But it wasn’t her headache right now. She had to be content she got the results they needed from it.

  “Let me know if you need anything from me, but for now keep up the good work.”

  “Thanks,” Brina said going back at it.

  She’d been engrossed in some pretty boring reading when her cell phone rang. She’d hoped it was Nathan but knew it wasn’t. He was working and rarely called her. During his shift she didn’t get much more than a text message now and again and even then it wasn’t often.

  They each had their space most of the time and it was working for them. Except when it wasn’t working.

  Like when she was missing him and couldn’t figure out why when she hadn’t ever really missed another man in her life.

  They’d been spending more time at his house than hers or going out and she was fine with it. His house was coming along. The kitchen had been started and was taking shape.

  “Hello,” she said when she picked up her phone after the second ring. She hadn’t even looked to see who was calling.

  “Brina, how have you been?”

  “Busy, Mom. How about you and Dad?”

  “We are never busy like you are. Not even Hannah. But your father and I were talking with Uncle Tyler and Jake about Blair’s wedding. They thought it was a good idea to have Nathan sit at our table with them too.”

  “Are you sure?”

  After she’d told Blair Nathan was going she’d said to just put him with some of their friends. He’d be fine, but Blair had insisted he should sit with family.

  She wasn’t going to argue but didn’t want to put Nathan on the spot either.

  At this point there wasn’t much she could do. Especially since it seemed her parents and Blair’s had already decided what they were going to do.

  “It’s the best place for him. But we’d like to meet him before then.”

  And this was part of the reason she was thinking it wasn’t a good idea. “Did you want us to just stop over and visit one night?” she asked. “He’s pretty busy and I’ll have to check his schedule.”

  “Not busy enough to go to dinner with us for an hour or so I’m sure,” her mother said. There was no getting out of it when it was put that way.

  “I’ll check with him. What works for you?”

  “The first night you two can manage we’ll make work. Hannah would like to meet him too, but it might be too hard to finagle all of us.”

  That was something at least. “I’ll let you know.”

  Once they hung up she tossed her phone on her desk and decided to get back to work before she let Nathan know what was going on. A few hours would be soon enough to put the pressure on him—and herself—when she’d told him they weren’t having anything but fun.

  Yet she knew she’d been lying to herself a lot lately.

  Two days later, Nathan found himself picking Brina up at her house at five thirty. “Did you just get home?” he asked. She was supposed to be ready by now, but he could tell she was still dressed for work.

  “Yeah, sorry. I got held up.”

  “I’m starting to realize that is your norm.”

  “I told you before I’m always running late. Isn’t that what happened the first time we met? You were just nice enough to not give me a ticket for speeding.”

  He smirked. “I’m never nice when it comes to that stuff. Yes, you were speeding but not enough to get a ticket for it. People were going faster around you. I’ve got a leeway in my mind and when it’s worth pulling someone over in traffic and so on.”

  “I didn’t think you had too many things with wiggle room.”

  He tilted his head. “If I pulled over everyone that technically broke the law then you and everyone else would get a ticket when they got behind the wheel daily. No one drives the exact speed limit.”

  “True.”

  “Are you going to change?” he asked. He was in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. She’d told him casual.

  “Yes. I need to shower quick too.”

  “Brina, we are supposed to meet your parents in less than thirty minutes and it takes twenty to get there. Without traffic.”

  “I’ll be fast,” she said slipping out of her shoes. “Stop talking to me.”

  He shook his head and went into the kitchen to get a bottle of water while she ran up the stairs to her room. She came back down ten minutes later dressed in a jean skirt, a purple T-shirt and flip-flops. Sometimes she looked like a college kid to him.

  “We might actually just get there on time if we leave now.”

  “You can speed. No one will stop you. All you need to do is pull your badge out,” she said, poking her finger in his side.

  “Which I won’t do for a dinner meeting with your parents. That is for emergencies only.”

  “Black and white to you again.”

  They walked into the restaurant ten minutes late to be escorted to the booth Brina’s parents were sitting at. He thought it was a horrible way to make a first impression, but her mother said, “Brina, are you ever on time for anything? You’ll be late for your own wedding someday.”

  “If I get married. And Mom, please don’t even talk about things like that in front of Nathan. You’ll scare him away and I like having him around.”

  That was the first he’d heard that. He might have suspected it, but they never really talked all that much about any future other than one conversation that was out of left field weeks ago.

  Her mother laughed and reached her hand forward. “Hi, Nathan. I’m Beth and this is my husband, Miles. It’s nice to meet you. We’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “I hope it’s good,” he said. He realized that Brina never talked much about her parents. Not like he’d confessed the sins of his and he wondered how much or what she’d said about him or their relationship.

  “We told Brina it might be nice to meet you before you were thrown to the wolves at a wedding. Hannah wishes she could be here too, but she works late on Wednesday nights.”

  “Hannah can make her own schedule,” Brina said, “but she packs it full.”

  “Because she wants to build her clients,” Miles said.

  “She has a lot of clients. She needs to just pull the trigger and go out on her own,” Brina said. She turned to him. “I told you Hannah is a hairdresser. She wants to be her own boss but is afraid to take that leap.”

  “I can understand it,” he said. “There is a lot of pressure and stress when you don’t have a steady paycheck coming in.”

  “Is that why you didn’t want to be a flipper only?” Beth asked.

  “No,” he said. “My blood runs blue. The men in my family are all in law enforcement. I knew I’d do it too. But my grandfather worked construction. My mother’s father and he taught me everything I know. I’ve always enjoyed it but having it be my sole income at a young age had never been my thought.”

  “But you said you wanted to do it when you retired,” Brina said.

  “I’ve got years yet. I’ve only been a trooper for five years. I could be promoted to an investigator soon too. I guess at some point I might start going toward apartments and rental properties. I need to find my own place first. Lots of time to figure it all out.”

  “Investigator,” she said. “You never said a word.”

  “Things like that take time. It’d be nice to get on a normal schedule too.”

  “How many houses have you flipped?” Miles asked, bringing the conversation back around, and Nathan was thankful. Brina looked annoyed he hadn’t said anything, but the truth was, it was still up in the air.

  At least they weren’t getting too personal about other parts of their lives. The waitress came over and took their drink and food orders, then he answered, “This is my fifth. And it’s my biggest. It’s going to take a long time to get it finished and I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it though. The profit would be massive when it’s time to sell, but so far I like it enough I might want to stay.”

  “Really?” Brina asked. “You never said that either.”

  He hadn’t known how to bring it up. “I’m not sure what I’m doing. I’ve just found that everything I’m doing or all my ideas are things I would want in a house. When it’s all done I might love it too much to sell it.”

  “Paradise Place is a great area to raise a family,” Beth said with a big smile. “I’m sure Brina has been up front in your face on her thoughts of that subject. What do you think of it?”

  “You mean if she ever gets married she’s keeping her own name and if she doesn’t have a kid by the time she is thirty-five she’s, ah...buying the...” He couldn’t bring himself to say it in front of her parents.

  Brina laughed. “Sperm, Nathan. You can say it. I’ve told them enough. And they roll their eyes just like that. Go ahead and tell them what you told me. I’m sure they will be ready to jump up and shake your hand again and then tell me I told you so that someone like you exists.”

  He wasn’t sure what he was missing, but he answered them. “I told Brina that I didn’t care what name my future wife might have—whoever it is. And as for kids—if we are still together in three years, married or not, why would she buy a donation when she could have a child with a man she was in a relationship with?”

  “So you’d have a child without being married?” Beth asked.

  “No,” he said and turned to look at Brina. Her jaw dropped and he laughed at her.

  22

  Feel Special

  Brina wanted to slap Nathan’s arm for answering the way he’d just done to her parents.

  Here she thought for sure it’d be the answer she wanted to prove to her parents she could have her cake and her parents could eat it too.

  But he ruined it by saying what he had. “So if I got pregnant you’d want to get married?” she asked.

  “Right now? Geez, Brina, you’re putting a lot of pressure on me,” he said with a grin.

  She felt her face flush. “No. Three years from now.”

  “Just what I told you. Three years from now we’d be in what both of us would consider a relationship. If I’m with someone for three years then it’s serious and if you got pregnant whether it was planned or not, then yes, I’d like to be married before that child was born. If I wasn’t serious enough to marry someone after three years, then I’d move on long before that.”

  “You’ve never said that before,” she argued. It felt like all she was doing was repeating that statement. Her parents were probably wondering how close they could be if she didn’t know these things.

  “Because we’ve been dating for a little over a month.”

  “Brina,” her mother said. “This is why your relationships don’t last. You start seeing someone and then lay the law down. One month in and you are already talking about this. Even I know that’s a no-no.”

  Nathan actually laughed at her. “I thought it was an odd conversation, especially at the time, but I’m not one to shy away from anything. I don’t have a problem being upfront with someone.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Can we change the subject now?”

  “Just like when you were a kid. If things didn’t go your way you wanted to change the subject,” her father said. “We’ve told Brina for years that she needed to learn to compromise in life. It can’t always be what she wants when she wants it.”

  “Thanks for laying all my faults out on the table.” Another reason she didn’t want this dinner.

  “Isn’t it better to do it now than at Blair’s wedding?” her mother said.

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Of course she would,” her father said. “She wants to see you and your sister settled down and she’ll be talking about that the entire time at the wedding.”

  “I’m sorry, Nathan,” she said. “I told Blair to seat you with some of their friends. Maybe I shouldn’t have even asked you to go. I’ll be busy and at the head table. This has been a mistake.”

  “Brina,” her father said. “That is rude to say to your boyfriend.”

  She looked at Nathan and realized what a big mess this was turning out to be. “I can’t believe I’m putting my foot in my mouth this much,” she said.

  “I have to say I’ve never seen you quite like this before,” he said.

  “I guess you’ve always had the ability to fluster me.”

  “I think I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  And there was that smile of his she didn’t see often. One that reached his eyes and warmed her up. The one that made her feel special and not like the other part of him she was with only for fun.

  “That wasn’t too bad,” Nathan said when they were back in his car. Sure, it was uncomfortable at some points, but he sort of expected it.

  What he didn’t expect was that Brina’s parents would give her crap about the way she wanted to do things in her life. She apparently thought for sure they’d be thrilled that she could prove them both right, that they could find what they wanted for her and she could do the same.

  He wasn’t lying though. If they were still together in a few years and she got pregnant, he was asking her to be his wife. The name change, he couldn’t care about. His child would have his name and he almost said that and then realized there was no reason for it.

  They were talking about things that most likely weren’t going to happen.

  Which was another thing. He never did that.

  He planned things in his life but he didn’t plan stuff like this.

  “Easy for you to say. They were all over my back. Just like old times.”

  “I don’t get the impression they are on your back all that much,” he said.

  He knew love when he saw it. He knew when parents were proud too.

  Brina’s parents were proud of her. They were also scared and nervous over her tires being slashed.

  “I guess not. It’s just I’m not like everyone else. They all have hearts and flowers in their eyes.”

  “And you have what? Fun? There isn’t anything wrong with that either,” he said.

  “No. There isn’t. And I’m sorry that my father put you on the spot over my tires. I told him they were never going to find out who did it. I’m not sure why he asked you to look into it.”

  “You know I already did,” he said.

  “What?” she asked, turning to look at him as he drove her home. “That was when you put the camera on the doorbell. I just thought that you checked to see if it had been happening at that point.”

  “I did. But did you really think I wouldn’t follow up?”

  He’d made a few calls, but there wasn’t anything to report. No witnesses, no nothing. It could have been any case she was working on. It could have been kids. There had been reports of a lot of cars being broken into and money and electronics stolen out of them. Maybe someone was annoyed she had nothing in her car and slashed her tires.

  No one was ever going to know at this point. As worried as he was over it weeks ago, he’d tried to ease her parents’ minds. They’d laughed when he’d said he installed the camera for her, so he guessed that helped.

  “I suppose. It makes sense that you said what you did to them. I just thought you were trying to make them feel better by talking in generalities. But I guess it was the truth, huh? That it could have been anyone.”

  “Yep. And I was trying to make them feel better about it too. No one knows if you were targeted. Vandalism to cars happens all the time. Especially in places like where you live.”

  “Meaning where I live isn’t great?”

  “Whoa, what bug crawled up your butt?” he asked. He’d never seen her this defensive before.

  “I don’t know. I’m not normally like this. Sorry. I feel like everyone can’t believe I’m still single. That I’ve got so much going for me. Or they blame me for being single and then with my tires it’s like I can’t take care of myself. That I’m weak and should cry and be upset and not let it get to me.”

  “I don’t think anyone blames you for anything. And you aren’t single,” he pointed out.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Were you truly not affected by the tires? Be honest with me,” he said. He wasn’t sure how he wanted her to feel about it, but knew he wanted honesty.

  “Yes. It scared me. I was pissed off more than anything, but then I wondered and doubted myself. My clients. The people I was around. I started to think about who I was meeting with and was it them. This chip I have on my shoulder at times, it got knocked around.”

  “Why haven’t you said anything to me?” he asked. “I could have helped you. I could show you some things or ways to defend yourself. Or is it a pride thing?”

  “It’s some of all of it. I’ve always been this woman that knew what she wanted and didn’t need anyone. I guess you could say if I said I was afraid maybe everyone would either coddle me or say they told me so. Not only that, my ex, the douchebag, he’d always said no man would want to be saddled with me and I kind of believed it. It was wrong of me, but I did.”

  “So you didn’t want to tell me because I might think you weren’t capable of taking care of something?”

  “I guess. Maybe. Yes. I don’t want to be anyone’s burden.”

  “I can understand that to a point, but you’re not a burden to me and you never will be. Anyone who said that to you is an ass and doesn’t know you that well. So now what? Did or are you changing how you do things because of what happened?”

  “I’m more aware. I don’t want to blame people. I can’t judge people. I can’t do the whole guilty until proven innocent. That isn’t who I am or the job I’ve got. If I do that I can’t be effective for my clients either. But I guess I need to change how I feel about myself too. Not to take things others have said about me to heart when they aren’t true.”

  “I’m just glad it was somewhat of an awakening for you. I guess it helps to know you are looking out more. Not that I won’t still be worried, but knowing you are more alert is still a good step in the right direction. And that doesn’t make you a burden. It makes me caring. Most women like a man that is caring,” he said, grinning.