Part Eleven
Nate couldn’t keep the grin from his lips as he fell backward onto his bed, still wearing his jacket. He’d spent the whole evening with his estranged family and they’d turned out to be wonderful people! After dinner, he and Max had taken Diane’s dog for a walk and just chatted about things. Nate had shown him pictures of his parents and Annie, whom Max had given a sincere thumbs-up that made Nate glow with pride. And tomorrow, they were meeting for breakfast – ironically at the same restaurant Nate had been frequenting since he’d arrived in town. As is where, the proprietor was Max’s father-in-law.
Still grinning, Nate glanced at the clock. It was late, too late to call his parents and let them know about his evening. He was bursting to tell someone, so naturally his thoughts turned to Annie. It could never be too late to call her, right?
Without another thought, Nate rummaged in his jacket pocket until he found his cell phone and hit Annie’s number on auto-dial. After a few rings, she answered the phone, her voice groggy.
“Hey, sweetie, it’s me,” he said into the phone, his smile widening.
“Nate? What’s wrong? What time is it?”
“Nothing’s wrong, I just wanted to talk to you.”
“What’s going on?”
“I met them, Annie, all of them. My father, my grandparents. I went to their house and ate dinner with them tonight.”
“That’s nice.” Her voice was still a tired slur. “What about your mom?”
Nate felt his good mood starting to dissipate and knew that Annie would now try to punch holes in all he’d learned. Why did this always happen? Why did he always let it happen?
“Apparently my mom died after I was born,” he said solemnly.
“Convenient. What about her parents? You have another set of grandparents, you know. Where are they?”
Nate frowned. He hadn’t even thought to ask that. “I can ask Max tomorrow. We’re having breakfast.”
“Good. While you’re asking him things, ask him why you couldn’t know about him until you were eighteen.”
Nate withdrew slightly. He hadn’t told Annie that piece of information and her bringing it up was proof that she’d looked in the brown envelope before he’d had a chance to – which explained why she’d seemed less than floored when he’d told her he was adopted in the tree house.
“You didn’t even ask him, did you?” Annie said after a strained silence.
“How did you know about that?” he asked cautiously.
“You told me, silly.” There was a hint of laughter in her voice and Nate immediately wondered if she knew she’d slipped and was trying to cover.
“I did? When?” he prodded.
“In the tree house.”
But he hadn’t opened the envelope yet when they’d met in the tree house…
“You remember,” she said, her voice becoming soft as silk. “Right before you showed me what you’re made of, before you rocked my world, Nate.”
Nate’s mind wanted to slip back to that day, making love to Annie in his childhood play house, but there was still the unsettling knowledge that she’d snooped behind his back and had just lied about it.
“I wish you were here,” she said softly. “I want you to rock my world right now, Nate. Come home. Please?”
He cleared his throat, his joy totally gone now. “In a couple of days, love. I have a lifetime to spend with you, but this may be the last time I ever see these people.”
A frustrated sigh sounded on the other end of the line. “Fine. Do what you want to do. I guess I’ll be here when you get back.”
Nate drew in a breath and let out an inaudible sigh in response. “Love you, Annie.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
With that the phone went dead. Nate stared at it for a long time, then pushed the button to turn it off. Deflated, he tossed the phone onto the nightstand and stared at the ceiling. Annie had pried into his business and then lied when confronted with her actions. It was a behavior he had never expected from her.
But maybe she had a point about some things - tomorrow, Nate would remember to ask Max about the strange agreement in his adoption papers. Tomorrow, he’d try not to get caught up in the moment and get the answers he’d come all of this way for.
*****
In the morning, Nate phoned his parents and told them of his evening with the Evanses. Some of his excitement had been extinguished because of Annie, but he still managed to tell them how wonderful his biological family appeared to be. Unlike his fiancé, Jonathan and Emma were happy for him and offered very encouraging words. They helped to lift his mood a bit, so that he was looking forward to breakfast with Max again.
The CrashDown was sparsely occupied at seven o’clock in the morning, so Nate’s eyes went immediately to a certain blond waitress, who looked like she’d been up half the night. Upon seeing him, however, she gave him a big grin and laid a menu down at the counter for him.
Nate shook his head. “Not today,” he said. “Today I have company.”
“My, my,” she teased as she led him to a booth. “In town all of what – three days? –and you’ve already picked up company.”
Nate shook his head and flushed slightly as he slid into a booth.
“Want some coffee?” Alyssa asked.
He nodded and watched as she went to get the coffee pot. His eyes skimmed over her round bottom and he immediately felt that pang of guilt again. When she returned, Alyssa flipped over his coffee cup and started to fill it for him.
“Listen, I have a word of advice,” she said seriously.
Nate looked up at her, waiting curiously.
Bending at the waist so that she was eye-to-eye and extremely close to him, she whispered, “Don’t eat here too often.”
He studied her dark eyes and had to struggle not to laugh. “Why not?” he whispered back.
“Because some day the food here will make your heart burst.”
Nate lost his battle at containing his laughter. Alyssa straightened and tossed her pony tail over her shoulder.
“Fine, laugh,” she huffed playfully. “I try to be nice and look how you treat me. And just when I was starting to like you…”
His mouth dropped open slightly as she walked away, back to the counter where one other patron waited. Like him? She was teasing, right?
Nate didn’t have time to contemplate the implications of her not teasing as Alyssa suddenly let out a squeal and ran for the door. He recoiled a bit, watching her run like a three-year-old with her arms held out as she shrieked in a high-pitched girlie scream. Following her path, he was startled to see that the object of her totally losing her composure was none other than Max Evans. As Alyssa hurled herself into his arms and planted a huge kiss on his cheek, Nate’s eyebrows rose nearly to his hairline.
Max laughed and gently disentangled himself from the girl, who was blabbing a hundred miles a minute. Nate’s lips turned into a half smile as he watched the display and wondered just how they knew one another. From where he sat, he couldn’t hear their conversation, but when Max pointed to Nate’s booth, she glanced at Nate and looked equally as surprised.
A few moments later, Max was sliding into the booth opposite of Nate and Alyssa was doing her best not to crawl right in after him. Nate looked from Max to Alyssa and silently asked for an explanation.
“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes with the sides of her fingers; until she did that, Nate hadn’t noticed that Max’s presence had produced tears. “It’s just that I haven’t seen Uncle Max in so long!”
Nate felt like someone had kicked him in the nuts. Uncle Max? Crap – had he actually been having impure thoughts about his cousin? Shame raced through him.
Max must have caught his expression because he gave a small laugh as he shrugged out of his coat. “Uncle in name only,” he clarified.
Nate breathed a sigh of relief.
“And you’re family,” Alyssa said to him, her voice full of affection and awe all at the same time. “See? I knew you looked familiar.” She held his gaze for a moment, her eyes creased with her genuinely happy smile, then reached for her order pad. “Let me get you breakfast.”
“Heart attack special,” Max said, grinning at her.
Alyssa looked over her pad and raised an eyebrow.
“Hold the lecture,” he tacked on.
She sighed and scribbled on the pad, then looked at Nate, who hadn’t a clue what to order since he had yet to check out the menu.
“Uh, the same?” he said.
She blinked twice, then scribbled on the pad again, mumbled as she moved away, “I try to warn them. And do they listen? No.”
Max let out a little laugh. “She’s a bit of a health nut,” he said, reaching for sugar for his coffee. Nate watched as he picked up what looked to be six or seven packets – maybe Alyssa had rights to be warning her “uncle” about his health.
“How do you know her?” Nate asked.
Max picked up his empty cup and held it up toward the girl, who was behind the counter again. She grinned and moved to get the pot. “Her father and I were best friends growing up. Her mom was my wife’s best friend. Still is, in fact.”
“Oh,” Nate replied.
“He’s going to be joining us, as a matter of fact,” Max said as Alyssa stopped to fill his cup. “And Maria, too, if she gets the chance.”
“If she gets the chance,” Alyssa echoed in a disgusted mutter.
Max shot her a look, his eyebrows drawn together out of concern or confusion, Nate wasn’t sure which. He couldn’t dwell on that, however, because the news that he was going to have breakfast with Maria Deluca had just sunk in.
“She’s coming here?” he asked in a squeak. “Maria Deluca?”
Max laughed lightly and started dumping the sugar packets into his coffee. Alyssa shook her head and moved away, disgusted at both Max’s dietary habits and her mother’s impeding arrival.
“She’s just like you and me, Nate,” Max said. “She’s just a person.”
“My fiancé doesn’t think so.” As the words left Nate’s mouth, he realized that Annie had thrown him into such a tailspin that he never did tell her that he’d seen Maria.
Max shrugged. “You’ll see.”
Nate shifted in his seat, reminding himself about the questions that were still unanswered. “Listen, Max, before they get here I have some questions.”
“Okay.” Max picked up his spoon and stirred his coffee.
Nate bit his lip and mustered his courage. “In the envelope of stuff I was given, there was a legal document in there that stipulated I couldn’t be told about my adoption until I’d turned eighteen.”
“There was?” Max replied, almost absent-mindedly, like he wasn’t paying attention.
“Yeah. I was just curious, um…why was that?”
Max shrugged. “I don’t know. I never knew about that. We could ask my father, I guess…”
Nate’s brow furrowed. He didn’t know about it? “Um, okay. One other thing – how come I was listed as abandoned? I mean, obviously you knew about me and someone put me up for adoption, so it wasn’t like I was left on a church step or anything.”
“Oh, look – there’s Michael,” Max interrupted, waving a hand in the air. “Michael, we’re over here.”
Nate turned in his seat and withdrew slightly as he took in the man approaching them. He was tall, his build solid, his hair as wild as the wind – but it was the eyes that reduced Nate to nothingness. While everyone else he’d met had been welcoming and friendly, this person appeared anything but. Without a doubt, this Michael would crush Nate if he had to…and maybe even if he didn’t have to.
As Max rose to greet his friend, Nate felt his stomach start to churn again. Max had clearly avoided answering his questions about the adoption. He hated to admit it, but maybe Annie was onto something.
tbc
