by Nicole Helm
It wasn’t so much irritation that clawed through him as a panicky kind of futility. The kind he knew so well. If he listened to that voice it would tell him he’d never get through to her, so why try? If he accepted what he always accepted, he’d convince himself he just wasn’t good enough to be the one who did.
He didn’t think he could live with himself anymore if that part of himself kept winning. Kept turning him into someone he didn’t want to be.
“Why’d you come here, Tori?” It had to matter, the impetus for her reappearance. There had to be some reason she’d finally decided to come back after seven years.
“I was lied to about the availability of cock.”
But he wasn’t in the mood for humor or jokes. “I’m serious.”
“That’s always what scares me,” she muttered.
A joke, but not. “I’m starting to think nefarious reasons are at work. Are you an on-the-run ax murderer these days?”
“I wish,” she said under her breath, but he caught it, and the heavy sigh that followed, which meant she was weakening.
* * *
Tori didn’t want to tell him about Toby. The truth was, she could lie. Hadn’t she come up with a million lies before she’d set foot in Gracely?
But he’d made her soft, bringing her to this beautiful place, talking about feelings. Making it impossible not to believe him.
Which made it all worse. The past. The choices they’d both made. It swirled inside of her, a whirlwind of regret and bitterness, and she didn’t want to go back to the place where that ruled her life.
Life could only be made by moving forward, by stepping away from the bitterness and regret, and accepting it as your damn lot in life.
But how many times had he asked her now? He wasn’t letting her move on from that until she told him something.
“It was a guy, because isn’t it always?” she offered, as flippantly as she could manage, forcing herself to turn her head and look at him straight on. Regardless of what she told him, she couldn’t let on how much it all hurt.
His jaw tensed at the mention of a guy, and maybe it was a foolish thing to be soothed by that somehow.
“Yeah, what about a guy?” he demanded, his voice suddenly different than it had been all day. Not soft, not easygoing or charming. Not reminiscent or pained or any of the things it had been out in the lake. Just flat growl.
Yeah, this really shouldn’t make her feel better, but it did somehow.
“I was seeing him. Working at this posh ski resort. I taught classes or did one-on-one stuff. Skiing and rock climbing.” She looked up at the sky through squinted eyes. She missed it, sometimes, the job itself. She liked guiding, but she missed the teaching. Watching someone develop a skill and learn to do it on their own.
“You taught people how to ski?”
“And rock climb. I was a damn fine teacher, I’ll have you know. Kids especially. They loved me.”
“Did they now?” But any skepticism that had been in his voice at first had changed over to wonder.
She didn’t know why that made her more uncomfortable than the initial skepticism, or why this discomfort felt like a warm wave of satisfaction wrapped in sharp nerves. Pride and the desire to hide away all wrapped up into one confusing-as-hell emotion.
“It was a good job. I liked it a lot. The only drawback was I couldn’t take Sarge many places, but we had a nice little cabin and he did all right.”
“The guy, Tori, what about the guy?”
“I’m getting there,” she muttered. She didn’t want to lay out all her embarrassments in front of Will. She turned her face back up to the sky, the warmth and glow of the sun soaking into her skin. It could almost drug her into complacency.
Luckily, the rocks digging into her back kept her rooted in exactly what she was doing. Exactly what you are.
“I did these one-on-one classes, and there was this guy. He was smooth, and charming, and good-looking and we went out. For a while. He was one of those guys who took care of everything. Where we were going to eat, what movie we were going to see. He’d stock my fridge with the groceries he wanted, make the bed, change a lightbulb without my having to ask.”
“That’s your type?” Will asked incredulously.
“I wanted it to be. You live your life always doing all that shit, it’s kind of nice when someone swoops in and does it without a second thought.” She shrugged, focusing on one rock digging into her shoulder blade, letting that pain be more important than the one in her chest.
“Turns out, he was the son-in-law of a rival ski resort, doing some weird corporate espionage, and I was just . . .” She swallowed at the burning ball of resentment in her esophagus. “Something fun for him to do while he worked.”
“So, you left?” There was still a note of surprise and disbelief in his voice, and tears pricked at her eyes when she realized why.
He thought she was strong and kick-ass and wouldn’t stand for any of that. Because that was the Tori Appleby image, and boy, what a fiction it had turned out to be.
“Not so easily, no. But when your boss finds out you’ve been sleeping with the enemy, because the enemy’s wife made sure he knew, well . . . You get to be persona non grata pretty quick.”
“The fucker was married?”
Again it soothed something that it shouldn’t, his clear outrage on her behalf. Oh, she had no doubt he’d get over that and realize she’d been the idiot who hadn’t read the signs, who let herself get into the mess, but for now, he was outraged on her behalf and that was nice. No one else had been, they’d been too worried about what information Toby might have secreted away to his father-in-law’s ski resort.
“Long story slightly less long, my boss made sure every ski resort within . . . well, probably the state of Colorado, knew I wasn’t fit to be hired, so . . . I didn’t have a job, or a house—because that had been part of my salary—so . . .”
“So you came here.”
“I didn’t think Brandon would give me a job. I didn’t think . . .” Hell, she figured Will would have turned them all against her. She should have known better. Turning them against her would have required telling them what had happened. “I figured he might help me find something though. Him or Sam.”
“But not me.”
Tori snorted. “Yeah, no, I didn’t expect you to be particularly receptive after the last time I’d seen you.”
He was quiet for a while, and she noted he’d stopped touching her. No little brushes against her arm or leg. He was keeping his distance now.
She swallowed at the lump in her throat. She’d known it would change his opinion of her. She knew people didn’t like that story, because it never quite mattered she had been clueless, people thought it was pretty disgusting when you slept with a married guy trying to take down your place of business.
“Why’d the wife ruin your job?” Will asked at last, sounding far away and too contemplative for comfort.
“Huh?”
“The wife. You didn’t know he was married, and you didn’t even know what he was up to. Why did his wife make sure you got shit for it?”
“I assume because he probably told her it was all my fault, slinky seductress that I am, and she wanted to believe him. I can’t blame her for that, exactly. I wouldn’t want to realize I’d made that kind of mistake in marriage.”
“Men like that always know what they’re doing, don’t they?” Will said, his voice low and disgusted and . . . something else.
She snuck a glance at him, which she’d been avoiding so as not to see any sort of reflection of his lowered opinion of her on his face. His jaw was set, fine lines digging into his face. He had his hand clutched around a rock and he looked like he wanted to punch something.
Not good-natured wrestling stuff like he’d done with Brandon earlier, but a furious violence to him.
“What do you mean, know what they’re doing?”
“They know who to target.”
Tori frowned. “
I wasn’t some victim. I was just an idiot.”
Will pushed into a sitting position, angling the top half of his body over hers. “It wasn’t you, Tori. Men like that, they know how to find your weaknesses, prey on them, then blame you for anything bad ever happening. It’s what they do, time and time again.”
She was surprised at his vehemence, at his theory. “What are you talking about?”
“Guys like that, who get their wives to look the other way, who get everyone to blame anyone but themselves for their crap. It isn’t by accident. It’s by design. They know who to target. They know just how to take advantage of people.”
“I don’t think we’re talking about me anymore,” she said carefully, resisting the urge to touch his face, to smooth the lines out, to somehow uncoil the anger that was poised tight within him.
Which wasn’t about her. Nothing he was saying was about her, and she needed to remember that to keep herself safe, whole. His care was only peripheral to whatever he was talking about.
It wasn’t about her, these things never were.
“My father had affairs,” he said flatly, but his eyes weren’t flat, they were full of so much emotion Tori wanted to look away, but she couldn’t.
“And your mother blamed the other party?”
“My mother refused to acknowledge them. Even when . . .”
Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it. But her arm had a life of its own, and she reached up to brush some wet hair off his forehead. “Even when what?”
He let out a sigh, and he took her stupid hand in his, studying her palm before pressing a kiss there. He pulled her up into a sitting position, so that their hips were touching, their chests facing each other.
She wanted to scoot away, but he was holding on to her, and she . . . It was like that cancer analogy she’d used when she’d first arrived here. Caring about him, wanting to soothe him, it was a cancer she couldn’t cut out.
“At least one affair resulted in a child.”
Some of the dots finally connected, because she’d been so wrapped up in her crap, she hadn’t given much thought to anything else. “Hayley.”
Will nodded.
“I’m sorry. That has to be hard.”
Will dropped her hand, looked away. “I wouldn’t be sorry for me. Hayley? Yes. Her mom. Hell yes. Me? I knew about it and didn’t tell anyone, well, except my mother. I’m not exactly poor little disillusioned son, in this scenario.”
So much anguish there, so much guilt. “Well, I think it’s time for some tit for tat. I told you why I’m here, now you explain that.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Will needed a few minutes to get his whirling emotions under control. It never would have occurred to him to prepare for all this.
Being livid on her behalf. Remembering too much all the mistakes he’d made. A bitterness over his father he’d thought he’d left behind when the old man keeled over, much deservedly.
But she touched his face again, something gentle and soothing, and he thought he’d crack himself open a million times over to earn that.
“My father had a charm, a way of making you forget all his shortcomings and over-focus on his good qualities. The town treated him like a benevolent king, and everyone loved him or was in awe of him.”
“Except you,” she said, still studying his face and gently tracing his hairline with her index finger.
He wasn’t sure if that was something he’d told her years ago, or just something she put together in the way he spoke, but either way . . . she was the only one. As a kid when he’d thought his father wasn’t all the town cracked him up to be, Bran and Mom and whoever else usually figured it was because he was the spoiled youngest. Clearly the favorite.
No one had ever figured it must be true, but Tori, forever his benefit-of-the doubter, even now . . .
It was important. It was something to hold on to. More and more and more.
“I . . . I didn’t idolize him the way Bran did. I didn’t sweep away him being a dick like my mom or people in town did, but you know what sucks is even when it turned out I was right, that Dad was just a jackass on a power trip who didn’t care who he hurt, it didn’t matter that I was right, because everyone was suffering. There’s no satisfaction in that—being the one who sees through the bullshit, living in the aftermath of it. It all sucks.”
Her fingers filtered down over his beard and jaw, that soft look still on her face. He wished he knew how to bring that out without sharing tragedies. He wished he knew how to scale her walls without sympathy.
But if this was all he had right now, then this was all he had, and he’d take it. Because she . . . She was it, and this was his second chance, and nothing was standing in his way.
“But the thing is, once you get some hindsight, you see that men like him chose the people they can manipulate. Whether it’s a finely honed skill or some asshole intuition, they seek out the people they can bend to their will without the people ever knowing it.”
She withdrew her hand. “I’m not sure I like what you’re trying to say if you’re drawing some correlation to what I just told you.”
He took the hand she withdrew, put it back on his jaw, placing his own hand over it so she had to keep it there. “You’re thinking I think that makes you weak, that a man could sneak under your defenses, but it isn’t weakness. That’s the whole point. Everyone has a vulnerability, and some people excel at stepping all over them. I saw the pattern.”
She didn’t try to tug her hand away, but the ease in her expression had vanished into skepticism and maybe irritation. No, Tori did not like any implication she might not be Ms. Strong and Mighty.
He wondered if she held on to that idea of herself as tightly as he’d held on to the idea of frivolous party guy.
“What pattern?” she asked flatly.
“One summer I was . . . The summer before college, actually, I was working at Evans Mining Company. Brandon was at some leadership conference Dad had sent him off to, grooming him to lead, and he stuck me in the mail room because of my lack of drive among other things.”
“That doesn’t sound very fair.”
“It was Evans fair, I suppose. It didn’t surprise me and since I didn’t want the Evans Mining life, I wasn’t too bent out of shape, but I overheard a lot taking mail and packages here and there. The ways my father took advantage of employees—mainly women—who also did not view my father as a shining savior of all that was Gracely holy, but they were women who were alone, who didn’t have people or money to fall back on.”
“Took advantage of . . . like . . .”
Will squeezed her hand under his harder because what he really wanted to do was make a joke and laugh it off, but that didn’t do anything. “I’m not sure anyone was ever . . . I don’t know details. But I heard whispers, and one day I happened to overhear one woman crying to another that she’d slept with my father.”
“Will.”
“She was upset about it, for a lot of reasons, and the woman she was telling told her not to be like Vanessa. I didn’t know who that was, but . . . Well, it stuck with me. The woman crying. The other woman acting like that was normal. That there was a precedent you had to make sure not to do.”
Tori’s free hand, which had been curled in her lap, uncurled. She gently placed it on his knee, soft again.
Was it his own kind of manipulation that he was using this? He felt sick at the thought, but only for a second. Tori did fit the mold, alone and a little desperate for money, except . . . She wasn’t really alone. She had Brandon and Sam, Lilly wouldn’t be content to let her flap in the breeze, and he doubted Cora would either.
It had been a short amount of time, but Tori had people now. People who wouldn’t so easily let her run away a second time.
“I . . .” He laughed a little at how crazy it all sounded. “I got the name, figured out she was an old employee, and I saved up my generous allowance to pay a private investigator to figure it all out. He found her, and h
er daughter, and it didn’t take a genius to connect the dots. Dad had gotten his secretary pregnant, then paid her off to disappear and never tell anyone about the child.”
Tori’s hand tightened on his knee. “Oh my God, Hayley.”
“Yeah, Hayley.”
“But I thought you guys just met her . . . You didn’t tell anyone.”
Finally Will let go of the hand on his face. He wasn’t sure he actually did want all this touching, for this anyway. But her hand remained firm on his face and on his knee, and maybe anchoring with something—someone—good wasn’t such a terrible thing.
“Actually, I told my mother.” He sighed. “I don’t know what I was thinking. That I’d be hailed as a hero? I guess I had it in my head she’d thank me, or tell me I’d been right all along. Something childish and flat-out stupid.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing at first. She just . . . hit me.”
“Hit you?”
“Backhanded me across the face. Definitely not the reaction I was expecting.” He tried to laugh, but no sound came out. Except a gasp from Tori.
“Will . . . That’s . . . Why on earth would she hit you?”
“I don’t know that I’ve ever unwound that. I know she was mad, and hell I was seventeen and a lot bigger than her, so the hitting wasn’t such a big deal. I never figured out why she got so angry with me, but . . . She told me to never utter words like that again to her, and that if I dared spread that story along she’d make sure I was cut off from Evans, Brandon, and Gracely for good.”
Will didn’t look at Tori, he stared at the stones, and tried not to remember the rage-filled words his mother had yelled at him. When she’d never yelled before. She’d always been so poised, maybe cool and aloof, but never . . . brokenly furious.
“So, point being, my father knew all along what he was doing. He knew Mom was so wrapped up in the life of being an Evans she wouldn’t leave, no matter who he slept with. The women he took advantage of knew they had no recourse because the town loved him. Men like that always know.”