My Boyfriend and Other Enemies

by Nikki Logan

  ‘—and deluded, as always.’

  Right. Good to see you, too.

  ‘You got here very quickly,’ Tash commented, all suspicion.

  ‘It’s Saturday. I was working at home.’

  A silver thread stretched out between them, binding them together. ‘Your father said you were pulling long hours,’ she whispered.

  ‘Aiden lives in the next street,’ Laura announced apropos of nothing. ‘Family’s always been important to him.’ It was a gush but it wasn’t for her benefit. In fact, it reeked of a reminder. Or maybe an instruction.

  Aiden looked as if he found it about as distasteful as Tash did.

  ‘Tea, darling?’ Laura cooed to Aiden. ‘Natasha, are you sure I can’t persuade you?’

  Oh, please. But growing up the daughter of Eric Sinclair had at least taught her what to do with passive aggression. Play the game.

  ‘Well, perhaps if it’s a party...’ She threw out a tight smile.

  ‘Don’t let me interrupt your conversation,’ Aiden challenged, locking eyes with hers. They said, What the hell are you doing here?

  Tash swallowed the ache and lifted her chin. I’m fighting for what I want. ‘How much did you hear?’

  ‘You were asking about your mother and mine, what happened to their friendship.’

  Not an answer. Which meant he could have heard everything, or nothing.

  Laura waved an elegantly manicured but papery hand. It reminded Tash, suddenly, of something that might flop out of a sarcophagus. She placed the kettle back onto its electric base and set it to boil. ‘Oh, you know how it is. Those years of your life are so dynamic. Friendships come and go.’

  ‘Mother’s first diary is full of her sadness as your friendship waned.’ If she wanted to do this in front of a witness, fine.

  Laura turned bitter eyes in her direction, not quite as gracious or befuddled as she’d gifted Aiden with. She thought it was secret, but Tash saw Aiden see it in the mirrored splashback behind the induction cooktop. ‘Adele always was good at turning it on and off as required.’

  ‘Was it only about Nathaniel? The troubles between you?’

  ‘My goodness, you certainly inherited her sense of entitlement!’ Laura blustered, all wit and sarcasm. ‘As if someone as delightful and fabulous as Adele should automatically be loved by all.’ She slapped her hands on the counter. ‘She was as flawed as the next person. She and Eric deserved each other in my opinion.’

  ‘Mum...’ Aiden murmured, dangerous and low.

  Nausea threatened deep in Tash’s throat. ‘Really? She deserved overnights in hospital and being beaten with a phonebook so the bruises would be less distinct? She deserved the coroner’s investigation when she died because of the number of old injuries on her body?’

  Laura’s hands froze in the midst of dropping a gourmet teabag into each of three designer cups. But she pulled herself together enough to finish the job. But not enough to stop her hands from trembling visibly. She tucked them out of view as soon as she could and turned to pour the kettle. She lifted it as though it weighed a ton and then replaced it succinctly onto its base when her unsteady hands couldn’t keep it still.

  Finally, she half turned back to Tash and whispered, ‘He beat her?’

  Tash nodded and Laura echoed it, though slower and jerkier. Aiden crossed behind his mother and poured the cups for her, placing a supporting hand on her shoulder. That little bit of solidarity only undid her more. She slid her own up to thread through her son’s fingers.

  ‘I didn’t know it was that bad,’ she whispered, all pretence vanished.

  Tash clenched her teeth. ‘But you knew it was happening?’

  ‘It was Eric.’ She shuddered in a breath. ‘I discovered Nathaniel’s expenditure. The legal costs. That little house. I forced him to explain. But he never said why she had to get out, just that she had. I assumed...’

  She couldn’t finish and Tash knew what that meant. Laura had assumed it was a prelude to Nathaniel taking back up with Adele.

  ‘He saved both our lives that day.’

  Laura nodded. ‘He would have done anything for her.’

  ‘Mum—’

  ‘No, Aiden. Enough.’ She turned haunted eyes up to him. ‘I’m so tired of all of this. Time that it all came out.’

  ‘Without Dad here?’

  ‘He knows all of it. He’s always known.’

  ‘Known what?’

  She turned to Tash. ‘Adele shouldn’t have valued my advice, Natasha. It was selfish advice.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She confided in me, about Nathaniel pressuring her to...consummate their relationship. And he confided in me as well, his fears that her not wanting to be intimate meant she didn’t care for him the way he did for her.’ Her laugh was dark. ‘It was so easy to turn their minds. To convince him he was right and to convince her that holding out would be good for their relationship.’

  ‘They trusted you.’

  ‘Of course they did.’

  ‘What are you saying, Mum?’

  She spun on her son. ‘I wanted them apart. I wanted an end to the endless soap opera that was Adele and Nathaniel’s great love affair and I wanted to turn the friendship that I had with him into more.’

  ‘You broke them up,’ Tash whispered.

  ‘Oh, don’t say it as though I defaced some holy relic,’ she hissed. ‘I seized my chance. My future. I knew what I wanted and I went for it. I won’t pity Adele for waiting for the world to give her things. She already had beauty and intelligence and—’ She bit back the rest.

  ‘And Nathaniel?’

  ‘To the victor go the spoils. That’s how it works. Well, I was the victor.’

  ‘Until you weren’t,’ Tash whispered. ‘He went back to her.’

  ‘And then returned to me.’

  Intense pity suffused Aiden’s face. His hand squeezed on Laura’s shoulder and his eyes fell shut.

  ‘He just needed time. He just needed an opportunity to love me.’

  Aiden turned her slowly and stared down on her. ‘Was I that opportunity?’

  Her whole body trembled now. ‘He was a good man,’ she urged up into Aiden’s face. ‘He just needed a good reason to come back to me. To get out from under her influence.’

  And a pregnancy was a very good reason indeed.

  ‘You trapped Nathaniel,’ Tash whispered. And destroyed a whole bunch of lives in one fell swoop.

  Aiden’s hand slipped from her mother’s shoulder and he turned and braced himself on the opposite counter.

  ‘It wasn’t a trap,’ she urged. The earnest proclamation of the condemned. ‘It was a reason.’

  Tash stared; saw the fragile, broken women that must have lived under the gloss and glamour. Perpetually. Even back then.

  ‘I’ve blamed him for so many years,’ Aiden whispered. ‘I was convinced he’d done you great wrong.’

  ‘He did do me wrong,’ she begged. ‘He slept with her.’

  ‘He was desperate,’ Tash murmured. ‘He discovered my father’s brutality and he wanted to save her, but she wouldn’t let him leave you. So he staged it so that Eric would find out.’

  Laura spun on her, fire in her eyes below the tears. ‘No. She would have taken him in a heartbeat.’

  ‘It’s true. It’s in her diary and Nathaniel told me, too. She wanted him to go back to his family.’

  Panic filled her face. ‘No!’

  ‘Why “no”, Laura? Does it upset you to think maybe she was a good person after all? That the woman you cheated out of her love didn’t deserve what you did to her? That you abandoned your friend and set her up to be with a man who abused her horribly?’

  Her thin lips opened and closed wordlessly. She turned and begged A
iden with her panicked gaze. ‘Why is she here?’

  ‘I’m here because I want the truth.’ Tash moved around to put herself directly in Laura’s line of vision and she locked onto her eyes. ‘I’m here because I know what I want and I’m going for it. I’m seizing my chance just like you did.’

  ‘You want Aiden,’ she nearly shrieked.

  ‘I absolutely do.’

  Behind her, Aiden straightened and then walked past them both, out of the kitchen and through a sliding door to the pool deck.

  Laura turned on her with triumph. ‘Looks like the feeling is not mutual.’

  Every part of her tightened. ‘That might be true, but I’m only going to accept that from him. Hasn’t there been enough lies and deception in this family?’

  ‘It’s not bad enough that she got Nathaniel’s heart, now I have to give you Aiden’s?’

  The sneer finally got to her. Tash struck back. ‘Maybe the hearts of the Moore men have always belonged in my family? Maybe this is just the universe putting things to rights?’

  ‘No!’ Laura’s wail was pain incarnate. And broken.

  Pity swamped through Tash for a woman who was so crippled by fear that she’d let it run her whole life. ‘I don’t want it exclusively, Laura,’ she urged. ‘I could never love a man who didn’t cherish his family.’ She glanced up at where Aiden paced, furious, along the decking surrounding the opulent swimming pool and then back at his bitter, fearful mother. ‘But I want my chance. And I’m taking it.’

  Mascara-streaked eyes widened and stared, and then dropped to where her fingers twisted in front of her. ‘You’re just like her, you know,’ she murmured, disarmed.

  ‘Like Mum?’

  ‘Adele had a very strong sense of what was right and wrong. I knew that. Despite everything.’

  ‘You knew she wouldn’t fight for Nathaniel.’

  Breath wheezed out of her. ‘I counted on it. I’m so sorry that you lost her so young. There but for the grace of God....’

  Tash was nearly overcome by the strength of the hatred coursing through her. For what this weak woman had done to her mother’s life. But she forced it to morph and change. Into pity. And acceptance. She’d meant it when she said she was tired of living in the past.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘We were true friends. At the start. I hope that Adele knew that.’

  ‘She knew.’

  And then no more words would come. Laura just nodded and turned back to finish making the tea that nobody wanted. Tash stepped back, turned her eyes to the pool deck and started walking. But as she reached the door a croaky voice reached her.

  ‘I made him into the man he is, you know...’ Tash stopped, looked back at Laura. Was she still going to stake her claim on her son? But a broken heart shone through in her red-rimmed eyes as she lifted them. ‘This man that can’t trust love.’

  Tash nodded and looked around this beautiful, empty, soulless home. ‘Why would he?’

  And then she pulled on the door.

  * * *

  ‘Aiden?’

  He stopped where he stood, his back still to her. ‘Did you suspect?’

  ‘I had no idea. I just wanted to talk to her, try to understand where you’re coming from. Try and change it.’

  He nodded. ‘Do you think Dad knows she got pregnant on purpose?’

  ‘I think so. He always seemed on the verge of saying more. But he never did.’

  ‘Still doing the right thing by her.’

  Her chest lifted and then slowly deflated. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do you think there’s any future for them?’ he asked, monotone.

  No. Not according to Nathaniel. ‘Perhaps it’s time he put himself first?’

  Aiden turned, found her eyes. Found her soul. ‘He’s earned it.’

  She stepped closer and curled a hand around his wrist.

  ‘I’ve misjudged him so much,’ he whispered.

  ‘He understands.’

  ‘You’re very certain.’

  ‘You’re his son. The only person in his life that he’s free to love unconditionally. He’s not going to give up on that lightly.’

  ‘He loves you, too.’

  Tash smiled. ‘For who I remind him of.’

  ‘And for who you are. He told me.’ Clouded eyes held hers. ‘He’s made discussing you in my presence a sport.’ His eyes flicked to the house. ‘When she told me on the phone you were here...I thought you’d come to force my hand.’

  ‘You looked pretty mad when you walked in.’

  ‘Your persistence riled me even as your courage shamed me.’

  ‘No...’

  ‘You confronted my family, knowing how they felt about yours. Knowing how she would be. Why did you do that?’

  ‘Because all my life I’ve ceded power to other people. My father. Kyle. Even you to some extent. It was time I took control into my own hands.’

  ‘By fronting the lion’s den?’

  ‘Wounded lions always lash out.’

  ‘You don’t judge her?’

  ‘What she told us is going to take a lot of getting past. But she’s lived with her own judgement all these years; I don’t think mine would add much value.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘That’s very generous.’

  ‘It’s not generous, it’s just smart.’ At his blank look, she elaborated. ‘If I want to be in your life.’

  ‘Tash—’

  ‘I know what you said. I just don’t believe you. This can’t be just about your family.’

  ‘You believed it enough to come here.’

  The tension in her shoulders made shrugging a strain. ‘I’m covering all my bases.’

  ‘And now?’

  She took a deep breath. ‘You were right when you said I could never fit comfortably in your family. I couldn’t. But what you failed to understand is that I’m prepared to live uncomfortably in it. For you.’

  His gaze intensified. His throat lurched. ‘That’s no way to live. Look at my father.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be my first preference.’

  ‘I thought you were done ceding power to others?’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I wouldn’t move heaven and earth to change it. I’m saying you’re worth the discomfort.’

  His eyes slated sideways. ‘I thought I was no more worthy than I am strong or exciting. Or manly.’

  ‘I’m not perfect either. I wanted you bleeding the way I was.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve bled, Tash. You have no idea.’

  ‘Why? If I meant so little to you.’

  He paced to the corner of the pool, then retraced his steps. ‘So much of who I am is based on who I thought he was,’ Aiden muttered. ‘I saw and heard more than everyone believed back then. I knew what he’d done. Thought I knew,’ he corrected himself. ‘And on some level I think I took my cues about relationships there. How vulnerable you are to hurt when you give yourself—your heart—to someone else.’

  ‘It’s not like that for everyone.’

  ‘I wonder if your mother ever said that to my father?’

  ‘And I wonder how much might have been different if they’d been honest with each other from the start. Not made all those assumptions.’

  ‘Do you think it would have changed his decision when he found out Mum was pregnant?’

  ‘No. Because he was and still is a man who owned his actions. But I don’t think he would have gone with her in the first place.’

  ‘Then you and I wouldn’t exist. We never would have met.’

  Was that what he wanted, deep down? Would it be easier, for both of them, if she’d never opened her mother’s diaries? Never opened the door to her curiosity? Perhaps. But easier was not necessarily better.


  She peered up at him. ‘Meeting you was a turning point for me. Being with you. I don’t like how it came out but I wouldn’t wish it undone for anything.’

  A small bird flitted down into the garden and made a show of bouncing between perfectly manicured shrubs. Tash fixated on it.

  Aiden cleared his throat. ‘I need you to know something, Tash. I didn’t know, going in, how I was going to feel on the other side of us sleeping together.’

  At least he hadn’t said having sex. But it was a long mile from making love, which was how she’d viewed it. When she wasn’t thinking of it as changing her forever.

  ‘I was numb coming out of the meeting with my father. The only thing that could pierce that was you. Your presence and your touch. I craved it.’ His eyes dropped. ‘I used it, to distract myself from the reality of everything I’d learned. I used you. And I hate that.’

  ‘I’m not all that crazy about it, either,’ she muttered.

  ‘My experience of relationships has been limited,’ he admitted.

  She gaped. ‘I read the newspapers, Aiden. I have an Internet connection.’

  ‘I’m not talking about quantity. I’m talking about scope. I’ve had hundreds of the same kind of relationship. Fast, limited. Safe. I’m sure the papers don’t cover that.’ He plunged his hands into his pockets. ‘You were a totally new experience for me. Someone who challenged me. Someone who bested me. Someone who was quite prepared to be disrespectful of me.’

  He roamed back and forth across the deck. Tash stood frozen.

  ‘And then we stood in your apartment on the verge of being together and I saw how nervous you were to really be free with me, and I burned with such intensity I was overwhelmed.’

  Doubt washed through her. The old distrust. ‘Out of your hundreds of experiences?’

  ‘I’m not talking about my raging desire to take you. I’m talking about the force of my desire to take care of you. To protect you, even with me, and with anyone else you would ever meet. I wanted to liberate you from the doubt that jerk Jardine instilled in you and beat your stinking father to death with my bare hands for how he treated you. I woke up next to you and never, ever wanted to wake up next to anyone else. Ever. You were so brave and so wild and so perfect and that...terrified me.’