- -
- 100%
- +
“I’m Nick Colter. Brittany’s husband.” He scooped the man’s cowboy hat off the ground and handed it over. “Sorry. I thought you were somebody else.”
The other man accepted the hat but not the apology. “It seems to me your hello could use a little work.”
Nick nodded, the small gesture an acknowledgment of fault and an admission to an error in judgment. He would have said more, but it was pretty difficult to make amends with a man who was wearing paint chips on one side of his face.
Burke Kincaid couldn’t have been more than a few years older than Nick, but something about the steadiness of his gaze reminded Nick of his father. “Now, Nicholas,” Joe Colter used to say. “Your mother and I aren’t raising any hotheads. Wild animals get mad. People get angry. If you’re angry, take it out on that stack of wood out back.”
Nick had split a lot of wood in his day.
Sometimes his mother had brought him out something cool to drink. More often than not she’d stuck around, stacking the wood he’d split, her hands work-roughened and chapped, her face bearing far too many lines for a woman her age.
“Everyone’s born with gifts,” Clarice would say, staring at the house with its peeling paint and sagging roof. “Money doesn’t happen to be one of ours. But pride is one of your greatest strengths, Nicholas, and so is brawn, neither of which amounts to a hill of beans unless you have the brains to back them up.”
Nick shook his head at the memory. Watching as Burke strode in the direction of the town’s only gas station and Louetta disappeared inside the door that led to the apartment over the diner, he wondered how many times he’d allowed anger to get in the way of his brain.
Patting the revolver underneath his coat, he took a deep breath, released it and took another before turning to face Brittany. Her arms were crossed, her shoulders set, her eyes wary. His rough handling hadn’t done any lasting damage to Burke Kincaid, but it had raised Brittany’s suspicion.
She stared at him, unblinking, the only sound that of droplets of water plopping into puddles on the ground. Finally she said, “Why did you come here, Nick?”
Brittany saw Nick take a step toward her, only to stop abruptly as if he’d thought better of coming any closer. His chest expanded with the deep breath he took, his fingers raking through his hair. “Everything I’ve told you is true. I want you and Savannah to move back to Chicago with me. If you won’t do that, I’d like you both to stay with my parents in Florida for a while.”
She took a moment to digest the information he’d given her. The man standing before her wasn’t an awkward cowboy wearing scuffed boots and a bolo tie. He was an intimidating man in jeans and a worn bomber jacket. He was five foot eleven and three-quarter inches tall. The lack of that last quarter inch had always rankled him. Some men would have considered it close enough and called themselves an even six feet. But not Nick.
Nicholas Colter was a lot of things. Egotistical, overbearing and stubborn to name a few. But he never lied. That didn’t mean he always told the complete truth. At least not until he had to.
Glancing at the footsteps Burke Kincaid had left in the snow when Nick had hauled him up against the building without warning, she said, “Why, Nick?”
He narrowed his eyes as if waiting for her to be a little more specific. That expression could raise her hackles faster than anything else. Today she wasn’t giving in to it, not until she had some answers.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.