a sigh of resignation he told her, “Stay here.”
Hands propped on her hips, she scowled. “I didn’t ask for your help.”
Like it or not, she was getting it. If she went down there and wound up hurting herself, it would be his ass on the line. He picked his way down the slope into the ditch on the passenger’s side of the car, weeds twisting around his legs and clinging to his uniform pants like tentacles. Thankfully there had been no rain for a while, or he would be trudging through mud and muck.
He gave the car a firm shove, to make sure it was stable, and it didn’t budge. From this angle he could see that the hood was wedged under a large boulder at the edge of the field. This car had definitely seen its last days on the road.
“How bad is it?” she called down to him.
“Looks fatal,” he answered, and he heard her mutter something under her breath. “Sorry, I missed that.”
“I said, what next? Which in retrospect was probably a stupid idea. Why tempt fate?”
He didn’t believe in fate. Not anymore.
He tried the passenger’s side door. It resisted at first, but with one hard yank and the grating screech of metal against metal, it opened. As he leaned inside he was filled with an eerie sense of déjà vu. Somehow, despite having essentially spent the past seven years under a tarp in the garage, the car still smelled like the coconut body spray she’d used in high school.
He shook the thought away as he reached over and switched on the hazard lights.
The papers she’d mentioned lay scattered across the floor. He gathered them up, revealing an expensive-looking leather purse underneath, its contents spilled out onto the mat. He recognized the brand as one his ex-wife had often coveted but could never afford.
He had overheard his dad tell someone that Caitie had done rather well for herself in New York. It was a surprise to Nate. Not because he considered her incompetent. He had just always believed that material things didn’t interest her, that family was what she really cared about. Living in the city had obviously changed her.
Or hell, maybe he never really knew her at all.
He slid the sheets of paper—which looked to be financial forms—back into their folder and stuffed her belongings back into her purse. He gave the interior a final cursory glance, a disturbing sense of longing tugging at his soul. He shut the door and climbed out of the ditch.
“Thank you,” she said when he reached the top and handed her things over. “I could have gotten them.”
He should have let her do just that, but he had been entrusted by the town to keep its residents safe, and it was a duty he took very seriously. So, until Caitie went back to New York, she was essentially his to protect.
“I noticed your left taillight is still flickering,” he told her, looking back at the car.
“Only because someone never got around to fixing it for me,” she said sharply. “Though he promised about a hundred times.”
Resentment churned his gut. Who was this woman? The Caitie he knew had always been so sweet and accommodating, so...nice. She never had a negative thing to say about anyone. Well, almost never.
“I’m not the only one who made promises,” he reminded her. She had promised to marry him and have his children and spend the rest of her life with him.
Yet here they were, not married.
“Can I go now?” she asked.
He wasn’t sure where his reply originated, maybe from some deep dark place where the pain still simmered, but it was out of his mouth before he could stop it. “Leaving is what you do best.”
Her sharp intake of breath said the barb had struck its target. He waited for the feeling of satisfaction to release the weight that had been dragging him down since he’d first heard her voice in the diner. But treating women with respect was a virtue so deeply engrained by his parents, he felt like a jerk instead.
Her bluster and bravado seemed to leak away, filing the edge off her sharp tongue. “I didn’t want to hurt you, Nate. If you believe anything, please believe that.”
Whether she meant to or not, she had hurt him. She’d left with no regard for anyone else’s feelings. Abandoned him and all their friends with no logical explanation.
If this was her lame attempt at an apology, she was wasting her time. It was too late for that. She’d betrayed his trust, and, whatever her excuse, that would never be okay with him.
“Let’s go sit in my car,” he said.
Looking apprehensive, she asked, “What for?”
“It beats standing in the hot sun while I write this up.”
She hugged the file to her chest, shooting an anxious glance down the county road, as if she were plotting an escape route. Did she think she could outrun him? “I told you what happened. Do I really need to be here?”
Was she in such a rush to get back to the diner, or just eager to get away from him? It didn’t matter either way. His priority was to do his job.
“I’ll need your statement. Then you’ll have to sign it, so yes,” he told her. “You do, in fact, need to be here.”
Caitie realized that she was in no position to be asking Nate for any favors, but it couldn’t hurt to try.
Swallowing the crumbs of her shredded pride, she said, “Could we maybe skip the report this time? I mean, no one was hurt, right? No one else was even involved. So who would know?”
He just stared at her with his “cop” expression.
“If I’m late back to the restaurant, it’s everyone else who will suffer. The waitresses, the customers. My dad.”
“Maybe you should have considered that when you drove your car into the ditch.”
Like she had done it on purpose. And technically, she’d pushed it in. If the damned car hadn’t stalled, she wouldn’t be in this mess.
Nate crossed the road to his cruiser and opened the back door. It was silly to believe that he would cut her any slack after all that had happened.
She waited for a truck to rumble past, then walked across the road and peered into the cruiser. “I have to sit in back, locked in like a criminal?”
“Those are the rules,” he said.
It wasn’t as if she’d never been in the back of a police vehicle. Nate’s dad, P.J., a state police officer, had sometimes given them rides in his squad car. But this was different. Once she got in there, she would be trapped. Not that she thought he would hurt her. Not physically anyway. But he could spoon-feed her all the bitterness and resentment that had obviously built up these past years, and she would have no choice but to swallow it.
She stepped closer, then hesitated. Did she really want to do this?
Did she have a choice?
The longer she stalled, the later she’d be getting back to work. And there was nothing she hated more than letting people down. Though it was getting to be a recurring theme for her. First she let everyone down by leaving Paradise, then she let down her clients by not seeing the fraud going on right under her nose.
She glanced up at Nate as she slipped into the car, and as their eyes met, his were so cold and emotionless, it was as if he were looking right through her. She’d seen that look before.
Nate rarely lost his temper or even raised his voice—or he didn’t when they were younger. His weapon was silence. And the less he talked, the more she felt the need to justify herself over whatever it was he was upset about, which would usually leave her feeling like the bad guy. Whether it was her fault or not.
Not anymore.
He