Then He Kissed Me (Whispering Bay Romance 2)

The residents of Whispering Bay had an unofficial, but well known way to refer to the two areas of town where most of the population lived. There was NBTB, which stood for Not By The Beach, and BTB, its opposite. Nate grew up in a modest three bedroom brick home in the NBTB section of town. His dad had been a foreman at a nearby lumber mill and his mom stayed home to take care of him and his younger sister, Melanie.

As far as childhoods went, Nate’s had been perfectly normal. He played video games and excelled at math and science and dreamed of being an astronaut when he grew up. Sports weren’t his thing, but he did like to toss an occasional basketball. He was taller than most boys his age, and although not very coordinated, his height gave him somewhat of an advantage. But he was never good enough to make a team (at least, he assumed he wasn’t, because he never tried out for any). Melanie was the athletic one in the family. She played volleyball and girls’ basketball and just about every sport she could try out for.

They’d gone on family vacations to Disney World, had camped in the national parks nearby, and had gone on a more elaborate family road trip to the Grand Canyon (shades of Chevy Chase and Family Vacation and Walley World). Nate had been a boy scout and he’d even helped his dad build the wooden deck they added on to the house.

He’d been happy as a kid. Or as happy as any kid could be. It had never been easy for him to make friends, but his skill at video games had ensured that there was always be someone who wanted to hang out with him. Teachers liked him because he was quiet and smart. Girls petrified him, so he steered clear of them, and he never messed with the bullies at school, so they steered clear of him.

Then one day, everything changed. His dad died of a heart attack when Nate was thirteen. The life insurance hadn’t been enough to do mo

re than pay off the rest of the mortgage on their modest home. His mother, Connie, had only a year of college and couldn’t find anything in the area that paid much more than minimum wage. So at age thirty-eight, she went back to nursing school full time. Nights, she worked part-time as a medical assistant at a retirement home in Panama City. It had been up to Nate and Lanie to help around the house, cooking and cleaning and getting themselves ready for school. They were a team, Mom had said, and teams fought together till the end.

After Mom graduated nursing school, she got a job at the hospital in Panama City and things got better. They weren’t rich, but she was able to keep food on the table and pay all the bills and there was even money to replace their old car. Her hard work had paid off and Nate was proud of her, but when it came time to go away to college, he was hesitant to move too far away. So, he picked the closest one to home that would give him a free ride—Florida State University, just two hours down the road. And when it came time to apply to medical schools, he decided to stay put and continue on at FSU. Doc Morrison offered to pay for all the expenses not covered under his scholarship and in exchange, Nate promised to come back home to practice.

It hadn’t been hard to keep that promise. Despite the allure of more glamorous medical subspecialties, he’d been pleasantly surprised to find that family practice genuinely appealed to him. He liked solving puzzles. Taking a vague set of symptoms and figuring out what was wrong with someone. His colleagues had teased him. He’d graduated top of his med school class and could have gotten just about any residency he’d wanted. Dermatology and plastic surgery at big teaching hospitals like Emory or John Hopkins were considered cream of the crop. Instead, he’d chosen the family practice residency program at Tallahassee Memorial.

Doc Morrison hadn’t made him sign a contract. They’d given each other a good old-fashioned handshake to seal the deal, but in Nate’s eyes, that was just as binding as any legal document. If Jessica knew, she’d have his balls in a vise. No matter. He wasn’t breaking his word to Doc Morrison. Jessica or no Jessica.

Nate could smell his mother’s beef stroganoff before he even opened the front door. Charlie, the family cocker spaniel greeted him enthusiastically, barking and wagging his tail like an idiot. “Hey, boy,” Nate said, bending down to give the old dog a scratch behind the ears.

“We’re in the kitchen!” Lanie yelled. Nate followed the smell of his mother’s cooking to the back of the house.

Lanie immediately handed him a cold beer from the fridge. “You’re gonna need this.”

“Oh, goodie, my not-engaged son is here.” His mom swatted him on the arm with a wooden spoon. “How come I had to go to work to find out you proposed to Jessica?”

Nate flinched. Lanie smiled like she was enjoying herself. “I was going to surprise you,” he said, which sounded dumb, but the truth was he knew the two women in his life weren’t big fans of Jessica. It was a classic case of planning to ask for forgiveness rather than permission.

“We’re surprised, all right,” Lanie said. “Pleasantly surprised, I might add. Next time you decide to throw yourself off a cliff, please come to me for advice first.”

“I really had no idea you disliked her this much.”

“That’s because I didn’t think you were serious about her. I thought you were just using her for sex.”

“Melanie!” Mom slapped Lanie on the arm with the wooden spoon. Good. Now they were even.

“If you’re that desperate for company, bro, you should have come to me. There’s a new litter of puppies at the shelter. Chihuahua-Dachshund mix.” She shuddered. “Extremely needy and hard to house break. Just your type.”

Lanie was the manager at the local animal shelter and she was always trying to foist some stray dog on him. “I mean, I can certainly see what you saw in Jessica. I’d go for that myself if I knew I’d never have to see her again.”

“Please don’t tell me we have the same taste in women,” Nate said.

“That would imply you have taste.”

“Knock it off, you two,” Mom said.

“He knows I love him,” Lanie said defensively. She shook her head sadly. “Bro, your mess is all over the Internet.” She pulled out her cell phone and began finger swiping the screen until she got to YouTube.

Mom suddenly looked worried. “Maybe we shouldn’t show him.”

“Show me,” he said.

“Okay, here goes.” Lanie pulled up the video and the three of them stood hunched over her phone. Like his sister said, the video was all about botched proposals. Poor sad sacks whose girlfriends had no clue they were about to get down on one knee. One proposal had gone down during halftime of an NBA basketball game. The girl ran off in front of a stunned crowd and the team mascot (a teddy bear, no less) had to drag the guy off the court. Then came the guy who talked about how he loved the way his girlfriend ate a cupcake. “Don’t worry, you’re next,” Lanie said.

Fuck. There it was, the scene at The Harbor House playing out in front of him. He was down on one knee and he looked pale and the whole time Jessica kept the same expression on her face. At one point, the videographer had done a slow pan of the restaurant. The entire place looked mesmerized. He’d known that the tables nearby were looking on, but he had no idea everyone in the place had been watching, too. And then there was the moment when Jessica told him to get up and he still looked confused and had even offered her the ring again. Against the quiet background you could hear a man’s voice say, “What a loser!” The video then segued into the next spot that involved some poor schmuck proposing on T.V.

“Want to see it again?” Lanie asked.

“That’s enough, Melanie, leave your poor brother alone,” Mom said.