Fools Rush In

by Lilliana Anderson

  I glanced at Sam and he nodded, patting me on the thigh before I stood up and started clearing the plates to be of help. Holland stood and did the same, but then Nate grabbed her wrist and shook his head. I frowned and looked at Sam, alarmed. He gave me a look that said ‘don’t interfere’, but I didn’t like what I was seeing.

  “You aren’t a servant,” Nate told her.

  “Neither is she,” Holland objected, indicating me.

  Releasing his breath, Nate nodded, then stood and helped clear. My entire body relaxed. Perhaps I read the situation wrong.

  “The girls can get that, darling,” Jasmine told Nate.

  He just kept cleaning. “It’ll be faster if we all pitch in. Once all this is clean, we’ll talk business. I didn’t bring my wife here so she could clean our mess.”

  Wow. I didn’t see a problem with clearing a table to help out while they all talked. Better to get it done now than leave it to later when we were all tired. Besides, it would give me something to do while Holland and I caught up. We didn’t exactly have Netflix here, so it wasn’t like we could talk shows like we normally did.

  “Come on, peaches,” Sam said, taking the stack of plates I was holding. “We’ll get this done, and then you and your friend can hang out for a bit.” He kissed my nose and we all carried everything back to where it came from.

  Once everything was right again, Nate handed Holland a couple of drinks, and she and I went to the living room while the brothers and Jasmine went back outside. Sam gave me a wink just before he exited. He made my heart beat ridiculously hard.

  Holland still seemed nervous, even though we were alone. She was freaking me out. Had Nate been treating her all right?

  “Are you OK?” I asked in a hushed tone as we took a seat on the dark grey leather couch. It was super soft and worn in from countless bodies draping themselves over it. “I’ve been worried sick about you since the wedding. He hasn’t hurt you, has he?” I grabbed her arms and inspected her for bruising. She seemed fine. Why was she acting so cagey?

  “I’m fine,” Holland said with a laugh, flicking her long blonde hair over her shoulder. “Why would you worry about me? I’m the one worried about you.”

  “Me? No, I’m great.” I wasn’t the one shacking up with a guy who gave his little brothers a beatdown and then threatened his mother with the same. “I love it here.” Love was probably too strong a word, and I didn’t really know why I was selling it so hard, but she’d walked in there acting as though she felt sorry for me from the get-go. I wasn’t to be pitied. “I mean, it gets a bit much sometimes having so many people around, and I admit to being a little homesick and bored hanging around the house all the time. But Sam is amazing whenever we’re together, and I can pretty much do whatever I want the rest of the time. Kristian is teaching me to surf. Jasmine is teaching me to cook. I’m pretty much perfect.” Perfect. Sure. That’s what I was.

  “So you’re living here? Not at Sam’s?”

  “Sam’s?”

  “Nate said they all had their own places.”

  “Nate and Toby are the only ones living on their own. But Toby is here a lot.” Toby owned an old boat he enjoyed doing up, and I’d heard him mention a property in passing, but I was fairly sure he was looking at renting it out.

  “And you’re happy living with them all?”

  I shrugged. “I like the noise and the company.” That part was true. I never felt lonely in the Cartwright house.

  She frowned like I’d just given her the wrong answer. “Wow. So I imagined all the discomfort out there?”

  “Discomfort?” What the hell? Did she want me to be miserable? She seemed disappointed that I wasn’t.

  “Yeah, between you and Jasmine, and Toby.”

  “Toby?” Was she taking drugs? “He’s a pussycat.”

  “Are you sure about that?” She looked at me like she didn’t believe me, and honestly it ticked me off. It wasn’t OK for her to push her misery on me. She’d put us in this position, and I was making the most of what life had presented me. I didn’t need her poking and prodding and looking for holes. She was supposed to be supportive, the one person in my life I could always count on to understand.

  “I’ve just been worried sick about you,” I assured her. “After our wedding, Nate went crazy on Kris and Abbot. Kris had a split lip, and Abbot could barely see out of one eye for a whole week. And I saw him yelling at Jasmine.” Maybe she’d change her tune if she knew what I’d seen. “Lord, Holl, I was so scared. I thought he was going to hit her.”

  Her eye twitched. “Did he?”

  “No, but he threatened to, held his hand up like he was going to backhand her the same way she did to you. And I thought, ‘God help Holland if that’s the kind of temper that man has.’”

  She shook her head like I was talking crazy. “He doesn’t have a temper, Leesh. He was angry because Jasmine hit me and the twins covered for her. I really don’t think he would hit his own mother.”

  That wasn’t how it looked to me. “So you’re OK?” I wasn’t convinced. She wasn’t acting like herself.

  “More than OK. I’m ridiculously happy. I’m in love with him.” This massive goofy-looking smile took over her face.

  She’s in love with him? Of course she is. Holland always gets the best of everything. Well, I think I did OK out of this too.

  “You do? That’s such a relief.” I forced a wide smile. “We got real lucky with these guys, Holl. I reckon someone was watching over us.”

  She nodded. “My parents, perhaps.”

  She always makes everything about her. The thought popped into my head unbidden, my inner voice managing to reveal the underlying cause of my reaction.

  I smiled again. Two could play that game. “Or maybe God. Or my mum if she’s up there. Lord knows I’ve prayed enough for a man to whisk me away from my crappy life.” It was true, I had, but I’d forgotten to stipulate his criminal status.

  “I want the fairy tale,” Holland quoted in the worst Julia Roberts impression I’d ever heard.

  It was strange, but as I sat there with the only friend I’d ever really had, talking about a massive life change we’d both experienced, my mind kept flashing back to the moment I fell in the mud and Holland had chosen to laugh at me instead of help. I could see her in her wedding dress, pointing at me and laughing like it was a video on repeat in my head. It was the opening scene to a highlight reel of our friendship, where I was always the awkward joke and she was always the star. Had that been why she was friends with me, because I made her look better? I’d thought we’d been friends because we’d both struggled with loss and we liked the same things. Except we didn’t like the same things. I didn’t even like Pretty Woman. I thought it glorified the objectification of women.

  Why was I only just realising this? Ever since Holland had met Nate, she’d done one selfish thing after another. And when she fucked up, I was the one who stepped in and picked her up. Now she was looking at me like I got the raw end of the deal? I didn’t. I got a good man who thought I was beautiful and a family who actually wanted me around, never making me feel inadequate. I won the fucking forced marriage lottery.

  She wanted the fairy tale? Well, I was living it. “As far as men go, it seems we got exactly that.” I squared my shoulders with pride. Becoming indignant really made all that doubt I normally battled with slip away. Suddenly I was very sure of my position in this house. I was Peaches. I was a Cartwright.

  She doesn’t get to feel sorry for you anymore.

  “Yes.” She frowned and then nodded towards the back of the house. “But what about the rest of it? Their… business activities?”

  I shrugged her question off. She was so hung up on how they made their living. She needed to let it go, because they weren’t going to quit any of it for her sake.

  “I try not to think about it. The less we know the better, right? That’s how mob guys protect their wives.”

  She smiled. “You watch far too many movies.”r />
  “Up until now, they’ve been better than my life.” My life was definitely way more exciting now. I’d never had to take out a car thief before.

  She gave me another pitiful look. Has she always done this? “You said you’re a little homesick. Have you gone to visit your dad?”

  That got me. My father’s rejection was a sore point, and I had to blink a couple of times to straighten my thoughts. He lived next door to her aunt, so there was no point in lying. If I just stuck to the facts, we could move on. “We went to visit when we got back and he lost it. He’s angry with me for getting married without him, and especially because I didn’t get married in a church to a good Catholic boy.”

  “I’m sorry, Leesh.”

  “Ugh.” I shrugged. “He was never going to like anyone I brought home. I always expected something like this to happen.”

  “He’ll come around,” she said, patting my leg condescendingly.

  “We’ll see,” I said with a nonchalant shrug of the shoulder. Then I adjusted on the couch, wanting to change the conversation to something, anything else except my quarrel with my father. I smiled when the perfect topic hit me. “Tell me about Nate. I want to know everything about him.”

  Unable to resist talking about herself, her face lit up and she tossed her head back. Then she paused and did something out of character. She asked about me.

  “How about you tell me all about Sam. Start with the moment you locked eyes, and don’t leave out a thing.”

  Have I been judging her too harshly? It was possible that my defensiveness over the way she perceived my marriage had made me second-guess the most constant relationship I’d had in my life. I felt awful and almost wanted to ask her for her forgiveness. I took her hands and said, “Oh, Holland, he’s wonderful.” Shed responded with “So is Nate,” and from that point on, we continued to talk about her and how wonderful her new life was.

  By the time she left, I wasn’t feeling sorry at all. I felt slighted. Again.

  “You seem quiet. Everything OK?” Sam walked up behind me and took the brush from my hand, standing behind me and working it through my thick hair. I watched him in the bathroom mirror, his handsome face concentrated on each languid stroke. God, that feels nice.

  “I’m OK.” I sighed. “Just tired.”

  Nate and Holland had left only half an hour before, and I was drained. She went on and on about Nate’s virtues and how he was building her a ladder—why?—and that he was a wonderful cook, delivered as if she thought my husband didn’t cook at all. I was really happy for her, truly I was, but I couldn’t help feeling put out, dragged down. I had stuff going on in my life too, had found happiness that I wanted to share. I’d been missing her so much over the past weeks, and when we finally got the change to talk, I barely got a word in.

  Had I always been the supporting role on the Holland show? And why did I not see or object to it until now?

  “You didn’t enjoy hanging with your friend?” Sam’s hands felt amazing as he ran the brush through my shoulder-length locks. There was nothing more relaxing than having someone play with your hair.

  “It was OK. Things are just different now, I guess.”

  “Because you aren’t single and living in each other’s pockets anymore?”

  “I suppose. But I think I’m starting to see some things a little more clearly.”

  “Like what?”

  I turned to face him and leaned my butt against the vanity. “You know what I keep replaying in my mind?”

  He shrugged and placed my brush in the holder next to the mirror.

  “Our wedding. More importantly the moment I fell in the mud.”

  “I was drunk but yes, I remember.”

  “She pointed and laughed.”

  He kept his features even except for a light furrow between his brows. “Are you upset by her laughter or the mud fight that followed?”

  “Her laughter. She’s my best friend. Why didn’t she help me up? She should’ve waited for my reaction before turning it into something else.”

  He nodded a little, his eyes looking a little faraway and thoughtful before they landed back on mine. “Did you tell her that?”

  “No. I just kept sitting there thinking about all the times she dominated the spotlight, and I realised it was all the time. I was nothing more than her sidekick. It’s always been about her. You know, when were in year five, she watched Strictly Ballroom and decided her destiny was to be a ballroom dancer. So to prove her point, she entered us in this talent quest and convinced me to dance the male part. She got up there in this beautiful sparkly feather-edged dress and I got up in a coat and tails with my hair slicked back. People called me Alan for weeks. And to make things worse, she tried to do this move where I caught her, and we tumbled off the stage and I sprained my wrist.” I ran my hands through my hair in frustration. “I keep looking back on my life, and every time I got into trouble, or felt humiliated or out of my depth was when I was with Holland. Why did I ever agree to do any of those things with her?”

  He caught me around the waist. “Because you’re a good person, and you’ve obviously been a great friend.”

  “I’ve been an amazing friend.”

  “I think you’re an amazing wife.”

  I pressed my lips together, frowning. “You’re just saying that because you want to get in my pants.”

  His full lips curved wickedly. “I don’t need to say anything to get in your pants, I just need to touch you like this.” He lowered his hands to the curve of my butt and squeezed. “And pull you real close like this.” He held me so every curve of my body was pressed tight against the hard plains of his. “Then do a little….” He placed his lips against the base of my jaw, his breath washing over me as he spoke, lightly kissing the sensitive flesh.

  I grabbed his giant biceps and gasped. “Yes,” I moaned, really enjoying the subject change.

  “But if I did all that, I’d be a pretty shitty husband since you obviously need to talk through everything that’s troubling you.” He was taunting me, I could tell that much. No man understood the inner workings of the female mind, just as we didn’t understand theirs. But I knew a distraction technique when I saw it, and I remembered something about feasting on my body behind a barricaded door being mentioned at dinner. I wanted that more than I wanted to dwell on my angst-filled thoughts, just as I knew he wanted that more than he wanted to listen to said thoughts.

  “No,” I whimpered as he pulled away. I quickly wrapped my arms around his neck to anchor myself to him. “No talking. I’ve had enough talking.”

  He grinned. “Hmm, lucky I already barricaded the door, then.”

  Hmmm, maybe I was beginning to understand the inner workings of his mind because I totally called it. “Make me scream, Sam.”

  “It would be my absolute pleasure.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Her Horn’s A Little Bent

  Waking to an empty bed and tangled sheets wasn’t an unusual occurrence. It was something I’d grown used to in the three months I’d been a married woman—time flew when you were having fun, right?—I couldn’t believe the amount my life had changed in such a short time. I couldn’t believe how much I’d changed either.

  If the surf report was good, Sam would get up with Kris and Abbot, then come back a couple of hours later in a fabulous mood, smelling like saltwater and seaweed. I never thought that would be a smell I adored, but it was.

  Untangling myself from the messy bed, I stretched languidly, then headed into the bathroom to do the things one needed to do first thing in the morning.

  The Cartwright brothers did almost everything together: they worked—not only had they performed a group job, but they also helped maintain many small businesses they used to launder the profits they took—and with the exception of Nate, they played together too. Although, from what Kris had been telling me during our surfing lessons, Nate used to always be with them, only changing his behaviour since Holland arrived on scene.
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  Holland. We met the year we both turned eight. Her parents had passed away, and she went to live with her aunt who was my next-door neighbour. I always thought we’d be best friends forever because from that moment, we’d gone through everything together. But then, we hadn’t—I had gone through everything with her. And her behaviour since our combined wedding had shown me how quick she was to leave me behind.

  She hated Jasmine with a passion, called her the she-devil when she wasn’t in the room and always thought I was being manipulated. When the brothers went on jobs together, Nate brought her around to spend time with us so she wouldn’t be alone. Or maybe he doesn’t trust her to be alone. Jasmine tried to make it a great bonding experience by having the three of us hang out in the kitchen cooking a massive family meal for when everyone was home. Holland had spent the entire time with her lips in a pout and her mouth firmly shut, save for a few words here and there that were absolutely necessary. It seemed that she disliked being around the family so much that she was willing to let our friendship go too. It was the cherry on top of my massive realisation pie—Holland only cared about Holland and, like, one other person. There wasn’t space for more in her life, and now that Nate was occupying that slot, she didn’t seem to need me.

  Being cast aside by my friend irked me as I twisted my hair into a messy bun and washed my face. We had never fought, never said a hurtful word to the other during our entire friendship. It seemed so wrong that it should just end and nothing more would happen. But that seemed to be exactly how it worked—she went her way, I went mine, and we simply became two people who used to know each other.

  With no contact with my biological family since I left with Sam that day, the Cartwrights had become my family. I was alone, yet surrounded by acceptance and admiration, which was contrary to when I was with my family. I’d always felt alone there too, even when I was around my brother. Trevor was the best part of my family, and I missed him and his kids most of all, but our relationship as siblings was combined with feeling disconnected and disapproved of. He succeeded in an environment where I failed, so I was lonely even when he was around.