His lover sure knew how to kill a good afterglow. Samira erupted from the couch and for a moment he thought she would flee upstairs, but she just stormed to the kitchen area of the single open-concept room.
“You’re making it sound like some tabloid story. It’s only sordid if we try to hide it. I’m not married. Neither are you. We aren’t doing anything wrong. I know it isn’t exactly something we’ve discussed, but there’s no rule saying we can’t be together—”
“What if I don’t know what I want? You keep jumping ahead—”
“And you keep refusing to.”
“You can’t assume just because I said I missed you and we slept together that all of our problems have magically disappeared.”
He came to his feet, needing to be eye to eye with her for this conversation though he didn’t try to approach her. “What problems? Do you not want me? You keep talking like the idea of us together is unthinkable, but that’s only true if you don’t want it enough to fight for it.”
“And that would make all the difference? If I fight suddenly it won’t matter who we are? That you’re Prince Aiden and I’m the Iranian nanny.”
“You’re American.”
“You sure your parents are going to see it that way?”
“Why are my parents in a conversation about us? This isn’t about them. It’s about you and me. And whether you actually want to be with me. Besides, Candy’s husband isn’t white. It didn’t stop them.”
“Candy isn’t the crown jewel of the Raines crown,” Samira snapped. “I heard your mother earlier. Trying to set you up with someone suitable. Someone from your boarding school? That’s the kind of person you should be with.”
“Why?” he demanded. “Because you’re scared?” He stalked toward her then, stopping only when she retreated, one hand held up like a shield. “What was this to you?” He waved at the wall he’d had her pinned to minutes ago.
“Sex? Really amazing sex? What did you think it was? My declaration that I’ve decided I want to be a politician’s wife?”
“You aren’t just someone I’m screwing. I want to be with you, Samira!” He loved her, but he had a feeling shouting those words at her in the middle of a fight might not be the best way to tell her.
“Maybe I don’t know if I want to be with you. Maybe I like being alone. Maybe I’m better off that way.” She flung the words at him, low and harsh, and he flinched as they found their target.
He’d heard those words before—or ones so similar they could have been the same. Thrown at him by Chloe as she told him she didn’t love him anymore. Didn’t want him anymore.
Why couldn’t he seem to stop falling in love with women who refused to let him in?
“Just stop pushing, Aiden. I can’t do this. I’m sorry.”
He was still caught in echoes of Chloe and missed his chance to stop her as she bolted toward the stairs, rushing up them and out of sight. Running away again. Aiden swore viciously under his breath.
He could chase her. Bang on the door. Break it down. Probably wake the girls in the process. Give them nightmares for months.
Shit. He couldn’t make a scene with his daughters asleep in the next room. Even when she made him fucking crazy.
But he couldn’t stay here. If he stayed in the cottage, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from going up there. He could still smell her on his skin. The woman he loved. The woman who was slipping through his fingers all the faster the more he tried to hold on.
After a cursory check of his clothes to make sure he was decent, he stalked out of the cottage. He didn’t know where he was going when he left, silently closing and locking the door behind him. He only knew he had to get away from here. From her. From the acid of her words, eating away at him from the inside out. From the fucking helpless feeling that there was nothing he could do to change her mind.
He headed back up to the main house, half-hoping to run into someone who could take his mind off his troubles, but when he reached the terrace, the stragglers from cocktail hour were all gone. The only evidence that remained of the gathering were a handful of half-empty liquor bottles left behind by the staff who had been tending bar.
Aiden snagged the Glenfiddich off the bar.
He’d read about alcoholism over the years, worried about Scott—and his own temptation to lose himself when things went sideways and it felt like there was nothing he could do to stop it. He knew that drinking alone and using alcohol to deal with stress were early warning signs, but that didn’t stop him from removing the cap and taking a long drink. Sometimes a man needed a drink, damn it.
The scotch was smooth—only the best from his grandfather’s store—and Aiden sighed as something unknotted in his shoulders as the silky liquid slid across his palate. He carried the bottle with him, lifting it regularly for another taste as he stalked into the moonlit gardens.
It was a romantic setting—shame the only woman he wanted to share it with was scared to be with him.
His mother would be more than happy to set him up with an appropriate match, but Aiden didn’t care about appropriate. He was in love with Samira. Didn’t that count for anything?
Apparently not to his mother. Or to Samira. Though he hadn’t said the words to her. The thought of having them thrown back in his face wasn’t exactly appealing. But how else could he make her see that he didn’t care about finding someone who would make his political life easier when she already made his entire life better?
He found his way to the rose garden and the fountain that burbled at its center. So freaking idyllic. He stared into the water, waiting for inspiration to strike, but all he had was frustration and scotch.
A crunch of gravel behind him caught his attention. He turned and for a moment all his brain registered was a female form in the darkness—but then he saw the blonde hair catching the moonlight and the slim athletic form that barely reached five feet, already starting to retreat at the sight of him.
“Candy.”
Her retreat halted at the sound of his voice. “Hey.” She approached, footsteps soft on the gravel walkway. “What are you doing out here?”
He raised the scotch in a mocking toast. “Celebrating my future.” She came to stand at his side and he eyed her as they both faced the fountain. “What about you?”
“Running away from my past.” Her voice was dry. “Anything particular you’re celebrating?”
“Evidently, it’s time for me to remarry. Mother invited Tamara Hilton. Wouldn’t we make a cute couple?”
“Have you seen Tamara Hilton since boarding school?”
He snorted. “Does it matter?” He lifted the scotch, taking a long, satisfying swallow. The alcohol moved through him, washing his bitterness down and replacing it with a pleasant warmth.
“If you aren’t ready, just tell her. She’ll understand,” Candy told him.
“Yes, our mother is so understanding.” He released a humorless laugh and chased it down with another taste of the Glenfiddich. Though that wasn’t really fair. It wasn’t that their mother didn’t understand—it was that she always thought she knew better, no matter what you thought you wanted.
Especially if what you wanted was a woman who didn’t fit the Raines mold.
“You don’t have to step into the life she built for you if you don’t want to,” Candy insisted. “You don’t have to live your life by their rules. You have a right to be happy, Aiden.”
“You say that like it’s so easy.” Candy had certainly never worried about living her life by anyone else’s rules. She’d run off to California and never looked back. Never given a second thought to anyone else in the family—but as he studied her now, the defensive line of her shoulders, the way she was hunkered down like it was her against the world, he had to wonder if she’d made the right call. “Are you happy in California? Really happy?”
“Are you?” she snapped back.
His lips twisted in a bitter grimace. Happy? He had been. But now… “I can be happy anywhere and doing anything as long as I have my girls.” Only his girls had started to include Samira. When had that happened? And how could he reset his heart when she didn’t want to be his? “Maybe I should go along with Mother’s master plan. My life would certainly be easier if I let her run it for me.” Just step back. Go through the motions. Stop caring. Stop hurting.
“But would it be yours?” Candy argued.
He frowned, irritated by this sister who had never bothered to know him. “Free will’s overrated, right? What’s it gotten you beyond a husband you lie to?” A husband none of them had even met before this week. “Sorry about spilling the beans, by the way. It didn’t occur to me that he wouldn’t know.” He turned his head to look at her and the world blurred and wobbled a bit with the sudden motion before his eyes agreed to focus. He studied his sister, the rigid blankness of her expression. “Why didn’t you tell him, Candy? Why didn’t you let him be there for you? You have to let people care, you know?”
He stared into the fountain, lifting the bottle, but not making it all the way to his lips. What was it about the women in his life? Samira. Candy. Chloe. Shoving him away like he had no right to love them. “Chloe pushed me away when she got sick,” he told her, words he rarely admitted to anyone, even his own family. “She thought she was protecting me, but I just wanted to be there for her. Instead it was her disease. Her fight. And I was the innocent bystander watching the mother of my children waste away.”
He’d loved her like she was the beginning and end of his world, but as soon as she was diagnosed, she’d started shutting him out. He’d tried to be understanding. He knew she was struggling to cope with her battle. With losing her battle. An impossible thing for anyone to cope with.
They’d planned their entire life for the future. Everything was about looking forward—forward to a time when the girls slept through the night and when he was done with the insane hours of law school and passing the bar and paying his dues at the firm. They’d talked about someday, making plans together, alternating between envisioning themselves in the White House or maybe just retired in Boca with a sunrise view. The future was their time. Everything they did was in service to the future—until suddenly she hadn’t had one.
“Even if there’s nothing we can do, even if there’s no way we can make it better, it still hurts when you won’t let us try,” Aiden said, his eyes inexplicably wet.
“I’m sorry,” Candy murmured. “I didn’t know that about Chloe.”
He released a bitter exhalation. “Badmouthing my sainted dead wife isn’t exactly my favorite pastime. And we all handle these things differently, right? If she threatened to divorce me when she was diagnosed, that was just how she processed grief, right? One day everyone’s happy and the next she’s dying and she doesn’t want me anywhere near her.” Another long swallow of scotch soothed the raw ache in his throat, coating it in liquid warmth. Candy had always kept people at a distance—just like Chloe at the end. “It doesn’t make you stronger, you know. When you refuse to lean on anyone. It just makes you…” He paused, the reality of his own situation sinking deep. “Alone.”
He tried for another drink of Glenfiddich, but the bottle was empty. Had he drunk all that? Crap. Even half a bottle was going to hurt tomorrow. His stomach roiled uneasily, reminding him he hadn’t eaten much at dinner. “I guess that’s the end of my bender.”
“Do you need help getting back to the cottage?”
“No. I’ve got this.” He huffed out a laugh when he swayed, ruining the firmness of his words. He was officially a drunk, stumbling around in the night. The thought didn’t bother him as much as it probably should. There was a certain freedom in failing to live up to expectations for a change. He started down the path, but the thought of Candy pushing everyone away, living with the world at arm’s distance kept nagging at him.
Samira’s words echoed in his brain. Maybe I like being alone. Was that what it was? He spun suddenly, putting out one hand to catch his balance as the world rocked like an unsteady surfboard. “Do you like being alone, Candy? Is that why you ran away to California and left us all behind?”
He saw her swallow, and a single low word answered him. “No.”
No. But then, she had Ren, didn’t she? She had the one person she let in.
He nodded and turned to make his way back to the cottage—and the woman who refused to let him in. He could see the light shining in an upstairs window. She was awake. Almost close enough to touch. But impossibly out of reach.
* * * * *
The footsteps on the stairs were heavy and uneven, almost stumbling.
Samira held her breath, listening through the midnight quiet. Would he knock on her door? Half of her desperately hoped he would, while the other half remained equally desperate for him to walk past.
She was hiding. She’d been hiding since she ran up the stairs earlier. Trying to save herself. She was afraid to fight for him. Afraid of being wrong again. Afraid that she couldn’t trust herself. Her own judgment. Her own emotions.
She loved him, but her heart had been wrong before. So incredibly wrong.
His footsteps paused on the landing and Samira closed her eyes. Her light was on. He would know she was awake. If he knocked, would she answer?
Even if there was more to say, this wasn’t a conversation for dark bedrooms in the middle of the night. This was an emotionless, cold-light-of-day conversation.
She could almost convince herself she heard him breathing on the other side of the door. Heard his hand lifting to knock. But then the footsteps trudged onward—to the cottage’s master bedroom—and she let out the breath she’d been holding, something hot pricking behind her eyes. She couldn’t tell if she felt more disappointment or relief.
She loved him, but was it enough? Even if she could trust her unreliable heart, there was still the chance that she would make him miserable. That she could sabotage his future with her mere presence in his life.
She was making the cautious choice, but she had to believe it was the right one for both of them. In the long run, he would probably even agree with her. But she couldn’t stop seeing the flash of hurt in his eyes when she’d told him they were just sex. That was all they could be.
It’s for the best, she chanted to herself, her new mantra.
She’d made the right choice. She had.