Here to Stay by Debra Webb Read Free Book Online

really be here, he had to be
dreaming. Still, he tried to focus on the figure standing over his
bed, but the urge to close his eyes was too great.
    “Get up,” the voice demanded.
    Nathan snapped his eyes open and focused on
the mirage once more. Paige had gotten all gussied up for some
reason. Maybe, Nathan thought, he’d died and didn’t know it yet.
After the way he’d behaved last night, he didn’t deserve to live
anyway. If he closed his eyes, maybe he’d wake up out of his
misery—in hell, where he belonged.
    “I said get up!”
    Paige jerked the pillow from under his head.
Nathan moaned at the daggers of pain that shot through his skull.
Damn…He was in hell.
    “Stop…My head is killing me.”
    “Good.” She gave the mattress under him a
swift kick. “You must have been pretty drunk last night, because
you left your front door standing wide open.”
    “Stop shouting,” he begged in a near whisper.
Nathan opened his eyes and looked up at the source of his
discomfort. Paige. He frowned. She really was here. She’d put her
hair up somehow. He didn’t like it. Nathan liked it when all that
soft, honey-colored stuff hung free around her shoulders. A blue
skirt and jacket. He didn’t like the suit, either. Too stuffy. He
liked Paige better in jeans and a T-shirt or naked. He smiled.
    “What the Sam Hill are you smiling
about?”
    “Stop shouting, dammit,” he demanded then
wished he hadn’t. He squeezed his eyes shut, groaned and held
perfectly still until the room stopped spinning and the pain
subsided again.
    “I have to be in court in less than three
hours. Now get up!”
    Nathan opened his eyes and looked up at her
again. “What is it you want, woman?”
    Paige’s dismayed gaze suddenly locked on his
body. Only then did Nathan realize that he was naked. All
that prevented him from being completely exposed was the corner of
the sheet draped over his private parts. If she didn’t stop looking
at him with that wide-eyed expression, that part would soon be
making an appearance.
    She dragged her gaze to his and cleared her
throat. “Windborne has gone into labor—”
    “Damnation, Blondie, why didn’t you say so?”
Nathan sprang from the bed, eliciting a gasp and a gaping mouth
from Paige. “Whoa.” Nathan closed his eyes and steadied himself
against the vertigo. He fumbled for his jeans and jerked them on.
“Did you call Walden?” he managed to ask without his head
exploding.
    “The vet is with her now,” she said, her back
turned. “I have to leave for Memphis. I know Robert would want one
of us there.”
    “You’re right. Thanks for letting me know.”
Nathan plowed a hand through his hair and ignored the queasy
sensation rising in his stomach. A flashback of the previous day’s
events slammed into his head. Words he’d said. Celine. Damn. He passed a hand over his face. “Look, Paige, I’m sorry about
yesterday.”
    Paige didn’t turn around or speak, but her
posture stiffened. The knowledge of how insensitive he’d been would
have made him sick had he not already been at death’s door.
    “I didn’t mean to say all those things. I
didn’t think.”
    Nathan braced himself for her rejection
before he reached out and touched her rigid shoulder.
    Paige shrugged away, then turned to face him.
“What would you like me to say in response to that?”
    “Nothing…I mean, I just wanted you to know
that I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
    “Sure you did. That’s why you said all those
things.”
    He closed his eyes and sighed long and loud.
Why should she make this easy for him? He had been a total ass.
“Okay,” he muttered and opened his eyes. “I wanted to hurt you.
Satisfied?”
    His insides twisted as Paige’s gaze slid
slowly down his body. Nathan wondered if she was even conscious of
the act. When her eyes paused on his half-open fly, his groin
tightened and heat flooded his loins. His breath stalled in his
chest. She shouldn’t be looking at him like that. Not right