Dirty Little Secrets

by Lizzie Shane

  “Are you?” she snapped back.

  His lips twisted in a bitter grimace. Happy? He had been. But now… “I can be happy anywhere and doing anything as long as I have my girls.” Only his girls had started to include Samira. When had that happened? And how could he reset his heart when she didn’t want to be his? “Maybe I should go along with Mother’s master plan. My life would certainly be easier if I let her run it for me.” Just step back. Go through the motions. Stop caring. Stop hurting.

  “But would it be yours?” Candy argued.

  He frowned, irritated by this sister who had never bothered to know him. “Free will’s overrated, right? What’s it gotten you beyond a husband you lie to?” A husband none of them had even met before this week. “Sorry about spilling the beans, by the way. It didn’t occur to me that he wouldn’t know.” He turned his head to look at her and the world blurred and wobbled a bit with the sudden motion before his eyes agreed to focus. He studied his sister, the rigid blankness of her expression. “Why didn’t you tell him, Candy? Why didn’t you let him be there for you? You have to let people care, you know?”

  He stared into the fountain, lifting the bottle, but not making it all the way to his lips. What was it about the women in his life? Samira. Candy. Chloe. Shoving him away like he had no right to love them. “Chloe pushed me away when she got sick,” he told her, words he rarely admitted to anyone, even his own family. “She thought she was protecting me, but I just wanted to be there for her. Instead it was her disease. Her fight. And I was the innocent bystander watching the mother of my children waste away.”

  He’d loved her like she was the beginning and end of his world, but as soon as she was diagnosed, she’d started shutting him out. He’d tried to be understanding. He knew she was struggling to cope with her battle. With losing her battle. An impossible thing for anyone to cope with.

  They’d planned their entire life for the future. Everything was about looking forward—forward to a time when the girls slept through the night and when he was done with the insane hours of law school and passing the bar and paying his dues at the firm. They’d talked about someday, making plans together, alternating between envisioning themselves in the White House or maybe just retired in Boca with a sunrise view. The future was their time. Everything they did was in service to the future—until suddenly she hadn’t had one.

  “Even if there’s nothing we can do, even if there’s no way we can make it better, it still hurts when you won’t let us try,” Aiden said, his eyes inexplicably wet.

  “I’m sorry,” Candy murmured. “I didn’t know that about Chloe.”

  He released a bitter exhalation. “Badmouthing my sainted dead wife isn’t exactly my favorite pastime. And we all handle these things differently, right? If she threatened to divorce me when she was diagnosed, that was just how she processed grief, right? One day everyone’s happy and the next she’s dying and she doesn’t want me anywhere near her.” Another long swallow of scotch soothed the raw ache in his throat, coating it in liquid warmth. Candy had always kept people at a distance—just like Chloe at the end. “It doesn’t make you stronger, you know. When you refuse to lean on anyone. It just makes you…” He paused, the reality of his own situation sinking deep. “Alone.”

  He tried for another drink of Glenfiddich, but the bottle was empty. Had he drunk all that? Crap. Even half a bottle was going to hurt tomorrow. His stomach roiled uneasily, reminding him he hadn’t eaten much at dinner. “I guess that’s the end of my bender.”

  “Do you need help getting back to the cottage?”

  “No. I’ve got this.” He huffed out a laugh when he swayed, ruining the firmness of his words. He was officially a drunk, stumbling around in the night. The thought didn’t bother him as much as it probably should. There was a certain freedom in failing to live up to expectations for a change. He started down the path, but the thought of Candy pushing everyone away, living with the world at arm’s distance kept nagging at him.

  Samira’s words echoed in his brain. Maybe I like being alone. Was that what it was? He spun suddenly, putting out one hand to catch his balance as the world rocked like an unsteady surfboard. “Do you like being alone, Candy? Is that why you ran away to California and left us all behind?”

  He saw her swallow, and a single low word answered him. “No.”

  No. But then, she had Ren, didn’t she? She had the one person she let in.

  He nodded and turned to make his way back to the cottage—and the woman who refused to let him in. He could see the light shining in an upstairs window. She was awake. Almost close enough to touch. But impossibly out of reach.

  *

  The footsteps on the stairs were heavy and uneven, almost stumbling.

  Samira held her breath, listening through the midnight quiet. Would he knock on her door? Half of her desperately hoped he would, while the other half remained equally desperate for him to walk past.

  She was hiding. She’d been hiding since she ran up the stairs earlier. Trying to save herself. She was afraid to fight for him. Afraid of being wrong again. Afraid that she couldn’t trust herself. Her own judgment. Her own emotions.

  She loved him, but her heart had been wrong before. So incredibly wrong.

  His footsteps paused on the landing and Samira closed her eyes. Her light was on. He would know she was awake. If he knocked, would she answer?

  Even if there was more to say, this wasn’t a conversation for dark bedrooms in the middle of the night. This was an emotionless, cold-light-of-day conversation.

  She could almost convince herself she heard him breathing on the other side of the door. Heard his hand lifting to knock. But then the footsteps trudged onward—to the cottage’s master bedroom—and she let out the breath she’d been holding, something hot pricking behind her eyes. She couldn’t tell if she felt more disappointment or relief.

  She loved him, but was it enough? Even if she could trust her unreliable heart, there was still the chance that she would make him miserable. That she could sabotage his future with her mere presence in his life.

  She was making the cautious choice, but she had to believe it was the right one for both of them. In the long run, he would probably even agree with her. But she couldn’t stop seeing the flash of hurt in his eyes when she’d told him they were just sex. That was all they could be.

  It’s for the best, she chanted to herself, her new mantra.

  She’d made the right choice. She had.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Going shooting while brutally hungover wasn’t Aiden’s best idea, but the way his mother had issued the invitation it had sounded more like an edict, so he’d sucked it up, dragged his achy ass out of bed and gone out to terrify woodland creatures. The gunfire hadn’t helped his throbbing head and his patience with Tug’s fondness for singing his own praises was at an all-time low, so he spent most of the morning with his rifle propped over one shoulder, shooting the breeze with Ren.

  He’d come to the conclusion that he liked Candy’s husband—even if the other man had gotten weirdly squirrelly when Aiden had asked where he and Candy lived in LA. He was good company. Easy-going and low drama—which was good considering neither of those words would ever be applied to Candy. Ren balanced her well. Aiden figured he’d be worrying about Candy less in the future.

  If only the same thing could be said for Charlotte.

  Tug had once again declared his rifle defective when the reality of his skills didn’t live up to his bragging. Charlotte adored him, but was that because love was blind? Because she saw a side of him that no one else did? Or because she was so desperate to remarry and reclaim her life as a beltway wife that she would make it work with Tug no matter the cost? Was she so busy proving she could make it work with Tug that she wasn’t even considering whether he could make her happy?

  Aiden’s hangover lent itself to the more pessimistic view, but he managed to get through the hunting expedition without accidentally shooting his futu
re brother-in-law in the ass—no matter how tempting it might have been.

  The group dispersed when they got back to the estate later that afternoon. The women had already returned from their spa day and Ren went to seek out Candy as Tug and Charlotte were called away for wedding prep.

  Aiden fell into step beside his father, heading through the house toward the pool where Walters had told him he would find his daughters. “You talked with Tug a lot today…”

  His father, ever the diplomat, commented, “We never lacked for conversation. He has strong opinions and he isn’t afraid to put them forward.”

  In other words, he loved the sound of his own voice. “Charlotte mentioned to me that you had expressed concerns to her when I started to tell her about mine.”

  “Be careful there,” his father cautioned. “She’s good at holding grudges, that one. And she’s very protective of their relationship.”

  “Protective? Or defensive?”

  Thomas just shook his head. “We aren’t going to change her mind. The more you push her, the more she’ll dig in her heels. Charlotte may be a people pleaser, but she’s as stubborn as your mother when she wants to be. All we can do is hope we’re wrong about him and be there for her if she needs us. The last thing I want is for her to feel like we’re against her. Like she can’t come to us for fear of hearing I told you so.”

  It sounded surprisingly similar to the advice Samira had given, but it still didn’t sit well with him. “So you’re supporting this,” Aiden waved to the wedding preparations around them.

  “I’m supporting her. Just as you would for your girls. You can only guide them so far, Aiden. Then they have to stand or fall on their own. Hardest thing about being a parent, stepping back and watching them live their own lives. You’ll see.”

  They came out onto the pool deck then and the girls squealed at the sight of their grandfather—he was so rarely in the country that his presence was a delightful novelty, so Aiden tried not to take the fact that the girls didn’t even notice their own father to heart. They splashed in the pool, hot pink water-wings puffed around their upper arms as they clambered up the shallow steps and ran toward their grandfather, wet feet slapping on the concrete.

  “Walk!” Samira called and both girls slowed to a barely-restrained power-walk until they could throw themselves against their grandfather’s khaki-clad legs. Samira sat on a chair at the edge of the pool near where the girls had been playing. She wore shorts and a T-shirt and Aiden’s gaze went immediately to her long bare legs.

  “Swim with us, Grandpa!” Maddie begged, and Aiden jerked his attention back to his daughters before his entirely-too-perceptive father could notice the direction of his distraction.

  “I’m afraid I can’t right now, angel girls. Your nana has plans for me.” He waggled his eyebrows dramatically.

  “You two look like you’ve already turned into raisins,” Aiden intervened when the girls began to complain. He caught Stella’s hand, making a show of examining her tiny, pruned fingertips.

  “We were just about to head back to the cottage,” Samira said, rising from the edge of the pool—and once again drawing his eye.

  She must have always been this beautiful. It hadn’t happened overnight, but today it hit him anew and he couldn’t seem to look away. The long tan legs. The curves he knew intimately. The little quirk of an affectionate smile when she looked at his girls. It all combined to steal his breath.

  “We’ll play tomorrow,” his father promised the girls, before jerking Aiden back to the moment with a clap on his shoulder. “And I’ll see you tonight at dinner.”

  “Can we go too, Daddy?” Maddie wheedled as his father disappeared back into the house and whatever obligations his mother had arranged for him.

  “Not tonight, baby. It’s a long, fancy, slow dinner and you’d have to sit still for hours. Until after your bedtime, even.”

  “We can stay up late.” She grabbed his hand and swung back and forth at the end of his arm as Samira approached them with the girls’ pool stuff gathered in a tote over one shoulder.

  “No, you can’t. Not tonight. But on Saturday, you can stay up. Wouldn’t you rather stay up for the fancy wedding party than for a boring old dinner?”

  “Both!” Maddie argued as Samira draped each girl in a towel and Aiden helped Stella tuck hers more securely around her. The girls put their flip-flops back on and they all started back to the cottage, while the girls kept up a running argument of why they ought to be allowed to do all the adult things—and Samira avoided his gaze.

  She wasn’t looking at him, but he knew she was as aware of his presence as he was of hers. The air between them seemed to be alive, thick with all the things they needed to say to one another. But as was often the case when four-year-olds were concerned, they didn’t have the privacy to say what needed to be said. He wasn’t even sure what he would have said, only that there was more to say.

  Back at the cottage, he went quickly to change out of his hunting gear while Samira herded the girls into the bathtub. As soon as he was dressed, he went downstairs—hoping to catch Samira while the girls were distracted—but the main room was empty. He made himself a K-cup of coffee, hoping to eliminate the last vestiges of his hangover, and pinched the bridge of his nose tight against the lingering headache as he waited for it to brew.

  “Are you okay?”

  He jerked around at the sound of Samira’s voice, his hand dropping as his heart rose. Was he okay? He was worried about everyone—Scott, Candy, Charlotte. All his older siblings who had never been his to protect, but whom he worried about nonetheless. His grandfather and the way he’d been even more lost last night than Aiden had ever seen him, the afternoon’s lucidity like a mirage. The girls—Maddie’s tantrums and Stella’s absolute passivity. He worried about everything.

  And then there was Samira. An entire stack of worries revolved around her.

  But that wasn’t what she was asking him. He could tell by the wrinkle of concern on her brow that she meant was he all right physically. When had he learned the difference between her worried frowns?

  “I’m fine,” he assured her as the coffee finished brewing and he picked up the full mug. “Just a little lingering hangover. I got hammered last night and I don’t bounce back as fast as I did when I was twenty-one.”

  The worried frown deepened, another little line joining the first on her brow, and he knew this time her concern wasn’t for his physical state. “You’ve been drinking more lately.”

  Because the woman I love is pushing me away and there’s nothing I can freaking do about it. His hackles rose instinctively, but he kept his voice calm. She knew about Scott. Knew Aiden may have a genetic predisposition to slide down that slippery slope. She was worried, he reminded himself, but it was hard not to blame her and there was bite in his voice when he assured her, “I don’t have a problem.” He was dealing with it. “It hasn’t affected anyone, has it?”

  The worry lines deepened still more. “Aiden…”

  He wasn’t in the mood for a lecture—even a well-intentioned one—so he took particular pleasure in the timing as Maddie hollered down the stairs. “Samira! Sam-eeeeeeeee-ra! We’re ready for shampoo!”

  She hesitated, her expression conflicted, and he lifted his coffee for a sip—part of him feeling like an ass when her face closed off at the dismissive gesture. But before he could take it back she was moving toward the stairs at another shout from Maddie and he’d lost his chance.

  The girls were everywhere for the rest of the afternoon, climbing all over him, demanding his attention, and he didn’t have another moment alone with her before it was time for him to head up to the main house to play nice with the future in-laws.

  His perfectly tailored suit felt too tight, itchy and ill-fitting, as he strode up the path to the main house. This wasn’t supposed to be how love felt, like needles underneath his skin. He’d been through a lot of emotions with Chloe. Things had been easy for them at first. They’d been
one of those obnoxious couples wallowing in the perfection of their life together. For years they’d never really learned how to fight because they’d never disagreed. They’d floated through life on a blissful tide. He’d wanted to make her happy and she’d been very clear about exactly what she required to feel pampered and adored. He never would have suspected that it was possible for him to feel the level of bitterness toward her that he’d felt in the end.

  She was demanding, but funny. Smart and beautiful and fully aware of her own worth—but also willing to put aside her ego and be there for him on the rare occasions they’d faced set-backs. Until her diagnosis changed everything.

  Things with Samira were different. Not just the way he felt, but the person she needed him to be. He couldn’t go by Chloe’s relationship handbook and expect it to work. But he didn’t know how to be what Samira needed yet. And this time love wasn’t sweet and fun and exciting. It was wrenching and aching and frustrating. It was need. But need that wasn’t met.

  Samira made him realize he needed to be better for her. More for her. Stronger and more aware. But how did he become that man?

  He was in a haze through dinner, going through the motions, though no one seemed to notice his distraction. The feeling in the room was almost frantically festive—as if they were all trying their hardest to play their part of the happy family.

  After dinner, they retired to the terrace again, where someone goaded Candy’s husband into singing for them. Aiden stared off the back of the terrace toward the cottage, distracted until Ren’s surprisingly compelling voice caught his attention.

  There was something familiar about the husky timbre, but he couldn’t quite place it. Candy’s husband’s voice was good enough to be on the radio, but surely Candy would have mentioned if Ren were secretly a recording artist.