Home Sweet Home by Bella Riley Page A

picked up since they’d left the store, too, and she barely held back a shiver.
    “I didn’t expect it to be that cold.”
    “Let’s try this instead.” Nate laid out the blanket he’d brought onto the seat. “I should have known you’d be cold, that you wouldn’t be dressed for the weather.”
    Sitting down on the blanket, Andi suddenly felt self-conscious, like her dress was all wrong, the same dress she’d put on that morning for an extra dash of confidence, to try and ground herself in who she really was. Only now she was a greenhorn who didn’t know how to be “dressed for the weather.”
    “If I’d known this was where we were going, I would have changed into something else.”
    Obviously reading between the lines, Nate said, “You look really pretty, Andi. I’ve always loved you in blue.” But even as he complimented her, he looked irritated. “It’s my fault. I should have thought this through better.”
    He tucked the blanket up and over her shoulders and around her lap, until she was completely cocooned in thick wool.
    “Fortunately I did think to bring this.” He pulled a thermos of hot cocoa out of his bag and poured her a cup.
    When was the last time a man had worried about her? she found herself wondering as she burrowed one hand out from under the blanket to grab the cup. When was the last time a man had cared about something as simple as whether she was warm or thirsty?
    “Hey Nate, awesome to see you out here!” one of the kids called out. “Any chance you can come run some drills with us?”
    Nate grinned. “Howie, meet Andi.”
    The teenager said hi, and she remembered being that young once, when the entire world was her oyster.
    Neither she nor Nate had any idea that it would all implode in the blink of an eye.
    “We’re just here as spectators tonight, Howie,” Nate told him. “I’ll work with you guys later in the week, okay?”
    But the truth was Andi needed a little space, a little time to catch her breath and figure out an ironclad way to control her reaction to Nate.
    “Go run drills,” Andi said.
    Seeing the way the boy’s eyes lit up—Nate was clearly his hero—made her feel even more confident that she was doing the right thing by sending him out onto the football field.
    “I’m here for you tonight, Andi. Not them.”
    But she didn’t want to hold him back. Not when she knew that these kids were far more important to him than she could ever be.
    “I’m fine. Really. It’ll give me some quiet time in the great outdoors. With helping out at the store, I haven’t had much of that since I’ve been back.”
    Heck, she hadn’t had much of that since she’d left at eighteen. She spent most of her time inside either her office or apartment, usually in front of a computer.
    For the next hour she watched Nate yell, laugh, and run with the team, and for a moment she was seventeen again, watching him, so young, so beautiful, as he would catch a touchdown pass, grinning up at her in the bleachers as she sat just like this, under a blanket with a thermos of hot chocolate.
    But she wasn’t seventeen anymore. And not only was he a man who had weathered far more than he should have—she was also making the mistake of finding him a thousand times more beautiful.
    She loved the way he focused completely on the kids, singling them out one by one, clearly forgetting that she was sitting in the bleachers. She loved watching how the boys almost seemed to grow bigger from Nate’s attention, whether it was his hand on their elbow as he corrected a throw or because he’d just showed them exactly how to evade the defense.
    Nate had a very rare, very special gift: he made you feel like he cared. Her father had done that, too; every politician did, but it was different with Nate.
    Andi didn’t like the way her thoughts were going, didn’t like admitting to herself that her father’s attention almost always came with an ulterior motive. Whereas Nate simply cared because of