by Ivy Layne
“I wasn’t aware,” Aiden said smoothly with just the right note of concern. “Troubled how?”
“Violent outbursts, lying. He’s delusional.”
My mother added, “For years I suspected he was doing drugs.”
“You’ll need a firm hand with Violet,” my father said. “She’s stubborn. Digs her heels in when she should do what she’s told. Talks back.”
“When she was younger, she was such a sweet girl,” my mother said, her voice weighted by nostalgia and regret. “We should never have allowed her to go away to college.”
“It wasn’t college so much as allowing her to live in the dorms,” my father said. “She became positively unruly after that. Disobedient, with a smart mouth.”
“But you look like just the kind of man to bring out the best in her, doesn’t he, Henry?” I didn’t have to see my mother to picture the inquiring tilt of her head or the ingratiating smile on her face.
“He does, he does,” my father agreed.
Did they not realize how rude it was to talk about Aiden in the third person when he was sitting right in front of them?
Reminding myself that eavesdroppers rarely heard anything flattering, I continued down the hall, allowing my heels to echo on the hardwood, announcing my presence. I took my seat beside Aiden and picked up my glass of wine, taking the tiniest sip.
“Have you all been getting to know each other?” I asked.
Aiden’s eyes met mine, and he knew immediately that I’d been successful. I was uncomfortably aware of the envelope tucked against my lower back beneath my clothes. Just a few more minutes and I’d make our excuses.
My mother smiled in Aiden’s direction. “We have. But you haven’t told us how long you two have been seeing each other.”
I opened my mouth to answer, but Aiden got there first. “Just about a month.”
“Oh, not very long then.” My mother sounded disappointed. “Then I suppose it’s too soon to expect any announcements.”
I hadn’t spoken to these people in years, so why was my mother’s behavior so impossibly embarrassing? Heat rose to my cheeks as I hissed, “Mother!”
I was about to apologize to Aiden for her presumption when she smoothed her skirt over her knees and gave me a pointed look. “Gordon Walters got married last year.”
I took a deliberate sip of my wine before I said, “How unfortunate for his new bride.”
My father set his tumbler of whiskey on the side table with a rattle of glass on wood. “That’s enough of that. You’re lucky we stopped you before your lies could damage his reputation. When I think of what he could have done for this family, and what you ruined—”
My mother reached out a hand and patted my father’s knee, murmuring, “Henry, now is not the time. Perhaps we ought to give Violet the opportunity to redeem herself.” This was followed by another pointed look at me and a quick glance at Aiden.
For someone who put so much stock in good manners, my mother could be oblivious. Did she think Aiden was an idiot?
Aiden’s jaw clenched. I’d never told him the name of the man who’d assaulted, then fired me. Now I didn’t have to. Aiden was far from an idiot and he’d figured out exactly who my parents were talking about.
Fury radiated from him. I couldn’t imagine how my parents didn’t notice. It was there in his tight mouth, the lines around his eyes, the coiled tension in his legs and arms.
When he spoke, his voice was level and implacable. “I’m sorry to cut this visit short. Violet and I have an engagement elsewhere in the city, and we need to go.”
He rose to his feet, bringing me with him. We walked to the door, trailed by my parents. My mother said, “It was lovely to meet you. I hope Henry and I will see you again soon.”
Aiden turned and met her eyes. His face expressionless, he said, “I doubt that,” and swept me out of the house, leaving them gaping after him in astonishment.
I didn’t let out a breath until I fastened my seatbelt and Aiden pulled away from the curb. As soon as we were moving, I leaned forward, untucked the back of my blouse beneath my jacket and pulled free the papers I’d stolen. Aiden looked over to see the manila envelope in my lap.
“You found the files?”
“It’s not much, but yes.”
“Good, because we’re never going back there again.”
“Fine with me,” I agreed. I’d been on edge every second we were in that house. Now that I’d escaped, my goal accomplished, the adrenaline faded, and I was left with a sick, sad ache in my chest.
It was fine with me. Better than fine. There was nothing for me in that house. Nothing for me with those people. My eyes dropped to the envelope in my lap. I opened it and withdrew the stack of papers, scanning the contract on top.
Based on the dates, it was Chase’s. A quick look told me there wasn’t much useful information. Maybe a professional investigator could find more. Or maybe I was just distracted. My eyes blurred with tears and I looked out the window.
Finding out that I was adopted should have been a relief. It could have been an explanation for my parents’ coldness, their disinterest in me once it became clear I wouldn’t serve their purposes. It wasn’t. Biology had nothing to do with their miserable parenting.
I knew their treatment would have been the same if I’d been born of my mother’s body. They lacked the capacity for love. For compassion. For anything other than enduring self-interest. It was who they were. They were incapable of nurturing, of devotion, of everything that made a parent into a parent.
Love wasn’t about blood, it was in the heart.
Neither of them had one.
I let out a gusty sigh as I blinked away the moisture in my eyes. Aiden took my hand, lacing his fingers through mine.
“You can out-ice queen your mother any day, sweetheart.”
“Hmph. She taught me everything I know.”
He lifted my fingers to his mouth and kissed my knuckles, eyes flashing to my face before they returned to the road ahead. “She’s a poor imitation of you.”
“Thank you for coming with me. I’m sorry they were so horrible”
Aiden surprised me with a laugh. “You’re not responsible for them. Believe me, they’re not the worst I’ve met. Dropping a name like mine rarely brings out the best in people.”
I thought about that, what it meant in his life for his very name to draw greed and grasping hands from the people he met. “You deserve better than that.”
“Some people would say I deserve far worse,” he said, stroking his thumb along the back of my hand.
“They’d be wrong. Don’t forget, I spent weeks trying to dig up your worst transgressions and came up blank.”
“I work too much to have any juicy transgressions,” Aiden said, the side of his mouth curling up in a wry smile. “My life is a lot fewer strippers and a lot more spreadsheets than people think.”
I had a sudden flash of a stripper pole installed in Aiden’s office and laughed out loud. “How about no strippers and fewer spreadsheets?”
Aiden pulled his eyes from the road just long enough to scan me with a hot glance. “How about you strip for me every night I come home on time?”
Heat pooled between my legs. My voice was husky when I said, “That might get predictable. How about you get a reward of my choosing every night you don’t work late?”
“I’ll tell the executive team to adjust my schedule,” he said, and I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not.
I hoped he wasn’t. I liked this thing we had going. I liked being with him. Unless he was playing me, Aiden seemed to intend for this to go on. But if it did, I wanted us to be together. Not me rattling around his big house by myself while he worked all hours of the day and night.
I wanted him, had feelings for him, feelings that went way beyond attraction and sex, but I wanted a relationship. Not crumbs of his time. I wasn’t sure he could give me that. I thought he wanted to. Intended to. But wants and intentions didn’t always t
ranslate to action. I’d just have to wait and see.
I flipped through the papers on my lap again, pulling up the contract dated a few weeks after my birth. The names typed beneath the scrawled signatures meant nothing to me. Before the thought fully formed in my head, the words left my mouth. “I want to find them.”
“Who?” Glancing down at the papers on my lap Aiden said, “Your biological parents? Are you sure? You don’t know the can of worms you’d be opening.”
“No, but they can’t be worse than Suzanne and Henry.” I was half joking, but Aiden’s response was deadly serious.
“You’re wrong. Is there a number on that contract?”
I knew what he meant and scanned for a dollar amount. When I found it I swallowed hard. “Holy shit,” I said, under my breath.
“How much?”
“Chase’s doesn’t say. Mine says seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
Aiden gave a low whistle. “People will do a lot of things for that kind of money, Vi. We can look for them. I’ll put the Sinclairs on it. They’re going to go through that paperwork with a fine-tooth comb trying to track down what Maxwell was up to. They’ll want to talk to the parties to those contracts anyway. But don’t forget, this wasn’t an agency adoption. It was private, and a lot of money changed hands. There are a lot of ways that doesn’t add up to a pretty picture.”
“You don’t know that,” I said quietly. The look Aiden gave me was soft, gentle.
“I don’t,” he agreed. “I’m just saying that most cases end up with a reputable agency. I don’t know why your parents didn’t go that route. Having met them, and knowing you and your brother, I’d guess they were more interested in special ordering their children. The hair and eye color for both of you is too close to your mother. That’s not a coincidence.”
“That’s my guess, too,” I agreed.
“That much money with those kinds of requirements leave the door open for a much more unsavory arrangement than a normal, above-board adoption. You need to be on guard. People willing to sell their child for close to a million dollars may not have the kind of motivation you’re looking for.”
“I still want to find them. I want to know.”
“Then we’ll find them. I promise.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Violet
I shut the door to Aiden’s suite behind me, my feet dragging on the carpet. It had been a long day, and dinner with Aiden’s family had worn me out. There was only so much of Gage I could take. Keeping my cool when I wanted to throw my wine glass in his face took way too much energy. I’d spent my day going to two interviews and swimming laps in the pool, but I felt as if I’d run a marathon.
If I’d been more awake, I might have seen it before I was almost on top of it. On the other hand, if I’d been more awake I probably would have screamed loud enough to alert the entire house.
I slapped my hand over my mouth to hold in my shriek. I couldn’t stop my feet from stumbling back, tangling and almost spilling me to the floor in my haste to get away from the long black snake curled in a circle on the crisp, white sheets of the bed, half hidden beneath my pillow.
My heart thumped in my ears, drowning out the sound of my harsh breathing, panicked whimpers leaking from behind my hand.
Run, I ordered myself. Run, run, run!
I sagged against the window frame, mere feet from the side of the bed, knees like jelly, feet rooted to the carpet. That was a big snake. Big, and black, and…not moving.
Reason slowly invaded my panic-stricken brain. The snake wasn’t moving. And how the heck had a snake that belonged in the woods made its way to the master suite on the second floor of Winters House?
I’d only been there a week, but a few hours was enough to tell me that Mrs. W ran a tight ship. I wasn’t sure a field mouse would have the nerve to breach the walls of Winters House, much less an enormous rat snake.
I don’t know how long I stood there waiting out what I was increasingly sure was a rubber snake. I’d have to touch it to verify my hunch, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to move yet.
Maybe it was sleeping. Were snakes light sleepers? I had no clue. I was a suburban girl. I’d never been camping. I didn’t hike. My experience with snakes was limited to a quick trip through the reptile house at the zoo.
I’d like to say I kicked the ice queen into gear, strode to the bed, and picked up the snake. The woman I wanted to grow up to be might do that. I wasn’t there yet. Instead, knees still shaking, I sprinted to the dressing room and grabbed shoes at random, snatching sandals, heels, and sneakers from the closet shelves. Armed with footwear, I crept back to the bed, stopping a few feet away, watching the snake warily.
It hadn’t moved.
I was absolutely, positively, almost sure it hadn’t moved.
For a second, I thought about yelling for Mrs. W. I had a feeling she could rout an invading army. One rat snake under my pillow would be no match for her.
Only one thing stopped me. If the snake wasn’t real, if it was, in fact, a rubber snake, then I knew exactly who’d slipped it beneath my pillow, and why.
Aiden’s great aunt Amelia was known as a prankster. And she didn’t like me. She didn’t dislike me, either. Aunt Amelia didn’t pull her punches. She’d said straight out the day before, “I can’t quite figure you out, girl. You remind me a little too much of his first wife. I’m keeping an eye on you.”
I’d given her a cool look and said, “Fair enough. I’m not sure about you either.”
Sophie, Gage’s wife, who I’d learned was sweet and endlessly patient, had given me a kind smile at my answer. I was pretty sure Sophie liked me. Then again, Sophie was nice to everyone, so it was hard to tell.
Annalise and Riley were polite, but not particularly warm. Gage was the same, and I could tell being civil cost him. Every day I debated leaving Winters House. Every night I told myself, just one more day. Aiden had asked me to stay. He’d asked me to give this a chance, give his family a chance, and I’d promised I would.
In Aiden’s favor was the fact that I didn’t, at the moment, have anywhere to go. I didn’t want to blow my savings on a hotel and finding an apartment would take time. It made sense, both in terms of finance and my potential commute, to find a job first. I was working on it, but that too took time. My only sensible option, other than Winters House, was my room in Chase’s condo.
If I wanted to go home, I had to forgive him first. I wasn’t ready. Not yet. I was close, but as much as I loved my brother, I was still pissed.
I forced myself to inch closer to the side of the bed. The head of the rubber snake stuck out from beneath the white pillowcase, just a little more exposed than the coils of black scales tucked mostly beneath the pillow. The snake had a dull sheen to it. If it were real, wouldn’t the scales be shiny?
I shifted my weight to the balls of my feet, ready to run screaming bloody murder if the creature beneath my pillow moved. I tossed a sneaker at the pillow, letting out a barely audible squeak and jumping back even as it struck the snake and tumbled harmlessly to the floor.
The snake didn’t move.
I threw a sandal. The sneaker had knocked the pillow awry and the sandal landed square in the middle of the snake’s coiled body.
The snake still didn’t move.
It’s rubber, you idiot. Just go pick it up.
That would be sensible. But, just in case, I tossed a nude pump, a spike-heeled sandal, a pink wedge, a ballet flat, and a flip-flop. The snake looked less terrifying and more silly covered in my shoes.
And I was absolutely, positively, mostly, really, sure that it was fake.
I still approached the side of the bed with my eyes squeezed half shut. I reached out, fingers trembling, and grasped the heavy, cool, rubber length of the fake reptile.
At the confirmation that there was not a giant snake in my bed, I sank on the side of the mattress in relief.
I thought about calling Aiden, and just as quickly rejected the idea
. He was in Houston overnight. It was the first time he’d traveled for business since we’d officially been together, and the trip was so quick he hadn’t invited me to join him. I didn’t mind being left out. Twelve hours of meetings didn’t sound like my idea of fun.
If I told Aiden about the snake, he’d rush to my defense. And if I wanted to make a place for myself with his family, I couldn’t hide behind him every time they tested me. I wasn’t afraid of Amelia Winters. I’d heard about her pranks.
I pulled the heavy rubber snake onto my lap and stared down at it, considering. She’d probably been expecting me to scream. Maybe to come running out of Aiden’s rooms, terrified and hysterical.
Aunt Amelia didn’t know me very well. I didn’t do terrified and hysterical. At least, not in public. The shoe throwing episode, my pounding heart, and my wobbly knees were between me and the rubber snake. If Amelia was expecting me to entertain her, she’d be disappointed.
I’d learned that when people wanted to get a rise out of you, the most satisfying response was to give them absolutely nothing. It was guaranteed to drive the other person crazy.
Smiling to myself, I picked up the shoes I’d thrown, silently apologizing for the abuse, and replaced them in the closet. I hid the snake in there along with them.
I had plans for that snake.
Aiden didn’t call that night. I got a quick text close to midnight that said only, Miss you. Been a long day. Be home for dinner tomorrow.
His bed was too big without him. I’d gotten used to falling asleep beside him, used to waking up with him. Used to the feel of his lips on my skin, his hands on my body. It was a little scary, how easily I’d fit into life at Winters House. To life as part of a couple. I’d never had anything like this with a man.
I thought I understood the pattern of relationships. Dating, sex, maybe moving in together. What I had with Aiden was different. We fit. We could talk all night or sit in silence. I knew what he was thinking by the way he raised an eyebrow, and when no one else saw beneath my cool mask, Aiden could read my mind.