by Aly Martinez
My conscience wept.
The sight of Brady holding a six-month-old little boy with black hair and brown eyes was worse than any slice from the blade of reality. It was a direct hit from the rusty, jagged knife of the past.
My back collided with Tom’s hard chest as I blinked frantically, trying to stay in the present. Memories of Brady holding Lucas flooded my brain until I was choking on them.
The chill of Brady’s gaze raked over me as he shifted the baby in his arms. “Jesus, Charlotte. You couldn’t take the day off?”
“I…” I smoothed the top of my scrubs down and did the best I could to keep my voice even. “I had a patient. I just came from the hospital.”
“Well, I’m so glad you could find the time in your busy schedule to join us.”
It could have been an innocent statement coming from anyone else. But not from Brady.
It still killed me the way he so fiercely blamed me for everything. It’d been almost ten years and the ever-present disdain still radiated from his eyes when we saw each other. I’d often thought I could have waited a hundred years and he still would have scowled at me from the grave.
Time hadn’t healed his wounds, either.
He hated me. I could have lived with that if he hadn’t been the only piece of Lucas I had left.
And I’d lost that too.
It was no secret that I hadn’t handled the emotional upheaval of Lucas’s disappearance well. Brady had lost his mind when I’d gone back to school five days after our son was taken. But everyone had their own ways of dealing with hardship—or, in our case, life-altering devastation. For me, it was to throw myself into my career.
I couldn’t sit at home, waiting for the phone to ring or a knock at the door from someone saying that they had found him. The what-ifs and regrets of that day were nearly crippling without being forced to relive them for hours on end. Yes, I waited with bated breath for someone to bring him back to me. Praying to any and every god who would ever exist. Crying oceans of tears. Losing parts of myself in the depths of despair. But, no matter how many times I’d bargained with the universe, nothing had changed. I wanted my son back more than I wanted to see another sunrise, but with no leads, there was only so much I could do.
Brady took to the media and worked closely with the Center for Missing and Exploited Children while I desperately tried to disappear into the shadows. Our story had made national news for a brief spell. And the finger-pointing had been more than I could handle.
What kind of a mother leaves their child alone in a stroller?
She deserves to be in jail.
She probably killed him and made up this whole kidnapping thing as a cover.
Those were a few of the most popular comments echoing through the media.
By way of the popular opinion, I was guilty.
I was barely surviving my own condemnation without the entire world casting stones at me too.
So I went back to work, doing everything possible to keep myself from self-destructing. And people misunderstood this as me being unaffected. I’d sacrificed everything for my career. Love. Friends. Time with my family. But make no mistake about it. Without hesitation, I would have given it all up for one second with Lucas.
Straightening my backbone, I refused to show Brady any weakness. My heart was breaking, but I wouldn’t allow him to make that day any more difficult than it already was. “I’m here, okay? Let’s cut the bullshit. Have some cake. And then go back to pretending the other doesn’t exist.”
His jaw ticked as he stared down at me. “Right. Of course. Pretending. The Charlotte Mills way.”
I barked a humorless laugh. “Yeah, Brady. I’m the one pretending as you sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to our ten-year-old missing child.”
The words hadn’t escaped my mouth before I regretted them. It was a stupid jab spoken out of anger. I should have known better than to provoke him. I’d become skilled at dodging his insults over the years, but that one statement opened me up for Brady’s signature blow. There wasn’t armor in the world strong enough to protect me from its assault.
I braced.
His face became hard, and his nostrils flared with rage.
It was coming.
The air around us chilled.
“Brady,” Tom warned at my back.
But it was too late…
“And whose fault is that, Charlotte?”
The words tore through me. It was a truth and a fact not even I could deny.
Mine.
It was my fault.
Always and forever.
“Enough!” Her voice breezed into the silent room like the warning whistle of an arrow.
I imagined her walking in like a superhero, her arm stretched out in front of her, the furniture sliding back to the walls at her will. In truth, she tiptoed in on a pair of kitten heels, wearing a pair of crisp, white linen pants and a bright-coral silk blouse that popped in contrast to her dark brown bob. At fifty-eight, she was just as beautiful as she’d been when I was a kid. But, for as petite and proper as she appeared to be on the outside, on the inside, my mother was a warrior. She’d fought the entire world on my behalf when Lucas had gone missing.
“Susan…” Brady started, but he didn’t bother finishing the thought. He was no opponent for the likes of Susan Mills. Not many people were.
“Today is not about you, Brady,” she snapped. “You stand there, holding your son, spewing insults and blame? It’s never too early to teach your children a thing or two about understanding and forgiveness. Be an example for him.” She palmed each side of William’s tiny head, covering his ears, and then hissed, “And stop being an asshole on my grandson’s birthday.”
God, I loved my mom.
Brady shifted the baby in his arms, and without another word or glance in my direction, he backed out of the room, his tail firmly tucked between his legs.
My shoulders rounded forward as relief washed over me.
At five-six, I was over four inches taller than my mother, but when she wrapped me in her arms, I felt like a child again.
“Hey, love,” she cooed, all signs of her hard-ass attitude erased.
“Hey, Mom,” I murmured.
Tom ambled away, giving us space without wandering far.
“You okay?” she asked, stepping out of my embrace.
“I’m fine.”
She kept her hands on my biceps and studied my face for any sign of a lie.
If she found any, she had the graciousness to let it go.
I wasn’t fine. And I hadn’t been in a long time. She’d hated it, but over the years, she’d had no choice but to accept it. The happy and carefree Charlotte Mills she’d raised had died on that fated September morning.
She slid her assessing gaze to the side. “You know, Tom. You do carry a gun. It wouldn’t have killed you to take care of that situation before I got here.”
He lifted his head from his phone, a small—and entirely handsome—smile pulling at his lips. “Not fond of spending my retirement in the slammer, Susan.”
She grinned and then batted her eyelashes. (Legit Betty Boop–style.) “No. I guess we can’t have that, now can we?”
I flicked my eyes between the two of them as they stood there staring at each other, the blatant chemistry damn near suffocating me.
God. I wanted that. With someone. Anyone. Though that would have probably required me to let someone in and allow them to get to know me. In a lot of ways, that insurmountable task seemed harder than finding out who had taken my son.
“Anyway,” I drawled to break their invisible current.
Mom shook her head to snap herself out of it. “I hear it’s time for cake.”
My shoulders tensed. When would it stop hurting so damn much? I read in a book about grief once that it was all about baby steps, focusing on each individual day. It had been ten years and I still felt like I was living frozen in time, not necessarily waiting for him to come home but still unable to figure out how
to move forward.
Maybe it was time for big steps. Giant, even. I couldn’t keep doing this to myself. One day, I was going to wake up and realize that, in my desperate escape from the pain in the present, I’d let the future pass me by.
Hell, I’d already allowed a decade to slide into past tense.
What if I never got to meet someone who loved me the way my dad had loved my mom?
Or even experience the way Tom looked at her as though she were the only woman he’d ever seen?
If I kept on the same path, taking baby step after baby step, working myself to the bone to avoid reality, I was going to die on that path—miserable and alone.
But how do you move forward when all you really want is to go back?
“Charlotte,” Mom prompted. “It’s time.”
She’d never been more right.
Sucking in a deep breath, I linked my arm with my mom’s and then looked back at Lucas’s picture above the fireplace. “Happy Birthday, baby.”
And then, together, the three of us walked outside to have cake.
Tom stood at my side, doing his best to deflect Brady’s glares, and my mom held my hand as I sobbed while singing the saddest rendition of “Happy Birthday” to ever be sung. Less than an hour later, I excused myself and headed home, where the pity party was just getting started.
* * *
“Uhhh ohhh,” Tanner drawled behind a pot of bubbling red sauce, a giant shit-eating grin pulling at his lips. “I spilled it on my shirt.”
Gripping the back of my neck, I made a U-turn and continued to pace a path behind the row of cameramen and sound engineers.
Quietly, I mumbled to myself, “You always spill it on your shirt, asshole. Learn to lift a damn spoon to your mouth.”
The idea of watching Tanner flirt with a camera while making vongoli was very low on my day’s priority list. It was only slightly above being waterboarded and hung by my toenails. Sure, the day had been shitty, but that was pretty much the permanent order of my priority list when it came to watching my brother strip his shirt off for his adoring fans.
Yes. He was a chef. Not the star of Magic Mike, though if you asked the president at The Food Channel, the ratings were surprisingly similar.
“And cut!” the director yelled before turning a seriously scary glower my way. “You have got to stop talking!”
“I didn’t say anything!” I defended—and lied.
I’d been grumbling under my breath for at least a half hour. She’d already threatened to throw me off the set once. But, really, the first time had been totally warranted. I wasn’t a TV director and I knew beyond nothing about cooking, but even I could tell that he was stirring an empty pot.
“I can hear you! We can all hear you.” She waved her arms around my brother’s kitchen, motioning to a team of cameramen nodding in agreement.
Defiantly crossing my arms over my chest, I feigned ignorance. “Sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Must have been someone else.”
Her eyes bulged and her lips started doing this crazy twitching thing that made it look like she was having a seizure.
“Okay, okay,” Tanner interjected, peeling the half apron from around his hips. “Andrea, can you give us a minute?”
She sliced her gaze over to me, but her words were aimed at my brother. “Absolutely, as long as you promise to get rid of him when you’re done.”
“Get rid of me? Are you kidding?” I stabbed a finger toward Tanner then hooked my thumb at my chest. “We share strands of the same DNA. And you want him to—”
Tanner gave my shoulder a hard shove before stating, “I’ll get rid of him.”
“The hell you will!” I shot back, but only because I was pissed. I wanted to leave more than she wanted me gone.
Shaking his head, he dug a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and led me out to the porch. “Let’s go. Spit it out. I’ve only got a minute to sort your shit, so talk fast.”
“She’s a witch,” I grumbled, jutting my chin at the woman barking orders to someone on the other side of the sliding glass doors.
After flicking his lighter to life, he hovered the orange flame over the tip of the cigarette dangling between his lips and talked around it. “Amazing director, decent in bed, but crazier than a tiger on acid. I suggest you don’t piss her off any more than you already have.”
Raking a hand through my thick, blond hair, I asked in all seriousness, “Should I be concerned that you’ve seen a tiger on acid?”
He chuckled. “Probably. But let’s deal with your shit first. Tell me what’s got you ranting and pacing around like Dad the day we accidentally scratched his Vette?”
I scoffed. “Please. I’m nothing like Dad.”
His baby-blue eyes, which matched my own, danced with humor. “That’s probably because you’d never have the balls to buy a Vette. A ding on the ol’ Tahoe just isn’t the same.” He grinned and exhaled a thick cloud of smoke through his nose.
I waved the smoke away from my face. “You’re a dick. But I need a favor.”
His smile grew. “Reeeeaaaalllly?”
I mentally groaned. I hated asking him for shit. It was always the same song and dance, but as much as I would have liked to handle this thing with Dr. Mills on my own, I needed Tanner.
“What are you doing on Saturday?”
He tipped his head to the side and eyed me warily. “Probably not whatever you’re about to ask me to do.”
“I need you to cook.”
I’d spent the morning ordering a gazillion pounds of meat (rough exaggeration) and calling in four of our sous chefs to make burger patties, pasta salads, potato salads, and a bunch of other amazing picnic-style foods Tanner would never allow us to serve at the restaurant.
“You need me to cook for you every day. Seriously, I can’t watch you make a PB and J without cringing, but why specifically on Saturday?”
“I’m trying to get Travis an appointment with that new pulmonologist, so I volunteered to cater their Spring Fling.”
“And you think having celebrity chef Tanner Reese show up is going to help get your foot in the door?”
I rolled my eyes. “Your humility is astounding. No. I don’t need celebrity Tanner Reese to do anything. I do, however, need my brother to show up, be charming, and grill a literal shit-ton of hamburgers. Though, if someone asks for an autograph, sign it. Just, please, for the love of all that’s holy, wait for them to actually ask. It’s embarrassing watching you snatch cocktail napkins out of people’s hands each time you exit the kitchen. You have no idea how many of those ‘collector’s items’ the bar staff throws away each night.”
It was his turn to roll his eyes. “One time. One time.” He paused and gazed off into the distance at the picturesque pond dancing in the background.
I’d always loved that plantation house, with its wraparound porches, oak-lined driveway, and the massive weeping willow that decorated the front lawn. It was the perfect house to raise a family. Thus, it had boggled my mind when my brother of all people had bought it two years earlier.
“No,” he said absently.
“No, what?”
He turned to face me. “No, I’m not spending my first day off in almost a month making a bunch of burgers for a Spring Fling. Get Raul to do it.”
I took a long stride toward him. “Don’t fucking do the diva bit today.”
He smiled. “I’m not being a diva. I’m exhausted. I need a day off.”
“So take next weekend off,” I offered—though I had no idea what the hell I’d do without him.
We booked out months in advance on the weekends. And, as much as I hated to admit it, most of that hype was because customers knew that Tanner would be there, not only in the kitchen, but also meandering around the dining room. Worse, with the soft opening of the new restaurant quickly approaching too, I doubted either one of us would be able to take a weekend off for a long while.
“Can’t,” he replied. “We have the Leblanc we
dding reception. He paid a small fortune to buy us out for the night.”
I ground my teeth, desperation getting the best of me. “I need you there.” And then the truth escaped my mouth before I had a chance to stop it. “You have to come. What if she tells me no?”
He paused with the cigarette halfway to his mouth. “She?”
I interlocked my fingers and rested them on the top of my head. “Dr. Mills. I was kinda hoping you’d come and put her in that weird trance thing that makes women actually like you.”
“The trance thing,” he repeated, humor thick in his voice.
“I don’t know. Okay? I just can’t afford to fuck this up and I thought maybe, if you were there, I’d have a better shot at getting her to say yes.”
I had no idea that a human face was capable of stretching that wide.
“Say it… You want celebrity Tanner Reese.”
“No, what I want is for you to stop talking in third person.”
“Say it.”
“No.”
“Then no. I can’t make it.”
“Fuck!” I exploded, tugging at the top of my hair. “Fine. I want the minor celebrity—”
“Major,” he countered.
I glowered and then amended through clenched teeth, “Major celebrity Tanner to come—”
“Full name or it doesn’t count.”
Closing my eyes, I tipped my head back and stared up at the wooden slats of the second-floor balcony. “I need you, major celebrity Tanner Reese, to come cook burgers and help me schmooze a doctor into taking your nephew on as a patient.”
When he didn’t reply with a smartass comment, I pried my eyes open and found him watching me with a satisfied grin.
He smacked my arm before giving it a reassuring squeeze. “I’m fucking with you. I was in the minute you said it was for Trav.”
I shrugged his hand off. “You’re a dick.” But knowing he’d be there lifted the weight of the world off my shoulders. If anyone could talk a middle-aged, crotchety doctor into treating Travis, it was my brother.
Laughing, he put his cigarette out and headed to the door. “Whatever you need, man. Text me the details and let yourself out.” Just before the door closed behind him, he leaned his upper body out and said, “Go around the side of the house. I hear it’s past Andrea’s feeding time, and I don’t have time to save your ass with the ladies twice in one week.” He winked, and then he was gone.