Fool Me Twice

by Lilliana Anderson

  “OK. It’s just that there are so many of them, and there’s obviously a lot of money to go around if you’re able to afford the property we’re living on—”

  “I have my own investments. The others aren’t as well off as I am,” he interrupted.

  “OK, but that only presses my point more. Why are you still robbing people? You, in particular, have so much already. Why do you need more?”

  He glanced at me, and I could tell by his expression that he legitimately didn’t know the answer to that question. “It’s just what we do,” he said eventually.

  “At what point do you think you’ll decide you have enough?”

  He licked his lips and shook his head. “I don’t know. When everyone in the family is as wealthy as I am, I suppose.”

  “They’re all adults, Nate. You aren’t responsible for them.”

  Speeding up to merge onto the freeway, Nate stayed quiet for a while. “They’re family, duchess. Of course I’m responsible for them.”

  The slim, tallish woman I’d always known as my best friend came hurtling out the front door and practically threw herself at me when we arrived at the Cartwright family home. Nate told me on the way that we’d been invited to dinner so they could discuss the business and, more importantly, make amends after what went down in the Cook Islands.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” Alesha whispered, hugging me so tight that I almost couldn’t breathe.

  Tears sprang to my eyes as I hugged her back. I’d been so focused on my own feelings and Nate that I hadn’t thought enough about her and how her new relationship was going. Was Sam treating her well? Did they still feel as strongly for each other as they did in the beginning? Was Jasmine being good to her? What about the other brothers? I did hope she was living somewhere with Sam on her own and wasn’t here cooking and cleaning for them all every night. She did have a tendency to try and please….

  “I’ve missed you too,” I returned, pulling back so I could look into her eyes. “How have you been?” It was the one question I felt safe asking while all the family was around. I would know how truthful her answer was by the look in her eyes. The rest would have to wait for a more private time.

  She pressed her lips together, wrapping her hands around my forearms as she nodded. “I’m OK.”

  My heart sank—she wasn’t happy. I could see the sadness in her big brown eyes and the slight quivering of her lip. My instinct to protect her overwhelmed me, and I drew her into my arms.

  I didn’t know what else to say, so I just held on tight, only releasing her when Jasmine’s voice cut into our moment, reminding Alesha that there was something in the kitchen that needed her attention.

  “I’m glad you both came,” she said, looking between Nate and me. “I’d hate for our family to fall out of contact.”

  “Then maybe my family will refrain from touching what’s mine,” Nate said coolly, stooping slightly to kiss his mother on the forehead.

  “Of course.” Jasmine smiled. “I do hope you’ve forgiven me, Holland. There was a lot of pressure on us as all that day. I’d never intentionally do anything to harm you.” Her saccharine voice made me sick to my stomach. She’d threatened me with that voice, threatened my life and those of everyone I loved. She’d have to forgive me if I didn’t believe her.

  “What’s for dinner?” I asked, redirecting the conversation instead. “It’s been a long day and I’m starved.”

  “Alesha has made potato au gratin, Toby has some lamb on the rotisserie, the twins are on salads, and Sam is on drinks. I’m doing dessert. We have everything covered.” She held out her arm to welcome us inside. “Come. It’s time we celebrate properly. It’s not every day a woman with five sons gets to entertain two daughters.”

  As food and drinks were passed around the outdoor table, it was easy to relax into the festive atmosphere. Kristian and Abbot were like two halves of the same person, talking interchangeably about whatever topic caught their interest in the moment. They even laughed at the same time, syncing to the same beat. It was funny to watch.

  Despite Alesha’s demeanour when we’d arrived, she did seem highly content sitting next to Sam. When the food was finished and the conversation continued to flow, he draped his arm over the back of her chair, gently caressing the bare skin on her arm. She relaxed into him. The only times she seemed uncomfortable were when Jasmine addressed her, or if she had to interact with Toby—who was once again fairly silent for the most part. I noticed it was rare that he looked my way, spending most of his time focused on his beer bottle instead while the Boston terrier, Rogue, sat at his feet and he slipped her scraps under the table.

  Then he caught me watching him. He raised a single finger to his lips, glanced at Jasmine, and then smiled at me. I looked away, the interaction feeling odd. The last time we spoke, he’d told me he thought I was trouble and looked as though he wanted to kill me. Now he was smiling at me?

  Perhaps he was drunk.

  “Will you ladies excuse us for a while?” Jasmine asked during a lull in the conversation. “My sons and I have some business we need to discuss.”

  Standing obediently, Alesha started clearing the plates, so I stood and did the same. Nate grabbed my wrist and shook his head.

  “I should help,” I whispered.

  “You aren’t a servant,” he reminded me.

  “Neither is she.” I glanced towards Alesha, whose arms were laden with plates and cutlery.

  Releasing his breath, Nate nodded, then stood to help clear.

  “The girls can get that, darling,” Jasmine said with a shocked laugh.

  “It’ll be faster if we all pitch in. Once all this is clean, we’ll talk business. I didn’t bring my wife here so she could clean our mess.”

  “I think I just came a little,” I whispered in his ear as we walked towards the kitchen together.

  He pinched me on the arse and I let out a little yelp. Everyone else stood and grumbled a little, but they ultimately helped to clear the table, tidy the kitchen, and put everything back where it belonged.

  Once everything was pristine again, Nate grabbed Stollis from the fridge, handing me two before telling me to go relax with my friend.

  Alesha and I retired to the living room at the front of the house, putting a decent amount of distance between us and the rest of the Cartwright family.

  “Are you OK?” Alesha asked immediately in a hushed tone. “I’ve been worried sick about you since the wedding. He hasn’t hurt you, has he?” She grabbed my arms and inspected every part of me she could see with a keen eye.

  “I’m fine,” I assured her, laughing slightly out of confusion. “Why would you worry about me? I’m the one worried about you.”

  “Me? No, I’m great! I love it here. I mean, it gets a bit much sometimes having so many people around, and I admit to being a little homesick and bored hanging around the house all the time. But Sam is amazing whenever we’re together, and I can pretty much do whatever I want the rest of the time. Kristian is teaching me to surf. Jasmine is teaching me to cook. I’m pretty much perfect.”

  “So, you’re living here? Not at Sam’s?”

  “Sam’s?”

  “Nate said they all had their own places.”

  “Nate and Toby are the only ones living on their own. But Toby is here a lot.”

  “And you’re happy living with them all?”

  “I like the noise and the company.”

  “Wow. So I imagined all the discomfort out there?”

  “Discomfort?”

  “Yeah, between you and Jasmine, and Toby.”

  “Toby?” She scrunched her face as if the idea of being uncomfortable around him was insane. “He’s a pussycat.”

  “Are you sure about that?” I eyed her carefully, and she nodded emphatically.

  “I’ve just been worried sick about you. After our wedding, Nate went crazy on Kris and Abbot. Kris had a split lip, and Abbot could barely see out of one eye for a whole week. And I saw him yel
ling at Jasmine.” Her eyes went wide. “Lord, Holl, I was so scared. I thought he was going to hit her.”

  “Did he?”

  “No, but he threatened to, held his hand up like he was going to backhand her the same way she did to you. And I thought, ‘God help Holland if that’s the kind of temper that man has.’”

  “He doesn’t have a temper, Leesh. He was angry because Jasmine hit me and the twins covered for her. I really don’t think he would hit his own mother.”

  “So you’re OK?”

  “More than OK. I’m ridiculously happy. I’m in love with him.” It felt silly sitting there admitting that, but at the same time it was wonderful because Alesha was the only other person on the planet who understood exactly who it was I married and how it all came about.

  “You do? That’s such a relief. We got real lucky with these guys, Holl. I reckon someone was watching over us.”

  I nodded. “My parents, perhaps.”

  “Or maybe God. Or my mum if she’s up there. Lord knows I’ve prayed enough for a man to whisk me away from my crappy life.”

  “I want the fairy tale,” I quoted in my best Julia Roberts voice.

  Alesha smiled at the Pretty Woman reference. “And as far as men go, it seems we got exactly that.”

  “Yes. But what about the rest of it? Their… business activities?” I nodded towards the back of the house where the family meeting was underway.

  Alesha shrugged and sighed. “I try not to think about it. The less we know the better, right? That’s how mob guys protect their wives.”

  I smiled. “You watch far too many movies.”

  She shrugged. “Up until now, they’ve been better than my life.”

  “You said you’re a little homesick. Have you gone to visit your dad?”

  She shook her head, lowering her eyes slightly. “He won’t take my calls. We went to visit when we got back and he lost it. He’s angry with me for getting married without him, and especially because I didn’t get married in a church to a good Catholic boy.”

  “I’m sorry, Leesh.”

  “Ugh.” She shrugged. “He was never going to like anyone I brought home. I always expected something like this to happen.”

  “He’ll come around,” I said, patting her leg.

  “We’ll see,” she said with a nonchalant shrug of the shoulder. Then she adjusted on the couch, tucking her knees beneath her as she looked at me and grinned. “Now tell me about Nate. I want to know everything about him.”

  I smiled at the mischievous glint in her eye as I was taken back to a simpler time where we shared everything. That seemed so long ago after this whirlwind of events.

  “How about you tell me all about Sam. Start with the moment you locked eyes, and don’t leave out a thing.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  A Loveable Rogue

  Life seemed fairly normal for the next couple of weeks. The commute from Torquay to the city was a bit long, but having Nate with me made it a hell of a lot more bearable. Still, almost four hours of travel every day was wearing on us.

  “You know, if you put some furniture back into my apartment, we could stay there during the week and spend weekends at your place,” I suggested when I noticed him yawning uncontrollably Monday morning. He’d had a busy weekend doing ‘business’ things with his brothers that meant I’d stayed at the family house to keep Alesha company while they were gone—although, I also thought that Nate didn’t like the idea of leaving me in the Bells Beach house alone because of how secluded it was. Maybe he was still afraid I’d run away.

  While the men were out ‘working’, Jasmine procured our help to prepare a grand feast for their return. She had said with great authority that her boys would be starving when they got back, and she’d been right. They shoved food in so fast that I’d barely cleared a quarter of my plate before they’d started on seconds. After that, Nate had gone caveman on me and dragged me upstairs—I say dragged, but I went rather willingly—to have his way with me. We hadn’t gone home that night, falling asleep exhausted in the family home instead. I had to wonder if it was the adrenaline rush that kept Nate going back to the family line of work when he clearly had enough of his own. He’d been an absolute animal that night.

  “It’s our place,” he corrected, referring to the Bells Beach house. “There is no mine and yours anymore. It’s all ours.”

  “Fine, our place,” I said. “But by that same thinking, we have a perfectly good apartment only fifteen minutes from my work. Do you think staying there could be an option? I love living by the beach, but the commute is killing me, babe. And by the looks of things, it’s killing you too.”

  He glanced at me and took in a slow breath. At first I didn't think he was going to go for it, but then I held my hands together and batted my eyelids, making whimpering puppy noises that made him laugh. “OK, duchess. I’ll get the boys to move your shit back into the apartment.”

  “Our shit,” I corrected.

  He chuckled and agreed. “We’ll stay there until the end of the school year, but I want you to look at transferring schools so we’re not in the city for long.”

  “What’s wrong with the city?”

  “I work in the city.”

  “So?” I started, and then it hit me—you don’t steal where you live. It compromised the job. “Oh.” I sat with my arms folded across my middle, silently staring out the window. “I really like the school I’m at, Nate. It isn’t as easy to get a good position as you think.”

  Reaching across the car, he took my hand and squeezed. “There are plenty of good schools farther down. Marriage is compromise.”

  I snatched my hand back. “Then quit your fucking job,” I snapped.

  We drove the rest of the way in silence. Just because I was aware of what Nate did for a living didn’t mean I was OK with it. The fact that he was expecting me to change my entire career trajectory so he could keep travelling through the city, robbing people without being identified while out picking up groceries really pissed me off. So far, my life had been the only one to make compromises. His was going on, uninterrupted and unencumbered.

  I spent the entire day pissed off about it and was ready to give him a piece of my mind when the wind was knocked out of my sails the moment Toby pulled up outside the school.

  “Where’s Nate?” I asked, peering through the window of his black BMW sedan.

  “Hello, Holland. How was your day?” he asked in return, gesturing for me to get inside.

  Since I wasn’t in the mood for a kidnapping, I stayed on the outside.

  “Where’s Nate?” I insisted.

  “He’s busy. He asked me to pick you up.”

  “Busy? Doing what?”

  “Just get in the car. You’re attracting the attention of the locals.” He looked over my shoulder to the group of students craning their necks.

  “That’s not your husband, Miss,” one stated, crossing her arms.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, Jessica, but this is my brother-in-law, Toby.”

  She and her friends leaned closer to get a better look and Toby grumbled, rolling his eyes.

  “Want a copy of my license and registration too?” he asked as they gathered around.

  “No, but I don’t see a ring. Can you be my stepdaddy?” Jessica asked.

  “All right.” I held up my hands and gave them my most severe-looking teacher face. “That’s enough. He didn’t come here to be the butt of your lewd comments, girls.” When they moved back, I opened the car door and slipped in, deciding it was safe enough since I had a whole gaggle of witnesses to attest to my last known whereabouts. It was unlikely that Toby would take me shopping for concrete boots and then sightseeing at the edge of a really high cliff.

  “See ya, Miss. See ya, Daddy!” The girls blew kisses and giggled uproariously as Toby planted his foot and sped off, his cheeks bright red.

  “That’s the calibre of girls you’re teaching these days?” He shook his head.

>   “They get raised by YouTube and social media. It’s a different generation than what we grew up with.”

  He shook his head again and drove on in silence.

  “So, what has Nate so busy?”

  “Well, it seems whatever the—what does he call you? Princess?”

  “Duchess.”

  “That’s right. Whatever the duchess wants, the duchess gets. We all had to drop what we were doing today to move furniture for you.”

  That so wasn’t what I was expecting to come out of his mouth. “We’re going to my apartment?” I couldn’t help but smile. Some husbands bought their wives flowers, others bought jewellery. Mine, he returned the things he stole. It made my heart soar.

  “And you’re happy about it. Of course you are.” He turned down a familiar street and I immediately relaxed—which, in Toby’s presence, was a big thing for me. He always made me feel on edge, but today, he seemed… OK. “We strain our muscles all day so you get to sit on your plush couch in your love nest while the rest of us get to drive all the way back to Torquay and listen to the other loved-up couple go at it like rabbits all night.” He rolled his eyes. “It’s enough to drive a man to drink.”

  “Careful, Toby, you’re sounding jealous.”

  “Maybe I am.” He glanced at me as he indicated to turn into my parking garage. “I did see you first.”

  My heart jumped into my throat. What an odd thing to say. I thought he hated me.

  “Why don’t you stay at your place, then?” I asked, clearing my throat, trying to steer the conversation to more comfortable grounding.

  “It’s not really mine at the moment. I’m renting it out for a while to make some extra cash.”

  “Extra cash?”

  “We aren’t all rolling in it like Nate. I have legitimate goals, and I need legitimate money to make those goals happen.”

  He pulled into a guest parking spot and I took a moment to regard him, his tone suggested more than just jealousy over Nate’s bank account. “Why is Nate having more money a problem for you?”