Page 14 of Long Lost Winter

Instead, he’d downed the fourth… or was it fifth?And now his balance was off.

Drunk.Great.

But Sam rounded them up into her tiny car.She drove them back to his rental cabin.Which meant she’d have to come get him in the morning so he could pick up his truck from the office.

When she pulled to a stop at his cabin, Cal was the first one to fling the door open.He got out of the car on a stumble.

“Icy as shit out here,” Cal muttered before slamming the car door shut.Nate followed suit.It was indeed icy, and his equilibrium was all off.But he didn’t go down like Cal did, swearing the whole way.Still, he slipped and slid and had to grab on to the gate for balance.

The car turned off and Sam came around to where they were both struggling for footing.Sam managed to somehow offer balance to both of them, even though she was small, and they were not.She got them up the porch, then took the keys from Nate when he fumbled with them.

She unlocked and opened his door, and Cal stumbled in first.“Thank Christ.What the hell am I doing in this frozen tundra when I could be inTexas?”he grumbled, moving inside.

Nate hesitated in the doorway.He hadn’t missed the way Sam’s gaze kept moving from the road to across the way where her aunt’s house stood.

She opened her mouth, no doubt to say goodbye, but Nate pulled the door closed—Cal inside, him and Sam out here on the porch.

“Maybe once this trial is over she’ll…”

“She won’t,” Sam said before he could figure out a good outcome for this.“She needs time to grieve it all over again.Maybe someday she forgives me, but it won’t be anytime soon.”

“She should.”

Sam shrugged.She managed to pull her gaze from Lisa’s house to Nate.“He’s her brother.”She said it like it was an excuse, when that was ridiculous.

“He’syourfather.”

She inhaled sharply at that.“Yeah, well, she wouldn’t be the first to tell me that I care more about the truth than I should.Than what’s important.”

“You don’t.”

There was heartbreak in her eyes, or maybe that was just the moonlight and his own imagination.

“Thanks,” she said softly.She blew out a breath, and it puffed out between them illuminated by the porch light.She glanced at the cabin behind Nate.

“You’re going to have to tell them.About Bo.And we need to make a decision about… if we’re going to take him up on the whole… investigation for job thing.”

He knew that.He supposed she said it because she was aware he knew that.And procrastinating didn’t change anything.

Except not having to deal with it just yet.

“I will.I just…”

“Don’t want to?”

“Yeah, that.”

“I could tell them.If it’s easier.”

He studied her, because he couldn’t tell—was it selfless to help him?Or was it a way to keep that rift going between her and Landon and Aly?She said she was ready to move on, to get over everything that had come between them for fifteen years.

But he knew how much more comfortable rifts could be over fixing them.

“I’ll handle it.Tomorrow.Or this weekend.I just want the trial to be more a… thing we all know how to deal with.”

He could tell she wasn’t sold, but she nodded.

“I’ll hold Bo off until you tell them.I think once we hire him… it won’t be such a secret.So let me know when you do it.”