“Did you eat?” I asked, my tone softer now, and he shook his head.
This time, I walked to the fridge and pulled out the eggs and a handful of veggies. I set an omelet pan on the stove top, drizzled in some olive oil, and turned on the burner.
I needed to be busy, to make work for my idle hands. In reality, they yearned to smooth their way down Aston’s back. My mouth ached to place kisses along his neck and across his cheek, all the way to his mouth.
Instead, I sliced an onion, diced a pepper, and halved a few cherry tomatoes.
“You don’t have to cook for me,” he said, his voice scratchy, gruff, and oozing sex.
I scurried back to the fridge and grabbed some spinach. I needed to do something, and that something was not kissing him.
“Omelet okay? You still like it without cheese and your eggs mixed with milk?” I kept my gaze glued to the stove and my back to the man in my kitchen.
“Bexley, look at me.”
Ignoring him, I tossed the veggies in the frying pan and gave them a stir with the same concentration as if I were solving the national debt.
“Bex, turn around. Now.”
Reluctantly, I did.
“What’re you doing?” He wasn’t on the stool but walking toward me. “Huh?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
“You need to calm down.” He pushed a stray hair out of my face and ran his knuckles down my cheek. “I should be asking you if you ate.”
I shook my head because I hadn’t eaten, but he didn’t need to ask me that. That wasn’t his job anymore. Or ever, really.
“Come on.” He guided me toward the stove and stood behind me as he picked up the spatula and brought it to my hand. Together, we stirred the vegetables, his large hand cupping mine. His lips tickled my ear as he whispered from behind me, “I want to take care of you.”
I felt elated and saddened, all at the same time. How could I be so excited over him wanting to care for me . . . after he left me all those years ago? Chose his dad over me?
“Let’s get the eggs.”
He set the spatula down and guided me toward the sink where I’d left the eggs. He repeated the whole hand-in-hand cooking business, cracking eggs and dumping them in a bowl, adding milk, and whisking it all together.
Back to the stove we went.
He nudged the burner down a bit, stirred the vegetables one last time, and poured the eggs over top. Then he turned me, setting my butt on the counter next to the stove.
“Aston,” I whispered, “I don’t think I can. I’ve been waiting for this moment, it seems . . . all my life. But I don’t think I can now. It hurts. The memory of what we were, what we could have been, what later happened. There are too many sides, too many lies,” I said, rambling as my eyes began to sting.
He held my face close, looking deeply into my eyes. “Love isn’t scripted. It’s not a movie or a book where there’s a formula. There’s no plan. In real life, it just happens. This is our story, and it’s my time to come back into your life. We may have had a messy middle, only to get a little messier with this shit going on. But the ending is going to be perfect.”
I felt weak everywhere. My heart, my knees, even my toes. “How can you be sure?”
Ignoring my question, he said, “Now we’re going to eat, and then I’ll tell you what I learned. Go sit.”
Somehow the tables had been turned. I was now sitting on my kitchen stool, and Aston was walking toward me with half an omelet.
“Coffee? Pancakes?”
I could only nod. He poured me a cup of coffee, and I couldn’t help myself. “You make pancakes?”
“Damn straight.” Without another word, he started rifling through my cabinets, apparently looking for pancake mix.
Aston
“Here, take this, and we’ll talk.” I handed Bexley the coffee and took a plate for myself.
As she took a long sip, I watched her swallow. It was a beautiful sight. Bexley had always thought she was plain, had never realized how stunning she truly was. She was natural and real, everything I’d never been exposed to, and all I ever wanted to have.
It hadn’t been possible years ago, but now it was. I was through with being a pussy. Through bending for my dad. And definitely through with being accused of something I didn’t do.
I grabbed my plate and a cup of coffee for myself and stood next to where she sat on the stool, leaning my hip against the counter. “My dad thinks you and Milly had something to do with all of this.”
“What?” Bexley jerked as she looked up, almost knocking her coffee off the counter.
“He does, and now I have to prove him wrong, in addition to proving my own innocence. So I need to ask you . . . do you think Milly would do something like this?”
“How dare you!” Bexley went to get up, and I eased her back onto the stool.
“There’s a lot going on with Milly that you don’t know about. Try not to get your panties in a bunch.”
“Oh yeah? Are you spying on her too?” Bexley chugged the rest of her coffee, never taking her death stare off me.
“No, but the guy my dad had watching you couldn’t help but learn some stuff about her. A casualty of the job . . . we’ll call it.”
Bexley’s mouth hung open, and I couldn’t help but want to shut her up with something on her mouth—like my own. But I knew better than that.
“I thought you had someone watching me. Now it’s your dad who has someone? Who else will you blame in all this?”
“It’s both of us, actually. He had someone watching you, which is how he found out I was keeping tabs on you. It’s a bit of a sordid affair, if you ask me.”
Bexley’s eyes narrowed. “Damn straight it is.”
“Listen, the heat is going to be on us. Mostly me, but you as an unintended casualty. You know my dad’s like a bulldog when he gets his teeth into something, but this time I’m going to outsmart him and fix this.”
Her head tilted to the side, and she looked at me in the compassionate way I craved like a starving man at a buffet. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
I started to nod, words of affirmation about to spill from my mouth, but then she leveled her gaze on mine, a truth serum if there ever was one. Eyes as green as the grass on the golf course pinned me, her dark blond hair swirling around her face.
“Don’t lie, Aston. It’s okay to say you don’t know. It’s okay to look for help. It doesn’t make you any less of a man to ask for help. Seriously, take it down a notch.”
She was right, but I’d never let my guard down. I’d been the strong one, resilient, and had developed my take-charge attitude after my parents’ divorce.
Unable to stay away, I made my way closer and turned Bexley’s stool so she was nestled between my thighs. “I wasn’t man enough years ago to fight for you. Now I have to be double the man. Understand that? I need to fight for you, my freedom, and my family.”
Her forehead met my chest, and I listened to her uneven breathing. “I’ve lost you once, twice, but a third time will kill me, and I have kids now. I can’t get them mixed up in this. The last few years haven’t been easy on them. Seth, he . . . he’s not always there for them.”
“Listen to me, Bex, nothing is going to happen to me. You have to know what I’m like. In a dog fight, I’m always the toughest, strongest mutt in the lot. My mom made sure of that.” I tilted her head with my finger and looked her dead on. “She wasn’t the best mom, nothing like you, but she made sure I was tough. Speaking of kids, I want to meet yours, and maybe you’ll meet mine. I’d like that.”
I didn’t call attention to her swallowing hard. She could pretend I didn’t see her do it, or wonder why I’d notice it at all.
“We’ll see,” she said, and then went back to eating her eggs.
Later that day, freshly showered, shaved, and suited up, I went to see my lawyer. After scouring hours and hours of security tape from my factory, his team still had no new leads. Nothing but
a host of my employees coming and going, in and out of the factory.
Aidan, the lead lawyer on my case, paced back and forth. “There has to be something else we’re missing. The Feds claim their case against you is airtight, and there’s no way it is.”
Turning to his associate, he said, “Sniff around and see who fed it to them,” and then he looked at me. “You gonna go behind my back and put your guy on that too?”
“No, he’s back on Bexley.”
He blew out a long breath. “Aston . . . we’ve discussed this. She needs to stay out of this. And you need to stay away from her.”
“No can do.”
“No can do what? Keep your guy off her? Or you?”
“Both. My dad’s got his own guy on her, and I need someone on his prick. Stupid fuck thinks Bex has something to do with it, which is bullshit. And now he’s telling stories about her friend Milly fucking around and being a part of this. I need to watch what they’re doing.”
Aidan gave me an incredulous look. “For Christ’s sake, when did your life become such a soap opera?”
“The day I gave up Bexley for my dad.”
He nodded as if I’d made his case. “And that’s why you need to give her up.”
Shoving my hair off my forehead, I noted to book a haircut. “Are you my lawyer or my therapist? I’m not giving her up, and you know better than anyone why. I should’ve never walked away in the first place. Christ,” I said, slamming my fist onto his desk. “Why do I have to keep repeating myself to everyone? I have a shitty ex, my kids are a mess, and I’ve never loved anyone but Bex. Oh, and I’m being accused of a crime I didn’t commit. Back off of my love life and get me cleared.”
Aidan dropped into the chair behind his desk. “I’m doing the best I can. I have a whole team working around the clock on it.”
“Just fix this.” I slammed my fist onto his desk again. “Fast.”
He looked up, rattled. “Get a hold of yourself, Aston. Calm down,” he said, using a tone meant for a mental patient.
“No can do. This is as good as it gets.”
I didn’t have anything left to say to him, so I pushed out of my chair and headed back to my office, wishing I had eyes in the back of my head.
Every person who walked by my office in a suit or a warehouse uniform was a suspect. As if my day wasn’t shitty enough, my dad stopped by, knocking his knuckles on my door frame as he paused, giving me a salute.
“What’s up?” I smiled at him, his face still tanned from Hawaii. If I’d learned one thing from the Bexley situation, it was to never show my hand to my dad. Ever.
“Just running in to grab something from my office, then I’m heading to Vegas. Since you can’t go, I’m taking the meeting with the new hotel going up in Red Rock. They want to do all private-label soaps, men’s grooming kits, napkins, and possibly exercise towels with gold embroidering, mostly standard stuff, but also have an interesting idea for their exercise machines. Could be a big account. They have deep pockets, you know?”
“Good luck with that. And don’t think for a minute that I wouldn’t be there if I could. My hands are tied. Luckily, yours aren’t.” The last part came out on a sneer. Fuck if I cared. He’d micromanaged me long enough.
Dad gave me a smug look. “Yeah, pretty lucky I can do it. I’d hate to see the business go to shit too. How would you support yourself?”
Closing my eyes, I leaned back in my chair. “Get out,” I said through gritted teeth. “I don’t have time for your guilt trip. I know I’m forever indebted to you, Dad. But right now, I need to put my life back together, and while I don’t expect any help from you, you could let me be.”
“Help?” He scoffed. “I’m closing accounts you should be handling.”
“Lots of luck then. Oh, I’m moving Denise in with me. Cass is in no shape to take care of the kids, even part time, and I don’t like having them over at your place all the time.”
“You’ll have to pay her more and take over her benefits,” he said before he turned away.
Typical Dad. All he cared about was the bottom line.
“Yeah. ’Bye,” I said to his back.
Bexley
When I walked into the women’s health clinic on Tuesday, a sense of calm washed over me. The kids were in school, where they belonged, after a good breakfast, lunches packed, and after-school activities planned.
My clogs clunked on the floor as I made my way to my small office and flicked on the light. It would be a busy day—it always was—and I welcomed as many distractions as possible. The kids came home on Sunday night, and at least Aston had the decency to text, asking if he could come over. I’d said no, and then he protested for a while, explaining that he’d hired a full-time live-in nanny, so he could leave his kids at home.
After Mike spilled the beans, it was pretty obvious Aston knew my secret, but I didn’t know why he was staying quiet about it. Aston was always direct, so I expected him to confront me about Piper. Then again, I didn’t know him all that well lately. Either way, I still wasn’t ready to have them meet.
“Bexley?” Maria, my supervisor, called from my doorway.
“Oh yes, sorry. I was going over my to-do list in my head,” I said while looking up. Busying my hands with twisting my hair in a tight bun at the nape of my neck, I wondered what she wanted.
“I have a sensitive case in my office. A young girl, only fifteen. She’s here with her mom. Dad isn’t aware of her situation. I was wondering if you might take them. It’s going to be a long morning for them, I fear, and I don’t want to rush with her.”
To me, it was manna from heaven—a long case, a dragged-out decision, a laborious morning. Check, check, check.
“Sure, no problem. Do you want me to come to you? Or do you want to bring them here?”
“I’ll just show them to your office. I have a grant visit later, so I need to keep my office open.”
“I’ll be ready,” I said, turning on the desk lamp and standing to turn off the overhead lights. Over the years, I’d found that soft light was comforting.
I also lit a lavender candle, refilled the tissue box, and replaced the hard candies on my desk. Noting that none of my family pics were up, I ticked through some of the touches I’d added over the years. This was about making it easier on the client, not me.
As expected, this client did take several hours, and by the time I finished up some paperwork and checked my schedule for the next day, it was after two o’clock. My stomach let out an angry growl, and my head pounded for some caffeine, so I decided to take a quick walk to the coffee shop around the corner for a sandwich and a cup of joe.
But as soon as I entered and the bells jingled above the door, I wanted to turn back around. Sitting in the middle of the coffee shop, waiting like a king, tanned and glowing, sat Peter Prescott.
About to turn and leave, I paused when he crooked his finger at me. Not wanting to make a scene so close to my work, I went.
“Are you going to order?” he asked me like we’d planned to meet up like two old friends.
I shook my head. “What do you want? You do realize I’m in the middle of my workday?”
“You mean that liberal do-good job?”
“Yes, that’s what I mean. It’s honest, unlike you.” I didn’t have any goodwill toward the man, and I was beyond pretending I did.
“Please sit,” he said, like I had a choice.
I’d also come to realize he knew my secret too. Everyone did, apparently.
Sliding into the chair, I asked, “What do you want?”
“You know what I want, the same thing I’ve always wanted—you to stay away from my son. We don’t need you sullying our good name. We have enough problems right now.”
“I’d say you do,” I said, my hand itching to fidget with my bun, but I silently commanded it to remain on the table.
“Look, take my deal. Take the money for Piper. Lord knows, your loser of an ex would take the handout. He doesn’t want to pay for
her.”
“Stay away from Piper,” I said sharply. “She doesn’t need any of this to fall onto her. She’s a kid. She didn’t ask for any of this.”
“No, you did.” His eyes bore into me. A very familiar shade of blue, but they didn’t have any of the fire or passion of Aston’s . . . or Piper’s.
“You asked for it when you didn’t take care of things. You could have ended the pregnancy, but instead, you kept the baby—or insurance policy, as I would call her. You held on for a moment just like this, when my son could come crawling back to you, like we all knew he would. Can’t blame the guy for coming back. You must be one hell of a lay.”
“How dare you call my daughter an insurance policy?” The sex comment was the least of my problems. My blood gurgled and boiled in my veins, and if I didn’t spot two coworkers in the coffee shop, I feared I’d topple the table over on the asshole’s lap. How could he speak about Piper like that?
“My granddaughter,” he said, not flinching. “Don’t forget, she has my blood too. You know, if I wanted her, I could get her.”
“Look,” I said, trying to reason with him when I knew better. “You’ve left me alone for all these years. I didn’t take your money way back then, and I don’t want it now. I don’t want anything. I don’t hold you or your son responsible in any way for Piper. She doesn’t know who you are, or what you do, or how much you’re worth, or that you even exist. She doesn’t know Aston exists. She thinks my ex is her father, and he is, for all intents and purposes.”
“Bullshit. You’d tell her in a minute if it would benefit you,” Peter said, glaring at me. “I want you to let go of my son, because when he finds out about all this, he’ll lose his mind. He’ll learn about Piper, and it will all be over. Everything I’ve built will be for nothing. He won’t be able to stay away from you or her. He’s a sucker for a happy ending, like the one his mom never got.”
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