Dirty Little Secrets

by Lizzie Shane

  The girls chorused their disapproval, throwing in votes for chicken fingers and tater tots—their current meal of choice—and Samira felt a pang deep inside her as she watched Aiden with his girls.

  The townhouse had become her home over the years. Somehow even though it wasn’t her house, she’d never felt like the help. The girls looked to her for permission. She knew she wasn’t part of the family, but she’d never felt like she was on the outside looking in. But now, here, with all of Aiden’s family descending and his mother arranging to have meals sent out to them, something had shifted and she was acutely aware that the girls giggling with their father weren’t hers.

  She’d been able to fool herself for a long time, trick herself into thinking that it didn’t matter to her whether she was the nanny or the mommy, but there was a difference, a profound one, and her new awareness of it burned like acid in her esophagus.

  While the girls were entertained, she slipped up to the room that would be hers and briskly set about unpacking her things.

  She hadn’t brought much—they were only here for a handful of days and the seventeen-mile distance had made it feel almost silly to pack a bag—but now that they were here she realized there was a keen sense of isolation about the estate. It may only be half an hour from the heart of DC, but it felt like another world. Or its own kingdom, safe behind high walls from the real world outside.

  What must it have been like, growing up here? Samira knew Aiden hadn’t spent his whole childhood at the estate, but she knew he’d lived here at one point. She could only imagine being the prince of this kingdom.

  Funny, Aiden didn’t seem like a man disconnected from the real world by living in this fantasy land. Somehow he was far more real, far more grounded, and far more genuine than most men she’d encountered in her admittedly limited experience.

  But just because he was a good man didn’t mean he was the right man. And certainly not the right man for her. She would vote for him in a heartbeat, but anything more had to be out of the question. It simply had to be.

  “Samira?”

  She whirled, startled to find Aiden framed in the doorway. “Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine,” he assured her, taking a half step into the room. “I wanted to make sure you and the girls have everything you need before I head up to the main house for dinner.”

  It sounded like something out of one of the historical romances she’d read. A house party at some grand estate—with her as the poor spinster governess—only there would be no torrid love affair with the heir to a dukedom. This wasn’t that kind of story.

  “We’re all set,” she assured him. “And if we need anything the first footman showed me how to call the main house for supplies.”

  One corner of Aiden’s mouth lifted. “I’m reasonably certain we don’t have a first footman.”

  “But you aren’t sure, are you?” She battled her own smile, reminding herself not to banter with him, not to get too familiar—she’d been doing such a good job of keeping him at a distance, but she couldn’t resist one last remark. “I’m pretending this is Downton Abbey. Don’t tell your mother.”

  “As long as my mother gets to be Maggie Smith and rule the world, I don’t think she’d mind that comparison.” His smile invited her to join the joke. God, she loved his smiles. The variety of them. Some wry, some self-deprecating, some so open and honest—and all of them inviting her in.

  She felt her own smile slipping as she looked at his mouth. Different worlds. She needed to remember that. The heir to the dukedom wasn’t for her. Not in real life.

  His smile faded in response to hers, his eyes growing intent as he took another step into the room. “Samira…”

  “You should go to dinner. I don’t want to make you late.” She looked away, fussing with the drawers even though she’d already put away her things, needing to keep her hands busy. “You’ve always said your mother thinks tardiness is the eighth deadly sin.”

  He fell back a step, his expression resigned. “You can always call the main house if you or the girls need me for any reason.”

  “Go. I’ve got the girls.” She’d been taking care of them for two and a half years. She could manage one more night—even if they were amped up to eleven. And she’d much rather be wrangling four-year-olds on a sugar high than navigating the unpredictable social waters at the main house.

  This wasn’t her world—and even if it had been, the idea of being on display, of playing nice with high society, gave her hives. No. This was better. That was their world. His world. Thank goodness she was just visiting.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Dinner was…odd.

  His mother had, unsurprisingly, arranged the seating even though it was, in theory, only a family dinner. In the Montgomery household, etiquette was to be observed at all times.

  Dalton sat at the head of the table, ranging between pleasantly bemused and angrily confused as his gaze roamed the faces around him. Charlotte and Aiden flanked him—the two members of the family who visited him every week and whom he was most likely to recognize, aside from his daughter who sat at the foot of the table. They took turns gently fielding his questions about what was going on, doing their best to diffuse his agitation before it could take hold.

  Dalton hadn’t been around so many people at one time in months and Aiden’s irritation over putting his grandfather through the ordeal of the family dinner steadily built. His mother had called this a test run to see how he would handle the rest of the weekend and the larger social events.

  If tonight was anything to go by, he wouldn’t be joining in much.

  Scott occupied the seat beside Charlotte. His wife had apparently decided not to join them—which Aiden couldn’t say surprised him, though it had earned Scott more than a few death glares from their mother. Scott didn’t seem to mind her ire. He was pleasantly lubricated now, alternating between baiting his sister, flirting with the maid of honor at his other side, and draining his wine glass as fast as the staff could refill it.

  Candy sat to Aiden’s left, but she barely paid their grandfather any notice, her attention fixed on the opposite end of the table where her husband Ren was being steadily interrogated by their parents. The husband who really did exist. Miracle of miracles.

  Ren Xiao was almost too good looking to be believed—like a stud picked out of a perfect man catalogue—but he looked at Candy like she was the only light in the room and there was something contained and almost calm about his presence that Aiden found reassuring. The man might actually be able to level out his wound-up-to-within-an-inch-of-her-life sister. Though she certainly seemed tense now—her grip on her spoon white-knuckled.

  Aiden let his hand brush her arm. “You okay?” he murmured under his breath.

  Candy had never handled family functions well. He knew her past had left her with some emotional baggage the entire family tried to pretend wasn’t there, but he’d always regretted the distance she put between them—and not just the physical distance to California. He knew his family could be difficult, but he’d always loved each of them and felt in a way it was his duty to be the bridge between them when things grew strained.

  “Are you?” she countered, her voice as low as his had been. “You sounded pretty rattled on the phone the other night.”

  He grimaced. He’d sounded drunk off his ass on the phone the other night, but at least Candy hadn’t called him on that. His gaze drifted across the table to Scott, who sat very carefully upright in his chair even as his eyes were glazed and his facial expressions a little too loose, his gestures too expansive.

  “The folks want me to run for state house,” he admitted—though technically they wanted him to run for the United States Congress, but he was still getting used to the idea of public office at all. And all it would do to his life.

  “I thought you loved practicing law.”

  The echo of what Samira had said reminded him how hard he’d worked to show everyone that ev
erything in his life was perfect. He shrugged, his gaze moving to his plate. He did love practicing law, but he put in those insane hours and was he really changing the world? “Don’t we have an obligation to run if we know we can do good?”

  “That sounds like Mom.” Bitterness coated the words, but Aiden chose to ignore the acidic tone.

  “And Dad. Among other people.” Samira thought he could do good. Change the world.

  “Okay, but what do you want?”

  Samira flashed in his mind and he grimaced. He couldn’t seem to get close to her anymore—not without her defenses snapping down. “Things I shouldn’t,” he murmured.

  “Aiden. This is your life—”

  He could tell she would have gone on, but her husband’s voice rose at the foot of the table and her words cut off as her head snapped toward the sound. “Actually, Candy’s been lying to you.”

  All eyes landed on her disturbingly-good-looking husband as he paused dramatically. “She’s been lying to you for years. The truth is…” Ren’s eyes locked with Candy’s and Aiden had the sudden feeling that he was watching a private moment. There was something intimate in that look. A shared joke. “We do want kids.”

  Aiden saw Candy’s shoulders relax—which made no sense since she’d frequently expressed her aversion to motherhood—as Ren went on about their desperate desire for offspring. She tried to kick her husband under the table, but only succeeded in rattling the silverware.

  “So you want kids, eh?” Aiden asked softly. “I thought you said we’d be ice skating in hell first.”

  Candy turned back to him, her lips pressed tightly together. “We don’t want kids. He’s messing with me.”

  “You sure that’s all it is?” he teased. “Maybe your husband’s biological clock is ticking.”

  “He doesn’t want kids,” Candy snapped and he decided maybe this wasn’t the best thing to tease her about. Ren and Candy had seemed happy when he met them before dinner—like a team, constantly aware of one another, visually checking in on one another even when they were separated—but maybe there was trouble in paradise.

  “Look, about running for office…”

  Oh great. They were going to talk about him again. “I’m good, Candy,” Aiden reassured her quickly. “Don’t worry. I shouldn’t have called you.” He would figure out his own damn mess. It was what he did.

  “Aiden—”

  Thankfully the servers appeared then with the main course, distracting her from whatever she’d been about to say.

  A noise at his other side drew his attention to his grandfather. “What are you doing?” Dalton snapped mistrustfully at the server removing his soup bowl, glowering at the staff moving around the table. The server froze nervously, but Aiden waved him away with a low flick of one hand while he leaned in to distract his grandfather, catching his attention before he could start yelling at them all to get out of his house.

  It was going to be a long week.

  *

  “Do you think he’s a gigolo?”

  Aiden glared at Scott as his brother swayed over to him on the terrace during after-dinner cocktails. “Don’t be an ass.”

  Scott shrugged. “You have to admit he looks like an advertisement for Rent-a-Stud.”

  It was alarmingly similar to his own assessment of the man with the supermodel looks, but maybe that was how all men looked in Hollywood. “You’re just trying to get out of paying up. He’s real. He’s crazy about her. Admit defeat.”

  “I am nothing if not a good loser,” Scott said, lifting his nearly empty glass cheerfully. “Or maybe just a loser. I always forget which one Eleanor is always yelling at me. It all sort of blurs together.”

  “Very funny.” Aiden studied his brother—Scott spent so much of his life drunk and high it was sometimes hard for those close to him to tell when it was business-as-usual and when it was cause for concern, but Aiden was starting to tip toward concern. Just how bad were things with Scott? “Are Eleanor and the kids still staying with her parents?”

  “She’s happy there. It’s closer to her boyfriend. And you know the saying. Happy wife. Happy life.”

  “Scott…”

  “What about you?” Scott clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to rock him forward. “How’s your love life these days, little brother? You seem a little down. Is the tragic widower schtick not quite the panty-dropper I imagine it to be when I fantasize about Eleanor’s untimely demise?”

  “I’m fine.” Except for the fact that he couldn’t stop thinking about Samira. And about running for office. And if he was making the wrong choice. Would she even take him back if he gave up the idea? She was so distant now.

  “Fine? Don’t tell me it’s as bad as all that?” Scott exclaimed in mock horror. “You, little brother, can do so much better than fine.” They stood side-by-side, watching the rest of the party mingle and both of them tracked the movement as Ren moved across their line of sight.

  “What do you think of him?” Aiden asked, only in part to get Scott off the topic of his own romantic future.

  “Best brother-in-law candidate yet?” Scott suggested wryly. “Though, admittedly, Charlotte isn’t setting the bar very high.”

  Aiden slanted his brother a look out of the corner of his eye. “What do you really think?”

  Scott sobered slightly. “I don’t know yet. Candy seems…” They both studied Candy where she and Ren were speaking intimately. She had always been difficult to figure out. Hard to read. Guarded. “She trusts him,” Scott concluded finally. “That’s something.”

  For Candy, it was a lot. She didn’t trust easily. “Maybe I’ll go have a talk with our brother-in-law,” Aiden murmured.

  She was his elder by half a dozen years, but it had always bothered him that they’d never been able to vet her husband for her. Run him through the wringer. The two of them had eloped before anyone had a chance. But now… It would be Tug’s turn tomorrow, but tonight the groom wasn’t here. And Ren was.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “There’s the man who convinced my sister to marry him,” Aiden said as he came alongside Ren, holding out his hand to shake. “I always wondered how you did it.”

  Ren gripped his hand, an affable smile curling his lips. “Perseverance.” The handshake was perfect—strong enough to indicate confidence without any attempt to grind the bones in Aiden’s hand against one another to prove how macho he was.

  Aiden chuckled. “Yeah, it would take that.” He glanced over to where his sisters were speaking, Candy’s posture rigid. Always so defensive with them. But with Ren… “She’s different when she talks about you.” Softer. More open.

  True love. Was that what it did to people? Aiden had a hard time remembering lately what things had been like with Chloe before she’d gotten sick. And angry. Things with Samira had been magical. He’d been happy, but that had been a moment in time. A blink. And now…

  “Is she always like this here?” Ren asked and it took Aiden a moment to remember they were talking about Candy, not Samira.

  “You mean defensive and wound so tight she looks like she might snap at any moment?” he asked, studying his sister. “For as long as I can remember. Especially when she’s dealing with our parents.” He wished he could remember more of life before Venezuela, but he’d only been six when it happened. He remembered her changing, but other than the most vague recollection of her laughter when they were younger, he didn’t have much more to go on. “Everyone says she was different before the kidnapping, but I was so young I barely remember her before that.” He remembered the hushed voices, conversations breaking off mid-sentence when he came into rooms, the fear in the air. The panic. “They certainly tried to shield me from it when it was happening…” He glanced to the side, and caught Ren’s expression, his words dying on his lips.

  Candy’s husband’s face was etched in shock.

  Aiden closed his eyes on a groan. “Shit. You didn’t know.”

  “The kidnapping,” Ren repeate
d, sounding dazed.

  “We were living in Venezuela…” How could he not know this? “I’m sorry. I thought she would have told you. I know it’s the Subject Which Shall Not Be Mentioned around her, but I assumed…” Shit. Why hadn’t she told him? “You’re her husband.”

  Unless he wasn’t her husband. Candy didn’t trust. She didn’t let people in. Could she have been lying about the husband to keep her mother off her back and—what? Hired Ren? Blackmailed him? No. There was something too intimate between them. Too familiar. They knew each other. Probably better than anyone in the family knew Candy. But then why hadn’t she told him?

  “Aiden, could you excuse me?” Ren said, the words sounding tight. Not angry, just strained. Hurt. “I think I need to have a word with my wife.”

  Aiden cursed under his breath as his brother-in-law crossed the terrace to Candy’s side. Everyone had secrets, but to hide something so big from your husband—he couldn’t make sense of it. He and Chloe had shared everything—until she’d stopped wanting to share with him. Until she’d pushed him away.

  “Aiden, darling.” His mother appeared at his side, white wine in hand—the same glass she’d been nursing all night. “I’ve been thinking more about Tamara Hilton.”

  Of course you have. He barely stopped himself from saying the words out loud, but his mother must have read the sentiment on his face.

  “She really is lovely, Aiden. Bright, charming, and her connections could help you if you were making a bid for political office in Virginia.”

  “I thought I was running as the tragic widower.”

  She flapped a hand at him, dismissing the comment. “This isn’t about your career. This is about your happiness. I know you loved Chloe. We all adored her and her loss is something we still feel, but darling, don’t you think you’re ready to step into the world again? To love again?”