by Teresa Hill
Last thing of note, a pair of boxers, white with red hearts all over them.
Would her husband ever have worn anything like this? The man she knew wouldn't, but maybe she didn't know him, and this looked like something a woman would give a man and then want him to wear for her. Would Luc do it under those circumstances?
Would they even fit? Grace held them up, spread out between her hands. She couldn't be sure and ended up walking into the next bedroom, where Aidan was, holding them out to him.
"Would these fit you?"
He made a face, like even the thought of them pained him. "Don't think so."
She walked over to him and held them up to his waist to see. "No, I think they would."
"Please don't make me try them on to see for sure."
"Fine. What size pants do you wear?"
"Thirty-fours, although I lost a little weight in the hospital."
"No, wouldn't fit Luc." Grace frowned, staring at Aidan and comparing him in size to her brother, her nephews. "So, this means a girl is giving one of my nephews underwear with little hearts on it?"
"Poor kid," Aidan said. "Find anything else?"
"No. You?"
"I've got what looks like a girl's, maybe a teenager's shirt with a cartoon cat on it." He held it up.
"Hello Kitty. One of my nieces went through a phase."
"Pink nail polish." He held it up.
"Fuchsia, actually."
"There's a difference?"
"Not to a guy. Still, it looks like something a little girl would wear. My nieces all tried out the cabin a couple of times and rejected it as dull and primitive."
"And, last thing, a box of condoms."
Grace froze.
Condoms?
She sank down to the bed as her legs went all weak and shaky beneath her.
There it was.
He'd brought her here.
Her husband had brought another woman to this cabin her family owned to have sex.
Chapter 10
"Oh, come on," Aidan told her, hating the way she turned pale and sank down onto that bed. "It's a box of condoms. You couldn't possibly know they're his."
"No one else would be using condoms here," she insisted.
"I don't know how you could possibly know that, honey."
"Of course, I do. My father, my brother-in-law and my brother—all married. Happily married. Married people don't use condoms."
"Never?" For the moment, he ignored the fact that lots of people might think they were happily married or look like they were happily married, who actually weren't.
"Why would they?" she asked.
"I don't know. I've never been married. You never did?" That seemed so strange. In his world, sex equaled condoms. No question. "Not the whole time you were married? You never... I don't know, messed up with whatever kind of birth control you normally used?"
"No," she insisted. "Married people, faithful married people aren't worried about diseases. If they're using birth control, they're trying not to get pregnant, so they use something more effective than condoms. The pill. The birth control shot. That little ring thing."
"Ring? What ring?"
"It doesn't matter. Luc and I, once we were married, never used condoms."
Okay, he was a rat, but that had him thinking. Sex with Grace without a condom? He had to force the thought away. This was about her, and he really did want to help her.
"Married people really never use condoms?" he asked again.
She shook her head, thinking. Then she added, "I'm not saying it's unheard of. Maybe while my sister was breastfeeding? Before she'd gone back on the pill? I think one time she said something about not being willing to take the pill while she was breastfeeding, no matter who claimed it was safe for the baby."
"Well, there you go."
"No. She doesn't come here."
"Okay, but your brother?" he suggested. "He stashes people here sometimes. I'm one of them, and I have a box of condoms in the bottom of my bag."
"You do?"
"Yeah," he admitted. "Going away present from my brother. He told me to go get laid, that I'd feel better."
She looked surprised. "So, he doesn't know you..."
"No. You're the only person I've shared that bit of news with." A woman he found himself stranded with, a breathtakingly beautiful, kind-hearted woman. What an idiot he was.
"But these aren't yours?" she asked.
"No. This box has been opened. Mine hasn't."
She looked at the box again, like it was practically a written confession. Aidan didn't get it.
"Anybody could have brought these here," he said. "Anybody your brother loaned the place to. And you said there are kids in your family who come here? Teenage boys?"
She nodded.
"Boys hit a certain age, they carry condoms. Mostly, it's wishful thinking, but we do it, long before we actually need them."
"But to leave a box here? I mean, if Zach or Rye found these and thought they belonged to one of the boys..."
"They'd probably think, better safe than sorry, and leave it right where they found it," he insisted.
"Okay, but the thing is, the first thing I found that convinced me he was cheating on me was a box of condoms," she said, looking up at him with sad, watery eyes.
Well, shit. "And the two of you never used them?"
"We'd been married for three years. You don't use a condom with your wife. If you do, she'll think you're cheating on her. I would have. You use a condom with the other woman," she explained miserably.
"And the box you found had been opened?"
She nodded. "Half empty."
"Can you be certain it was his? Did you find them... I don't know, in your house?"
"He had a small locker at the college where he taught part-time. It had a lock on it. The maintenance man cut the lock off in front of me, so I could clean the locker out."
"Okay... Yeah, that's bad." He didn't have any other ideas on how to convince her that wasn't significant.
"They were the same brand as those. I recognize the box. Are men brand-loyal when it comes to those things?"
"Assuming we can find the ones we want when we need them. I swear, there are a zillion different kinds."
She held out her hand for the box, and he gave it to her, thinking she might hurl the box against the wall and feel a little bit better. But she didn't. She sat there holding the thing like it was poisonous, and then she looked down at the bed she was sitting on and jumped up like that was poisonous, too.
"This is the only bed in the cabin bigger than a twin, so if they were here, they probably had sex on that bed," she said.
"Let's get out of here for a while, Grace." He took the condoms from her and left them on the dresser. Leading her into the front room, he took her jacket off a hook by the door and held it out for her to put on. "Come on. We'll go for a walk."
She let him help her into it, and he couldn't help himself. He put his arms around for a moment, kissed her temple and said, "I'm sorry, honey. I'm so sorry."
Tink showed up then, all perky and happy, like he knew what putting on a jacket meant, and he liked the idea.
"Yeah, you can come, too," Aidan told him, putting on his own jacket. Maybe the damned dog could make her smile again.
They went up the path to the road and headed right around the lake. Tink barked happily. He'd bound ahead a bit and then run back to them, over and over again.
It was still sunny, pleasantly cool. Aidan took Grace's hand in his and held it, and she let him. He followed the pace she set, which was brisk with anger during the first lap around the lake, which was about a mile. She slowed down on the second lap, looking more sad than mad.
Tink cried to go home every time they passed Maeve's cabin. On their third lap, Grace sat down on a fallen tree on the roadside, trying to comfort the dog and explain that he couldn't go home now, because no one was there.
When she finally started to cry, Aidan pulled her into his arms
.
* * *
Grace cried until she had no more tears left, and Aidan just let her. She loved that about him, that he let her do what she needed to do, whether it was three laps around the lake or sobbing pitifully until she was done. Truly, she kept it up longer than she needed to, simply because it felt so good, so safe, there in his arms.
"You're very good at that," she told him, when she finally eased away from him and started wiping the last of her tears away.
"I'm doing my best... you know, not to be one of those guys."
"One of those guys?"
"Who freaks out when a woman cries," he admitted.
And Grace couldn't help but smile at him. "Yeah, I've met some of those guys. And it's very nice to find a man who isn't one of them."
"Ready to go back?" he asked gently.
She nodded and called to the dog, and he happily followed them back to the cabin. Aidan took her hand in his for the walk, and between him and the dog, she was losing that awful feeling of being so alone.
It had been a struggle all along to figure out whether she'd feel better if someone knew about Luc or if it would leave her family hovering over her even more, worrying more, feeling even sorrier for her than they did. And she still wasn't sure about that. But she was really glad Aidan knew, and that he'd let her talk about it, be mad about it, cry about it, even, and just be with her. It felt so good to know someone that strong and steady and kind was here for her.
When they got back to the cabin, he stopped her on the porch.
"Will you let me finish searching for you? If I swear to you that anything I find that might seem remotely like evidence of an affair, I'll bring to you?"
"I can do it," she insisted.
"I'm sure you can, Grace, but why put yourself through it, when I'm here and perfectly willing to do it for you?"
She frowned. "You're throwing the same argument back at me that I used on you about the hospital."
He nodded. "It's a test. To see if you're any more reasonable than I am. You win by letting me search. What do you say?"
"That I'm being manipulated."
"It's not always such a bad thing," he argued.
"Well, I'll be sure to remind you of that, next time I'm trying to get you to let me do something for you."
"Okay. Fine, as long as you let me do this."
"Bring me anything that looks even remotely like it might belong to a female, and you've got a deal."
"Deal," he agreed, smiling down at her as he reached out and tucked a bit of her hair behind her ear.
Then he was gone, and it was just Grace and the dog. She sat down on the makeshift sofa, wrapping up in the quilt she'd brought out there that morning and then inviting the dog up to lie down at her side.
He looked so happy, like it was a real treat to get on a piece of furniture and stretch out. He curled up beside her, warm and smiling that doggy-smile of his. She rubbed his head and eventually, he leaned his head over to rest on her right knee, getting even more comfortable in his spot.
Aidan came out a while later and found them that way. He frowned at the dog, who looked up at him and whined a bit, but didn't budge from where he was.
"You two are taking very good care of me," Grace said. "What did you find?"
He showed her half a dozen items, none of which she thought was significant except a box of a sugar substitute in a brand she'd never seen before.
"Really? This?" he asked, looking surprised.
"How many men do you know who use a sugar-free sweetener?"
"Okay, I'll give you that one. But none of the women in your family come here?"
"We did a few times years ago, but look at the place. It's tiny, and the scenery's pleasant, but there's only so long you can walk around in a circle or sit and look at the water and the trees. We thought it was really boring, so we started having girls-only weekends of our own, except at home with great food and wine, heat and air-conditioning. We were very happy. I mean, men are fine, but no one wants one around all the time. You know that. Men are the same way."
Aidan nodded. "Yeah, we are. But still, fake sugar?"
"It's an odd brand." And she bet she'd find a woman who knew Luc who also used this sweetener.
"So, are we done searching?" he asked.
"Yes. Thank you. I know you didn't want to do it."
"Told you I'd do anything for you."
And then he smiled at her. He had a great smile, Grace thought. One of those smiles that said life hadn't always been easy, but he'd gotten through it. That this was a man strong enough to get through anything.
Grace had spent only a day with him, and she already thought she knew him, knew he was a truly good, strong, kind man. But it would be the height of stupidity for her, a woman so drastically wrong about the last man she thought she knew, to start to believe this time would be different. That she could trust him, and he wouldn't hurt her, wouldn't lie to her, wouldn't leave her, even when things got really hard.
Stupid woman syndrome, her sister the shrink called it, when women did the same stupid things over and over again and kept getting hurt again and again.
Grace couldn't afford to be a stupid woman again.
She glanced outside and realized the sun was slowly sinking in the sky. It would be getting dark soon. She hated realizing that.
"I should be going soon." She forced out the words.
Tink cried, looking for attention she thought, but his timing made her laugh.
"You know, he probably won't stop crying for days after you go," Aidan said. "You're going to leave me here with that? A giant, pathetic, crying dog?"
Grace hugged the dog to her, then turned her attention to Aidan. "I think you're trying to manipulate me again."
"Okay, you got us. The dog and I worked up this whole bit we were going to try on you. All true, by the way. I want you to stay as much as he does. Stay with us, Grace. What are you going home to, anyway? An empty house? People watching over you a little too closely? Secrets you're keeping from everyone but me and the dog?"
"I can't just stay here."
"Why not?" he argued. "It's Friday, the weekend. You said you were supposed to be at your in-laws—why, I cannot begin to understand, given what their son did to you—but you didn't go. Is anyone even expecting you home tonight?"
"Well, no, but—"
"There we go. This is progress. When are they expecting you? I'm betting not until Sunday. Maybe even Sunday night. Right?"
Grace didn't want to tell him, because, honestly, no one was expecting her. And because the idea of hiding out here with him and Tink was much too appealing.
"Come on. I know I'm right," he teased. "And I'm an expert at reading people. You're thinking about lying to me. Why would you do that, Grace?"
"Because it's tempting to stay. After all, I'm crazy about... the dog."
"Okay. I can accept that you like the dog more than me, but only because I know you are absolutely crazy about the dog. Which means, you need to be here, because this is where the dog and I will be all weekend."
"Or I could just take the dog with me. You don't like him anyway," she pointed out, smiling at Tink and laughing when he smiled back at her.
Aidan shot her a pained look. "No way. He's growing on me. I love that dog—"
Grace laughed again. "Now that I think about it, why don't I take him? He likes me, and he has to be missing Maeve. That has to be hard on him, and you merely tolerate him. There's no reason I can't keep him. I have a house, and my schedule is flexible. I don't have a fenced yard, but Dad and Rye would build me a fence. They'd be thrilled if I asked them for anything right now."
"Sure," he said. "If that's what you really want."
"Really? You'd make that kind of sacrifice for me?" She grinned at him.
"Honey, anything that makes you smile like that? I'm all for it," he said.
And she felt something fluttering around inside of her that felt vaguely like... Joy was the closest word she could com
e up with to describe it. Joy at the idea of having the dog with her, to keep her from feeling so lonely and make her laugh.
And the man... The man had her feeling all warm and gooey inside, like she could snuggle up against him and just melt from contentment and happiness.
"Okay, maybe I'm not so noble," Aidan said. "You can keep the dog if you stay here until Sunday. Deal?"
"Aidan, this is crazy. I can't just spend the weekend with you."
"Why not?"
"Because. I barely know you."
"So, you'll get to know me. What better way than spending time with me?"
"Women don't just do this. We don't break into places and then spend a long weekend with guys who held us at gunpoint," she argued.
"I only held you at gunpoint for maybe ten minutes, and under the circumstances—you breaking in—you really can't hold that against me."
"Well, that doesn't mean I can spend the weekend with you."
"You want to," he insisted. "I know you do. I can see it in your face. You can be happy here, Grace. How long has it been since you've been happy?"
"A long time," she admitted.
"So why go back there, when you could be here and happy?"
"You make it sound so reasonable, and you know it's not."
"I know no such thing. In fact, I think it would be unreasonable to go back to a place that makes you unhappy."
"So, you think people should just run away from all their problems?"
"I think we don't need to wallow in them. I suspect you've been wallowing, Grace. And you need a break. You're entitled to one. You were going to torture yourself at your in-laws, weren't you? I bet you got guilted into going. And it sounded so bad you couldn't even force yourself to go after you'd packed all your things and climbed into your car. So even you know it was a lousy idea."
"Okay, yes. Guilted into it. I've put it off for ages, and even after I agreed, I just couldn't do it."
"Which leaves you with this perfect opportunity to escape. And really smart on your part, looking out for your own mental health this way. You arranged this perfectly."
"I didn't arrange anything. I didn't even know you or that you'd be here."
