Wild Christmas (Wild Heart Mountain: Wild Rider’s MC #17)

10. Nate

10

NATE

F reya runs out of the kitchen before I can explain. She thinks I regret touching her, but that’s not it. I regret not taking her upstairs to my bedroom, not laying her down on a bed of fucking roses like she deserves.

I was going to take her virginity in the kitchen, probably bent over the kitchen counter. My dick twitches painfully as an image of a naked Freya bent over my kitchen island pops into my mind.

Fuck. I’m as useless with women as I always have been. Always saying the wrong thing.

I should have grabbed her to me. Told her I haven’t stopped thinking about her since she walked into my cabin with her easy smile and love of Christmas songs.

Instead I’ve made her feel cheap and made her cry.

“Good one, fuck nuts,” I mutter to myself.

But this is easily fixed. I’ll go upstairs and tell her how I feel. Tell her that I want to take her out properly, to treat her right like she deserves.

I’m about to head up to Freya’s room and hope she forgives me when my phone rings.

It’s the daycare where Maisie is, and my heart jumps into my throat when I see the number.

“What happened?” I bark into the phone.

“Oh,” comes the startled reply. “Is that Nate Martell?”

I grit my teeth, needing to know my baby girl is okay. “Is Maisie okay?”

“She’s fine.” The voice is firm but calm, and I relax a little. But only a little, because something must have happened for the daycare to be calling.

“Maisie’s got a fever. She’s at a hundred point two. Nothing to be alarmed about, but our policy is to send them home if it goes over a hundred.”

It’s just a fever and not one of the hundreds of scenarios that have flashed through my mind in the last ten seconds.

I sag against the counter in relief. I remember the first time Maisie got a fever and how panicked I was, searching online parenting groups, bundling a sleeping Dora into the car to rush them both to the medical center in Hope.

The nurses were sympathetic to a new widower trying to figure it all out with his kids. I was given a handbook on childhood illnesses and sent home.

Now I know better than to rush to the emergency room whenever one of them so much as coughs. But I still don’t take any chances .

“I’ll come get her.”

I snatch my keys off the counter and head out to the car. If she’s okay, I’ll stop by the store on the way home and buy something to make it up to Freya, flowers or chocolates or some shit. I dismiss the idea immediately as too cliche. I’ll stop by the bookshop instead. I’ve seen the library books she’s always got her nose buried in. I’ll grab her a couple of books as well as the roses and chocolates. Better to cover all bases. Then I’ll explain to her how I feel.

She might reject me, she might be too young, and she might want to go back to France, but I’ve got to try.

But first I need to get my baby girl and make sure this fever is nothing to worry about.

I slide into the Tesla and head off, hoping like hell Freya doesn’t hate me too much before I get a chance to come back.