Dirty Little Secrets
Page 25
Samira stood on the edge of the area where the cushioned folding chairs had been set up in rows with a long aisle down the middle. She had a view of the proceedings, but kept well out of the way as the mother of the bride bossed the wedding planner around. Stella was dancing from foot to foot and Maddie was sniffling, ready to burst into tears at the slightest provocation, but her father bent down, speaking calmly to her, and her lower lip stopped trembling.
Knowing the girls were in good hands, she let her gaze drift over the rest of the group. These were the people Aiden had been having dinner with and hunting with for the last few days, but she hadn’t even clapped eyes on most of them. She was the help, after all, and Aiden’s mother apparently had very strong ideas about when children were and weren’t included in family events.
She’d met the bride before. Charlotte doted on the girls and visited at least once a month, spoiling them rotten and ignoring all of Samira’s attempts to moderate their sugar intake. She was a beautiful, All-American blonde with a willowy figure who radiated pampered entitlement, even though Samira knew her life hadn’t always been sunshine and roses.
The man facing her at the altar was a large, blustery figure. Brown hair, flushed face, loud laugh. He held Charlotte’s delicate hands in his meaty paws, making jokes over his shoulder with his best man as his bride-to-be gazed at him adoringly.
Was he like Trevor as Aiden had feared? Physically, they couldn’t be less similar, and she couldn’t see anything on his face that reminded her of her ex-husband, but something didn’t sit right about the moment. It took her a second, frowning at the couple before she realized what it was.
He didn’t look like a man in love.
Not that all men in love looked the same way, but he was barely looking at his bride and when he did, his expression was almost indulgent. Patronizing. Like she was a poodle who was performing particularly well, not a woman he adored to the depths of his soul.
Not the way Aiden would look at his bride.
Not that she needed to be thinking about how Aiden would look at a bride. She didn’t even know if he ever wanted to remarry. He’d never expressed any interest in that direction that she’d heard.
Her gaze flicked to him, then away again—anywhere else. She had to look anywhere else.
Scanning the crowd, she caught another blonde woman staring at her and Samira blushed, ducking her head. When she glanced up again beneath her lashes, the woman was being distracted by Aiden’s mother. She’d never met her, but she’d seen photos and the family resemblance was strong enough that she would have been able to identify Candy Raines-Xiao.
Slightly darker than Charlotte and several inches shorter, she somehow nevertheless seemed more imposing. It wasn’t just her more athletic build. There was something about the way Candy held herself that made Samira think she could probably handle herself in any situation. She didn’t fit the pampered princess mold—and her gaze had been entirely too curious when she was looking at Samira.
Did she know? Had Aiden told her? Samira hadn’t been under the impression that he was particularly close with his Californian sister, but for all she knew they’d been sharing confidences all week.
“Slower, Maddie!”
The girls had been practicing their walk down the aisle, Maddie pulling ahead of Stella, and at Regina’s command Maddie stopped entirely, eyes widening, lower lip trembling. “Oh, no,” Samira whispered to herself. This wasn’t going to end well.
At least Stella was no longer twisting in her pee dance. She reached her sister, took her hand and the two of them began to march slowly down the aisle, like two somber little soldiers.
“Smile, girls! And sprinkle the petals!” Regina pantomimed throwing flowers. “Sprinkle, Maddie!”
And Maddie burst into tears. It sounded like she was trying to say, “I can’t sprinkle!” but it was hard to tell through the wailing.
Aiden got to them before Samira could take more than a step in that direction, hitting his knees beside the girls. He pried the baskets from the girls’ grip and set them aside, speaking too low for Samira to hear what he was saying. The wail cut off and he scooped up one daughter in each arm, turning toward his mother.
“We’ll practice with them,” he promised. “We’ll be ready for tomorrow, but I think right now we need a break.”
He carried the girls to Samira—who started to tell him not to bounce Stella too much, but his mother was right on his heels. “Aiden, we still need you for your usher duties. Let their nanny do her job and we’ll continue with the rest of the rehearsal for the adults.”
Aiden looked like he might argue, but it wasn’t an unreasonable request. “I’ve got them,” Samira murmured, taking Maddie, who immediately curled into her shoulder. She wasn’t as strong as Aiden and wasn’t sure she could carry both of them all the way to the cottage—and didn’t want to risk an accident with Stella—but thankfully the other girl seemed content to be set at her feet and clung to her free hand.
Aiden gave her an indecipherable look before nodding, kissing and murmuring something low to each of the girls. He stepped back, looking at her, and for a second—a single, heart-pounding, terrifying second, she thought he might kiss her too. Right there. In front of everyone. Like they were a real couple. Like they were together. But he settled for a single, scorching look before turning and heading back to the rehearsal in progress.
“Miss Samira?” Stella said plaintively. “I still gotta pee.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
After Stella declared that she couldn’t run because she had to pee so badly and Maddie clung to her like barnacle, refusing to be put down, Samira found herself sprinting across the grounds of the Montgomery estate with a girl on each hip. Her arms burned with their combined weight and she was convinced she was going to feel the warm wetness of Stella’s accident with every jarring step, but they made it back to the cottage—just in time.
Unfortunately, her relief at getting Stella to the bathroom in time was short-lived. She was sitting on the tiled bathroom floor, questioning her cardio health and gulping in oxygen to catch her breath, when Maddie began to sniffle pitifully. Maddie still clung to one side of her as Stella sat on the toilet a few feet away, and now the usually bold girl slumped down whimpering.
It probably made her a bad person, but all Samira could think was What now? She loved these girls. They were beyond precious to her. But she was. So. Tired. The entire day had been a gauntlet of stress, simmering beneath the surface and she was exhausted. She didn’t have the emotional energy to deal with another melt-down.
But she also didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t hit pause on the girls’ needs.
“Hey,” she murmured, giving Maddie’s slim shoulder a light squeeze. “Come here. What’s going on?”
Maddie crawled more fully into her lap, wrapping her arms around Samira’s neck like a baby boa constrictor and continued to cry. “Why are you sad?” she asked, though she knew the question would be hard for the girl to answer in the middle of her tears. She rubbed a hand in a circle on Maddie’s back, looking up as Stella finished her business, flushed and washed her hands.
Stella was very businesslike, very composed as she stepped down off the tiny step-stool in front of the sink, dried her hands on a towel, tucked a wispy blond curl behind her ear and walked over to lie on the floor with her head pillowed on Samira’s lap, only then releasing a long, shuddering sigh.
Samira stroked her back as well, offering what comfort she could. Maddie released one arm from her death-grip around Samira’s neck and reached down to Stella without lifting her head or in any other way checking her sister’s position. Stella gripped her hand and the three of them sat like that, cuddled around one another on the bathroom floor for long minutes.
Samira closed her eyes, just breathing, feeling those small hands clinging to her, the weight of small, warm bodies against her.
When Maddie’s tears had dried, a soft, high voice asked, “Were we bad?”
“I couldn’t sprinkle right,” Maddie whimpered, lower lip quivering.
“This was practice,” Samira assured her. “We’ll practice more tonight, okay? And however you sprinkle tomorrow is going to be perfect, okay? You’re going to be wonderful and everyone is going to love you.”
“Nana and Daddy are mad,” Maddie whispered—and Samira’s chest squeezed tight around her heart.
“But they aren’t mad at you,” she assured the girls, squeezing Maddie’s shoulder reassuringly and gently stroking the baby-fine hair away from Stella’s face. Nana’s mad at me. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Nana loves you. Daddy loves you.”
“We love you, Samira,” Stella whispered.
And her heart exploded. “I love you, too, baby.”
But this stress, the strain on their family, it wasn’t good for them. They’d been picking up on it all day. Children were resilient. They bounced back. But they weren’t immune to the negative currents around them. This situation was hurting them. She was hurting them.
Even if she had wanted, selfishly, to stay with Aiden, she couldn’t hurt the girls. She’d sooner cut off her own arm.
Or cut out her own heart.
*
Tension knotted the muscles in Aiden’s neck as he strode up the path to the cottage. He’d gotten through the rehearsal without trading any more barbs with his mother—a personal victory if ever there was one—and now wanted nothing more than to lock himself in the cottage for the rest of the night with Maddie, Stella and Samira. But if wishes were ponies, everyone would be running in the Kentucky freaking Derby. His presence was required at the rehearsal dinner.
He’d almost told his mother what she could do with that requirement, until she’d reminded him that it would be his grandfather’s first public appearance. Dalton’s nursing staff had kept him hidden away from most of the furor around the estate, but the Newtons apparently expected the great man at the rehearsal dinner at their club and Charlotte had insisted.
Aiden had just enough time to run back to the cottage, check on his girls and change into his suit before catching one of the limos over to the club. At least he would look presentable, even if he felt like someone had been tangling all his nerve endings into knots.
Music greeted him as he opened the door to the cottage. The interior lights were low and he saw a dark lump on the couch, which the flickering light of a laptop revealed as his daughters, huddled together beneath a blanket, raptly watching some cartoon on the computer that had been propped in front of them.
Samira moved in the kitchen, getting the girls’ dinner ready, and even though he knew he hadn’t made a sound, she looked up as he entered, her gaze snagging on his. Neither of them moved for a moment and he marveled that this woman had ever been invisible to him. She was so composed, everything she felt kept so carefully inside, but she seemed to glow now with an inner light. Chloe had been the sun, but Samira was softer, like moonlight—
She jerked her gaze away, hurriedly shoving a pot onto the stove, and he kicked himself for the brief fit of poetry. His romantic streak was getting out of control. She’d probably laugh in his face if he called her moonlight.
He crossed to the kitchen area and the girls didn’t even look up from the screen. “I wanted to check on them, but I don’t think they even know I’m here,” he commented, keeping his voice low so it wouldn’t carry over the music on the laptop.
“The miracle of Disney,” Samira commented dryly. “They were wiped out so we decided it was pajamas and Moana until dinner.” She glanced over at them. “Maybe until bedtime.”
Aiden nodded, trying to catch Samira’s eye again, but she was looking anywhere but at him. “I wanted to check on you too. Make sure we’re okay.”
She looked at him then—and he almost wished she hadn’t. His heart faltered at the seriousness in her gaze. “We should talk later,” she whispered. “The girls…”
He couldn’t wait until later. He would drive himself mad wondering all night what she wanted to tell him. “I have to change for the rehearsal dinner. Come upstairs?”
She looked at the pot of tepid water and the unopened box of macaroni and cheese beside it. Nothing that couldn’t wait, but still she hesitated—almost as if she was reluctant to be alone with him. Finally she nodded, turning off the heat on the stove, and waved him up the stairs in front of her.
He told himself he was overreacting. Imagining things. Worrying about nothing. He told himself it was the effects of the day making him feel like he was marching to the gallows to watch their relationship be executed. Again.
When they got to the bedroom, he went into the closet to collect his jacket and tie, already wearing the dress shirt and slacks.
Samira hovered next to the bed, not speaking, not quite looking at him. The tension in his shoulders wound tighter.
“I’ve been thinking…”
Why were those words always a harbinger of doom? Aiden glanced up to show he was paying attention as he buttoned the top buttons on his collar and looped the tie around his neck.
“All this stress really isn’t good for the girls.”
He frowned, trying to follow her meaning.
“You and I… we’re just complicating things by being together—”
She was breaking it off again. Of course she was. “Samira. My mother will come around. Don’t—”
“This isn’t about your mother.”
“So you’re saying we’d still be having this conversation if she hadn’t been a raging lunatic this morning?” he asked skeptically.
“Her reaction woke me up, but I would have woken up eventually anyway. We were a dream. The reality is different. You’re considering a run for public office—”
“I don’t have to be a congressman. I don’t want it without you—”
“Don’t. Don’t say that. Don’t give up on something like that for me. You’d hate me for it and I’d hate myself. You’re going to be an amazing congressman, Aiden. You can change the world. Make it better. I know that. I know it in the same way I know the sun will rise in the morning. But I also know that being with me would be political suicide.”
“You don’t know that—”
“You’ll be a good politician—which sounds like a contradiction in terms, but I know you will. It’s your calling. Your purpose. You light up when you talk about it and I won’t stand in your way.”
“So stand beside me. You’d be amazing. You’ve already shown me so much.”
“Aiden.” She grimaced. “I don’t want that. Even if I wasn’t more a liability than an asset, I’ve never wanted to be in the public eye. I hate being on display. It’s torture for me.”
“So you won’t be part of the campaign. We’ll tell the press you’re off limits—”
She shook her head—and he realized he’d forgotten to keep getting dressed.
He jerked on his jacket and began knotting his tie, but his hands felt thick and clumsy. She was looking for deal-breakers. Looking for a way out. “Would you really rather I marry some stranger who’s politically appropriate? Like Charlotte’s doing?”
“You know that isn’t what I want for you.” She looked down, shaking her head. “I love you, Aiden, but I can’t be with you.” She lifted her gaze then, and his mouth went dry. She meant it. “Please don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
He tried.
He tried to respect her wishes. He tried to be the bigger man. He tried to be what she needed, but bitterness spiked in his gut. She said she loved him, but she’d never stopped pushing him away. He realized he was shaking his head and couldn’t seem to stop. “You don’t trust me. You never have. You’ve been looking for a reason to walk away since the second I kissed you. You never gave us a chance. You never tried.”
She swallowed visibly, turning her face to the side. “I’m trying to do the right thing. For all o
f us.”
“How noble,” he snarled, hating himself a little even as the words came out.
“I’ll get you through the wedding, but then I think it’s best if you find a new nanny.”
“What?” She was leaving him. Really leaving him. Not just pushing him back with one hand while luring him in with the other. “No.”
“Aiden…” She sighed, resignation heavy in the sound. “As long as I’m living in your house, we’re going to be stuck in this limbo, I’m going to keep sliding back to you, and I can’t do that anymore. I’m sorry.”
“No,” he said again, his brain refusing to form more words. She wasn’t leaving. He needed her. Not as his nanny, he could hire a new nanny, but somehow his life had stopped meaning anything without her. “Samira—”
“You should go. Your family’s waiting.”
“Samira!” He started toward her, but she was moving too fast—already out the door and into the hall bathroom, the door slamming shut and locking behind her.
The second love of his life. Locking him out.
*
Samira leaned back against the door, breathing hard, head back, eyes squeezed shut in an attempt to keep any moisture from leaking out. She would not cry. Even if he was right. Even if she had always been looking for a way out. Maybe she was scared to love him, but she couldn’t be what he needed. She just couldn’t. And as long as she was around, he wouldn’t become the man she knew he could be. She needed to quit her job for him to even have a chance.
No. She’d made the right choice. She had. It only felt like it was killing her now, carving her open from the inside out. But time would heal that wound. Time would heal everything and he would thank her. It was for the best.
And she would keep telling herself that until it felt as true in her heart as she knew in her head it was.