by Kim Law
“Maybe a little.” She stressed the last word.
“Maybe a lot.”
At her pointed look, he gave her his hottest smile.
“Put that thing away,” she grumbled. “And the fact that I might have missed you—”
“Do miss me.”
She rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t mean anything. The other night”—she shook her head—“it was just—”
“I know,” Ben interrupted, his tone gentle. “It didn’t mean anything. It was just sex—an outlet for your frustration. Or, that’s what you’ve been telling yourself. But you’re wrong.” At her silent stare, he winked. “Take a walk with me tonight?”
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
“Quit thinking, babe. Just a walk.” He leaned into her space. “Say yes,” he urged.
She shivered instead. “It’s complicated, Ben.”
“I’m aware of that,” he said all too knowingly. “I get it. And I’m here to help.” His thumb slid over her wrist. “After the kids go to bed, just you and me. And just a walk.” He pulled back and peered down at her, the devil once again dancing in his eyes. “Unless you have more frustration to get rid of . . .”
And with that, she thumped him on the chest. “Just a walk,” she stated firmly.
“That’s my girl.” He put her palm to his mouth and pressed a kiss to its center. “I’ll see you tonight.”
He left her there, heading over to grab two ladders at once and move them to another tree, and when Dani forced herself to finally turn away, she saw Gabe watching her from a distance.
Her brother had been trying to talk to her for days, but she’d mastered the skill of avoidance. A skill she also remembered from the days following her mother’s death. Don’t talk about it, and it didn’t happen? She supposed that was the way she’d played it in the past.
In this situation, though, she simply wasn’t ready to talk about it. She was still too angry.
Gabe eyed her carefully now, before doing the same to Ben. But Dani didn’t care what he thought or what he had to say about any of it. In fact, she only cared about one thing at that moment.
That she would be having alone time tonight with Ben.
“Excellent dinner,” Dani’s father announced later that night—for the third time in the past twenty minutes.
Dani didn’t say anything.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” Gloria replied, her voice a little too bright. “I tried to get Dani to sit this one out since we’d planned her favorite meal, but she wanted to help. She, Megan, and I work really great together.”
The table went back to silent, and Dani caught Jenna and Haley exchanging confused glances.
The entire meal had pretty much been that way. Her dad or one of her brothers would speak up with some inane small talk, Dani ignored them, and Gloria filled in the gap. The kids had been quiet, Michelle hadn’t come down due to a headache, and Megan and Ben looked as uncomfortable as two people could possibly look.
The evening had been nothing more than a waste of time.
“I went into town this afternoon,” Megan contributed to the conversational void. “The library here is terrific.”
“It’s grown a lot since I was a kid,” Jaden added.
Crickets chirped.
Dani wanted to speak to Megan, to be polite. But the longer she’d sat there thinking about who and what her mother was, how Dani had set her above the rest of them while at the same time her brothers and father had known differently . . . how they’d kept those things from her . . . she couldn’t do it. If she tried to add to the conversation, she feared she would cry instead. Or scream.
She peeked at Megan, offering an apologetic look. The same was returned her way.
Then there was more silence.
Forks scraped against plates, Jenna slurped as she drank her milk, and Dani continued thinking about her mother. The woman wouldn’t have allowed a meal to be this silent. Similar to Michelle—when Michelle graced them with her presence—Carol Wilde would have been filling them in on how amazing she was. She would also have called them out on their rudeness.
But Dani didn’t feel like being polite. To anyone.
And since she’d figured out that she’d spent the majority of her life doing and feeling and acting the way someone else had wanted her to, she couldn’t bring herself to fake it for the sake of good manners. Not tonight. No matter how rude that made her.
She did have a question burning inside her, though. One she decided it was time to ask.
Laying down her fork, she finally lifted her gaze to her father. The hope that flared on his face punched her in the gut, but she ignored the sensation. It wasn’t time to move past this yet. He’d have to wait. Just like her.
“Did you know?” Dani asked, her words blunt.
Confusion flickered in his blue eyes. “Know?” he asked cautiously.
Cord shifted in his chair across from Dani.
“Did you know what Mom did?” Dani clarified.
The room went deathly silent for two seconds before Ben and Megan scratched the legs of their chairs on the floor by scooting them back so fast.
“How about we have dessert upstairs?” Ben asked the girls.
Haley looked up from the macaroni and cheese she’d been playing with. “In our bedroom?”
“I’ll get it,” Megan sang out. Gloria shot out of her chair to help.
Within thirty seconds, Megan had two dishes of cobbler in hand, Ben had both girls, and all four of them were hurrying up the stairs. At the sound of a bedroom door closing, Dani turned back to her father.
“Did you know her accident wasn’t an accident?”
All the color went out of her father’s face. “I talked about it with the boys at one point. We came to the same conclusion.”
“Did you know before that?” she persisted.
“No, Dani. I didn’t know. And I’m sorry—”
She held up a hand. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
“Dani,” he said, but she returned to concentrating on her food as she contemplated whether she believed him or not. Probably.
But she was still mad.
“We need to talk,” her dad tried again.
She didn’t reply.
Every other member of her family had talked together about the fact that her mother had manipulated them their whole lives. The fact that she’d killed herself, if inadvertently. They’d talked, and they’d begun their own healing processes. But no one had talked to Dani.
As if she hadn’t mattered.
As if there were no purpose for her being here at all.
But worse . . . how much had her dad been aware of as it was happening?
He’d slept down here for years. He’d avoided his wife as much as Dani had wanted to avoid her mother. He had to have known.
And what had he done to stop it?
He’d taken the boys and escaped the house as much as possible. She remembered that clearly now. There were always errands to run, chores in the field. And her dad always needed her brothers to help him out.
But what about her? Why had she been left here with that woman all by herself?
And then they’d allowed her to pretend for years that none of it happened?
They should have told her. Everything.
She shook her head slightly as she found herself fighting off tears once again. Her life was not only not what she’d believed, but she’d been completely alone in it, and she’d had no idea. How demeaning.
It left her wondering if they cared no more for her than her mother had.
“I think it’s time to go,” her father told Gloria, his words heavy with concern.
“What?” Gloria asked.
Dani’s dad rose. “Come on. We’re leaving. We’re making Dani uncomfortable
, and the morning starts early tomorrow. We should get home and get to bed soon. I’m sorry, Dani,” he said as he stepped away from the table. “I would like to talk, though. We need to talk. Maybe in a couple of days?”
Dani didn’t give him an answer.
“Well, okay.” Gloria hummed under her breath as she rose and took her plate to the sink. “Just let me get the dishes real quick.”
“Leave them,” Max said. “They’ll get done.”
And with that single phrase, Dani went hot. They’ll get done? By whom? Her?
Of course. Because they always got done by her.
Everything got done by her.
And then she remembered why.
If her brothers ever helped with the dishes—and she remembered a few times early on when they had—then after everyone was in bed, Dani’s mother would get Dani back up and make her rewash everything. Sometimes dishes they hadn’t even used that night.
Carol Wilde had been a mean, vindictive, manipulative woman who’d hated Dani from the day she’d been born. And the very idea of carrying any of that around inside of her made Dani’s stomach roll.
“They may get done,” she said, forcing the words out as she stood. “But they won’t be done by me.”
She escaped out the back door before her dad could, and had gone no more than fifty feet when she bent at the waist and threw up what little food she’d managed to get down.
“Dani!” Someone yelled to her from the house.
Instead of replying, she wiped off her mouth and disappeared between the closest rows of trees.
chapter seventeen
Two hours later, Ben stood at the top of the ridge that led down to the beach, watching Dani as she sat by herself on the end of the pier. She was a tiny form in the middle of vast surroundings, and he couldn’t help but compare that sight to how he suspected she saw herself at that very moment. She had to feel small and insignificant in her own world. Her mother had been a narcissist. She’d manipulated Dani at every turn. And Dani’s brothers had kept that from her. That had to be devastating.
Dani had unwittingly kept it from herself.
Moving again, he headed toward her.
He had to force himself not to run as he made his way down the slope. He’d missed her the past few days. And he hadn’t liked her avoiding him.
He continued at a normal pace, but his gaze ate her up.
She’d changed into an orange sundress, and her hair was down and softly curved around her shoulders. The color of the dress perfectly complemented the sunset painting itself across the lake, composing the scene almost for him. It made him regret not bringing his camera out with him.
Her shoulders were bare—the heat had yet to evaporate from the day—and she had the hem of the dress pulled up and tucked between her knees. Her feet dangled off the end of the dock, but weren’t quite touching the water.
As his footfalls reached the wooden slabs behind her, she glanced back, and when her gaze landed on the two bowls in his hands, he got the first smile he’d seen all evening.
“One scoop or two?” he asked, holding both bowls aloft.
“One.” She reached out her hand. After he handed over the bowl, he retrieved a small baggie of chips—the edges of the baggie had been tucked securely beneath his belt—and held it up in offering.
“No, thanks,” she said. “I’m good.”
She scooted to the corner post then, put her back to it, and stretched her legs out so they ran parallel across the end of the dock. He joined her, sitting at the opposite post and facing her. His legs ran alongside hers, his booted feet reaching to her knees.
“You and your father okay?” he asked.
She held the bowl loosely in her lap, not touching the dessert, and rested her head on the wood behind her. Her head shook back and forth. “Nope.”
“You think you’ll get there?”
“I have no idea. But he said he didn’t initially know Mom’s accident wasn’t an accident. Who knows what he was aware of before any of that.” She blew out a breath and stared off in the distance. “It’s not fair. Why did she hate me so much?”
Seeing her like this hurt him. “I’m no professional, but I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with you.” That’s what he’d read.
“It feels like it had to do with me.”
He could imagine that it did. “Maybe talk to Jaden about it?” he suggested.
At her heated glare, he gulped, but pressed on.
“He just majored in psychology. He might be able to help you make some sense of everything.”
“Or maybe it’ll never make sense,” she mused. “Maybe she just hated me.”
With that, she scooped up a bite of ice cream.
After taking her time to lick the spoon clean of chocolate, she wrinkled her brow and looked at him. “She put me on an ice-cream-free diet at fourteen for fear that my hips would get too wide.” She shoveled in another bite. “As women, we had an image to uphold. Men wouldn’t like a girl with wide hips.”
She took a third bite while he eyed her hips.
“Your mother was wrong. I’ve never seen better hips.”
She snorted as yet another mound went into her mouth. Once that bite disappeared, she relaxed back against the post, her shoulders curving into the wood, and blew out a breath. The chocolate was doing its job.
“I’ll give you that tiny white lie,” she told him, “but only because I don’t think you make a habit of lying to me.”
“I don’t make a habit of lying to you, white or otherwise. And that wasn’t a lie.”
“Right. You, the man who makes a living photographing gorgeous models for a living, think I have the best hips you’ve ever seen.”
“I used to make a living photographing models. And you do.” At her raised brow, he gave a shrug. “I’m not a fan of skin and bones.”
“Could have fooled me. You’ve sure dated your share of them over the years.”
“Really?” He smiled at the jealous tone that had crept into her voice. “Don’t tell me you’re a tabloid junkie, Dani Wilde.”
She didn’t respond, just ate more ice cream.
“You are?” He faked a gasp. “Were you buying them looking for me?”
She gave him a smirk. “Cut me some slack. It’s rare that a normal person knows someone who shows up in national magazines, even the trashy tabloids. So yeah, I’ve bought a few. And I bought them looking for you. It was fun keeping up.”
The fact that she hadn’t forgotten him over the years had him smiling even wider as he scooped up his own bite.
“Stop laughing,” she muttered. “It’s embarrassing. And I’ve had a lousy enough week as it is. I don’t need rich-and-famous over there making fun of me.”
“I’m not laughing. And I’m not famous—that’s my mother. I just like knowing that you were checking me out all those years. Of course, I did talk to Gabe occasionally. You could have asked him what I was up to.”
She set down her bowl—now empty—and leaned forward from the waist. Her eyes zeroed in on his. “I didn’t want to talk to my brother about you,” she said.
Her words made him hot.
He liked that she’d kept things between them private. He liked things between them being private. Yet he found as he sat there looking across at her, he would be okay with making them public, too. He couldn’t stop thinking about her, and he couldn’t stop wanting her. And he knew how stupid both of those things were, especially when he wasn’t a big believer in forever and she would be heading to the other side of the country in less than two weeks.
But facts were facts. He wanted Dani Wilde.
“So you’re no longer in the model business, huh?” she asked, as she once again relaxed back against the post. “That permanent? I thought since you and Haley had a good trip, you might decide to keep th
at going.”
“It wasn’t that good a trip.” He put his own bowl down, a full scoop left in it, and scooted it her way. It stopped halfway between them, and he could see from the glint in her eyes that she wanted it.
With his toe, he edged it closer.
“Stop it,” she moaned out. “My hips.”
“Now you’re just begging for compliments. Want me to go into specific detail about what I find most enjoyable about your hips?”
Her eyes widened. “No.”
“Then take the ice cream. You want it, I can see it.”
“I haven’t had that bad a day. That’s how I’ve managed to keep my hips from expanding over the years, by sticking to that rule. Two scoops only when it’s a truly craptastic day.”
He nudged the bowl within reach. “Break the rules, babe. I won’t tell. And I promise, I’ll still adore your hips.”
She tossed him another smirk. But she also picked up the bowl. “I’ll eat it only if you tell me why you won’t be going back on the road.”
“Because that’s not the life I want for my daughter.”
He studied the crystal-clear waters of the lake, focusing on a fist-size rock that was probably several feet below the surface even though it looked close enough to reach over and touch, as he thought about how true that statement was. He no longer thought in terms of his next great adventure. He ran everything through the what-would-be-best-for-Haley filter.
He could see taking her on the occasional trip, yes. But not for any of his previous types of contracts. He’d go to places that he wanted her to see. He could still do his thing, taking photos for additional books if this first one panned out, and Haley would get useful world experiences at the same time. Win-win.
“Plus,” he added, bringing his attention back to Dani and watching closely as his spoon slipped between her lips. “I want to stick around here; it’s good for Haley. I’ve already checked into preschools for the fall. And I’m going to do that book.”
“Yeah?” She looked from the bowl to him. “Good for you. I think those are both excellent decisions. Montana has a way of taking care of people, you know? It gets in your blood. So what did you decide for the book? You going with people?”