Last Summer(39)

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 the New 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.

“No more questions.”

“Isn’t that why I’m here?”

“I didn’t invite you to interview me. I invited you to dinner.”

He’s the one who encouraged her to continue her dictation, but she’s not going to mention that now. His eyes remain locked on hers, and with a sigh, she puts away the voice recorder. Nathan exhales.

“Thank you,” he says, standing. “Now let’s eat. I don’t want to reheat our steaks.”





CHAPTER 16

“May I ask a personal question?” Nathan says.

They’d eaten dinner and moved to the kitchen. Ella loads the utensils Nathan rinsed into the dishwasher. He didn’t want her help cleaning, but she insisted. It was the least she could do after the meal he’d cooked. She’d been famished from their hike. She polished off her rib eye and they consumed a French Burgundy. She probably shouldn’t have drunk that second glass and not just because she has to drive back to the hotel on a narrow, curvy road in the dark. Rather, she finds herself wanting to linger longer than professionally necessary.

“Sure.” Ella drops the utensils into the dishwasher basket, mindful the fork tines face down.

“It’s about Damien. What’s his take on your memory loss?”