At Last

by Addison Fox

  “What is it?”

  “I’m so sorry. This is not the right time.”

  Emma went with instinct and reached out, pulling Louisa close. “If it’s any help, there’s never a good time for a breakdown. You just take them when they come.”

  Louisa had the height advantage on her, but as Emma pulled her in for a tight hug, Nick’s mother seemed to shrink in her arms.

  What was going on? A house full of people could freak anyone out, but the combination of tight ship and Nick’s indication that his mother’s parties were normally large had Emma eliminating that on her list.

  Louisa pulled back, her eyes wet with tears. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You want to sit down?”

  “I want to slide through the sidewalk.”

  “Let’s try that stoop over there instead.”

  Emma kept a hold on Louisa’s arm and guided her to the stoop in front of another brownstone that looked so much like Nick’s childhood home, they could be twins. They settled onto the second stair from the bottom, the brownish stairs rising up behind them.

  Once settled, Emma realized her second challenge: What did she say? While she appreciated the camaraderie and welcome she’d received over the past week from Nick’s family and friends, she didn’t really know anyone. And she certainly didn’t have a right to pry into their lives.

  Like that stopped you with Nick.

  She ignored the voice of reason and kept her focus on Louisa. “Want to talk about it?”

  “I’m so embarrassed.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not this person.”

  “Someone who needs help?”

  “Someone who leaves her own party to cry a river of tears.” At the word tears, a fresh set welled in Louisa’s eyes. Emma simply waited, letting them run their course.

  She innately understood that vulnerability. Those moments you couldn’t control no matter how hard you tried. She’d had a few meltdowns of her own, the worst of which came in a department-store dressing room the day Cole served her with divorce papers. A kind woman in the nearby dressing room had taken pity on her and had passed tissues under the stall, then stayed to talk her through the tears.

  “Are you okay? Physically okay?”

  The question got a small, tentative smile and Louisa patted her knee. “I’m fine. Nick asked me the same the other day. He’s worried.”

  Relieved it wasn’t illness, Emma laid a hand over Louisa’s. “Do you want to talk about it? Because if you’d rather just sit here for a few minutes and catch your breath, we can do that, too.”

  “I’m not running for borough president.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  Nick had mentioned something about that in passing when they were walking through the botanic gardens. He’d seemed concerned that his mother had experienced a change of heart, but beyond a brief conversation, Emma hadn’t seen much wrong with the choice.

  Public office was a big responsibility and, as she understood it, Louisa still worked steadily. A job and the borough responsibilities would be a lot to take on.

  “I’m sure your family’s proud of you no matter what you decide. It is your decision.”

  “They won’t be proud when they understand why.”

  Those quiet words hung there, suspended between them with the same heaviness as the storm clouds forming in the air above them. “Why?”

  “My past caught up with me.” Louisa pulled her hand away, a harsh laugh spilling from her lips. “I thought it was well and truly buried, but secrets always have a way of coming out.”

  “What secrets?”

  “My secrets.” Louisa turned toward her, her blue eyes still tear-soaked and miserable. “About the life I had before my boys. Before coming home to Park Heights.”

  Thunder rattled the kitchen as Nick turned toward his brothers. “Where’d they go?”

  “They’ll be back.” Landon piled another stack of bacon on a tray. “They’re grown women.”

  “But where are they?”

  The crowd in the dining room still roared with laughter and good humor, but Nick felt none of it as he stared at his brothers. The food rush had died down, leaving Nick and his brothers alone in the kitchen.

  “Do you think the fact they’re together means Emma got out of Mom what has her so upset?” Landon posed the question as he poured himself a mug of coffee before holding out the pot.

  Something wholly irrational rooted Nick to the spot. Had Emma Vandenburg suddenly become the confessor of Park Heights? “Mom should be telling us.”

  “Maybe she can’t.” Fender held out his mug for a refill. “Maybe it’s some sort of girl thing.”

  “We’re not eleven. I think all of us can handle a girl thing.” Nick shot his brother a dark look. “Besides, she said she wasn’t sick.”

  “Menopause isn’t sickness,” Landon reasoned.

  “She already went through menopause. Don’t you remember how batshit crazy she got a few years ago? The mood swings.” Fender shuddered before waving a hand in front of his face. “And all the fans running and how she kept this place like an icebox.”

  “You two are not seriously talking about this?” An involuntary shudder ran down Nick’s spine at the casual way they spoke of their mother and . . . and that.

  “You brought it up.” Fender dug into his waffle, stuffing a huge bite into his mouth before talking around it. “And it’s totally normal and natural.”

  “You brought it up, ass munch.” Nick ignored his brother’s middle finger. “And why would she tell Emma about it when she’s got Mrs. W.? Emma’s too young to know about it all.”

  Fender swallowed, a shit-eating smile spreading across his face. “Which you would know since you’ve been spending time close up and personal with that young—”

  Nick was across the room, his hands on Fender’s T-shirt, dragging him up out of his chair before his brother could finish the sentence. “I let it go this morning.”

  Fender shoved at Nick’s chest before crossing to the far side of the table. “I’m not fighting with you about this.”

  “Then shut the fuck up.”

  The click of the kitchen door was enough to distract them both, and Nick turned, relief rushing through him as Emma and his mother walked through the door. Both were soaked through, but otherwise fine.

  “Where were you?”

  “We got caught outside.”

  They all scrambled at once. Fender snagged a few old towels their mother kept in a bottom cabinet behind the table while Landon grabbed chairs for both women.

  It was Nick who stood still, his feet like cement on his mother’s travertine floor. “Why were you even out there?”

  Emma caught his eye, some weird, silent communication winging between them. “Your mom needed a few minutes.”

  Fender tossed him one of the towels for Emma and used the other to wrap around their mom’s shoulders. The move was sweet, gentle—and in that moment Nick knew he’d once again earned the asshole card.

  Fender and Landon were worried. To think otherwise was sorely shortchanging the two men he loved most in the world. Respected the most, too.

  He owed his brothers an apology and would give one later. But he was pleased to see the fire had faded from Fender’s green-eyed gaze.

  “Landon. Nick. Fender. I need to tell you something.”

  Louisa stared at the faces of her sons. They’d grown into a handsome lot, even if she still saw the little boys inside them more often than the men they’d become.

  But what she had to share wasn’t for children to hear. She simply had to hope the men she’d raised could find a way to forgive her.

  “I need to talk to you, but now’s hardly ideal.” A loud shout of laughter went up in the dining room in support of her point.

  “I’ll take care of it.” Emma used the towel to finish wiping the last of the water from her face, then finger-combed her hair. “It’ll give you all a few minutes to talk.”

  Louisa kn
ew she’d do just that when Emma grabbed a full pot of coffee and a hot pad and headed for the dining room. With a glance toward the back stairs, Louisa gestured the boys forward. “Let’s go upstairs for a few minutes.”

  In moments they were all seated in her sitting room, Nick and Fender at the windows, and Landon next to Louisa on the couch.

  Her boys.

  It was amazing they still fell into the same patterns of their youth. Nick and Fender were her alphas, taking protection duty and always standing watch, whereas Landon’s first thought was always for her. Her comfort. Her safety. Even now, his hand was warm on her shoulder as he sought to provide comfort.

  “Mom, what’s going on?” Nick spoke first, the barely banked fire she’d seen in his eyes earlier still there.

  “I’m not running for borough president.”

  The three of them stared at her in various states of confusion until Fender pushed off the window. “Why?”

  “It’s not a good time.”

  It was Fender who pressed her once more. “Why not?”

  The layer of shame she’d carried for years rose up to swamp her. She’d stolen another woman’s husband and there was no place she could run from that. No remake of her life would ever change that choice.

  It was one thing to carry the guilt inside of her, but now, faced with the expectant faces of her children, it nearly broke her.

  “I made a bad choice. Years ago. Before we were together. And it’s come back to haunt me. Has threatened my run for borough president.”

  Landon’s hand tightened on hers. “What happened?”

  “I was a man’s mistress.” When her sons only stared at her, she pushed on, now anxious to have it done. “By choice. I chose to carry on an affair with a married man.”

  The three of them remained silent, and in the quiet, Louisa desperately grasped for the strength to finish the story.

  “I had an affair with Kincade Reynolds. He passed away several years ago, but his wife has never forgiven me. When she saw the news that I’d declared interest in the borough presidency, she threatened to go public with the news of my—” she swallowed hard around the word indiscretion, well aware it was a cop-out, “—with the news of my affair.”

  Landon let go of her hands and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Reynolds Investments?”

  “Yes.”

  “The place you worked when you lived in the city?” Landon stood up. “The fucking bastards who’ve declined, either directly or indirectly, the last three business loans I’ve tried for.”

  Tears choked her throat, but she refused to let them fall. “Yes again.”

  “And you never told me why. Or thought to direct me elsewhere.”

  “Reynolds has deep tentacles in the investment community.”

  “You’re my mother!” The words ripped from Landon’s throat, raw fire so at odds with his even, steady personality.

  “L—” Nick moved closer, but Landon held up a hand.

  “All these years. You’ve never hidden your time in the city from us. You told us story after story about where you worked and what you learned. The people you met. And now we find out you ran from them, your tail between your legs, back home to Brooklyn?”

  “Landon!” Nick’s voice was sharp but needless, as Landon slammed out of the room, his pounding footsteps echoing down the back stairs. She jumped as the door slammed.

  Misery washed through her, along with a strange sense of finality. The day she stood at the Park Heights playground, her dry cleaning in a pile at her feet as she stared at those three little boys, Louisa had sensed this day would come. That someday she’d have to confess what she’d done and who she’d been.

  At the time she had no idea it would be to the grown versions of those children, but she’d known.

  She’d known, and had understood there would come a day of reckoning.

  Nick hadn’t moved from his spot—her avenging angel—and she leaned forward and tugged at his hand to pull him to the couch. “He needs time. He’s always needed time to process things. Don’t force this.”

  “He had no right to say that. All because he didn’t get a damn business loan?”

  Louisa knew her sons, and she knew Landon well enough to know the loan was an excuse. A grasping hand in the dark for him. The one thing he’d made her promise the day she adopted him was to be honest with him always. And she’d kept this from him.

  Had kept it from all of them.

  Fender had remained quiet during Landon’s outburst, his gaze solemn as he’d watched the byplay between his brothers. But it was straight-down-the-line Fender that came pouring out. “I don’t get what has you so upset. This is water under the bridge, what . . . twenty years ago?”

  “Almost twenty-five.”

  “And that’s what has you so upset? Some rich New York matron bitch with a vendetta?”

  “Politics are ugly.”

  “So’s life.” Fender shook his head. “Do you honestly think the people here, the ones who really know you, are going to care about what happened so long ago?”

  “You care. I can see it in your face you do.” Her gaze drifted to Nick. “I see it in Nick’s face, and we all know how Landon feels. This is a blow. An embarrassment on the family.”

  “And something you did so long ago, it hardly seems to matter anymore.”

  “But it does matter. It matters very much.”

  “Bullshit. You’ve moved on. Made something of your life. Become a true pillar of the community. Hell, you took on three misfits, and we turned out pretty fucking good. If someone’s going to judge you over the word of a woman who’s had an ax to grind for a quarter century, then the people of Brooklyn don’t deserve you.”

  “Fender—”

  The tears she’d tried so hard to hold back threatened once more. But it was the strong arms that pulled her up off the couch and into his chest that had them racing out in a flood.

  “I mean it, Mom. Life’s not about being perfect every day. You’ve taught us that. You’ve spent years teaching us that we’re not defined by what happened in our past. Was that bullshit?”

  She pulled back from his chest, her gaze searching his face. “Of course not! You’re wonderful and brilliant. My sons, who I couldn’t be more proud of if I tried.”

  “Then why don’t the rules apply to you?”

  Louisa went still at that, Fender’s words spearing clean through her.

  How had she found them?

  These men who meant everything to her. Her children, whom she couldn’t have loved more if she’d carried each of them in her body.

  “I’m your mother. I’m held to a higher standard.”

  “Best I can tell, you’ve never let us down.”

  “I hate to say it, but he has a point.” Nick moved up and laid a hand on Fender’s back. “A damn fine argument, come to think of it.”

  Nick reached an arm around to pull her back into their embrace, the three of them locked tight there in her small study. The understanding and love she’d never expected washed over her, and for the first time, she fully—finally—understood that what she had with Kincade wasn’t love.

  It had been lust and folly and perhaps even affection, but it wasn’t love. He hadn’t had it for his family and he certainly hadn’t had it for her.

  “We’ll talk to Landon.” Nick whispered the words against her head, his arm tightening around her.

  “No, sweetie. I’ll talk to Landon. He deserves this time to react and grieve. But it’s for him and me to work out.”

  Nick hadn’t ever been prone to the philosophical. He was a practical man who’d had that personality trait drummed even more deeply into him with football. You ran a route, you moved the ball downfield, and you worried about the play you were in. Your future didn’t matter if you lost yardage on the play, or worse, turned the ball over to your opponent.

  So it was more than a bit unsettling to realize someone had harbored a grudge against his mother for nearly
twenty-five years.

  He just didn’t see the world that way. Hell, he’d been relieved when his father had taken off for Florida, never to be heard from again. It meant Arch Kelley was out of the picture—out of the play—and Nick could focus on moving his life down the field.

  “You okay?” Emma glanced up from the end of the couch, where she sat with a notepad on her lap. They’d come back to his place after getting everyone out of his mother’s house, a feat she’d nearly managed single-handedly by the time he and Fender had come back downstairs.

  He’d flipped on the TV with the intention of drowning himself in the Indy 500, but the endless run of cars around and around the track had only allowed his thoughts free rein.

  “I’m good.”

  “Okay.”

  She’d given him plenty of space, but he hadn’t missed the searching glances or the cautious way she watched him. When she went back to her notepad he reached over, tapping the edge. “What are you working on?”

  “A few more notes on that shandy. I also think we might need to expand what we’re doing with our hops distributors. I made a few notes to call them on Tuesday.”

  “You’re a busy bee.”

  Her eyelids flickered, then blinked as she stared at him. “It’s good to stay busy.”

  “Maybe busy’s overrated.”

  “Nick?”

  Something edgy and restless settled in his chest as he stared at her. Had it really only been little more than a week since she’d come back into his life?

  The slight yellowing around the edge of her eye from the punch she’d taken was visible now that her makeup had faded from the rain, vivid proof of that very point.

  What magic had she wrought in such a short period of time?

  “Maybe busy means you never need to settle. Never need to stop and evaluate things.”

  “What does that mean?”

  What did he mean?

  He knew himself—knew the edgy, restless feeling that precipitated a fight—and knew he needed to quit while he was ahead.