Page 6 of Rebel

“Should you?”

“Of course. Shouldn’t we all try to be more like our fathers?”

“Christ, no. Not if they’re not worth emulating.”

Hutch stared at him with his clear gaze, as if he were trying to parse him. “And yours isn’t?”

How to put into words the complexity of his relationship with his father? “He’s not… I often think he should have been born a century earlier and on the other side of the ocean.” He gave a rueful smile. “He’d have been happy bowing and scraping at court, I think. Whereas I...” He smiled and let that tell all he thought about kings and their courts. “My father doesn’t hold with my radical ideas.”

Among other things. Not that his father had known for sure about Nate’s bedroom preferences, but he’d been indiscreet enough at Harvard to bring whispers to his father’s ears. That, and his penchant for free thinking, had landed him here in Rosemont.

With Hutch. He took a deep breath of verdant river air and smiled at his father’s imagined displeasure had he known what Nate was up to here. “He’s not a bad man; I just don’t want to be like him. I’mnotlike him and couldn’t be even if I tried.”

“My father was estimable,” Hutch said, frowning down at the fishing pole in his hands. “My mother, too. But I fear—Iknow—I disappointed them. They intended me for the church, you see, but I… I just couldn’t.”

“We’re all entitled to walk our own paths, Hutch. There’s no shame in that.”

“Isn’t there?Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is pleasing to the Lord.”

Nate was silent. He had much to say about the Bible, but wasn’t sure Hutch was ready to hear it.

Hutch looked at him from the corner of his eye. “No argument?”

That made Nate laugh, mostly in relief. “Plenty, but it might shock you.”

“I don’t mind being shocked.” He turned, one knee cocked on the bank, so he could study Nate more closely. “Don’t tell me you think the Bible isn’t right.”

“I think it was written by men, and men are fallible. What if—? What if your father commanded you to kill a man? Should you obey him then?”

“No, because the Lord saysthou shalt not kill.”

“Very well, we’re agreed.” He gave a satisfied smile. “You can’t ‘obey your parents in all things’. The Bible’s wrong about that. Instead, you should use your judgement as to whether a thing is right or wrong. For you,” he added when Sam’s face fell. “What’s right for one man might be wrong for another. And vice versa, of course.”

“You make it sound easy.” Hutch picked at the button on the knee-cuff of his breeches. “But I wish I’d not disappointed my father. If I’d known… Well, if I’d known how little time he had left, I’d have held my peace about the church. He could’ve gone to his grave imagining me the man he’d hoped for.”

Nate, who knew very well what it meant to disappoint a father, put a comforting hand on Hutch’s knee. The gesture felt natural—as natural as a bolt of lightning striking a tree. The hair on the back of Nate’s neck stirred as Hutch went stock still beneath his touch. Still and airless, as though he was holding his breath. Very slowly, Nate moved his thumb in a slow caress across the bare skin below Hutch’s knee-cuff.

Hutch sucked in a shivery breath but didn’t object, didn’t pull away. Didn’t move.

Hell and damnation, butthiscouldn’t be misinterpreted. Could it?

“Fish!” Hutch yelped abruptly and scrambled to his feet as the fishing pole went sliding toward the water. He caught it just in time and wrestled it back under control, eventually hauling a struggling fish out of the water.

He held it aloft with a breathtaking grin, rainbows dancing across the fish scales and water soaking his shirt. Christ, he was ravishing. “Quite a beauty, huh?”

“Exceptional.”

To Nate’s surprise, Hutch unhooked the fish with care and let it go. When he saw Nate’s puzzled frown, he shrugged. “I don’t like killing them unless I have to, and I’m not in need of fish today.”

“But you fish anyway?”

Another shrug. “I like it here.”

I like it here. So uncomplicated, Sam Hutchinson’s pleasures. So honest.

He felt something expand in his chest as he watched Sam bait the hook again, his capable fingers working with an assurance that tugged in the pit of Nate’s belly. The feeling was far beyond desire. It was a heat Nate didn’t recognize. Not lust, though it felt equally potent; an emotion that might swell up until it overwhelmed his good sense.

Fondness, perhaps, was the word. Fondness for a kind man who refused to kill a fish unless he was hungry. Fondness for a good man who felt he’d disappointed his father. Fondness for a thinking man with an open mind and an open heart…

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