Aidan’s bright gaze cut through the mudroom’s low light. “Guy brought in his nineteen-year-old daughter, complaining of an intense headache, stiff neck, and spiking a fever. Told the dad I suspected bacterial meningitis, and I’d need to do a spinal tap. Poor guy nearly fainted.”
“And?”
Aidan’s mouth turned down at the corners, but his eyes smiled. He nodded. “Tap turned up what I’d thought. Told the dad what I’d found. Told him he’d done the right thing. Thanks to him, we caught it early. After a course of antibiotics, his daughter will recover just fine. When the dad realized he wasn’t going to lose his daughter, it was like …” Aidan’s gaze drifted, searching for a word.
“Pure joy,” she said.
“Yeah, that’s the word I was looking for. Joy,” he said and looked right at her. “You’re good with words.”
“Words are my life,” she said, and then amended her statement. “I mean my work.” She shook her head. “Used to be, anyway.”
“You write, like Jack did?”
“Mostly I edited his work,” she said. “Helped him with gathering research, revised, revised, revised.”
“But you didn’t write your own stuff?”
“Well … some.” She shrugged. “But I never got very far with it.”
“Anybody read this writing of yours?”
“Just Maggie and Elle. Oh, and of course, Jack.”
“What did Jack have to say?” Aidan asked.
Laura envisioned Jack sitting next to her, breathing down her neck, and hogging all the air. “Not his cup of tea. Too sweet, too trivial, too optimistic. Didn’t make the reader want to reconsider life, if you know what I mean.” Didn’t make the reader want to shove the barrel of a gun in his mouth.
“But you love writing,” he said.
“Oh.” Heat pulsed her cheeks. “Well.”
A grin split Aidan’s face. “I bet you’re good.”
She shrugged again, thought of the hard to believe compliments she’d received from Elle and Maggie: talented, original, as good as the novels on their favorites shelves. Aidan caught her gaze and held it, as though he could see the praise she held close to her heart.
“I bet your—I bet Jack Klein’s wrong,” Aidan said, and Laura wondered whether he was avoiding the words your husband . “Any chance I could read Laura Klein?”
Laura’s exhalation whooshed out of her. “Wow, I wasn’t expecting that question.” No one new had asked to read her writing in years, at least not anyone whose opinion of her she cared about. Her head grew light with heat, which only made her blush harder.
Aidan took half a step in her direction, and the glint in his eyes gave him away. He thoroughly enjoyed flirting with her and making her squirm. Forget logic. She thoroughly enjoyed flirting right back.
“C’mon, you’ve heard me play guitar,” he said. “Fair’s fair.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“Close enough. They’re both creative expression. Me, strumming away the blues.” He leaned over and performed a wink-quick air guitar riff. “And you, tapping away whatever it is you tap away,” he said, and pantomimed her fingers typing.
She wrinkled her nose and tried to keep a straight face. “I don’t think so.”
“Come on. Come on.” Aidan’s drawn-out words warmed like sweet talk. His forced pout tweaked her pulse like a dare.
Laura giggled. “No.” What if he read her writing and he agreed with Jack’s opinion? She imagined Aidan didn’t favor relationship novels. He looked more like the action-adventure type. He’d never straight-out insult her. But one look at his unable to lie face, and she’d know. Heaven forbid, he said something purposely vague like he’d found her writing interesting. Translated into English, interesting meant torture.
Aidan folded his arms, sighed. “What are you, chicken?”
“Excuse me?” Laura said. Right now, Aidan assumed he’d like her writing, but what if her writing disappointed him?
What if she disappointed him?
Aidan tapped his foot. From his mouth came strange noises, strange clucking noises. How old was he?
Laura glanced at the ceiling, imagined Aidan’s squawking rising through the floorboards and angling into the kids’ rooms. “You’re going to wake up the house.”
He grinned, and the flash from his eyes could’ve served as a lighthouse for ships.
She was an idiot.
“Cock-a-doodle—”
“On the shelf behind you!” she said, and he held a finger to his lips.
“Now you’re talking.” He glanced at the jam-packed bookcase. “Where?”
She hesitated, wondering how she could take back her words.
Aidan smiled and chicken-flapped his arms.
“All right already,” Laura said, and inhaled so she wouldn’t pass out. She took half a second to decide which manuscript to give him, and then got it herself. The tale about losing and finding love wasn’t a romance, but contained enough romantic elements to make Jack squirm. It’s fluff, Laura. You can do better than this. But what if she didn’t want to?
Aidan held out his hands, as if he understood her manuscript was like a baby to her.
“Here you go.” She placed her baby in his hands. “Whenever you get to it, no rush.”
“Uh, I was going to read it right now. Between switching loads.”
What had she done? Her mouth fell open. The backs of her knees went soft, like when she’d await one of Jack’s critiques. Jack would insist she sat by his side while he read, and she’d try to predict his thoughts from his rapidly darting gaze, the subtle nuances of his changing expressions.
Aidan smirked. “See you in a few,” he said, and slipped into the studio.
Thank goodness. Laura opened and closed her journal. She tried catching the story train of thought Aidan had interrupted, but failed. Her stomach growled.
In the kitchen, she put enough water in the kettle for two cups of tea, reminded herself not to burn down the house. She wondered what Aidan’s face looked like as he read her work. Whether his lopsided dimple deepened. Whether his mouth turned down in sympathy when he read a bittersweet passage. She wondered whether he was thinking of her.
By the time Aidan returned, she’d finished the tea, the kettle had grown cold, she’d wiped down and reorganized two spice shelves, and her hands were sweating. She dried them on the dish towel overhanging the stove handle.
“Back so soon?” she said, and avoided his gaze.
Aidan stood next to her. He leaned against the counter. His attempt to torture her with silence couldn’t have lasted more than two minutes. He cracked up, turned to her. “I thought for sure you’d want to know what I thought.”
She forced a deadpan expression. “What did you think?”
Aidan rubbed his hands together. “Thought you’d never ask,” he said. “I’ve come to two conclusions, derived from several thoughts. I thought your—what would you call it, writing voice—sounded a lot like Jack. Not the type of story, heck no, but some of your word choices. A bit of the, umm, music.”
Laura’s stomach tightened around the warm tea. “You’ve read Jack’s work?”
“Oh, sure, sure. Who hasn’t?”
“Lots of people.”
“You’re changing the subject,” he said, and his smile warmed her toes. “The writing’s unique, the observations fresh.”
“You went to medical school?”
“And I took Professor Pearlstein’s creative writing class as an undergrad.”
She tilted her head. “You write?”
“Got a B, which I didn’t even deserve. Should’ve been a C. Hey, I write music, not novels.” He paused. “As I was saying, the writing’s sensual.”
“You didn’t say that.”
“You helped Jack with his writing? You were the assistant behind the genius?”
“His right-hand girl.”
Aidan shook his head. “Uh-uh. You know what I concluded from all these really d
eep thoughts?” He turned toward her, pressed his palm to the edge of the counter, and his bicep stretched the sleeve of his T-shirt. He lowered his voice. “The second thing I concluded is that you were the unsung genius behind the writer.”
“Oh, no, no. I untangled Jack’s rambling overwriting, made sure the story structure was sound, did some light line editing. Nothing more.” At least that’s how her job had started. In recent years, Jack had come to rely on her for heavy revisions, a close cousin to cowriting. Another of their little secrets.
Aidan looked to the ceiling. “Unbelievable. I just called you a genius, and that’s all you’ve got to say for yourself?”
“If that was the second thing you concluded, what was the first?”
“Oh, that,” he said, and a little-boy-devil grin washed over his face. “The first thing I concluded when I read your writing was that I wanted to do this.” Aidan cupped her face in his warm hands, and those dark-chocolate eyes melted her. He leaned in. Touched his lips to hers. Took a tentative taste. His mouth parted from hers, and he licked his bottom lip.
They stood, forehead to forehead, grinning in the stove hood’s golden light. “Can’t lie,” he said. “I’ve wanted to do that since the day I moved in.”
Laura’s heart battered against her chest. She closed her eyes, and the space between them vibrated with … joy.
Aidan’s breathing deepened. His breath fell across her lips, and her hand found the back of his neck. Silk overlaid strength. She kissed him, hard, swallowed the candied ginger taste of his mouth. Her hips rose in the vibrant space between them.
His tongue explored her mouth with unnerving slowness and, dear God, she groaned, surprising herself with the sound of her own need. Aidan took his lips from hers, traced her jawline with his mouth. The edge of the countertop cut into her back, and she didn’t even worry that they were making out in the kitchen like horny teenagers.
She didn’t even worry.
She could reach for him, unzip his jeans, and open herself to him. She could let him inside of her. She could—
Answer the ringing phone before it woke up the kids!
She dashed across the room. “Hello.”
“May I please speak with—?” Laura took the receiver from her ear. Aidan’s ex-girlfriend, still snuffling after all these weeks. Laura stripped the affect from her voice. “It’s for you.”
She wanted to bash the receiver against the wall, smash it into smithereens, and crush the sharp-edged remains under her bare feet. Instead, she handed the receiver to Aidan, her dignity bruised, but intact.
She turned to leave, and Aidan grabbed her by the hand. He waited till she met his gaze. And then, without covering the receiver, he spoke loud enough for the caller to hear, “Don’t go.”
Chapter 19
Exactly at midnight, right when Darcy was about to call Nick, the phone rang once.
Darcy sat on her bed, listening for the sound of her mother’s telephone voice, eyeing her clock’s moonbeam face, and rubbing her belly. She’d shaken off the queasiness hours ago, but a bloated hollowness remained.
Silence from Mom’s room convinced her the single phone ring she’d heard had been either a wrong number or an electrical burp. For cover, Darcy selected her ocean sounds album and upped the iPod’s volume. She could explain needing the lullaby of waves and whales.
An overheard phone call? Not so much.
She switched off the light in case Mom happened by her bedroom again. Faking deep sleep during Mom’s earlier drop-in had required Darcy’s practiced acting skills. Even now she wondered whether her mother had known she was really awake. Why else would Mom lean close and whisper her enduring loyalty, after everything Darcy had done? Troy might’ve inherited Daddy’s bipolar, but she shared a deeper connection with their father. Sometimes what you didn’t tell caused the most damage.
After the great cookie tossing, she’d hastened to bed with her Webster’s dictionary and flipped to the word love. But the definitions made no sense at all, lying flat on the page and failing to explain Daddy. Her fingers flipped past the glossy black-and-gold indented letters and found the word that explained her father: insidious. Every single definition related back to Daddy. Treacherous. Having a gradual and cumulative effect. Drugs that destroyed the young.
Turned out, a slow-acting drug was growing inside of her, masquerading as loyalty. Reject all that Daddy had taught her, all that she’d promised him, and she rejected him, too. Reject her father, and where did that leave her? Her fingers tightened against her thighs, her nails digging into the flesh before she could stop herself. She rubbed at what she knew would turn black and blue, then nabbed twin tension balls from her desk drawer and squeezed until her hands ached.
With a slow, skilled hand, she lifted the phone from the cradle. If her penny-pincher mom would spring for a cell phone, Darcy wouldn’t have to deal with this game. She held the receiver to her face. A woman’s wavering voice tickled her ear, and Darcy’s eyes widened in the dark. At first she mistook the incoherent whining for Elle, and then Aidan interrupted the whimpering.
“I don’t want to hurt you. I really don’t. No matter how many times we talk, no matter how you frame it, I’m not going to change my mind about us. Okay, Kit?” A big exhalation from Aidan inspired more female crying. “We’re wrong for each other, so it’s over. There is no us. There just isn’t.”
A high-pitched wail made Darcy reposition the receiver a couple of inches away from her ear. “You hate me!”
“I don’t hate you. Why are you making this so difficult?” He paused. “Finn shouldn’t have given you this number. And you can’t keep calling my cell every night. Don’t call again.”
The crying stopped, as if Aidan had sprayed cold water through the phone line. Two clicks ended the conversation for good. Darcy couldn’t tell who’d hung up first, but she suspected it didn’t really matter.
Darcy pressed the receiver button and waited for the dial tone before tapping out Nick’s cell number. The phone didn’t even ring on her end, letting Darcy know Nick was waiting by the phone. “Hey, Darce,” Nick said in a whispered shout. “What’s up?”
“How’d you know I’d call?”
“You said you’d call, and you haven’t lied to me yet. Wait a second. Have you?”
Smiling, Darcy sped through her Nick memory bank, seeking fibs and omissions. Nope, no lies to date. Nick wasn’t like other boys; she didn’t have to lie to impress him. Just being herself was good enough. “No lies.”
“All rightie then. So, um, what are you doing?”
She clicked through the still frames in her mind from when Nick had dropped her off through discovering Mom knew all about the sicko Daddy poem, and the sharpness of wanting to cry kept her quiet. She would not turn into one of those girls, like the spineless loser bawling over Aidan.
“I’ll go first then,” Nick said when she was silent. “My dad called today. He wants to see me.”
“I thought there was a restraining order out against your dad. Like, he can’t see you, even if he wants to.”
“Yeah, well, he can see me all he wants. The restraining order’s between my mom and him. He can’t get within spitting distance of her, but me, he can spit at plenty.” Nick laughed at his own joke. “Pretty messed up, huh? He can beat up my mother, then I’m supposed to go out with the guy for a burger and fries. Act like we’re buddies, you know? Like I don’t wanna kill him.” Nick’s voice muffled, as if he were cupping his hand around the cell phone. She imagined him turning away from his bedroom door. “I do want to kill him.”
Darcy’s heart tumbled at the base of her throat.
On the day Daddy had died, she’d tried to run into the house, and Officer Holmes had caught her in his arms. She’d pounded her fists against his solid chest, trying to explain how she needed to get inside and talk Daddy out of what she knew he’d already done.
But wanting and doing weren’t the same. Plenty of boys joked about wanting to kill their par
ents, a stupid thoughtless expression they didn’t mean. If Nick were serious, he wouldn’t have told her. He sure hated his father though.
Darcy reached for the tension ball next to her thigh, and her hand wavered, like when she’d slide a bagel from the glowing-red toaster oven. She clenched the ball. “Making you see your dad if you don’t want to can’t be legal. We’ll find a lawyer. There are lawyers who represent kids, I think, stand up for them in court. You have rights. I know you have rights. We’ll figure it out together.”
In the silence, whales called to each other over the sound of crashing waves.
“You are so damn cute. You know that, Darce? You’re like no girl I’ve ever met before.”
“Nick—”
“No, let me finish. I’ve been thinking on this a lot lately, and I’m really glad we didn’t do it. I like that you’re a virgin. It makes me crazy, you know. I can’t stop thinking about getting inside you.”
Nick had it all wrong. He was already inside her.
“Nick—” The line beeped. “Hang on, okay?” She checked caller ID. Heather’s cell phone. Darcy put the receiver back to her cheek. “I don’t believe her. Heather’s calling in. I’d better pick up.”
“She’s trying to get you in trouble.”
Another beep. “No. I don’t know. I really should—”
“Okay. I’ll hang on.”
“Thanks.” Darcy pressed the flash button. “Hello?”
“I’m sorry. Is your mother asleep?” Darcy wouldn’t have recognized Heather’s whispered voice without caller ID.
“I sure hope so.” Darcy grimaced, wishing Heather could see her expression through the phone. If Heather were trying to get her into deeper trouble, this would be the way to go. Mom’s creative punishments during groundings were the absolute worst. Last time, Mom had made her do Troy’s chores, taking out the bottles, cans, and the gross compost.
Heather’s silence brought on the guilty gremlins. Nick was wrong. Her best friend would never try to get her in trouble. “Actually, you’re totally in luck. I’m on the other line with Nick, so the phone didn’t even ring. No harm done.”
“I just wanted to let you know I’m coming over.”
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