Four years and five months ago…
Patience didn’t come naturally to Ren, but he’d learned to be patient when he needed to be. Not for the first time, he thanked God he’d learned discipline along with his martial arts training. Otherwise he might have lost his mind waiting for Candy to admit she wanted him again.
It had been five weeks. He’d expected she would need a few days to think about things, but he was almost starting to wonder if he’d misjudged, if she wasn’t going to change her mind at all, if that one insane encounter in the bathroom of a club whose name he couldn’t even remember was going to be all they ever had.
Then he walked out of the Elite Protection offices one evening to find her glaring down at her car.
There is a God.
Candy loved her gadgets, loved being on the cutting edge of technology—which meant she drove an untested prototype electric car that had an unfortunate tendency to die on her when it sat too long in the parking lot.
“When are you going to get one that runs?”
“Soon.” She turned to face him, her expression unamused.
He arched a brow at his bike in silent invitation.
Her gaze slid helplessly to the bike where it crouched, waiting, in the next spot and she hesitated, as if weighing the lesser of two evils. “I have to wonder if you sabotaged my car just to get me on that thing.”
Ren’s hopes took a nosedive. Okay. Maybe this wasn’t fate intervening on his behalf. Maybe this wasn’t going to end the way his dick wanted it to. Maybe she wasn’t interested in a repeat performance or anything more from him. She still needed a ride—just not the kind his other head wanted him to give her.
“I don’t think I could figure out how to sabotage that thing without the help of a NASA engineer.” He flipped open the storage compartment and pulled out a spare helmet. “No strings,” he promised.
She plucked the helmet from his hand. “Thanks.
Pretty Boy smiled—hoping it didn’t look like a grimace. “What are friends for?”
He straddled the bike, strapping on his own helmet before holding out a hand for her, helping her balance as she threw her own leg over the saddle. He didn’t ask if she’d ever ridden a bike before—her stiffness spoke for itself. He closed his fingers around her hand when she would have taken it back, placing it on his waist.
“Don’t let go,” he murmured, his voice sounding husky to his own ears through the helmet microphone as he fired up the engine.
* * * * *
Present day…
She should have known her mother would have planned a seating chart even for just a casual family dinner. Nothing ever went unplanned when Regina Montgomery-Raines was on hand.
Her grandfather sat at the head of the table, with Charlotte in a place of honor at his right hand and Aiden at his left. On Charlotte’s side of the table, her mother had seated Scott, Alicia and Ren, so that Ren was in easy interrogation range to where Regina presided over the foot of the table with her husband to her right. Candy sat between her father and Aiden, filling out the far side.
Which meant she was close enough to hear most of what her parents were saying to Ren, but not close enough to gracefully intervene if things started to go south.
Scott attempted to flirt with Alicia—who was visibly unimpressed and spent most of the meal smiling adoringly at Ren. Charlotte did her best to ignore Scott’s attempts to bait her as well, her attention fixed on her grandfather—so Scott made friends with his whiskey glass instead.
As the soup course was served, Candy focused on her food—catching snippets of the conversations batting around the table.
“What do your parents do, Ren?”
Candy perked up, listening to see if he would lie. Rock star and performance artist were fairly specific careers.
“I was raised by my grandparents. He was a carpenter and she was a homemaker.”
Her mother glowed with approval. “I will never understand why women these days feel the need to work outside the home. Taking care of your family is a full-time job.”
Her mother, the feminist.
“Some people need the money, Mother. And some people just like having a purpose in life other than breeding and taking care of their man,” Candy interjected, and immediately regretted opening her mouth when her mother sent her a death glare. Okay then. Back to her soup.
A conversation from the opposite end of the table reached her ears.
“I’m not having a bachelorette party, Scott, and if I were going to indulge in such a vulgar tradition, I certainly wouldn’t want my brother to arrange male strippers for me.”
“Not strippers. Escorts. You gotta get your rocks off while you can. I bet you a hundred bucks Tug is going to have pros at his bachelor party.”
“Tug doesn’t need strippers or pros or any caveman rituals to be ready to marry me. We made the decision to skip the bachelor and bachelorette parties together.”
Scott caught Candy’s eye across the table, giving her a significant look as if the lack of bachelor party was a comment on Tug’s sexuality, his expression exaggerated thanks to the whiskey.
A gentle hand brushed her right arm. “You okay?”
Aiden.
She’d left him behind when she was eighteen and hadn’t looked back, but somehow he’d turned out reasonably well-adjusted, in spite of the pressure of the Montgomery-Raines clan. Or so she’d believed before that late-night phone call. “Are you?” she countered softly. “You sounded pretty rattled on the phone the other night.”
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.