by Lizzie Shane
He grimaced. “The folks want me to run for state house.”
“I thought you loved practicing law.”
Aiden shrugged, not quite meeting her eyes. “Don’t we have an obligation to run if we know we can do good?”
“That sounds like Mom.”
“And Dad. Among other people.”
“Okay, but what do you want?”
The grimace flickered again, more bitter this time. “Things I shouldn’t.”
“Aiden. This is your life.” Should and shouldn’t didn’t belong in the conversation when it came to his happiness, but before she could tell him that a conversation from the foot of the table yanked her attention away.
“Actually, Candy’s been lying to you.”
Candy’s head snapped around at those clear, unflinching words from Ren. She stared at him, trying to stop him with her eyes, ready to use the Force or anything else she could come up with to get him to shut up, but his attention was all on her mother as he paused dramatically.
“She’s been lying to you for years.”
No. Nononononono. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t do this to her.
“The truth is…”
Oh my God. He was going to do it. Maybe it was for the best, but she was fairly certain she was about to have a heart attack.
“We do want kids.”
Wait. What?
“We’ve been trying for years. Trying and trying and trying.” He glanced at her then out of the corner of his eye.
The bastard. He was messing with her.
She snapped out her foot, trying to kick him under the table, but he was too far away and all she got was a table leg against her shin for her trouble. The muted thud made the silverware jump and her mother frowned. “Was that an earthquake?”
No. Just the sound of a dent in her tibia.
“So you want kids, eh? I thought you said we’d be ice skating in hell first.”
She turned her attention back to Aiden at his softly voiced question. “We don’t want kids. He’s messing with me.”
“You sure that’s all it is? Maybe your husband’s biological clock is ticking.”
“He doesn’t want kids,” she insisted. But she was reasonably sure she was lying. Pretty Boy had never been shy about wanting a family—and she had always gotten the feeling a pack of rugrats were included in that vision. He’d be a great father, but Candy was never ever going there. If they’d been a real couple, it might have been a dealbreaker, but he was just her fake someone. They didn’t need to worry about the hard compromises. They just had to get through this week.
“Look, about running for office…”
“I’m good, Candy. Don’t worry. I shouldn’t have called you.”
“Aiden—”
But the arrival of the main course interrupted her, and by the time they were served Aiden had turned his attention to their grandfather on his other side. End of discussion. For now.
*
“What the hell was that?” The angry words preceded a hand gripping his biceps a little too hard when Candy appeared next to Ren as soon as dinner broke up, tucking herself against his side like they were having an intimate little moment and she wasn’t hissing at him like an angry python. “Kids?”
Ren shrugged. “Just keeping you on your toes, sunshine.”
“Well, don’t. My mother’s already going to be mad enough when I tell her the truth. I don’t want to be blamed for getting her hopes up about imaginary grandchildren too.”
He lowered his voice to match hers as they trailed behind her family toward the terrace for coffee and cocktails. “Are you sure you don’t want to tell them now? Even if we keep it up for the guests at the wedding, you could at least let your parents know so they don’t feel duped. Doesn’t it feel wrong? Putting on a show for them like this?”
“If we tell my mother, she’ll tell Charlotte, and if Charlotte knows then Alicia will hear and if Alicia hears then all of the Potomac River Basin will know by morning. Just stick to the plan. Five days and we’re out of here.”
“You know, they aren’t so bad.”
“Don’t start that again. You don’t know them.”
“I know. But so far I haven’t seen any indications of Antichrist behavior. Do you ever think…” He trailed off, thinking better of getting into this conversation as they stepped out onto the terrace.
“What?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“What?” she snapped.
“I just wonder if you’ve rushed to judgment on them.”
“I’m not the judgmental one in my family.”
“Aren’t you?” At her murderous expression, he tried to walk it back. “I’m sorry.” But ended up explaining instead. “But what have they done that’s so wrong? Why do you refuse to give them a chance?”
Why did she refuse to give him one? Why did she always have to push the people who cared about her away?
“You don’t know the whole story.”
“So tell me.”
She ignored the request, her expression distant as she stared past him. “Would you like a drink? I’m parched.” She was already slipping away from his side by the time she finished speaking, crossing the terrace to the bar area.
He was getting far too used to that view. Candy Raines, running away again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Four years and five months ago…
Candy leaned into the muscular line of Ren’s back, closing her eyes to block out the little voice in her head that whispered this was a very bad idea.
She’d known what would happen if she got on the back of his motorcycle. They both knew it.
If she’d wanted to keep her distance, she would have told him thanks, but no thanks and called a cab—but she was tired of keeping her distance. Tired of being distracted all the time because she couldn’t stop thinking about how it had felt to be with him.
That night had to have been a fluke. A trick of her memory. Nothing was as good as she remembered him being. All she needed was one more time with him to prove it. Or to get him out of her system.
Sometimes a girl just had to dance with the devil. Or ride his motorcycle.
She’d get tired of him quickly enough if she gave in to this. It was only the forbidden aspect of it that was making it feel like so much more. The only way to get rid of temptation was to yield to it. Wasn’t that what they said?
Those thoughts chased themselves around in her head as he threaded the motorcycle through traffic, driving them to her condo twice as fast as she would have managed in a car. Between the feel of his heat pressed against her, the vibrations of the motor humming through her, and the lustful thoughts filling her head, she felt like she’d had an hour of foreplay by the time he pulled into the carport she indicated. Her breasts were swollen, nipples tight against the fabric of her bra.
Pretty Boy cut the engine and threw down the kickstand, but didn’t move to get off the bike. Was he trying not to press his luck? Did he really think he wasn’t getting laid?
She shouldn’t. She really, really shouldn’t, but she wanted him so badly.
She pulled off her helmet and stood up, hanging it off the back of the seat. Before Pretty Boy could follow suit, she swung her leg over the bike in front of him, facing him and straddling his thighs.
“Hi.” She’d worn a sedate grey skirt suit today, the skirt now bunched around her hips. Her hair was in a prim French twist and she lifted her hands to pull out the pins, shaking it out around her shoulders.
Ren unfastened his helmet, a question in his eyes as soon as they were revealed.
The carport was dark after sunset, but it wasn’t private. Any one of her neighbors could drive by, their headlights flashing across the pair of them—and Candy didn’t care.
“Don’t you want to kiss me?” she whispered.
That was all the invitation Ren needed. “Fuck, yes.”
*
Present day…
“I didn’t know
you were trying to have children.”
Candy cringed as her mother cornered her near the bar that had been set up on the terrace. “We aren’t, Mother. He was teasing you.”
Her mother hummed, the sound thick with disbelief. “He’s very ethnic, isn’t he?”
Oh dear God. “Mother.”
“What? How is that racist?”
Beyond the fact that they were just talking about the potential for little brown grandbabies? “The fact that you knew what my objection was before I said it proves you know exactly how it’s racist.”
Her mother flicked her fingers dismissively. “It only proves that I know you better than you think I do.”
“You’re saying the fact that you know I think you’re racist proves how well you know me? Are we supposed to hug and sing kumbaya now?”
Her mother huffed. “Don’t be ugly, Candice. It ages you.”
“Ren is the most handsome man I’ve ever met. Any children we had would be lucky to look like him.”
“Of course, darling. But you have to admit life would be harder for them—”
“Without white privilege? Yeah, it probably would be. And maybe we should do something about that. How about introducing Black Lives Matter at the DAR?”
Her mother’s lips pursed tight with disapproval. “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”
“Disagreeing with you, you mean?”
Her mother ignored her last comment entirely, shooing her off. “Go congratulate your sister. I know you two haven’t talked since you arrived.”
Candy was pretty sure that lack of talking had been by design on both their parts, but she obediently set off to fawn over the bride.
*
Considering how miserable Candy looked, Ren almost felt guilty for how much fun he was having. Almost.
He liked her family. Yes, her mother was about as socially conscious as Marie Antoinette and yes, her grandfather had asked him if he was always so tan, but every time his friends and coworkers had bitched about crotchety relatives bothering them at the Thanksgiving table, he’d always felt like he was missing out on something. Something Candy had had all along.
They bickered. They poked at one another.
And they did all of it because they actually gave a shit.
Ren hadn’t had that—someone who cared enough to fuss at him—since his grandparents died and even before that he had always felt slightly out of step since he’d lost his parents. His grandparents were good people, but they’d always been very conscious of the fact that they were raising Lorenzo and Lily’s child, not their own, and Ren had felt the difference. They loved him. They guided him. But they didn’t interfere in his life the way Candy’s parents seemed to feel they had the right to interfere in hers.
Her drunk brother was funny—if a little too abrasive. Her sister the bride glowed with happiness that bordered on smugness. Her younger brother had him laughing within two minutes and halfway to a bromance in five. Even her grandfather the political mogul seemed like he could have been anyone’s grandfather.
It was a family. A real family. Ren felt like he was in the middle of one of those messy, family dramedies that came out every Christmas—those guilty pleasure movies he watched over and over again in spite of the cheesiness, envying that feeling of belonging.
And now he belonged. He had a role. The brother-in-law. The son-in-law.
He had a place because of Candy and even though she looked ready to snap in half at any moment from the tension in her body, he couldn’t stop himself from feeling happy in a way he hadn’t for as long as he could remember.
“There’s the man who convinced my sister to marry him.” Candy’s younger brother appeared at his side. “I always wondered how you did it.”
Ren smiled and shook the hand Aiden held out to him. “Perseverance.”
Aiden laughed. “Yeah, it would take that.” He eyed his sister across the terrace. “She’s different when she talks about you.”
Ren tried not to read too much into that. It was enticing to jump to conclusions about what he meant to her, but he knew Candy. Knew she was good at selling a story when she needed to be and right now she was selling True Love.
“Is she always like this here?” he asked, nodding to where Candy spoke with her sister, both of them looking excruciatingly uncomfortable with the interaction.
“You mean defensive and wound so tight she looks like she might snap at any moment? For as long as I can remember. Especially when she’s dealing with our parents.” Aidan grimaced. “Everyone says she was different before the kidnapping, but I was so young I barely remember her before that. They certainly tried to shield me from it when it was happening…” Aiden trailed off, taking notice of Ren’s expression. He closed his eyes on a groan. “Shit. You didn’t know.”
“The kidnapping,” Ren repeated, feeling like a tectonic plate had shifted beneath his feet.
“We were living in Venezuela… 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… You’re her husband.”
Ren barely heard him. Pieces were snapping into place. The way she refused to trust anyone or anything. Her addiction to security. The nightmares. How she hated being restrained. How she hated the dark.
Shit.
He’d wondered before if there was something big, some traumatic event in her past she was hiding from him. He’d thought at one point she might have been assaulted when she was younger. He’d even talked to a therapist about how to help her, how to be there for her without making her feel threatened by the intimacy.
He’d wanted to be everything she needed, but he’d never even known what he was dealing with. And she’d never let him in.
“Aiden, could you excuse me? I think I need to have a word with my wife.”
Though he didn’t know what he would say. And she wasn’t his wife.
He didn’t have a husband’s right to know her. He was only pretending to be the one she would rely on. Only pretending to be the one who had vowed to love her and care for her in sickness and in health. And it didn’t matter how much he loved her; she would never let him make those promises.
Elite Protection was the closest thing to a family she would let herself have and while Candy would walk through fire for them, she would never ask for or accept help. That was why it had been so monumental when she’d come asking him to do this. She’d needed him. To play husband.
But he hadn’t wanted to play. He’d never wanted to play. He wanted the real thing. And with every new bit of information he learned about her past, he was realizing more and more how little he knew her, how little she was willing to let him—and that he might never get the real thing.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Four years and five months ago…
“I’m guessing you aren’t going to invite me in.”
Ren would take what he could get where Candy was concerned, but he wasn’t an idiot. He somehow doubted quick, dirty sex in her carport was going to make her change her mind about wanting something more with him.
She dismounted, using both hands to smooth down her skirt and then her hair, and Ren found a wadded up napkin in his pocket to dispose of the condom—trying to act like his brain wasn’t still scrambled and he couldn’t still feel the imprint of her mouth on his palm where he’d pressed it over her lips to muffle her cries when she came.
“Thanks for the ride,” she said—and he almost laughed at the double entendre, but he had a feeling the sound would have been more bitter than amused and he didn’t want to give away his frustration. It wouldn’t help his cause.
“Anytime,” he answered instead, tucking himself away. Trying not to be pissed.
He’d gotten laid. And it had been fan-fucking-tastic. What red blooded American man complained when his fuck buddy didn’t want to talk about feelings afterward?
Apparently, he did. At least in the privacy of his own mind.
“G’night,
Pretty Boy.”
She’d called him Ren when he was inside her. But now she wanted distance and he was Pretty Boy again.
“G’night, Candy. Get a car that works.” Though if she did, what would she need him for?
He yanked on his helmet with more force than necessary, dropping hers back in the storage compartment with brisk, jerky movements before driving away. Telling himself not to look back. Looking anyway. Nearly running his bike onto the curb watching her climb the steps to her condo. Such a freaking sap.
*
Present day…
Ren had been acting differently since the terrace, no longer pushing her to be buddy-buddy with her family, just watching her. Hanging back. Cautious. Like he’d just realized she was made of porcelain and didn’t know how to handle her anymore.
“Who told you?”
Ren looked across the suite they shared at her, the expression on his face confirmation enough. She hated that look. Nervous. Careful.
At least he didn’t pretend not to know what she meant.
“Aiden,” he admitted. “He assumed I already knew.”
It was a reasonable assumption. If they’d really been married, she would have had to tell him at some point.
Her family didn’t talk about it, but she’d worried it might come up. She’d been afraid it would. She’d almost told him so many times in the last week—but in the end, self-preservation had been stronger than her desire to make the marriage lie seem more authentic.
And now he knew anyway.
Candy reached for her Tums. “I guess you want to hear about it.”
“If you want to tell me.”
Of course she didn’t want to tell him. If she’d wanted to tell him, she would have brought it up years ago, but it was the elephant in the room now and the only way to get it out of here was to smother it with words. She looked over at her ex-lover.
His face was so fucking cautious. God, she hated that. When people treated her like she was fragile because of what had happened to her. She wasn’t. She was stronger. She was steel, damn it. Because she’d made herself invincible. She wasn’t a victim. She was a warrior.