“Terri Rayburn from the lake.”
“I think I met her one time when I was with Dad. Tall girl? Can swim well?”
“Legs like a thoroughbred.” Nate stuck his hands in his pockets and stared at the floor.
“You hungry? We can order in from a place down the road. They have a chopped kale salad that’s good. Or do you want a Taggert feast of meat on top of meat?”
When Nate looked up, there was a sparkle in his eyes. “Kale, huh?”
Rowan knew it was a joke at his expense, but it didn’t bother him. “If you’re no longer welcome in Summer Hill, what are you going to do to earn a living for the next year? Don’t you have an office there?”
Nate sat up on the couch. “A big one. Stacy modeled it on this apartment.” He looked at the white furniture with distaste. “She thinks this place is beautiful.”
“Yeah?” Rowan smiled. “I agree. Simple. Clean.”
“You remember the Stanton house?”
Rowan put his hand to his forehead. “Stanton house? Big place smack in town? Falling down but could be restored?”
“That’s it.”
Rowan opened a drawer, pulled out a stack of menus and looked through them. “That’s a great old house. I always liked it.”
Nate shook his head. “You like that house?”
“Very much.” Rowan handed Nate a menu. “Italian. Lots of meat. If you can’t read it, I can translate. Call and order while I take a shower.” He left the room.
Nate looked at the menu but didn’t see it. Likes kale, loves the Stanton house, his apartment is all white. Maybe Kit had been right in matching his son with Stacy. And maybe he’d been right in putting Nate in Terri’s house.
But Nate had messed it up. He’d been so jealous that Kit had given his son a beautiful young woman that Nate had... He took a breath. He’d done whatever he had to do to win her—including becoming someone he wasn’t. He didn’t want to think this was true, but maybe he’d tried to be a Montgomery—specifically, he’d tried to make himself into Rowan.
“I gave Stacy beer when she wanted champagne,” he whispered.
Rowan appeared in the doorway, a towel wrapped around his waist. “Did you order?”
To Nate’s eyes, Rowan was too thin. In good shape, but with little muscle on him. But maybe that’s what Stacy liked. From the way she was always trying to get Nate to reduce his size, he thought so. “Not yet,” he said, and pulled out his phone.
* * *
By the time their meal arrived, Rowan and Nate were so glum they were hardly speaking. They sat at the glass-topped table, heads bent. That Rowan didn’t get plates and proper silverware out showed that he was in a serious funk. He moved a plastic fork around in his lemon pasta that was still in the foam container.
“Can you get me a picture of William Thorndyke?” Nate asked. “But then, maybe I should check at a church because by now the kid is probably up for sainthood. Terri will float away on a cloud with him.”
“Rayburn! I just remembered. Didn’t her mother run off with some man?”
“Yeah,” Nate said gruffly. “Her mother did.”
“I was a kid but I remember when it happened. We were in Dubai at the time. Dad got angry and wanted to go home and find out what really happened. He was on the phone yelling at somebody.”
“I wasn’t there then or I’m sure it would have been me.”
Rowan ignored Nate’s statement. “It was the sheriff. Dad was yelling that Lisa—”
“Leslie.”
“Leslie could have been murdered and her body thrown in the lake, but the sheriff wasn’t investigating.”
“I can believe that. I was cleaning up garbage around the old dock and I saw something down there. It looked like...” Nate’s eyes widened like in a horror movie.