A Town Called Valentine(111)

He briefly rubbed his fingers over his eyes. “That sounds pretty bad.”

She took his hand again. “It wasn’t. I’m not angry.”

“But maybe you’re disappointed I didn’t tell you any of this sooner.”

“No. You’re a private person, Nate, and you were honest with me about that. I’ve heard about your involvement in the preservation fund.”

“You have?” he demanded. “Who—”

“It isn’t important. You do the best you can for the people you believe in, and you don’t want anyone’s thanks, so you keep it private. The fund lets you help, while keeping your distance, not risking guiding a person a way they might not want to go, right?”

He winced. “I never thought of it like that. I kept parts of my financial life private for other reasons. A lot of my dad’s friends wish the town wasn’t changing, that their ranching lives would stay the same, that newcomers would never find our little peaceful corner of the world. The preservation fund bothers some of them, and I didn’t want them throwing my involvement back in my dad’s face. But Em, it bothered me they couldn’t see the future, that Valentine would die without new blood and new investments to make it attractive.”

She smiled. “Not everybody can see the future like you can. And as for keeping things private—I like that about you. My ex would donate to charities and make sure his name was prominent every time. I blinded myself to a lot of things about him, rushed into marriage without considering the important stuff. But I’m older and wiser now.”

He looked at her with a poignant sadness that made her turn away.

“You were right about my biological father affecting me,” he said at last in a quiet voice. “He left my mom when she was ill, but the worst of it was, he cleaned out every bank account and used up the credit cards before he left.”

Emily couldn’t hold back a gasp. “Oh Nate.” She imagined Sandy as a young abandoned mom with a frightened little boy, no money to buy food or pay the bills. “Your mother is such a brave woman. But your own wariness about people makes so much more sense.”

He stared at her in surprise, then bit by bit, tension seemed to leak away from him, as if her words had answered questions he’d never known he had.

“You know, we have something in common,” she continued, picking at the label on her beer bottle. “Your first dad left your mom because she was ill. Greg left me because I couldn’t have children.”

She didn’t look at him, afraid she’d burst into tears. When he put an arm around her, pulling her against his warm, solid side, to her surprise, she didn’t feel as devastated as she once had.

The words just started tumbling out of her. “I could get pregnant, you see, though it took a long time. But then I’d have a miscarriage, two or three months in.”

“Oh, Emily,” he said raggedly.

“My third pregnancy went much farther, but then in my seventh month, the baby died. The doctor said I’d be unlikely to ever have children.” She swallowed hard but didn’t look at him. “When I came home from the hospital, Greg said he wanted his own children, that he didn’t want to adopt. So he left me.”

And then Nate pulled her into his arms, and she clung to him, but her eyes were dry, her emotions full of sadness but also a rising determination. She pulled away to look into his eyes.

“So you can see why I plan to adopt. I want a family, and biology doesn’t matter to me. Greg was an ass, and if we’d shared any kind of true love, he couldn’t have treated me that way. But we matched so well, wanted the same sort of traditional life. I let that blind me to the kind of man he really was, let myself make excuses when I sensed he might not measure up.”

Nate still looked at her as if she might crumble to pieces any moment, and he wanted to be her rock.

She smiled tremulously and cupped his face with one hand. “It’s okay,” she insisted. “The worst of the betrayal is past me now. Trust me, anger has a way of pushing out the grief. It was bad at first—I almost lost myself in depression, never leaving my bed for days. I feel like such a fool now. I let him make me feel like less than a woman because I couldn’t give birth. You’ll really think I’m an idiot when I tell you I refused Greg’s guilt money, wanting no connection to him.”

“I don’t think you’re an idiot.” Nate touched her hair, her shoulder, her hand, as if he couldn’t stop.