Starting Over (Nugget Romance 4) Read online

  “Hang on a sec. Let me go first.”

  She tossed him a look like he was a moron. “You said it yourself, they’re raccoons, Nate. Not gun-wielding robbers.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “Hopefully they’re not rabid.”

  She waved him off and went inside with Nate on her heels. She stood in the front room, peering into the open kitchen. “Is the coast clear?” she called to Rhys and Jake.

  “We got one,” Jake said. “Just need to get the other.” Somewhere along the line, Rhys had brought in another trap.

  Nate went into the kitchen, where Rhys held the pantry door open a crack and watched to see if the second coon would take the bait. Food was strewn everywhere. Torn bags of rice and pasta covered the floor. Red sauce was smeared across the cabinets. Shards of glass and dishware littered the countertops. They’d had themselves a real party.

  “Got it!” Rhys yelled, and opened the pantry door to grab the trap.

  “What will you do with them?” Sam came closer, but didn’t step foot inside the kitchen.

  “Take them out to the state park and turn them loose,” Rhys said, holding the trap away from his side, gauging the mess. “Told you it wasn’t pretty. But at least they didn’t get the silver.” He laughed, and Nate supposed it was country cop humor.

  Yeah, not really that funny.

  “You ready to go, Nate?” Rhys said, and looked at his watch. Maddy was surely keeping dinner warm.

  “Nah, I’ll stay here and help Sam clean up.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” she protested. “Really, it’s no problem. I’ll have it cleaned up in no time.”

  “Then we’ll get it done even faster with the two of us. Then you can drive me to Rhys and Maddy’s to pick up my car.”

  “Sounds like a solid plan,” Rhys said, and looked down at the cage he was holding. “I want to get rid of this guy. See y’all later.”

  When they heard Rhys’s truck drive away, Sam got out the cleaning supplies. Nate wondered if she had maids, because he couldn’t see her doing housework. But she dug in like a pro. Nate found her stash of heavy-duty trash bags and began tossing away the broken glass.

  “Was any of this good stuff?” He looked at the pieces of china he threw into the bag.

  “Nothing that can’t be replaced.” She stopped from wiping the tomato sauce off the wall and turned to face him. “Thanks, Nate.”

  He hitched his shoulders. “Just being a good neighbor.”

  “To tell you the truth, I was glad you stayed. I know they were just raccoons, but it still feels like a violation.”

  “Don’t have a lot of wildlife in Connecticut, do you?”

  “Are you kidding? In back-country Greenwich? But I also lived in a house full of people. Part of the reason I chose this house was because it is next to you. Sierra Heights is kind of a ghost town.”

  He nodded in understanding. There were still a lot of empty houses in the subdivision. Even though Sam had probably lived on a fairly large spread, it wasn’t as remote as this. Hell, at the Cumberland estate, Kayla’s family had so many servants you couldn’t be alone if you tried.

  “You go out after work?” Nate eyed her work clothes again. A tailored pantsuit that looked like it was custom-made to hug her smoking body.

  “I stopped in at the Ponderosa to have a drink with Harlee and Darla, and Lucky was there. He and I wound up having dinner and talking about his cowboy camp. He’s really excited about it.”

  Nate wanted to tell her that if she liked Lucky so much, she should call him to help her clean up this mess. Petty, he knew, but it bothered him that she was palling around with the bull rider. What bothered him more, though, was that he was bothered. Nate had never been the jealous type, not even with Kayla. Being possessive about Sam was crazy. They were barely friends.

  “What were you and Rhys doing?” she asked.

  “I was over at their house, about to have dinner.”

  “Ah, Nate. You must be starved. After we finish this, I could pop a frozen pizza into the oven.” She glanced around the room and cringed. “Better yet, I could take you out.”

  “Nah, Maddy will warm something up for me. I just need to get my car.”

  “You sure?” She stood up and stretched her back, giving him a nice view of breasts straining against silk.

  “Positive.”

  “Is this about the kiss?”

  “Yep,” he said. “That absolutely can’t happen again.”

  “Nate, we can eat and not kiss, you know.”

  “You already ate.” With Lucky.

  “I could eat again. In fact, I’m craving salad.”

  Nate knew that was bullshit, since no one craved salad. “I’m good, Sam.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, Nate. You’re better than good.” She said it with a big flirtatious smile on her face. She was teasing him and he liked it. “That kiss was one of the best—ever.”

  He decided to play along, even though he knew he’d entered the danger zone. Flirting had a nasty way of leading to more kisses. “Oh yeah, whose was better? Your ex’s?”

  “Not hardly,” she said, and turned her face away.

  “Is that why you left him at the altar? He was a bad kisser?” Okay, he was flirting—and fishing. But suddenly it seemed important that he know why she dumped her fiancé.

  Her back went straight as a soldier’s. “Maybe I was bored and thought I could do better.”

  Nate flinched, feeling as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. Her words echoed Kayla’s almost to a tee. And the memory washed over him like an ice-cold shower. A wake-up call, because Samantha Dunsbury sure the hell wouldn’t do better with him. No way was he getting played a second time.

  Chapter 9

  What Sam really thought was that she deserved better than a man who just wanted to use her for her pedigree. But telling Nate about Royce would’ve been beyond degrading. Her ex-fiancé’s words still echoed in her ear. Still made her shudder with humiliation.

  The dumb cow is nothing more than a for-show wife. After the wedding we can live in separate houses for all I care.

  Sam met Royce at the Black and White Ball. It was Sam’s event and everything from the black-and-white striped chairs to the Fortuny-inspired lamp shades had been her idea. The ballroom had never looked more glamorous. As the band played “Wonderful Tonight,” Sam felt wonderful in a strapless, bodice-hugging Oscar de la Renta. It had taken her five weeks of dieting to fit into the dress. Unlike the other women of her social stratum, who starved themselves year round to fit into the latest couture designs, Sam was considered more curvaceous than what was fashionable. She could deny herself until the cows came home (another one of Clay McCreedy’s sayings), but Sam would never be X-ray thin. Not her body type. No matter how much she tried to cover them up, Sam had hips, breasts, and a butt. And her so-called friends never missed an opportunity to remind her of them.

  “Samantha is the Marilyn Monroe of our bunch,” they’d say. On its face, it sounded like a compliment. But Sam knew a subtle dig when she heard one.

  The subtext was that Sam was fat. In her circle, being fat was worse than being addicted to OxyContin or beating a child. And having a slow metabolism was a far bigger medical emergency than having anorexia.

  But on the night of the Black and White Ball she felt svelte and gorgeous. And men noticed, a few blatantly giving her that slow up-and-down. Crude when a construction worker did it, but somehow perfectly acceptable from a man in a tuxedo with a seven-figure bank account. Sam’s world was full of ridiculous double standards like that.

  Of all the men to pay attention to her, Royce was by far the most handsome. Tall, blond, and all-American, like he’d just walked out of a Tommy Hilfiger ad to dock his sailboat then join the boys on the lawn for a quick game of touch football. Everyone knew Royce Whitley was the most eligible male in New England.

  Because, yes, he was one of those Whitleys.

  And her father, a blue-blooded opp
ortunist, seduced by the prospect of adding a new string of regal DNA to the family lineage, pounced. He invited Royce to sit at the Dunsbury table. Royce, who should’ve won an Academy Award for his command performance, pretended to be enchanted to spend the evening with George Dunsbury’s only daughter. He spun her around the dance floor, made sure her glass was always full, and entertained her with story upon story of his favorite person—himself. He talked about his polo ponies, his pied-à-terre in Paris, and how he had the strongest strain of genetically modified weed known to mankind back at his penthouse, and asked her if she wanted to get stoned later.

  Despite his many farcical traits, which quite frankly were common in most of the men of his ilk, he seemed genuinely nice. He complimented her repeatedly. Offered to take her on a tour of the “Big Board,” otherwise known as the New York Stock Exchange. And after the party, walked her home to her family’s apartment on the Upper East Side. They bought a knish from one of the food carts and shared it as they strolled Eighty-Sixth Street, peering into the shop windows.

  Ordinarily, she would’ve thought Royce Whitley to be a stuffed shirt. But it turned out he was rather personable. Charming, really. They stopped inside the Barnes & Noble and browsed through the books. No one gave them a second look in their black-tie attire. The beauty of Manhattan.

  Once they got to Sam’s building, Royce left her at the front door with a chaste kiss and a promise to call the next day. And much to her surprise—and delight—he did. For the next three months they were inseparable. Royce took her to his annual fraternity reunion at Yale. Afterward, they and a bunch of his frat brothers wound up at a bar near campus and got smashed on Jägermeister. They went to Yankees games, to parties in the Hamptons, and to his family’s home in Newport, Rhode Island.

  For an entire week they stayed at the summerhouse, where he took her in his arms each and every night and told her, “You own my heart, Red.”

  In early fall, she found a three-carat diamond engagement ring at the bottom of her champagne flute. Royce got down on bended knee in the middle of Per Se and proposed. She said yes, making George Dunsbury and the Whitleys ecstatic. The next day, Page Six declared them the match of the millennium.

  Then little by little Royce began to change. Imperceptibly at first, like forgetting to meet her for lunch at the Plaza. Or coming late to an engagement party in their honor. “Sorry, Red, I got caught up at work and couldn’t find a cab.”

  As the big day got closer, Royce got more distant. Sometimes he didn’t call her for days. And when he did, he seemed primed for a fight. “Sam, can’t you just handle it? I don’t give a shit what flowers we go with.”

  Apparently, neither did she because she started handing off more and more of the wedding decisions to her bridal consultant. At the time, she marked it up to Royce’s erratic behavior. How could she focus on a wedding when her fiancé seemed to be falling apart?

  One day, Royce showed up to dinner—drunk—with his shirt on inside out.

  “Are you seeing someone?” she asked, thinking it was the only explanation for his conduct.

  “Why is that the first conclusion you jump to?” he asked, his tone antagonistic, like it was for most of their conversations those days. “Does it ever occur to you that I’m scared out of my skull of messing this up? That you’re the best thing that ever happened to me?”

  A tear ran down her cheek and he leaned across the table to wipe it away with his thumb. “I’m sorry, Red. Let’s spend tomorrow together. I’ll come to Connecticut. We’ll take a long drive and look at the fall colors—just you and me.”

  “Okay,” she said, hoping that they could go back to the way it was before they’d become engaged.

  But the next day he never showed. Never called. Didn’t even text. When Sam called his work, Royce’s secretary said he was gone for the day. Fearing that he had been in a car accident, Sam was just about to phone the police, when Royce emailed.

  A client has an emergency. Won’t be able to make it today. Love you, babe.

  That night, Sam called an emergency dinner with her best friend, Wendy. They’d gone to boarding school and Vassar together. But unlike Samantha, Wendy had shunned her upper-crust background to become a social worker, riding herd over nine female teenagers in a group home in one of Norwalk’s toughest neighborhoods. They met at a small café in Stamford and Sam poured her heart out.

  Wendy, always the voice of reason, said, “He could be having an affair or he could be having major pre-wedding jitters. He wouldn’t be the first guy to have them and he certainly won’t be the last. The question is, what do you want to do about it?”

  “I want to call the wedding off until he and I hash it out.”

  “Then tomorrow, before he leaves for work, you go to his apartment in the city and tell him.”

  “My dad’s going to have a conniption,” Sam said. And the Whitleys would be devastated.

  “Don’t say you’re calling it off. Tell George you’re postponing, which is true, right?”

  “I don’t know,” Sam said as the server brought them their glasses of wine and salads. “The truth is, I don’t know how I feel. Maybe I’m not ready to get married either.” Or perhaps she wasn’t prepared to marry someone who had turned her life upside down with his volatile mood swings. One day he loved her, the next day he left her twisting in the wind.

  At the crack of dawn, Sam took the train into Manhattan and caught a cab to Royce’s penthouse. He lived in a brick and limestone building off Park Avenue. She came ready to do battle in a two-tone Marc Jacobs sheath dress and a pair of nude sledge pumps.

  Royce’s doorman, who by now had become an old friend, seemed startled to see her. “Ms. Dunsbury, you’re here early. Let me ring Mr. Whitley for you.”

  “No need,” she said, pushing past him to the elevator. “I have a key, Jacob.”

  Sam figured she wouldn’t make it to the fifteenth floor without Jacob diming her out to Royce. But she knew that catching her fiancé off guard, before he could come up with a million and one excuses, was her best strategy. And if he had something to hide . . .

  But when the doors slid open into his large, open apartment, there was no sign of him. She checked the kitchen, thinking he’d be guzzling coffee before he headed to work. It was too late for him to still be sleeping, which made her suspicious. Where had he stayed the night? And with whom? The emergency client?

  Before she jumped to conclusions, she checked his bedroom. There he lay in the center of the bed, sprawled across the blankets. Alone. She felt part relief and part guilt for thinking the worst, then she shook him awake.

  “Get up, Royce. What are you, in a coma?”

  He squinted up at her, sleep still in his eyes. “Hey, Red, you here for a bootie call?” Royce pulled her down onto the bed and rolled her under him. Leaning up on both elbows, he looked down at her and smiled.

  “Why are you still in bed?”

  “Had a hell of a night. One of my clients lost everything in a bunk investment and I had to talk him off the ledge.”

  “That’s terrible.” Particularly terrible because she hadn’t believed him. “Is he okay?”

  “Better.” He rolled to his side so he wouldn’t squash her. “What brings you to Manhattan this early in the morning? Wedding appointments?”

  “It’s not that early anymore. But we have to talk, Royce.”

  “Shit,” he said. “I haven’t exactly been a peach, have I?”

  “The truth: You’ve been awful.” Except now he was back to his old self—jokey and affectionate. “I’m thinking we should hold off on the wedding until we work this out. If you’re having second—”

  “No,” he said, and she detected a glimmer of panic in his eyes.

  “We’re good, Sam. Work’s been a bitch and all this wedding insanity demanding. Come on, baby, we love each other. Don’t you want to be Mrs. Whitley?”

  She hadn’t even thought about last names, which struck her as strange. There was always the hy
phenated thing. Samantha Dunsbury-Whitley. Eww. Then again, maybe not.

  “I’m not saying we call it off indefinitely, but temporarily postpone it. Just until we know this is what we want.”

  “Come on, Sam, what’s this really about? I know what I want. You call off the wedding . . . Hell, you may as well stick a stake in my mother’s heart. She loves you like a daughter.”

  Samantha knew that for the fib that it was. Helen Whitley wasn’t exactly what you would call maternal. “You have to admit, Royce, you’ve been more than distracted. Half the time you act like you don’t like me, let alone want to marry me.”

  “Ah, now you’re just being silly. I love you, Sam. And this insecurity shit you’re pulling—well, it doesn’t look good on you.”

  He reached up her sheath dress and played with the elastic band on her panties.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Shhh,” he whispered, and started undressing her.

  They made love, and by the time Sam left the apartment her confidence in Royce and their relationship had shifted back to solid ground. She just needed to get through Thanksgiving at the Whitleys’, then she could put all her focus on their Christmas-day wedding.

  Every Thanksgiving, Royce’s family threw a dinner party for a hundred guests. Helen hired the best caterers in Newport, used the Whitley china, which only came out when dignitaries visited, and brought in a sinfonietta for after-dinner dancing.

  In comparison, the Dunsburys’ Thanksgivings had been much more understated. But Sam had always enjoyed her family’s holiday. Everyone in the house, servants included, ate together. After dinner, she and her father would retire to the den, sit by the fire with snifters of brandy, and play Scrabble.

  There would be no Scrabble at the Whitleys’.

  “Be sure to wear something special,” Royce told her. As if she would somehow dress inappropriately.

  As Royce’s fiancée, she had been invited with her father to stay at the Whitley estate. They got there a couple of hours early, were shown to their rooms, and dressed for the evening. Before dinner started, Sam went looking for Royce, surprised that he hadn’t been there to greet them when they’d arrived. His bedroom was in the south wing of the house and she wandered through the hallways until she found it. She knocked a few times and when no one answered, she let herself in. The only sign that Royce had been there was that the room reeked of pot.