my early twenties. Stephanie grew to despise you. Instead of adjusting your ways or meeting her halfway, you just kept working. As for your son—”

“What about my son?” Nathan asks sharply.

Ella knows she’s pushing him. Carson’s a sensitive topic, but she wants his reaction. That’s when she’ll get to the truth of the man he really is. She also wants him to share with her what Damien hasn’t. His grief.

“I’m sure he wanted your attention. What would he do to get—”

“Enough,” Nathan says in a guttural voice.

She stops talking. Silence lingers between them. His hands are fists. Underneath the table, his leg jiggles. His gaze darts to the recorder.

“Is that thing still on?”

Ella looks at the device in her hand. Digital numbers climb. “Yes, why? You don’t want to hear what I have to say? Because I have a theory. You asked me up here so that I can write an article about your simple life. A life that doesn’t involve taking risks or living on an adrenaline high. You want to show Stephanie that you can be the man she needs. You think that if she reads my article and sees you here, like this, she’ll come back. Did I get that right?”

Nathan doesn’t blink. Ella opens her mouth to continue, but before she can, Nathan snatches the recorder from her hand, turns it off, and slams it on the table.

Ella stares stupidly at her empty hand.

---