by Natalie Ann
He felt his face flush. When he looked around the room at everyone all he saw was sympathy. He wasn’t sure what was worse at the moment. He supposed he should be thrilled they weren’t against him. Not that he’d thought they would be. But it still felt like he was Houdini in a straitjacket dangling upside down over a roaring bonfire.
“I didn’t dump her on the floor. I didn’t want to put my hands on her at all,” he argued. “I didn’t know what else to do. How the hell was I supposed to get her off my lap? I asked her to get up.”
His mother snorted, but his father gave her a dirty look for that sound.
“I would have shoved her butt across the room,” Ella said. “Then I would have stood in front of her and done it again just for the fun of it.”
“You can say that because you’re a girl,” Mason said. “We can’t do that. We always have to be careful who or what or how we touch someone.”
“I get it,” Ella mumbled. “Still, I would have knocked her out on top of it.”
Ella had always been feisty. Of course, having four older brothers tended to make her stand up for herself more often than not.
“What did Bill say when you talked to him last night?” Brody asked Cade.
“He was confused by what was going on. Said that Abby came over to him earlier and said Aiden wanted to talk to her in his office and that she’d be right back.”
“So she was setting the whole thing up in case Aiden didn’t accept her advances?” his father said.
“I don’t even know if she wanted them,” Aiden argued.
Cade snorted. “Aiden, the women in the kitchen have been throwing themselves at you for years. You just can’t look past your pots and pans to see anything else.”
“Cade,” his mother said sharply. “Don’t make me take you on a car ride for another lecture. Aiden did nothing wrong.”
“He’s right, Mom,” Aiden said.
“See—”
“Shut up, Cade,” the rest of his siblings said at once.
“I don’t need you rubbing my face in this, Cade.”
“I’m not,” he argued. “Fine. I’m really not. It just slipped. Relax, I’ll take care of it.”
“How?” Mason asked.
“Cade knows what he’s doing. Let him do it,” Brody said.
“You’re defending him. The one that beats on him the most,” Ella said.
“Come on, guys. His mouth runs like diarrhea but he’s good at what he does.”
“Now what?” their father asked. “Do we just go about our days like this isn’t happening? Did Abby go to the hospital last night? Has anyone talked to her at all?”
“Not yet,” Cade said. “I’m going to call her after this meeting. I needed us all together to hear the facts.”
“No,” Ella said. “I deal with HR and workers’ comp. I think we just start there. She could have been blowing smoke last night on the sexual harassment part of it. Her pride was probably bent. No woman likes to be shot down like that. Not when they were crawling in a man’s lap. I’ll call her and follow up. Say I heard she got hurt and needed to complete her paperwork, ask for her medical release to return to work.”
Aiden listened to everyone talking at once. He was hearing their voices but not their words anymore. It was like another nightmare he’d lived and wondered why these things seemed to follow him around like the plague.
Little Incident
“Aiden,” Nic said when she opened her front door. “What are you doing here?” She wasn’t due into work for a few more hours yet and had no idea he’d be stopping over. She hadn’t talked to him since he texted her to say goodnight last night.
“Can we talk?”
“Sure, come on in.”
“Somewhere private?” he asked, noticing her grandfather relaxing in the recliner.
“Let’s go in the kitchen. He won’t hear us. He’s half deaf from all the yelling in the store his whole life,” she said, grinning. It was that or her grandfather had perfected the three-monkey act that she’d gotten so good at.
“Where’s your grandmother?”
“She’s at the market. What’s going on? You’re starting to scare me now.” Was he going to break up with her? Did they just tell each other they loved one another and now he was going to say “see ya”? Why did this always seem to happen to her?
“There was a little incident at Fierce last night.”
“What kind of incident? Did anyone get hurt?”
“I don’t even know where to start,” he said. But when he was done explaining, her blood was boiling. Her Italian temper made her get up and start slamming cabinet doors around.
“Porca puttana!”
“What?” he asked, looking at her.
“Sorry. When I get mad I swear in Italian. That bitch,” she said. He didn’t need to know what it really meant, even though she was itching to string a ton of words along now. Bet her grandfather was wishing Nic never heard those in the kitchen. “I’m going to rip every single hair off her head. She kissed you.”
“That’s what you’re focusing on?” he asked, looking slightly confused. “Not that she is accusing me of sexual harassment or wants to file a trumped-up workers’ comp claim?”
“You just said that she never went to the hospital last night. That she said it was just a bruise. That she told Ella that you were making more out of it and she never once said anything about workers’ comp.”
“She’s twisting everything around. It doesn’t matter what I say at this point, she’s saying the opposite. She covered her bases and made sure Bill knew she was going into my office even though I never asked her to.”
“I always hated that little stronza. She’s the one that was spreading rumors about you and me in the beginning.”
His lips twitched. “They weren’t rumors. I can guess what a stronza is, but are you going to tell me?”
“No,” she said, crossing her arms. “In the beginning they were rumors. We had nothing going on at that point. Nothing more than me showing you how to make cannoli.”
He laughed. “I knew how to make cannoli. I’ve been making them since I was a kid. You didn’t need to show me that.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Merde! So you set me up?”
“Wow, I need a dictionary. No. I did want to know how you made your pastry filling. But it was fun to watch you work.”
She bared her teeth. “Maybe you’ve been doing this to women all along.”
He stood up fast, the chair sliding across the old linoleum floor and banging into the wall. “If you think that then you don’t know me at all.”
“Wait, Aiden. I’m sorry. That came out wrong.”
“Too late,” he said and then walked out the door and left.
She ran after him, but he was pulling away from the curb. When she turned back her grandfather was staring at her. “You had that coming. You’re lucky I don’t wash your mouth out with soap right now too!”
Her face flushed. “You heard everything?” she asked.
He just raised his eyebrows, then struggled to push the bottom of the recliner back in place. Once he was sitting up, he said, “I should put you over my knee right now. How could you say that to him? After everything he just told you? After everything that’s happened to him in the past twenty-four hours, and all you were concerned about was that another woman made a move on him. Another woman tried to kiss him.”
“But he’s mine,” she said.
“Grow up, Nicolette. He doesn’t belong to you. He’s not a possession. Don’t make me call you by your mother’s name.”
She sucked a breath in. “That’s low.”
“It is. I won’t do it now, but I’m tempted. He came here hurting and you made it worse. He’s not guilty and you know it. He came to tell you everything that happened. Everything that is going on. What he needed was your support, and what you did was accuse him of doing something that he’d never do in his life.”
“You don’t know that,” she sa
id before she could stop herself.
“Stop looking for escape routes. Stop looking for something to go wrong so that you can end things before you get hurt. Life is all about getting hurt, so you better get use it. You should be so happy. You’re lucky to have a man like that to stand next to you when you feel that hurt. Those are the type of men that hold it together for you so that you can move on. Not ones that do the damage.”
She started to cry. He was right, but she didn’t want to admit it. “I don’t want to depend on anyone.”
“That’s not depending. That’s you being stubborn. That’s you being afraid that someone else is going to leave you. That’s you not fully understanding that not everyone walks away from you in life.”
She’d never told anyone of those fears. About any abandonment issues she might have felt over the years. She’d thought she was able to push them aside. But after her past two failed relationships, she realized maybe she couldn’t. That maybe she was always looking for the negative. Always looking for something to go wrong and trying to end it before that happened.
Before she could get hurt again.
Before she’d be alone again.
“I’ve got to go talk to him,” she said. “I need to explain myself.”
“Don’t. Leave him be. Trust me on this. He needs time to cool off.”
“But I’ve got to work with him tonight. How can I do that if he’s mad at me?”
“You’ll have to figure it out. Do you think your grandmother and I were never mad at each other at work?”
“That’s different,” she argued. “You were married.”
“Marriage is a piece of paper that symbolizes your love, but it doesn’t solidify it. It doesn’t change those feelings of hurt and frustration. What you feel for Aiden isn’t any different whether there’s a ring on your finger or not. And it’s not going to make tonight go away either. Figure it out, Nic. Either that, or you’re going to be alone a lot in your life.”
***
“Aiden,” his mother said. “I didn’t think you’d be here today. Come on in, honey, and let’s talk.”
“I didn’t think this day could get any worse.”
“What happened?” she asked, moving toward the cookie jar. She grabbed him two chocolate chips cookies the size of his fist and poured him a glass of milk just like she did his whole life when something was bothering him. She’d always known what brought him comfort, just like she did all her kids.
He reached for the cookie, looked at the bottom, and saw that it was more than slightly overcooked, but kept that comment to himself. He had no choice when she was narrowing her eyes at him.
“Nic and I just got into a fight.”
“A fight? Over what?”
“I thought she’d believe me. I thought she’d stand behind me.” He was proud of himself for getting that much out without choking up.
“She’s taking Abby’s side? No way. I don’t believe it,” his mother said, crossing her arms.
“You’re taking her side over mine?” he said. He bit the cookie before he said something else. Before his throat decided to close up on him, forcing tears out of his eyes. He never expected his mother to not come to his defense.
“Of course not. I’m just saying you need to look at the bigger picture.”
“I am.” He picked up the milk. The cookie was bone dry.
“If you were, then you’d see someone who had no family dynamic like you. Someone that has had to work as hard as anyone and still doesn’t have much to show for it. Someone that seems to have crap dumped in her lap left and right. Even when she tries, it seems she fails. That’s what I see.”
He didn’t want to believe what his mother was saying. “I went there to tell her what was going on. To tell her the truth. I expected her to console me. Not accuse me of doing what Abby is saying to other women. To her. How could that be dumping stuff in her lap? That’s more like getting shit dumped in mine.”
“Watch your language,” she said, pointing a finger. She could curse and swear worse than them all when she wanted, but if you started around her, you got in trouble. “Why do you need her to console you?” his mother asked, her stare never wavering. He felt himself shrinking like he always did under her gaze. She made them all feel like they were two feet tall, rather than almost a foot taller than her.
He opted for honesty, because it was his mother and she’d know if he tried to lie. “Because I love her. She knows that. I told her. She said it back. You can’t love someone and think what she did. That’s not love.”
“That’s true. And I’m not saying what she said is right at all. I’m not defending her, regardless of what you think deep down. I’m just asking you to look at it from her point of view.”
“What point of view is that? That she doesn’t want anyone to know about our relationship? That she is the one who has been hiding it all along? That somehow the staff knew and now Abby thinks that’s what I do, sleep around and keep it a secret, and that is what she was trying to do with me?”
“So you blame Nic for what happened with Abby?” his mother asked, her stare burning a hole in him now.
“No. Of course not.” How did this get turned around on him?
“That’s not what I heard.”
He sighed. Did he think Nic was to blame? That if the staff knew about their relationship and knew it was serious and they were in love, that Abby wouldn’t have done what she did? Maybe he did. Shit.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to think right now.”
“You’ve been afraid to let yourself go since your first year in New York. You did and you got burned. Then, after a few years, you tried again and you got burned a second time. You weren’t afraid of the fire then. I don’t think you are now, but you waited even longer to try. Now you are thinking ‘burn me once, shame on you, burn me twice, shame on me, burn me three times, I’m done!’”
Damn she was good. “I just got burned a third time, but I’m not done. I don’t want to be done.”
“Good. You shouldn’t be done. You know why? Because you didn’t get burned. And you surely didn’t by Nic. Abby would have done what she did regardless. She might have done it sooner if she knew about your relationship.”
“You don’t know that,” Aiden said.
“Nope. Just like you don’t know Abby wouldn’t have done it at all if she’d known how you really felt about Nic. Focus on the here and now. Not what has been or might be.”
“I wasn’t afraid of getting burned again,” he said quietly.
“Don’t piss me off, Aiden. Don’t argue with me. You’ve been afraid for years, but wouldn’t admit it.”
He looked up sharply at her. The warning signs of her temper were coming to the surface. “I’m not trying to.”
“If you don’t think you’re lying to me, then at least acknowledge you’re lying to yourself.” He held his tongue, not that it mattered because she was on a roll, it seemed. “Marissa hit you hard. I didn’t think you’d get involved with anyone that had so much in common with you again. Crystal surprised me, even though I knew that wouldn’t last. I was just glad you were trying though.”
He flushed. Marissa’s name hadn’t been brought up since that horrible day a few months into his first semester at the Culinary Institute of America.
“This has nothing to do with Marissa.”
“Aiden, I’m going to get up from this table and drive to your house and rip your kitchen apart if you don’t open your eyes.”
She’d do it too. “I didn’t want Marissa to affect me that way. That gives her the control. I don’t hand the control over to anyone.”
“Yet you did, whether you’re just acknowledging it or not. She almost got you expelled, Aiden. She almost cost you your dream. The dream that you and your siblings had. That’s what you felt. If it didn’t work out the way it had, you still would have gotten your dream though. You have to let it go and realize that you’re the success you are, not because of where you we
nt to school, but because of the experience you garnered outside of that schooling. You’re damn right no one controls you but you, and you’ve let what those two women did influence your future.”
It was such a horrible time in his life back then. That he’d worked so hard on his final to find out that girl he was sleeping with—the one he thought he was falling in love with—had only been using him. That she didn’t think she had what it took and stole his project.
He didn’t know what to do when he met with his teacher. He was scared shitless. He wanted to call Mason, Brody, even Cade, but instead he called his mother. She flew out that day and met with the dean.
“What did you say to them back then?”
“Who?” she asked. “That asshole that thought some bimbo was a better chef than my boy?”
He loved when his mother got all riled up and swore. Well, only when it wasn’t directed at him. “Yeah.”
“I told him there was no way, and that all I asked was for both of you to be allowed to cook the same recipe again without your notes. Without being able to look back. For the teachers to ask that something be substituted and throw it off a little. That would tell them whose it was and who copied whom.”
“That wasn’t the professor’s idea?”
“Nope. It was mine. I said if you failed the test that time, if you couldn’t make it just as good as you did the first time, then we’d pack your stuff and leave that day. But I know my kids. No one is a cheater. Especially someone who got up at the butt-ugly crack of dawn to work for free all those years.”
“How did you know about that?” He didn’t think anyone knew he was giving out free labor in exchange for knowledge and experience.
“Aiden, you’re so silly,” she said sarcastically. “You own a business. Do you think if someone came in and offered to work for free you’d let them without checking into them somehow? Several of them called the bar to verify who you were and that you’d worked there. That you weren’t some schmuck who’d go in and rob them blind. They probably checked with the school too.”