by Lizzie Shane
But he’d also seen the relationship his parents had—as much as he was able to remember it—and he’d seen his grandparents as well. He knew what real closeness was. Real intimacy. Real family. And he wanted that again.
He hadn’t fully appreciated it when he’d had it and he’d lost it too soon, but he knew that kind of bond had been what had given his father’s life meaning and his grandfather’s as well. It hadn’t been being a rock god with women throwing their panties at his feet. It was the way Lily would tease him, seeing right through all the layers of fame to the man beneath.
Candy had seen beneath his layers. Ren had felt that the day they met. But she still refused to let him beneath hers. The more he glimpsed of the real woman, the more she pushed him away.
Maybe they were better as friends. They certainly wanted different things from love.
So he would be her friend. And try his damnedest to forget the feel of her wrapped around his heart.
*
Present day…
Candy had never understood the appeal of spas—or the need to wake up at six in the morning for a crack of dawn hot stone massage. Her definition of relaxing didn’t include random strangers putting warm rocks all over her naked body. Especially not if it involved waking up when her body still thought it was the middle of the night.
But it was Charlotte’s day. Charlotte’s week. Charlotte’s chance to bond with her new in-laws before the wedding craziness kicked fully into gear, and so it was Charlotte’s idea of relaxation they were indulging this morning.
So Candy sucked it up and let the strangers play with their rocks even if it was the last place she wanted to be.
Last night’s epiphany still haunted her. She’d woken up in Ren’s arms, keenly aware of everything she’d lost when she pushed him away. And wondering if maybe he wasn’t right about other things too.
Was she the judgmental one in her family? Had she been too quick to assume her family only wanted to use her? She’d gotten defensive last night, but maybe he hadn’t been entirely wrong. She hadn’t liked hearing it, but maybe she’d needed to. He made it sound so easy—like she could just flip a switch and change the habits of a lifetime, just decide to see the best in people. Like he did.
She and Charlotte hadn’t been close in over a decade, but that was her fault as much as anyone’s. Had she jumped to conclusions, assuming the worst, and cut herself off from her own sister?
Ren was forcing her to see things she wasn’t sure she wanted to see—that it was her own brittleness keeping her from having any kind of real connection with her siblings.
She didn’t know if Charlotte even wanted to have a relationship with her anymore—they’d gotten very good at talking about nothing, but were careful never to let the conversation stray to anything real. But what if Charlotte wanted that and just didn’t know how to start?
She wanted this wedding to be better for Charlotte than the first time. Her sister might be her mother’s perfect country club creation with more than a slight tendency to sneer down her nose at anyone who didn’t toe the family line, but she was also a woman whose first husband cheated on her very publicly with another man and left her in a cloud of scandal. She deserved a little happiness, didn’t she?
And Candy could try a little harder to be friends with her only sister, rather than distant adversaries constantly navigating an uneasy peace.
When they were seated next to one another for their pedicures later that morning, Candy took her chance.
“Tug seems great,” she began diplomatically. He’d mostly seemed fond of the sound of his own voice when she’d met him for five minutes this morning before the spa group departed, but she tried not to jump to conclusions—for all she knew he was nervous to be meeting so much of Charlotte’s family. “How long have you two been together?”
“Five months.” Charlotte smiled blissfully. “I know it seems fast, but when you know you just know. It’s so different from the way I felt with Reggie. There’s no comparison.”
That certainly seemed accurate.
At first glance, Tug couldn’t have been a bigger swing from Reggie if he tried. Reggie had been cultured, quiet, with a sort of dignified snobbery that had always made Charlotte act superior that he’d chosen her to be his running mate in life. He was a little on the thin side, with thinning hair and refined features, where Tug looked like the former college football star he was—big, loud, proud, and puffed up with the power of testosterone. The one thing they seemed to have in common was an innate sense of superiority—but that was apparently Charlotte’s type.
She’d only been divorced from Reggie for a year. Her mother had made her relationship with Tug sound like a whirlwind romance and Candy hoped it was that, rather than a rebound.
“I envy your certainty.” She didn’t think she’d ever been that certain of anything.
Charlotte gave her a funny look. “You must have been certain too, when you married Ren.”
Shit. “Yeah, I guess.” When Charlotte continued to frown, she went on, babbling, “I mean after the fact I was certain, after the, uh, jitters were over and all, or when he, you know, proposed and I said yes. I must have been certain then.”
Charlotte cocked her head to the side. “You never told me how he proposed.”
“Didn’t I?” Candy squeaked, releasing a forced laugh. “What about Tug? Did he get down on one knee?”
Charlotte smiled mistily. “It was perfect. We went to a charity gala at the Kennedy Center and he’d arranged for the orchestra to play our song as an encore. The entire sold out crowd gave us a standing ovation when I said yes.”
It sounded more like a performance than a proposal, but Charlotte did love pageantry. Maybe that was what romance was to her. “Wow.”
Irritation flickered across the bride’s face as she appeared to sense Candy’s lack of enthusiasm. “What did Ren do?”
“Oh, you know, it was just…” Crap. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever told anyone else how he proposed. Had she already made up this story? How would Ren have proposed? He didn’t like to be on display. It would have been private. “We were just at work,” Candy blurted. “Sparring. And he, uh, he had a ring and he asked me and I said yes.”
Charlotte snorted. “You certainly didn’t miss your calling as a storyteller. It’s a good thing you didn’t have a big wedding. You would have had to tell the proposal story over and over again at the bridal shower and rehearsal dinner and you would have bored your guests to tears.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Mother lost her mind when you told her you’d eloped. Via email. I thought she was going to disown you. You’re lucky Aiden and I were there to calm her down.”
Candy frowned. “You calmed her down for me?” She hadn’t thought Charlotte liked her well enough to speak on her behalf.
“Sure. I knew you didn’t elope to spite her. You never liked the big fancy parties the way she did, but you had to know she would take it as a personal insult.”
“She got to plan your wedding.”
“Twice.” Charlotte grinned, as if the idea of her last marriage was amusing to her now. If nothing else, Candy was grateful to Tug for giving her sister that—the ability to laugh at the fiasco of her divorce. “But you know Mom. Any excuse to put on a show for the neighborhood is to be cherished.”
Candy blinked, realizing for the first time that Charlotte may not want all the pageantry of her wedding. Or the show that had been her first one. Was she like Aiden? Trying to figure out how to get off the merry-go-round? “It isn’t too late for you and Tug to elope.”
“Are you kidding? The Secretary of State is coming. Everyone who is anyone in this city is going to see me in my custom designer gown, looking like a goddess, feeling like a princess, and walking down the aisle to marry a man who knows exactly how lucky he is to be taking me off the market. You think I would give that up? You think Tug would? That’s the dream, Candice.”
“Yeah, but is it your dream?
Or Mom’s?”
“It’s mine,” Charlotte snapped. “I know what I want, Candice. Just because things went the way they went with Reggie, don’t assume I’m naïve.” Blue eyes spat fire as her lips pursed in a moue of irritation and disgust. “I knew about his affairs, you know. I just never thought he would be so careless as to let one become public knowledge. I thought he valued our life together more than that. But I’m not only marrying Tug because I know he’ll never do that to me. Everything is different with him. I’m never annoyed with him. It’s not that he’s perfect, it’s that his flaws are the right flaws for me. We’re a perfect match. All the things that would drive me crazy if Reggie did them, I just find endearing about Tug. Isn’t that what love is? When you stop caring about all the little stuff because he is something greater than the sum of his parts?”
Was that what love was? “Maybe.” She couldn’t help thinking of Ren. Greater than the sum of his parts. He’d always been that to her.
Alicia and the other bridesmaids stood from their spot across the room. “Seaweed wrap time!”
Charlotte laughed, letting her maid of honor pull her out of the pedicure room, and all talk of love reverted to the cheerful, easy level of the celebration in progress.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
About four years ago…
Candy had always known lies were a slippery slope. She’d grown up in politics, after all.
She just hadn’t realized how slippery.
In the weeks following the lie, her mother kept asking when Candy was going to bring Ren out to meet the family. She flooded Candy’s inbox with wedding spam, badgering her with requests to fly back to DC for dress shopping and venue selection. When was Candy sending out her save the dates? How many people would Ren be inviting from his side? She already had a preliminary guest list, of course.
When her mother had asked her fiancé’s name, back at Charlotte’s reception, Candy had blurted out Ren’s without thinking. Showing her mother the goofy, grinning selfie of the two of them on her phone had helped sell the lie. She’d figured she would wait until she got back to LA and come clean, but she’d put off the unpleasant business of honesty and her mother had kicked into wedding-planning mode.
She’d gone the cowardly route—sending a vague Sorry, Mom. There won’t be a wedding for you to plan email. It wasn’t until she got back the reply—Did you break it off? One of your father’s former aides is running for lieutenant governor in California, I’ll give him your number—that she realized the matchmaking was never going to end.
After a bottle of wine that should have been labeled Bad Decisions, Candy had photoshopped the hell out of some pictures from Ren’s modeling days and sent her mother another email: No wedding to plan because we already eloped!
And then life just became damage control. Her father wanted to meet him—could Ren fly out before her father was shipped off to whatever ‘Stan he was about to visit on a diplomatic mission?
No, he could not.
Would they be coming home for Thanksgiving this year?
No, they would not.
The lie continued, gaining a life of its own.
And seeing Ren only made it worse. Somehow she felt like she was lying to him as well, involving him in her farce. Though at least the guilt helped her stay away from him. And without her jumping him at every turn, they did slowly become friends again. It was almost a blessing in disguise.
At least that’s what Candy told herself.
Just friends was better. She was almost positive it was better.
*
Present day…
Candy could have saved her warning. If anyone was going to get “accidentally” shot in the face, he had a feeling it was going to be the groom. And Ren might not even be the one pulling the trigger. Both the father of the bride and younger brother of the bride looked equally willing to put a round in Tug Newton’s face.
Tug had spent the entire drive out to the family hunting lodge bragging about his unsurpassed hunting prowess, gloating so loudly he’d probably scared off half the game in a hundred-mile radius. When Ren had confessed that he’d only shot targets before—he wasn’t morally opposed to game hunting, it just wasn’t a very popular pastime in Southern California—Tug had patronized him with assurances that no one expected him to be good his first time, even though Tug had taken down a ten point buck when he was only eight years old.
When Thomas Raines explained to his future son-in-law that they were far from deer season and would instead be hunting squirrels and groundhogs—and also that the family never kept hunting trophies but always donated their take to Hunting for the Hungry, Tug immediately switched his tune to brag that he would bag the biggest groundhog and give the most meat to the starving people of Virginia.
Ren held his tongue. And carefully avoided commenting when it became immediately apparent that Tug couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. Aiden, who seemed less interested in shooting than he was in shooting the shit, stood at Ren’s side with his own rifle cradled loosely in his arms and didn’t bother to contain his amusement when Tug declared his weapon defective.
“He has terrible luck with weapons,” Aiden commented idly. “His gun was defective during the spring turkey shoot too.”
“You aren’t shooting?”
“I have two small daughters. If Daddy starts taking out Sleeping Beauty’s friends, he gets in big trouble.” He shrugged. “I was always more of a social hunter anyway. I’m not the competitive type. Which, of course, horrifies my mother.” He eyed his future brother-in-law. “No doubt why she loves Tug. Everything is a competition with that guy.” They moved deeper into the woods and Aiden kept pace at Ren’s side. “Don’t take it personally if you aren’t her favorite son-in-law. Bodyguard doesn’t sound as good as State Department when she’s trying to compete with her friends at the DAR for the most impressive offspring.”
“Is that why she never came to visit us?”
“You thought it was because you aren’t an appropriate shade of albino? No, I’m pretty sure she likes being able to say she has an off-white son-in-law. None of the other DAR ladies can say that. She just likes to be fawned over and Candy doesn’t do that. In fact, I got the impression Candy didn’t want visitors. I offered to come out there as part of a business trip last year and she made it sound like your place was in the Outer Mongolia of Los Angeles. Where are you two living these days? I don’t think I ever heard if she kept her condo after you got married.”
Ren froze. Shit. He didn’t know if she was supposed to have moved in with him or he with her. “Hm?” He pretended to be focused on an imaginary squirrel and took a shot. Then nodded over at where Tug was crowing his domination over a small red squirrel. “Looks like he got one.” Or someone in his general vicinity had and he’d decided to take credit.
“The poor thing probably had a heart attack at the sight of him.” Ren saw an actual squirrel then and lined up his shot—taking out an innocent knot on a log ten feet from the animal.
“Nice shot,” Aiden commented wryly.
“I wouldn’t want to face your daughters if I started taking out Bambi’s playmates.”
Aiden grinned. “Maybe we should mention that excuse to Tug so he stops blaming the weaponry.”
Ren snorted, relieved that his dodge over where he and Candy lived in LA seemed to have passed unnoticed. But as soon as the men and women reconvened that afternoon, it was the first thing he asked Candy when he managed to pull her aside for a private moment.
“Where do we live? Your place? Mine?”
Her eyes widened. “Oh God. I don’t think I ever said one way or another—but if I’d moved it probably would have come up so you probably live with me?”
He frowned. “My place is nicer and in a better location. Why wouldn’t you have moved in there?”
“How are we going to explain how you can afford that place on the same salary I make without telling anyone who your parents were?”
“Good point. Your
place, then.”
He started to move back to join the group, but she caught his arm, pulling him back. “You proposed at work. We were sparring. Very private.”
His gaze flicked over her face, reading the truth there. “I wasn’t the only one who got tripped up this morning?”
“God, we suck at this. But at least my sister just thinks I’m crappy at telling engagement stories and hasn’t figured out it’s because I’m a horrible liar.”
“If you were a horrible liar, you wouldn’t have gotten away with it for so long.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not.”
“Honestly, neither am I.”
He started to move them toward the rest of the group again, but she caught his arm a second time. “Ren…” She held his arm, studying his face questioningly. “Are we good?”
*
For a second she thought he was going to say no, then his confused expression eased into something comfortingly reassuring and he lifted his hand to brush her jaw with his thumb. “We’re good. I’m sorry about last night—”
“No. I’m sorry. I should have said something about Venezuela. It just… I don’t…”
“You don’t talk about it,” he provided.
She shook her head. “No. I don’t.”
“Okay.” His thumb traced another path along her jaw. “But if you ever want to, I’m here.”
Her heart clenched hard in her chest. That was Ren. Always too good to her. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Maybe not.” He grinned and suddenly the weight of the conversation lifted. “But you know you’d do the same for me.”
“Would I?” she teased, taking the olive branch of levity. “Are we sure about that?” She looped her arm through his and they began to stroll toward the rest of the group gathered on the back terrace for afternoon cocktails.