14
Georgina
Nathaniel opens the deck door to his bedroom, and my heart skips a beat. “Is this your way of getting me into your bedroom? This isn’t very subtle.”
“I've never been good at subtle.”
I look around his bedroom – “bedroom” doesn’t accurately describe it, though. It’s a huge master suite with light grey walls and log beams that run across the ceiling and match the rest of the house. It’s understated and masculine, with a sitting area on the other side of the room outfitted with several leather chairs and a television. When my eyes flicker toward his bed, I have to force them away.
Do not think about Nathaniel and his bed. Or what you might want him to do to you on that bed.
Or on the floor.
Or the chairs.
Heat rushes through me at the prospect of Nathaniel doing me anywhere in here, but I swallow hard and clear my throat as he walks to the far side of the suite near the sitting area where a set of closet doors lines the wall. I notice the keypad on the doors before he even touches it. “Wait,” I say, stopping him. “Are you about to show me something completely weird? Ohhh… were the blow up dolls really yours and not Adriano’s?”
“Okay, I’m not showing you. Forget we talked about it,” Nathaniel grumbles.
“So they were yours.”
“No, they were not mine.”
“Okay, show me.”
“Nope, you’re going to think it’s weird.”
“I promise I won’t.” I cross my fingers behind my back. Okay, I might. Especially if he has a bizarre fetish. What if he collects locks of women’s hair or something?
Nathaniel grumbles under his breath again as he unlocks the closet and slides open the door, revealing a set of cabinets topped with shelves that reach the ceiling. The shelves are filled to the bursting point with yarn. Skeins and skeins of yard in a million different colors and textures. He looks at me silently.
“Um… is this some kind of BSDM thing? You tie women up with yarn?”
Nathaniel sighs exaggeratedly. “It’s exactly what it looks like, all right? There you go. You’ve seen my dirty secret.”
When he moves to close one of the doors, I stop him. “Wait. I don’t get it.”
“I knit.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me the first time. I knit. In my spare time, I knit things. Socks, scarves, blankets. Christmas stockings.”
“You knit.”
“No one knows. Including Adriano. Shit, especially not Adriano. Or anyone on my team.”
A giggle builds up in my chest, and I cover my mouth to prevent it from coming out. It doesn’t work, and now Nathaniel is looking at me with a dark expression.
“Okay, see, I wasn’t going to tell you,” he growls, closing one of the doors.
“I’m not laughing at you,” I promise, suppressing a giggle. “It’s just that… you knit? That’s your dirty secret? The way you acted, I was afraid this was going to be filled with body parts.”
“Body parts, really? Shit, if the guys on the team found out about the knitting, I’d never hear the end of it. It would be worse than a closet full of body parts.”
I mock-button my lips. “Mum’s the word.”
“You promised not to laugh.”
“Nervous habit,” I say, rapidly changing the subject. “Show me something you’ve knitted.”
“Are you done laughing?”
“I swear.”
He sighs. “Fine. But don’t make me regret showing you.” He slides open a drawer in the cabinet and pulls out a long grey scarf. “This is one I just made. It’s angora.”
“Wow. This is…”
He sighs. “Yeah, I know. Lame.”
“That’s not what I was going to say at all. I was going to say, it’s… not what I expected from you.”
“Look, I love football. It’s my whole life. But a couple of years ago, I was having a hard time getting my mind off the game at night, which gave me problems falling asleep. The team has this life coach that players sometime see – I’m not crazy, though.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
“Doc sent me to her to fix my sleep, and…” He laughs under his breath. “She was pregnant and she was knitting when she talked to me. I thought it was the dumbest fucking thing I’d ever seen. She said I should try it because it might help me clear my head.”
“Does it?”
He shrugs. “I started doing it at night and stopped having sleep problems.”
“Whatever keeps you in the game, right?”
Nathaniel gives me a funny look as he takes the scarf out of my hands and slides the closet doors closed.
“You must have knitted a million things by now. What do you do with them?”
“I donate them to charities. Anonymously,” he adds, emphasizing the last word.
“Okay, I have one more question.”
He crosses his arms. “Go ahead.”
“Can you do ugly Christmas sweaters?”
Later, when I snuggle under the covers, thinking about big gruff Nathaniel and his knitting makes me smile.
The next morning, we’re up at dawn to work with the horses. When the kids find out what they have to do, they all groan.
“We have to clean poop?” Niall asks, making a gagging sound. He’s echoed by the moans of several of the kids and a chorus of barfing noises.
“That’s right.” Bryson, one of the seasoned counselors, crosses his arms. “Before you get on a horse, you need to learn how to take care of them. That means learning how to brush them after you ride, and put on a saddle, and check the horses’ hooves and… muck the stalls.”
“You mean shovel poop,” one of the other kids says flatly.
“Yep. Do you know why we have you muck the stalls first? Because you have to learn the not-fun stuff before you learn the fun stuff,” Bryson says brightly.
Nathaniel’s standing a few feet behind me and I hear him speak softly. “It’s really because kids are free labor. But also because sometimes in life, you'll have to deal with shit. So you should get used to shoveling it."
I spin around and give Nathaniel a wide-eyed glare at the use of his profanity, but the kid beside him nods knowingly. “And you can’t let shit get you down,” the kid says.
Nathaniel fist-bumps the kid. “Good philosophy, Louis.”
I glare at Nathaniel, who seems oblivious. “No profanity.”
“What?” the kid protests. “That’s what my mom says.”
“Your mom is a wise woman,” Nathaniel adds.
“Yeah. I know. Are you going to help muck the stalls?”
“Are you crazy?” Nathaniel blurts.
“So you’re going to just watch us do it?”
“That’s right. I’m going to stand here and enjoy my cup of coffee, because that’s exactly the way my dad taught me. Circle of life, man. I’ve done my time mucking stalls. Now it's your turn."
“Huh. I thought you were supposed to be a regular guy, not a stuck-up athlete,” Louis grumbles. “But I guess once you get rich, you’re too good for this kind of thing.”
Nathaniel groans and rolls his eyes dramatically. “Fine. Go get two pitchforks. Make that three – find your co-conspirator, Spencer. But you know you’re a pain in the ass, Louis.”
“Nathaniel!” I exclaim, my eyes big.
Louis grins. "Yes! I knew you would cave.”
“Did you just guilt me into shoveling crap with you?” Nathaniel asks.
Louis’ grin gets even broader. “Deal with it, bro. You got played.”
Nathaniel tries to keep from laughing. “Get out of here.” When Louis runs off to grab shovels, Nathaniel shakes his head. “He’s a total manipulator.”
“You can’t call him a pain in the ass,” I tell him.
“Why not?” Nathaniel asks, looking at me blankly. “I called him a pain in the ass because I like him. And because he’s a pain in the ass.”
“Number one, it’s profanity and we don’t use profanity at camp. Number two, you can’t just go around calling the kids names.”
“He called me an ass yesterday when we met,” Nathaniel protests. “I’m pretty sure I’m not hurting his delicate feelings or exposing him to any profanity he doesn’t already know.”
“Well, at least he seems to have an accurate assessment of you.”
“See? You agreed that I’m an ass right there, and you like me.”
I raise my eyebrows. “I like you?”
“Oh, please. Don’t pretend like you don’t.” Nathaniel grins.
I step closer to him, dropping my voice to a whisper as I lean in. “Yeah. There’s nothing that gets me hotter than a man who knits me socks.”
“Ohhh….” Nathaniel steps back, shaking his head as he laughs and puts his hands over his chest. “Going right for the jugular. I thought we said we’d never speak of that again.”
“I said I wouldn’t tell anyone else. But I made no promise to never speak of it.”
Louis and Spencer interrupt, arriving with pitchforks in hand. “Let’s get this over with,” Louis says, rolling his eyes.
Nathaniel shoos the kids toward a stall, pausing for a second to whisper in my ear before he passes me. “If knitting you socks gets you wet, sweetheart, I’ll knit you a whole damn wardrobe.”
