Dogwood Hill (A Chesapeake Shores Novel - Book 12)

by Unknown

  “Down to every detail,” she said. “I’ve told you how I found the dishes. I’ve done the same with the furniture and accessories, adding things as I found them. I’ve been in every antiques store, junk shop and consignment place within a hundred-mile radius of Chesapeake Shores.” She gave him a surprisingly defiant look. “My husband would have hated every piece in here.”

  “And that mattered to you?”

  She nodded. “When I got married, we did it all his way. We had the over-the-top wedding with at least a hundred of the guests turning out to be people that I’d never set eyes on before. They were all business associates and top corporate clients at his firm. We moved into a house in the best neighborhood and filled it with high-end furniture, set our table with expensive china and crystal. It was all about appearances. Josh was an up-and-coming lawyer hoping to make partner. Material things—the best material things—were proof that he was successful. It wasn’t till the end that I realized none of that was a substitute for the one thing we didn’t have.”

  “What was that?”

  “Honesty.” She held Aidan’s gaze. “Are you beginning to see why I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to trust anyone again? The person I believed in the most betrayed me. I told you once before that he shattered my heart, and that’s true. He also stole my ability to believe in people. How can I even think of moving on with all of those doubts crowding in every time I start to have faith in someone?” She leveled a sad look at him. “Especially someone who admitted he had secrets he’s keeping from me?”

  She regarded him with regret. “Trust is such a fragile thing, especially for me these days. It’s ironic really because I used to see the good in everyone. I trusted everyone.” She sighed heavily. “Not anymore.”

  There were tears in her eyes as she spoke. “I’m sorry, Aidan. I like you. Maybe it’s even more than that, though I’ve fought incredibly hard to make sure nothing happens between us. I don’t want to fall in love ever again, but you’ve still managed to slip past my defenses. I can’t deny that, but I just don’t see it turning out well.”

  She stood up, her hands visibly shaking. He knew if he reached for them, they’d be ice-cold.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again, her voice little more than a whisper. Her shoulders squared, her back stiff with pride, she walked out of the kitchen, leaving him shaken.

  Aidan stared after her, debating whether he should follow. He needed a minute, though, to think first. He needed to come up with an argument to counter her very real fears, but how could he do that when even now he so clearly didn’t know the whole story?

  His imagination ran wild, trying to piece together what might have happened to her. It obviously went way beyond losing her husband in a tragic accident. Being grief-stricken was one thing. What he sensed pouring out of her, weighing her down with such pain, was so much worse. Whatever had happened seemed not only to have stolen her ability to trust another man, but had shattered her faith in her own judgment.

  As he thought about what might have happened and how best to handle it, he busied himself cleaning up the dishes, washing them and putting them back into their lonely spots in the cupboards. He was still trying to make sense of what she’d said when he heard her coming back. He stilled as he waited, not knowing what to expect.

  “I thought you’d leave,” she said.

  He couldn’t tell with certainty if that note he heard in her voice was regret that he’d stayed or relief. He turned to face her and discovered that, while she’d dried her tears and seemed more composed, the old distance was back in her eyes. That barely banked distrust with which she’d viewed him almost from the day they’d met had returned, not because of anything he’d actually done, but because she’d lumped him in with her husband and apparently all males. Her wounds clearly ran a lot deeper than he’d ever imagined.

  “I apologize again for the outburst,” she said stiffly. “Maybe it would be for the best if we just forgot all about this, Aidan.”

  “For tonight?”

  “For good,” she said flatly. “I’m obviously not ready for a relationship. I thought maybe, if I opened up...” She shook her head. “It’s not going to happen. I may never be ready.”

  He drew in a deep breath and came to a decision. He stepped closer and risked a light caress of her cheek, just a tiny reminder of the undeniable sparks that shouldn’t be dismissed so easily. He felt her skin heat, proving his unspoken point.

  “Then you need to explain to me why,” he said softly. “Please, Liz. You can take your time, but I need to know. This is too important.”

  Then he did the only thing he could think of to do. He sat back down, kept his gaze on hers steady and unrelenting, and waited.

  *

  Liz studied Aidan with dismay. It was evident he wasn’t going anywhere. That stillness and patience should have been annoying, but a part of her admired it. On some level she saw it as proof that his emotions were honest, his feelings for her real, if barely tested.

  She didn’t want to talk about the past. No matter what promises she’d made to Aidan earlier, she didn’t want to revisit that time in her life. And yet, with Aidan regarding her with such compassion, how could she remain silent?

  To buy time, she poured herself another glass of sweet tea, then finally, knowing she couldn’t put him off forever, she sat across from him at the scarred kitchen table that reminded her of her life, a little battered and bruised, but—at least she hoped so—strong enough to survive.

  When she still didn’t speak, she sensed Aidan’s growing impatience. He was studying her with that same confused expression she’d seen too often when family members hadn’t understood the way she’d handled herself after Josh’s death. They’d been even more shocked than Aidan when she’d removed every trace of the years she’d spent with her husband.

  “Liz, talk to me,” Aidan said at last, breaking the silence. “Your husband died in an accident. Let’s start with that. It’s a terrible loss for anyone to face, but plenty of people do fall in love again after a tragedy.”

  She took a deep breath and forced herself to respond. “It wasn’t that simple and straightforward,” she told him, regretting more than she could say that it hadn’t been. There were whole books on coping with grief. Surely one of them would have struck a chord and given her the skills to move on. Instead, that night’s tragedy was all tangled up with a whole slew of complex emotions. Outrage, anger and disillusionment were just a few.

  Aidan turned his chair to face her and took her hands in his. “Then tell me how it was,” he pleaded. “I really want to understand. Maybe it will even help you if you get it out in the open.”

  His gentleness touched her in a way nothing else had. Liz had kept the story inside for so long now, she wasn’t sure she could find the words, wasn’t sure she wanted to. Even with all she’d revealed to her mother and sisters just this morning, there had been more that she’d kept to herself, mostly how unworthy Josh had made her feel with his devastating revelations.

  But now, with Aidan regarding her so hopefully, his voice laced with that now-familiar compassion and caring—the same emotions she knew had led to him giving Archie a home—she knew that perhaps it was finally time. It wouldn’t change how she felt about starting a new relationship, but maybe revealing the truth, sharing it with a friend, would ease the weight in her heart.

  “I loved my husband more than anything,” she began slowly, allowing herself to remember that. There had been good times, way back at the beginning. She’d deliberately buried most of those memories along with her husband.

  “Josh and I fell in love in high school,” she continued. “We were together all through college and got married a week after graduation. He went on to law school and I started teaching. He landed a job right away with a top law firm. I thought our life was just about perfect.”

  “It sounds as if it was,” Aidan said.

  “We’d even been talking about having a baby. Or maybe I’d been
talking and he just hadn’t said no. Sometimes I didn’t listen, at least that’s what he told me that last night. And sometimes I saw only what I wanted to see, the perfect marriage. My family certainly saw it that way. To them, marrying Josh was the smartest thing I’d ever done.”

  She blinked back tears. “I guess that’s why I didn’t see it coming. We had this nice dinner. It was our fifth anniversary and I’d gone all out cooking things he loved. I’d bought an outrageously expensive bottle of champagne to celebrate. And then, over dessert—his favorite red velvet cake made from scratch—he told me.”

  Aidan frowned. “Told you what?”

  She gave him a chagrined look. “That he wanted a divorce. That he’d been seeing someone else for almost a year.” She gave Aidan a bewildered look. “A year, and I’d been oblivious to it. What kind of an idiot does that make me?”

  “He was the idiot!” Aidan said fiercely. “What kind of man makes an announcement like that out of the blue, especially during an anniversary celebration?”

  “The kind who’d apparently been waiting for me to catch him,” she said bitterly. “Like I said, I was happy and oblivious. I gather he’d been dropping clues. All those late nights at the office, whispered phone calls that he claimed were about business, even a couple of overnight trips. I trusted him absolutely. I just took his word that they were part of the job, a requirement for getting ahead and making partner.” She shook her head. “I was so blind and naive.”

  “You thought you were married to someone you could trust,” Aidan reminded her.

  “Well, obviously I was wrong about that. And he’d run out of patience with my naïveté, so he hit me with the news. There was no easing into it, just the hard cold facts. He was in love with someone else and they wanted to get married because she, she, was having his child.”

  Even now she could feel her heart breaking all over again at that. That woman was having the baby she’d wanted so desperately! She was sure that pain was still written all over her face, because Aidan looked as if he wanted to smash things.

  “God, it was so awful,” she told him. “It was as if I snapped mentally as the truth sank in. I told him to get out, right then, that I never wanted to see him again. It was the worst sort of betrayal I could imagine, and I’ll admit I was pretty irrational.”

  “I think you had a right to be,” Aidan said.

  His understanding was surprisingly soothing, but she didn’t deserve it.

  “Wait,” she warned. “The story doesn’t end there. I knew it was pouring rain, that the roads might be turning icy, but I couldn’t bear to look at Josh for another minute. He tried to reason with me. He said he didn’t want to leave me until I’d calmed down, but I didn’t see that happening anytime soon. I practically shoved him out the door.”

  Tears flowed down her cheeks as she remembered what happened next. “A half hour later, a policeman came to the house. Josh had been going at a high rate of speed. His car had run off the road and hit a tree. He’d died instantly.”

  Shock spread across Aidan’s face. “That’s when he died? Right after you’d fought? Sweetheart, I am so sorry,” Aidan said.

  “I don’t deserve your sympathy,” she said.

  “Why on earth not?”

  “I sent him out there that night,” she said simply. “He died because of me.”

  “He died because he’d made a whole slew of stupid decisions and you justifiably called him on them. What happened after that was a tragic accident you couldn’t possibly have foreseen,” Aidan corrected.

  “I knew how bad the roads were,” she insisted, refusing to cut herself any slack. “There’d been warnings on the news. I’d seen them while I was cooking.”

  “I seriously doubt the local news was on your mind after hearing that your husband was involved with another woman and that she was carrying his child.”

  Liz still refused to let herself off the hook. “It was my fault,” she repeated stubbornly. It was a refrain that had run through her head every night since the accident.

  Aidan, bless him, didn’t look convinced. “Didn’t you say speed was involved? Were you in the car pressing down on the accelerator?”

  “No, but—”

  “No buts,” he said firmly. “The accident was not your fault. He was on the road alone. He saw the conditions firsthand. He could have slowed down or pulled over. Instead, he chose to speed up.”

  Liz sighed. It was comforting to hear him say the words, even if she couldn’t accept his quick defense of her actions that night.

  “The bottom line is that two days later, I buried my husband and no one ever knew the truth, that he’d been leaving me that night. Nobody ever questioned that I wanted a small family-only funeral. They chalked it up to grief and let me have my way. The truth was, though, that I was terrified this other woman would show up if there was any announcement in the paper. I had no idea what I would do if that happened. I was terrified of making a scene.”

  She lifted her gaze to his. “To this day I don’t know if his parents know about the woman, if they know that they have a grandchild by now. Our parents knew each other, but they weren’t close. After the funeral I don’t think they were ever in touch. They’ve barely said two words to me since then. His mother called once to ask how I was doing, but I think she sensed that there were things I hadn’t revealed. Maybe she didn’t want to know. Or maybe she knew and felt pity for me.”

  Liz shrugged at the way one huge part of her life had just vanished that night, not just Josh, but an extended family, even friends who’d been more his than theirs.

  “It’s hard to imagine that no one said anything,” Aidan said. “That no one warned you.”

  “My sisters certainly would have, if they’d known,” she agreed. “But even after I told them this morning about the cheating, they didn’t mention anything about a baby. Either the Marches don’t know they have a grandchild or it’s been handled very discreetly. The woman was a colleague at the law firm. I’m sure they closed ranks to protect her. That’s one of the blessings of being in a big city. It’s easier to keep secrets.”

  Aidan squeezed her hands. “I am so sorry, Liz. I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for you.”

  “No, you can’t. Acting like the bereaved widow was horrible. It still is. I’m living this terrible lie. What kind of person would I be if I admitted that I hated my husband for what he’d done? So I pretend we had this loving marriage right up until the end.”

  “It’s not a pretense, at least not for you,” Aidan corrected. “Up until that night, he’d been the love of your life. Just because you’d learned about his betrayal doesn’t mean that you haven’t been mourning him, or at least what you thought you’d had together.”

  “But I’ve been deceiving people all this time, because it was too hard to face the truth, that my husband had betrayed me. I’ve been keeping up appearances, just the way he would have if the tables had been turned. Ironic, isn’t it, since that was one of the things I liked least about him.”

  “Whether it was out of some misguided sense of guilt or out of love, maybe you felt you owed it to his memory,” Aidan suggested.

  She regarded him wryly. “That sounds very noble. I’m afraid it was something else, though.”

  “Such as?”

  “I just didn’t want people to know I wasn’t good enough for him,” she said, a catch in her voice.

  Aidan looked shocked by her words. “Oh, sweetheart, a man doesn’t cheat because the woman in his life isn’t good enough. He cheats because he’s a jerk who likes knowing he’s still attractive. It’s about his ego.”

  “Have you ever cheated?” she asked. Because she was watching him so closely, she thought she detected a faint hesitation before he replied.

  “Never,” he said, his voice firm. “I’ve broken off relationships, but I can honestly say I’ve never cheated on a woman I’ve been seeing.”

  Liz should have felt reassured by his words. And if it had
n’t been for that momentary hesitation she would have been. There was a story behind that, a warning that even though she was feeling closer to Aidan right this minute than she had to anyone for a very long time, it would be dangerous to trust him. She might have shared her most shameful secrets with him, but he’d shared none of his. While she’d missed all the obvious signs of lying and cheating with her husband, she was smarter and more suspicious now. She’d never ignore what wasn’t said again.

  19

  Aidan didn’t want to leave Liz alone, no matter what she said. He finally understood the burden she’d kept secret from all of her friends, the reason she’d so determinedly kept him at a distance.

  Now, though, all that mattered was trying to make her see that she wasn’t responsible for the way that horrible night had ended. She was clearly wrung out from all the revelations she’d shared. It physically pained him to see the unwarranted guilt she was carrying around. He understood that his absolution wasn’t what she needed. She needed to let herself off the hook. Until she was able to do that, she was destined to live in this dark place, punishing herself for something that had never been her fault.

  “Aidan, you should probably go,” she said, that familiar distance back in her voice. “I care about you, more than I wanted to, more than I should have, but at least now you understand why there can’t be anything between us. It’s not about you. It’s all about me.”

  “It’s at least a little bit about me,” he said. “Your husband was hiding things, important things, so secrets are obviously a big deal for you. And you’ve figured out that I haven’t been 100 percent forthcoming with you. I can see why that would trigger all sorts of alarms for you.”

  She regarded him with surprise. He had a feeling it wasn’t because there were things he hadn’t shared, but because he’d admitted to as much.

  He gave her a rueful look. “Given everything you just told me, I totally get why you’d be suspicious of any man who came into your life, especially one you suspected was being less than candid.”