She gave him a good long look that Thomas was sure could see into his soul.
“Want me to tell you what’s really worrying you?” she asked.
“Because of course you know,” he said, amused by her certainty.
“I do,” she said. “You don’t want Mick or Jeff to think less of you. As much as you’ve feuded with your brothers over the years, the three of you have an incredibly strong bond. You need their respect, just as they need yours.”
“I don’t give two figs what Mick thinks,” Thomas claimed, then sighed. “That won’t stop me from having to listen to his opinion, though.”
“No, it most certainly won’t,” she agreed. She placed a hand on his cheek. “It’s going to be okay, Thomas. We’ll work through it. So will you and Aidan. And with his mom gone, I think it’s possible that he needs a father in his life more than he realizes.”
“He says otherwise,” Thomas told her, aware that it had been anger over all the years lost talking.
“I’m sure he does. He is an O’Brien, after all. They never admit to wanting something if they’re afraid they might not get it. He’s keeping his feelings for Liz close to the vest for the same reason.”
He drew her out of her chair and onto his lap. “Have I told you lately how very much I love you and how lucky I was the day you came into my life?”
“You have,” she said, her head on his shoulder. “But it’s something I never tire of hearing.”
“I love you, Connie.”
“Right back at you.”
Thomas sighed, and for the first time in days thought maybe everything really would turn out to be all right.
18
Aidan was waiting on the porch when Liz got home from the store. It was after seven, so he’d begun to wonder if she’d changed her mind and decided to ditch him and all the soul-baring. Archie barked enthusiastically at her arrival, as did the dogs inside the house. Her animals had been in a frenzy for the past few minutes ever since they’d heard Archie outside. He’d heard them scratching at the door, too, and envisioned owing Liz a paint job.
“Sorry about the commotion and the extra guest,” Aidan apologized. “Archie wanted to visit his friends.”
“Did he really?” she said, weariness written all over her face. “He told you that?”
“You’d be surprised by how well he communicates.” He studied her as she opened the door. “You okay?”
“Exhausted, to be honest. And annoyed. I was all set to leave by six-fifteen. I’d closed out the register and even filled out a deposit slip. Just as I was about to turn off the lights, a tourist came by and knocked on the door. Since I try not to turn away prospective business, I let her in.”
“Why, if you were already closed? Couldn’t you have explained that to her?”
“Prospective business, remember? She’d been in earlier and expressed an interest in one of Matthew’s custom doghouses. Crazy me, I assumed she’d decided to order one. Instead, she started debating with herself all over again about whether she wanted to spend the money or not. I’m pretty sure she thought if she wore me down, I’d drop the price, but I finally told her flatly she’d have to negotiate that with Matthew. I gave her his card and practically pushed her out the door.” She looked guilty. “I doubt I’ll be seeing her again.”
Aidan chuckled. “Sounds to me as if you displayed amazing patience, and dumping her off on Matthew was ingenious. He does get the biggest slice of the doghouse profits, after all. Why shouldn’t he handle some of the aggravation?”
She smiled at last. “I doubt he’ll see it that way, but I’m sure he’s dealt with more than his share of difficult, demanding customers, to say nothing of having his uncle Mick as his boss. Just like his uncle, though, he has all that O’Brien charm to fall back on, something I’m lacking.”
Aidan could see the exhaustion around her eyes. “Would you rather postpone dinner? We can do this another night.”
She shook her head. “No, come on in. It won’t take me long to change. A quick shower should revive me.”
He caught her gaze. “We could share it. That would put some color back in your cheeks.”
She laughed. “I’m sure it would, but we have a whole lot to work out before you get to see me naked.”
Aidan doubted that the one-sided conversation he anticipated happening tonight was going to get them to that point. “You sure about that? Sometimes it’s better to just jump into these things than it is to talk them to death.”
“I’m not surprised you’d think so,” she said, clearly amused by his self-serving suggestion. “But I need the talk, Aidan. I need to work through about a million issues that are in my head. Most of them have nothing to do with you personally, but they’re there, and they’re real for me. Dealing with them is the only way we’ll ever be able to move forward.”
“A million, huh? I guess we’d better get started, then. You take your shower and I’ll have the sandwiches ready when you get to the kitchen. I assume you’re hungry.”
“Starving, actually,” she admitted, giving him no argument at all about commandeering her kitchen. “Thanks.”
With all three dogs and one suspicious cat watching his every move, Aidan made three BLTs with a couple of the perfect tomatoes that Liz’s mom had left. Admittedly, while standing over the sink, he ate a half of one tomato with only a little salt sprinkled on it. If it was possible to capture summer in a single food, this was it for him. There had been enough fresh tomatoes from his mom’s rooftop garden to last through the summer and into fall, even after sharing them with all the neighbors.
With the sandwiches made, he looked around and found an unexpected treat to cap off the meal, a container of homemade chocolate chip cookies. Of course, he sneaked a sample of those, too, then put the rest on the table, along with two glasses of iced tea. He’d discovered the pitcher of sweet tea for Liz already made and chilling in the refrigerator. Since he wasn’t a convert to that yet, he zapped a tea bag in a cup of water in the microwave to make his own unsweetened tea.
When Liz got to the kitchen, wearing another pair of those impossibly short shorts and a tank top that exposed way too much bare skin for his comfort, Aidan tried to focus his attention elsewhere to keep from sweeping her into his arms.
Instead, he directed his attention deliberately to a last check of the table. He thought he’d done a halfway decent job with the simple meal’s presentation, using colorful Fiesta Ware plates and bright napkins he’d found in the cupboard. Liz smiled when she saw the clashing colors that somehow worked.
“Trying to impress me? Paper plates would have been fine for such an informal meal.”
“I like these,” he admitted. “They seem to go with summer.”
She looked at the table quizzically, then nodded. “They do, don’t they? I’ve found most of them in antiques stores one by one, so they don’t match, but I think they’re cheerful.”
Aidan had noticed something while he was preparing the meal and searching for things in her cupboards. They were surprisingly bare. He’d found only a few cooking utensils, even fewer pots and pans, and what looked to be a set of four discount-store wineglasses and four matching tumblers. He’d realized then that he hadn’t noticed any fancy china cabinet in her dining room or matching furniture in the living room, not the sort of carefully chosen sets that most women would have after the end of a marriage. The sparse, slightly worn furnishings didn’t add up.
He took a bite of his sandwich and closed his eyes. “These really are the perfect tomatoes, nothing like the red sawdust you buy in the produce section of most grocery stores, even at this time of year.”
Liz gave him an approving look. “I’ll report back to my mother that she made you swoon.”
“I’ll put it in writing, if you like.”
“I don’t thi
nk that’s necessary,” she said before taking her own first bite.
Aidan noticed it brought an immediate smile to her lips.
“Pretty good, huh?” he said.
“No need to beg for compliments. You did a great job. You can be the official BLT maker around here from now on.”
“Works for me,” he said readily. “Do you think your mom would ship you more tomatoes?”
“I’m sure she would, but I’ve had pretty good luck at the farm stands out on the highway. And you might not want to suggest to Sally that my mom’s tomatoes are better than hers. Hers are grown organically and delivered three times a week by a local farmer. She prides herself on using produce from nearby farms. So does Brady.”
Aidan nodded. “Good for them. My mother would have loved that. She was into that whole farm-to-table movement to use whatever’s available locally.”
They ate quietly for several minutes until Aidan couldn’t stand the silence any longer. “Can I ask you something?” he said.
She glanced up from her last bite of the sandwich and nodded. “Isn’t that what tonight’s supposed to be about?”
“I suppose, in a way, but I’m not sure how this fits in to the rest.”
“Just ask,” she said, pushing the plate aside and studying him warily as if afraid of where he might be heading. She put both hands around her glass of tea as if needing something to do with them to keep him from noticing how jittery she’d suddenly become. All three dogs seemed to sense her distress, because they moved closer, creating a protective circle around her. Even the cat got on board, jumping into her lap to purr contentedly.
Her obvious case of nerves was almost enough for him to back off and leave the heavy stuff for another time, but as she’d said, tonight was supposed to be about filling in some of the blanks in their lives.
“It dawned on me earlier that these dishes, the furniture you have, none of it looks as if it was something you might have gotten at a fancy bridal shower or to start your married life. Not that it’s not cozy and exactly right for you,” he added quickly, hoping not to insult her with the observation.
To his relief, she smiled.
“I sold every stick of furniture from my house in North Carolina,” she explained. “I put my fancy dishes and the outrageously expensive crystal on consignment in a local shop and moved here with my clothes and not much else. I did keep my silver because it was an heirloom from my family, but I packed it away and left it with my mom.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want anything that would remind me of that time of my life,” she said, a startlingly bitter note in her voice.
It wasn’t the first time that Aidan had seen through her veil of apparent grief and suspected her marriage hadn’t been as rosy as she’d led everyone in town to believe, but the depth of her bitterness was new.
“Then you really, really wanted a completely fresh start,” he said carefully.
“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.
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