Deceiver

by Robin Lovett

  She hangs up with him and hands me the phone. “Happy?”

  I don’t answer. I take the phone back and go inside.

  My aunt asks how her father is and Daisy answers honestly. “He misses me, but he’s okay.” I brood, tightening the lid on my rousing anger. I can’t show it around my aunt, not like I can with Daisy. Which is so twisted it makes me even more disturbed.

  A dinner follows, full of my aunt’s embarrassing retellings of my childhood adventures. All of her stories about me getting into trouble here as a kid. She tactfully leaves out all the horrible things—how when I’d come here for vacations, I’d usually spend the first two or three days in bed recovering from the bruises I’d accumulated from my father since my last visit.

  Entering the safety of this house was always a balm to me. But I did have fun. The hardest part was always leaving, going back home and knowing there was nothing my aunt could do. My father, with his prestige and connections, was legally untouchable. As much as coming here was a break from the hell of living with him, she had no way of saving me—I was his property.

  “Did you teach him to sail?” Daisy asks her.

  “Of course. Did he take you out on my boat? Isn’t she lovely?”

  “She’s wonderful. I hope you don’t mind. I borrowed some of the clothes you had on board. I brought them back to wash.”

  I watch them together, and a strange feeling comes over me. Daisy’s been provoking memories, panic attacks and the best orgasms of my life from me. But I’ve also stolen her and done the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life by taking her.

  And she’s talking with my aunt, the woman who made my young years bearable and provided the only sanctuary I knew.

  I have nothing to say or do except watch them and marvel at the foreign mixture of warmth and anxiety I feel.

  I rub my chest. There’s a relief there too.

  After two bottles of wine and Aunt Maggie’s dinner of the best comfort food ever, we all go to bed.

  “I’ll be in my bedroom at the back of the house,” she says.

  Daisy thanks her with a hug goodnight. She goes on up the stairs, but Aunt Maggie holds me back for a minute.

  “Are you treating her well? Giving this one your all?” she asks quietly, her hand gently on my arm.

  “My all?” I shift in my shoes.

  Her lips pinch. “Don’t play dumb. She’s special, that girl, and you’re a fool if you don’t worship her and do everything you can to keep her. You are, aren’t you?”

  “I—uh—she says she’s enjoying herself.” I can’t believe I’m repeating what she said to her father, but she convinced me it was true as well as she did him.

  She sighs. “That’s good, but it has to be more than that to keep her.”

  “That’s . . .” I groan and scratch my head. “It’s not that serious.”

  “Bullshit. That girl wants to know you. Only someone who’s in love with you would listen to an old auntie go on and on about you for hours.”

  Air jolts from my lungs. “What did you say?”

  “I can see you feel the same, but I also know you.” She prods me with her finger. “You’ll come up with some excuse for why something this good can’t possibly work for you and—”

  I can’t stand here and listen to her talk about Daisy and me like we’re a real couple. Sweat forms on the back of my neck and I have to get away. “You’ve got us all wrong, Aunt Maggie. Thank you for dinner. Sleep well.”

  She tries to talk over me and protest, but I give her a kiss on the cheek. “Goodnight.”

  “Blake,” she grabs me by the hand. “Don’t walk away from me.”

  “Why?” I fail to hide my grimace.

  “It’s time for you to live your life. Not the way your father wanted you to. Not the way Penny needed you to, but for you, for yourself. And with someone who can give you that.”

  “I am living for myself,” I say, thinking about my revenge plans.

  “No.” She shakes her finger at me. “You’re still sitting in the past, I can see it in your eyes. The heaviness. You need to move on, and Daisy is your ticket out!”

  Knowing she’ll never let me go unless I agree with her, even though inside I’m screaming in rejection of every word she’s said, I reply. “She is. You’re right.”

  “Good.” She kisses my cheek. “Goodnight then. I’m so glad you’re here. See you in the morning.”

  I escape with relief, doing my best and failing to forget everything my aunt just said.

  Upstairs, Daisy’s in her room with the door closed.

  I could knock and see if she’ll let me in, but I don’t. I go to my room to sleep alone.

  She’s in love with you.

  I don’t know what’s more disturbing—the fact that my aunt has come to that false conclusion, or the fact that for a moment, an infinitesimal moment, I wanted it to be true.

  Chapter Twenty

  Sleeping isn’t easy.

  I hear him come up the stairs, expect him to knock on my door, but instead he goes into his room.

  A disappointment creeps over me. I have so many questions for him. That’s the reason for the disappointment, that’s all. Hearing all his aunt’s stories about happy things in his childhood—while he sat there unsmiling through most of it—makes it clearer than anything: those stories from his aunt are his only happy memories.

  I want to know his truths: how bad his father hurt him, how he saved his sister. I’m guessing it was bad.

  But the disappointment is more than just for my unanswered questions. More than just a craving for his sex that still hasn’t abated. Christ, how many orgasms we had last night. To still want more . . .

  I should be focused on how I’m getting away from him. Not learning more about him or getting more sex.

  My priorities are so out of joint that I can’t predict what I’ll want tomorrow. And that’s not even the worst of it.

  I can’t stop seeing the look on his face when his aunt hugged him.

  Vulnerable grief. Pained relief. It was like glimpsing a different person.

  A person I’m dying to know.

  I slam my fist into the pillow. Falling asleep is fitful, but when I do, I dream of chasing a man who I can never catch because each time I do, I don’t recognize his face.

  Voices downstairs wake me in the morning.

  Aunt Maggie’s voice rings up the stairs. “Penny! I’m so happy to see you!”

  I sit up in bed. Oh dear. The exact person Blake did not want me to meet. Serves him right.

  I leap from bed to put on clothes.

  My door is thrown open. “Penny’s here!” Blake says, out of breath, wearing only boxers.

  “Good morning,” I say, eyeing him up and down, a little needy and a lot sad I didn’t get to spend the night next to him.

  “Stop looking at me like that.”

  “Then put on some clothes.”

  “What are we going to do?” His audacity is infuriating.

  “Have you lost your mind? There is no we here. I don’t give a shit. You’re the one who’s trying to hide what you’ve done about me or us or what the hell ever from your family. Keeping that secret is not my problem.”

  “Oh, yes it is.” He points his finger at my chest. “Because—”

  “Spare me your lies about putting my father in prison. You wouldn’t do that for real. You couldn’t.”

  He stiffens and anger flares in him—his sleepiness gone. “You think I wouldn’t?”

  “I saw how you were with your aunt yesterday. You’re not the kind of man who would do something like that.”

  “I’m not?” He stands over me, forcing me to walk backward until I’m pressed into the wall. “You’re so sure about the kind of man I am, you’re willing to bet your father’s freedom on the things I ‘wouldn’t do’?”

  The sneer in his tone sends shivers over my skin.

  I don’t know which side of him to believe—this side of him feels just as real as the t
ender side. So I bluff my way through. “I love you angry in the morning,” I purr, stroking a finger down his chest.

  “You . . .” His mouth drops. He leaps away from me like I’ve burned him. “Get dressed.” Then he slams the door on his way out.

  His mood swings are giving me whiplash.

  I’m midway through getting dressed when he comes back in carrying all his stuff.

  He dumps his suitcase and clothes next to mine. “I’m sleeping in here.” The look on his face is conflicted and I have no idea if he’s happy or perturbed about it.

  Probably both.

  “One positive to your lies,” I say, turning to him with no shirt on.

  His gaze drops to my nipples. A growl rumbles from his chest and he lurches forward, like he means to grab me. But he shakes himself and goes to the door. “Penny is a very sensitive person, so please, be nice.”

  “Do you really think I’m so insensitive? It’s only you who needs abrasive tactics with your mountains of unscalable anger.” I have no idea where that came from but I like the reaction it gets from him.

  The tension sags from his face, like I’ve doused him in water. “Am I something to conquer? A feat to achieve?”

  I cross my arms under my breasts. “Perhaps.”

  “Let me make one thing clear to you. The faster you learn it, the easier your life will be in your new . . . situation.” His hesitation has a malicious intent to it, an intent to scare me. “Nothing you say or do will get me to let you go. So save yourself the grief of failure and don’t try.”

  He leaves, walks down the stairs, leaving me smiling.

  He doesn’t realize what he just said—in his threat, there was a concern. For me. To save me from the grief. He cares how I feel.

  One step on the way to victory—he’s starting to feel things for me.

  Though I should be elated, my palms get sweaty. If only it didn’t come with the price of me starting to feel things for him too.

  Dressed and downstairs, I find Blake’s sister is surprisingly small and soft-spoken. Her husband hardly speaks at all, and if there’s a smile under that stern face of his, he doesn’t share it often.

  They gush over meeting me, Blake’s new “girlfriend,” but I do catch a skeptical glance cast by Penny toward Blake. She knows there’s something funny about our “relationship”—though how much she knows I’ll have to find out by stealth.

  The third person I don’t expect is full of bubbly fun and takes crap from no one, especially Blake, which I love. It’s Penny’s best friend Layla.

  She pats Blake on the shoulder. “Things are much better without you in Cali.”

  He rolls his eyes, “I’m sure,” but doesn’t smile. He hasn’t smiled at all, not even looking at Penny. He gave her a hug and asked her questions for five minutes straight until Layla told him to shut up.

  “My life is a hell of a lot simpler with you gone,” she says. “No more phone calls begging me for information.”

  “Layla.” Blake snaps her name like a curse and the look he gives her is full on shut up. I expect Layla to call him out or cower. She does neither, only smiles a toothy grin. “Penny’s life is so much better without you stalking her all the time.”

  “Not to mention mine,” Logan adds in a low voice.

  Blake shoots Penny’s husband the most brutal look, and I wonder what Logan did to piss him off. Penny laughs like Logan just told a joke.

  All of us sit in the chairs on the garden patio, and Penny leans her head on Logan’s shoulder. “It has been nice to get a break from you, Blake. You must feel the same—getting a break from worrying about me so much.”

  “I never stop worrying about you.” He gives her a softened look that’s reminiscent of his looks with his aunt yesterday. This other side of him, the one that looks like the opposite side of his anger coin, is proving I’m right: his life before now was consumed with taking care of Penny and now that he doesn’t have her anymore, he’s wandering aimlessly in a sea of grief, blaming all his problems on needing revenge.

  “Your paranoia is going to bite you in the ass,” Layla taunts him. “You know the only thing you have to worry about now is her own husband.”

  I expect Logan to get mad.

  Blake’s jaw clenches so tight in anger, I wonder there isn’t steam coming out his ears.

  Logan doesn’t get angry, but he wraps a protective arm around his wife. “She’s safer with me than she ever was with you.”

  I see red.

  After Blake’s confession yesterday about how he sacrificed himself for years to protect her, knowing he’s never told anyone, I can’t not say something.

  “You know nothing,” I say to Logan.

  Logan’s eyes widen but he waits for me to continue, his light green eyes an eerie contrast to Blake’s dark ones.

  “If you had any idea what Blake did to protect Penny, you would never dare say that.”

  “Daisy, stop it,” Blake says through clenched teeth, taking my hand. “Sit down.”

  I didn’t realize I was standing over Logan. I sit next to Blake.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he whispers to me. “Keep your mouth shut.”

  “I can’t just sit here and let him berate you for doing something good,” I whisper.

  “Why do you give a shit?”

  “Are you telling me your sister doesn’t know that you worked your entire childhood to keep her safe from your father?” I’m outraged, flabbergasted. And somehow endeared by his superhero-complex stupidity.

  “What are you two whispering?” Layla calls out, her prying eyes heavy with amusement. “No reason not to share.”

  “Shut it, Layla,” Blake snaps.

  But Layla laughs at him. “Ooh, defensive. All the more reason to pry.”

  Penny leans forward. “Layla, please.” She turns to me. “Daisy, what did you mean?” Her expression is full of concern. There’s a delicateness to her—something the polar opposite of Blake’s toughness. I believe him entirely that she never suffered any of the things that hardened him to life. Though even in her delicateness, there’s a wariness, an inquisitiveness, a quiet determination.

  Blake pacifies Penny. “It’s nothing. I’ve just told her how important you are to me. That’s all.”

  “There’s something else.” Penny presses me. “What did he tell you? He has this habit of withholding the full truth from me.”

  I glance at Blake, who implores me with bitter eyes to not tell this intimate thing he told me about his sister—that his own sister doesn’t know. It’s strange and I feel like I should tell her on principle. But that look on Blake’s face—beneath the bitterness is a desperation. It will hurt him for me to reveal this. And for some weird reason, I don’t want to hurt him.

  “He moved to California to be near you, right?” I ask Penny. “That’s all.”

  She sits back, like she accepts it, but gives Blake a side-eye that she’ll have questions for him later. “Yes, he did.”

  “How’s the charity going?” Blake interrupts, in a too-obvious bid to change the subject.

  Penny and Logan go on about a new charity she’s apparently founding out in California, and it more than perks my interest.

  “For women and their children escaping from domestic violence?” I ask. “A charity in Nashville we used to support doing that just went under.” I have chills running down my back, it’s so ironic.

  “You’re serious?” Penny’s eyes go wide. “That’s terrible.”

  “I’ve been, well, embarrassed that I didn’t do anything about it. That’s amazing that you’re starting one yourself.” Inspiring really, and I’m no longer put off by her shyness. More intrigued by her understated courage.

  She blushes and ducks her chin. “I’ve mostly just hired people. I wrote the check and told them what to call the place.” She shrugs.

  Logan nudges her shoulder. “More than that.”

  “I wish we could do the same in Nashville,” I say, thinking out loud
.

  “But you have the estate,” Layla interjects, turning to Blake. “What the hell are you going to do with that place anyway? I know you’re not keeping it.”

  He mumbles, “I’ll sell it as soon as I can. There’s too much legal shit from the will now, but probably next year.”

  “But what about the Tanners?” I say on instinct, thinking of the sweet couple who tried but couldn’t help me escape the man sitting next to me.

  Blake shakes his head. “I could care less—”

  “That’s not true,” Penny interrupts him. “You care a lot about what happens to them. And I think using the estate as a women’s shelter would be brilliant.”

  I agree totally and immediately launch into quizzing Penny about what she’s learned, getting excited about what it could mean in Nashville, daydreaming plans for making it happen.

  “Daisy, are you saying you’d help?” Penny asks with a broad smile.

  The excitement I feel at this—the possibility to help, to really make a change—“How could I not?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I rest my head in my hands and wish there was some way to escape everyone, to get away from all my lies. But there is no way.

  Daisy getting chummy with my sister is the opposite of what I wanted to happen. I poke her more than once, trying to get her to stop. She ignores me.

  When the others get up to go inside, I hold her back. “Stop it. I forbid you to do this with her. You’re not going back to Nashville.”

  She narrows her eyes at me and her jaw tightens. “You can’t forbid me from helping people.” Then she follows the others inside.

  I barely have time to groan in frustration before Penny confronts me.

  “What are you doing with her?” she whispers, maneuvering me into the garden away from the door.

  “What are you doing here? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” I counter.

  “Because I knew you’d have run if I did. There’s something fishy with you and her. Did you tell her? Does she know you’re accusing her father of covering up murder?”

  “Yes, I’ve told her.”

  “And she’s still here? Have you forced her or something? She seems way too smart to be here with you voluntarily.”