Her Aussie Holiday

by Stefanie London

  Trent was starting to get suspicious. And frustrated. Thankfully, he had the sex drive of a bull in mating season, so she’d ruthlessly used that to her advantage. But tonight they were supposed to work on the last few pages of the scrapbook in time for Liv to return home the following Wednesday and to present it at the Walterses’ big anniversary dinner. Cora would be long gone by then.

  Gone.

  She brought two mugs of coffee to the table and hoped that Trent couldn’t see how her hands shook. The milky liquid sloshed up against the sides of the cups as she set them down. It was impossible to think that merely a month ago, they were complete strangers. Now…

  Now he felt like a key piece of her world.

  Despite her trying to maintain the distance early on by retiring to her own room, she couldn’t tear herself away anymore. She slept every night in his arms and woke struck with how magnificent he looked with the sunlight streaming over him. They cooked dinner, laughed at inside jokes. He encouraged her every day, doling out caring words like they were limitless and unconditional even though she knew such words always had strings, even if you couldn’t see them at first.

  “I can’t believe we’ve almost finished this bloody thing,” he said, flipping through the scrapbook. In reality, it wasn’t as good as Liv’s work—there were dried bits of glue on some of the pages, random specks of glitter that refused to budge after the “glitter incident,” and some pretty shoddy washi tape application. But it was filled with love in every page, in every photo, in every dotted i.

  She settled into the seat next to him. Then she made a snorting sound. “God, I couldn’t even imagine what my parents would say if I presented them a handmade gift.”

  “They wouldn’t appreciate it?”

  “Darling, true gifts come from Fifth Avenue,” she said in her best impersonation of her mother. “How do I know it’s love if the price tag doesn’t have at least four zeroes?”

  “She sounds like a nightmare,” he said, reaching for his coffee. With his other hand he fanned a section of ink where he’d glued down some gold stars.

  “You know, I’ve tried really hard to understand her over the years.” Cora sighed. “My mother came from nothing. Her family immigrated to America when she was a little girl, and she shared a bed with her three sisters until they were teenagers. She worked her ass off to get through school, juggling cash jobs on the side to help keep her family afloat. They were dirt poor. She decided that nothing and nobody was going to stop her from having a future.”

  “So that’s an excuse to be narcissistic?”

  “I guess the fire to succeed was ultimately what became her downfall. Too much of any trait can be a bad thing.” Cora bit down on her lip. “Add to that a drinking problem and a tumultuous marriage… I don’t think parents ever mean to hurt their children.”

  Cora looked at the scrapbook’s open pages, which contained pictures of a young Trent with his arms around his parents. She swallowed back against the words clogging her throat—he looked so happy in that picture, and he so easily labeled her mother, but did he have any idea who his mother was?

  “Why do you let her treat you poorly?” he asked. “It’s unacceptable, even if she doesn’t hurt you intentionally. You deserve so much better than that.”

  Her eyes prickled, but she wouldn’t let him see her cry, because this conversation sounded way too much like the ones she had with Alex. He didn’t understand why she kept trying with her parents, didn’t understand why she craved their love even after all her mother’s antics and her father’s adultery.

  But maybe she needed to see this with Trent. It was proof that all relationships would turn out the same way no matter how good a partner you had. Alex wasn’t perfect by any means, but he was a good person. He cared, he was smart and attentive. Trent…well, Trent was on a whole other plane. His heart and soul were like beaming rays of sunshine.

  And yet they had circled around to the same place, thinking she should quit on her family because things were tough.

  “Is it so wrong that I’m a forgiving person?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “No, but…isn’t there a line somewhere? Will you ever get to the point where enough is enough?”

  No.

  The word came out of nowhere into her mind, quietly, as though whispered. It frightened her. Was it really true that she would keep trying to build a strong relationship with her parents no matter how many times her mother hurt her? No matter how much her father didn’t believe in her talent?

  “If you say no, I’m… I don’t even know,” Trent said, placing his coffee cup down with a dull thunk. “Parents should lift you up and help you with your dreams, and they should want you to have every good thing in life instead of trying to hold you down.”

  He saw her now. The real Cora. Not the Cora who existed in Australia with carefree hair and her suntan and her ready smile and her sexy writer persona. No, this was who she really was—sad, lonely, unloved. For the first time since meeting Trent, she felt truly ashamed, but she didn’t want him to pity her. She didn’t want him to see her as the sad, pathetic creature she was.

  “Your family isn’t perfect, either,” she said, shaking her head, letting her defensive walls shoot up. Her emotions were swirling now, creating a tornado inside her. Why had she said anything? She should have known this was how it would end. “Everyone has skeletons in their closet.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Trent’s shoulders drew back.

  Oh shit. Why did she always go into verbal diarrhea mode whenever she felt attacked? If only she’d never seen that picture…

  “I’m just saying, I’m sure your family has its flaws.”

  “That’s not what you said.” His eyes were on hers, searching and searching. Seeing too much. Peeling back her layers. “What skeletons are you talking about?”

  Now the tears came with more force, filling her eyes, and she turned away, trying to blink them into submission. Was she self-sabotaging now, the way her mother always did? Sure, this wasn’t getting drunk and coming on to someone inappropriate, but she was trying to ruin something with someone she cared about by opening her big damn mouth.

  “Cora.” Trent touched her arm, and she flinched. When she turned back to him, the hurt was splashed all across his face as vivid as red paint. “Talk to me.”

  “I should never have said anything.” A tear splashed onto her cheek, and she whisked it away with the back of her hand, shaking her head in frustration. “It’s none of my business, but when you said those things about my family, I felt vulnerable and…”

  “And?”

  “It was like staring down the barrel of how things ended with Alex.” She sucked in a big breath. “I said too much.”

  “You can’t say a little and then stop.” His brows were furrowed, knitting above his perfect nose and perfect blue eyes and crinkling his perfect tanned skin.

  God, if her issues weren’t enough to end things between them, then this certainly would be. But she’d mentioned the skeletons in the closet; now they were creeping out and shaking their bony limbs in time to the “Monster Mash.” No way she could stuff them back in there now.

  “I saw a picture…” She scrubbed her hands over her face. “When we were doing photocopies for the scrapbook. I noticed that your mother had the same exact picture with your brothers and sisters in the hospital bed, a blue teddy bear sat with her, and…”

  When she looked up, Trent’s face was impassive. His eyes were frosted over and his hands curled around the coffee cup, still, as though he weren’t a man but a lifelike rendition in marble.

  “I noticed there wasn’t one of you,” she said, gulping.

  “And?” His jaw twitched. “Were you snooping?”

  “No!” She shook her head vehemently. “It was an accident. In trying to rush and clean everything up the day your parents came ho
me early, I knocked a box off the shelf and some documents spilled out. There was a picture in there…”

  “With my real mother.”

  He knew.

  Cora almost couldn’t breathe as she waited for Trent’s reaction. Was he going to yell? Cry? Leave? Would he push her away? The sound of the outside world intruded on their moment—the sound she’d come to know as warbling magpies filling the air with their unique song. The rustle of trees, the laugh of a kookaburra. She wanted to tell them all to be quiet.

  “I found out when I was twelve,” he said eventually. “I’d always suspected I was different. Even Jace, with the challenges he had growing up, felt more similar to the rest of them than I did. They all thought the same, they were logical and ambitious and good at school and I…wasn’t.”

  “How did you find out?” she whispered.

  “I was doing a school project about family trees and noticed that same photo missing as I trawled through the family albums. When I asked my mum, she told me there was a whole album missing. Water damage, ironically enough.” He shook his head.

  Cora bit down on her lip.

  “But there was something about her answer that didn’t sit right. All the albums were stored in the same place, so how could only one be damaged?” He shook his head. “I went looking, and I found that photo. I started asking more questions about my real mother.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “That nobody knows who my real father is. My birth mother refused to tell anyone. Maybe it was a one-night stand? Short of hoping for a hit on AncestryDNA or one of those things, I have no way of finding out who he is. As for her…” He let out a big sigh. “She died in a car accident when I was three months old. She’d left me with her sister so she could run some errands. It was dusk, a kangaroo jumped out in front of the car, and she swerved and went off the road, straight into a tree.”

  Cora clamped her hand over her mouth, her eyes so blurred by tears, she had no hope of keeping them in. “Oh my God.”

  “My mother had a will, and she wanted her twin sister to take custody of me. Ever since then, I’ve called Melanie my mum.” He raked a hand through his hair. “It sounds tragic and horrible, and I guess it is, but…I’ve had a good life. I love my parents and my siblings. I love my life here.”

  It made sense now, why he did so much for his family. Why he always seemed to put other people’s needs before his own. Was he trying to earn his place? Make sure he was loved for what he did rather than who he was?

  “Does she know that you found out?”

  He nodded. “I kept it a secret for a long time, and I think deep down she knew. But it was like neither of us wanted to say anything because we were afraid if we did, everything might fall apart.”

  “What about your brothers and sisters?”

  “They don’t know. We’ve never told them.” He bit down on his lip. “That’s my decision, and my mum and dad respect it. If Liv and my brothers suddenly saw me as less than one of them, I’m not sure what I’d do.”

  “Family isn’t just about sharing the same biological parents. You’ve grown up alongside them.” Cora’s chest was almost full to bursting. This man, his positive outlook and spirit, had caught her deeply. If everyone in the world was half as good a person as he was, life would be very different.

  “I know, but sometimes when things are so good…”

  She nodded. “You have more to lose.”

  “Yeah.” He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Some days I feel like I have everything to lose.”

  “Is that why you don’t date seriously?”

  He sighed. “It’s hard not to assume that everyone lies, even the good people. Even for good reasons. I tried dating and thought I understood what love was, but…she lied, too. So I figured there’s no way to be lied to if you don’t get too close.”

  Something lingered in the air, a snapping, sizzling thread between them that drew Cora to Trent like a magnet. It was almost as if the universe was telling her that they were close, that they’d crossed that line together.

  That they had something to lose.

  It was terrifying. Because Cora knew that loss was inevitable. That history repeated itself until you finally learned the lesson you were meant to. Until you submitted to your fate.

  “Maybe you deserve more than secrets,” she said.

  “I’ll admit to that only if you also admit you deserve more, too.” He brushed the hair from her face, his fingertips sending sparks skittering along her skin.

  “I never meant to pry into your life,” she said. “I promise. It was an accident.”

  “I understand.”

  She shook her head at him, eyes holding his. Unwavering. Unflinching. She couldn’t tear herself away.

  “How are you so strong?” she asked, wonder tinting her voice. “How did you go through that and still have such a whole heart?”

  “I’m not going to say I handled it perfectly, because I definitely didn’t,” Trent replied with a laugh. The sound held so much weight and feeling, she reached out and pressed her palm to his cheek. “Nor the breakup with Rochelle. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I’ve had so many false starts.”

  That made her sad. Because Trent deserved everything good in this world. He was a bright light. He could easily have turned bitter and resentful and angry from what had happened to him, but he’d taken it all and soldiered on with his life.

  “Do you think we’re too broken to make good on this life?” she asked softly.

  “No.” He rested his forehead against hers. “I think we’re just two regular old caterpillars.”

  She laughed, and a tear plopped onto her cheek. This time she didn’t brush it away, because Trent was there first, catching it with his thumb and whisking it off her cheek.

  “Come on,” he said, straightening up. “We’ve got a scrapbook to finish.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  To: Cora.Cabot@CarsonCabotLiterary.com

  From: Anderson.Cabot@CarsonCabotLiterary.com

  Subject: Manuscript revisions

  Cora, thanks for sending through your revisions last night. I can tell you worked very hard on them.

  I don’t know how to say this…

  While I know you have a great deal of passion, I cannot represent you simply because you are my daughter. That is not what’s best for my business. Nor, I think, is it what’s best for you. I also worry it would be unfair to lead you on, knowing that you’ll be hurt. Maybe I have indulged this dream too much. Only a very small percentage of writers get published, let alone have the talent and stamina to sustain a career in this industry.

  The last thing I want is to see you end up like your mother, tortured and twisted by criticism. I don’t think your writing is at the right level, and I’m honestly not sure if further work will get it to that point. I worry that your beautiful spirit will be broken by this. Maybe it’s time to think about how you can direct your efforts inside the industry in some other way. Perhaps we could talk about training you to be an agent instead.

  Your father,

  Anderson.

  Trent shouldn’t have looked at Cora’s email. It was wrong, an invasion of privacy…yadda yadda yadda.

  But he did. He looked. And he read. And his blood boiled as though he were plugged directly into the core of the earth. How dare he try to crush her dreams. How dare he tell her that no amount of work would be enough.

  How dare he tell her that she couldn’t grow.

  Without thinking, Trent emailed himself a copy of the manuscript file, because Cora’s heart could not be shattered without a second opinion. His dad would be more than happy to read her book and give some honest thoughts. And while Trent himself wasn’t much of a reader, he was certain Cora had talent. There was something musical about her words—the way she spoke and wrote, the way
she described things. Plus, that English professor of hers had urged her to write.

  That had to mean something, right?

  For whatever reason, Anderson Cabot didn’t seem to want to help his daughter. Yet every time he tried to talk to Cora about it, she clammed up and made excuses for him. The whole cruel-to-be-kind thing? Bullshit. If he wanted to help Cora, he wouldn’t tell her not to write. Anyone could see she was passionate about books, and what right did her father have to tamp that down?

  Sure, Trent’s family wasn’t perfect. They’d kept a huge secret from him for his entire childhood. Finding out his parents weren’t his real parents had been…well, devastating. He still remembered the day, clear as a bell, still remembered the tears in his mother’s eyes and the choked-up voice of his father.

  He still remembered that sick feeling in his gut and the question swirling in his mind: What if Adam and Nick and Jace and Liv decide I’m not one of them anymore?

  He understood why it was hard for his mother to talk about losing her twin sister, and he knew without a shadow of a doubt that his adoptive parents loved him. So much so, that he didn’t ever think of them as adoptive. They were simply Mum and Dad.

  Yet he still hadn’t plucked up the courage to tell his siblings the truth. The longer it went on, the harder it became to think about voicing his big secret.

  Which meant Cora knew more about him than most people. He’d never discussed it with anyone aside from his parents—not even Rochelle, when he thought he was in love. It was the card he kept closest to his chest. Maybe he should have been happy that Cora was going away, taking the information with her to the other side of the world where it couldn’t upset the easy balance of his life.

  But he couldn’t be happy about it. Not when it’d become obvious that he couldn’t watch her walk away without saying something. Without making it damn bloody clear that this wasn’t a temporary fling to him.

  The only problem was…how to tell Cora? When it came to their bodies, they had no problem communicating. Sex came easily and was always good for them. They fit together physically. But emotionally and mentally?