A Family Affair: The Wish: Truth in Lies, Book 9 (17 page)

“I want to marry you, Nat. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” He squeezed her hand, inched closer. “You. Not anyone else.” Pause. “Just you.”

“And Jeanine, little Miss Calculator? Where does she fit in? Will you invite her over for dessert and keep me around for the main meal?”

He blew out a breath, shook his head. “You’re exaggerating. Calm down. Jeanine and I have a professional relationship, and whether or not my mother wants it to be more, it isn’t.” Pause. “And it’s not going to be.”

“Really?” She yanked her hand away, stepped out of reach. “Well, maybe someone should have told Jeanine before she kissed you and tried to stick her hand down your pants.”

Pink splashed Robert’s cheeks, spread over his nose and down his chin. “Obviously, she had too much to drink and didn’t know what she was doing.”

Natalie raised a brow, crossed her arms over her chest. “I think she knew exactly what she was doing.”

“Nat. Please. Let’s not turn this into something it isn’t.”

He knew just how to warm that voice into honey and drizzle it over her senses so she forgot to be mad. Was this the beginning of the lies and deceit and cheating? “What did your mother say about me?” She met his gaze, held it. “I want the truth.”

“I can’t.” He dragged a hand over his face, sighed. “My mother has very strong opinions and I’m not going to let her words hurt you.” His eyes turned bright, brighter still. “I love you, Natalie, and I will not let her hurt you.”

“Hurt me?” She swiped at her cheeks. “You’re breaking my heart, Robert. Telling me you won’t let your mother’s words hurt me tells me she spat out some pretty cruel ones.” Her chest ached, but she pushed on. “I’m not good enough for you but I bet she thinks Miss Calculator is.”

“Please. My mother can be cruel and she makes assumptions that aren’t true.”

Or they are
. Natalie sipped in air, forced out the questions she didn’t want to know, but needed to ask. “What kind of assumptions?”

He ran a hand over his forehead, fidgeted. “She said you want to marry me for my money, that you don’t really care about me. I know she’s only saying that because she views you as competition. It’s what she does.”

She’d like to say this sounded crazy, but hadn’t she seen a similar reaction from her own mother? If she really thought about it, hadn’t her cousin Gina’s parents treated her as though she didn’t matter, like she was an object to be tossed around, tormented, even discarded? And hadn’t she acted that way to Gina, too, as if she were unimportant because she weighed more than Natalie and didn’t know how to flirt and flaunt herself? Well, who got the last laugh, huh? Now, Natalie was the one about to be tormented and ridiculed by the mother of the man she loved. All this venom and hatred and the woman didn’t even know about Natalie’s past. Had she really thought she could escape what she’d done, just pretend she hadn’t slept with men to boost her ego, feel desirable, destroy relationships?

“Nat? Hey, Nat. Don’t cry.” Robert swiped a tear from her cheek, said in a gentle voice, “We’ll figure this out. I promise.”

She shook her head. No, they wouldn’t figure anything out. They’d only been kidding themselves by creating imaginary boundaries around their past. It was all fake; they were fakes because people couldn’t draw lines and cut out the parts of themselves they didn’t like. They had to face those parts, like she’d done with her sleeping around, and they had to change because they wanted to change, because they couldn’t stand what they were doing and what they’d become. “We’re a lie,” she said, the tears coming faster, spilling along her cheeks to her chin, onto her neck. “You. Me. Us.”

“Don’t say that. It’s not true.”

“Oh, Robert, you are so brilliant and so naïve. I wanted you to love me so much I was willing to be anything for you, but I can’t do this anymore. The reason I kept you out of my town and away from my family is that I didn’t want you to know about my past or my parents. I’m not proud of either.”

“I thought your parents were fine.”

His expression said the opposite, but what was one more lie stacked on a relationship built on them? “They were on their best behavior. The second meeting would have been more obvious. My mother would hint around ways to get into your bank account like she did last time when I shut her down by telling her you were giving me a loan for a salon. But she’s not done with that. She’ll start on your appearance, too. If you lose any more hair, she’ll suggest implants or a toupee. And a self-tanner and new clothes…it won’t stop until she’s dismantled every single part of you, and still she won’t be satisfied.” She paused long enough for the words to saturate his brain and then continued. “You weren’t the only one sidestepping matchmaking attempts. My mother always has a list and they start and end with a man’s profession. She called accounting boring but dependable.”

“I’m not afraid of your mother or her commentary,” he said in a quiet voice.

He had never done battle with a woman like Lydia Servetti. She did not play fair and she would not quit until she’d humiliated him. “It’s not just my mother, Robert. It’s us. We only love what we know about each other.” Pain spilled through her next words. “But what about the dark parts we haven’t shared, the ones that make us want to cry when we think of them? We’ve shut down those parts and cut them off from each other. I thought we’d share in time, because how could we move forward without complete honesty, right? That’s what my friend, Roman Ventori, told me. He warned me to be honest with you a long time ago. I didn’t listen, but now I see he was right. I should have told you everything and if we didn’t survive, then it wasn’t meant to be.”

“Nat.” He held up his hands, palms outstretched. “Please, don’t.”

That action only made her angrier. Who was he? A saint come to forgive her transgressions, sins he didn’t even know about? Well, she would not let him forgive her without knowing what she’d done. He would not get to play saint without reason. “I slept with a lot of men. Young, old, single, married. I destroyed relationships and families and I didn’t care. I wanted the high, the thrill of being wanted, and sex became my drug. That’s the real reason I never wanted you in Magdalena.” She swiped at her cheeks, forced herself to hold his gaze. “Because of the men and the sex.”

He stared at her, his dark eyes misting behind his glasses. “You’re not that woman anymore.”

What was wrong with him?
“Did you hear me?” Her voice escalated with her anger. “I ruined people’s lives with sex. I even had sex with my cousin’s boyfriend, just because I felt like it. What kind of person does that? Huh? What kind of person goes along with a scheme to break up a man’s marriage by drugging him and pretending to seduce him?” Her shoulders shook, her chest heaved, as sobs of grief took over. “I’ll tell you what kind. An evil one.”

“No, not evil.” Robert’s words tried to soothe her. “I’d say a confused one.”

“What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you tell me to go to hell? Call me a whore? Why are you acting like it doesn’t matter?”

“Because I’ve known about your past for a long time.”

The confession spun through her so fast it made her dizzy. “You knew?”

“I checked you out right after we finished ballroom dance classes. I found out you lived in Magdalena, that you worked at a salon doing nails and facials, that your cousin was the physical therapist—” he shifted from foot to foot, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and fixed his gaze on the ground “—and it didn’t take more than one visit to O’Reilly’s Bar to hear about the men.” He sighed. “After you told me the truth about your real job, I figured you might work up the courage to tell me about the men. I waited, but…”

“Why did you stay?”

Robert dragged his gaze to hers, reached out, and clasped her hands in his. “Isn’t it obvious, Nat? I love you.”

All she’d ever wanted in her entire life was for a man to say that and truly mean it. And now, the man who owned her very soul had spoken those words, and they broke her heart. She and Robert lived in different worlds, ones that would never unite. She’d found a way to escape her old one, including her parents’ claims on what constituted self-worth, and had begun to rebuild a new world filled with hope and feeling good about herself. But Robert could not climb out of the existence he shared with his mother, an existence that crippled and snuffed out the soul, and she could not be a part of that world, no matter how much she loved the man in it.

“Did you hear me, Nat?” He touched her cheek. “I said I love you.”

She sniffed, nodded and spoke the words that would separate them forever. “I love you, too, Robert. But it’s not enough, and I think we both know that.”

“
W
hat in the
name of all that’s holy have you done, Rex?”

The big lug hung his head and ran both hands over his face. “I don’t know, Pop. I thought I was doing the right thing. Now I got Kathleen ticked at me for talking her into it and Bree refusing to have anything to do with me.” He looked up, his eyes wet. “When is it such a crime for a man to protect his children?”

Pop eyeballed him. “When the protection he’s providing brings hurt to those children. The last dang thing on this earth Bree needed was for you to spin a tale. That girl’s
been upside down
since Brody died, not knowing who to trust, how to start over, even if she
could
start over. Look how she booted her friends away. Didn’t even congratulate Gina on the new pregnancy. That’s not like Bree.”

Rex nodded. “I know. It tore me up to watch her and I knew I had to do something.”

Pop shook his head. “Well, the something you picked was the wrong something.”

“How can I fix this, Pop? I don’t know what to do.”

“It’s a lot easier to get the hen back in the henhouse before she’s gotten out.”

“Huh? That makes no sense.”

“No, it doesn’t, unless you think about it.” He picked up a pizzelle, studied it. “What I’m saying, Rex, is it makes doing the right thing a lot easier if you hadn’t done the wrong thing in the first place. The only reason you brought that boy to town was so he could size the place up to sell. That is plain cold and wrong on every level of wrong. Then you put the boy smack in the middle of the lie. I heard all about it from Kathleen. She said you put poor Roman Ventori in a bad spot and threw Adam to the wolves. Seems that boy met Bree in Chicago at the trade show, huh? Instant attraction is the way I heard it.” He nibbled his pizzelle, thought about the mess families created for each other in the name of trying to help.

“How was I to know the guy might actually care about Bree as more than a quick way to pass time. She’s got a heart as big as Magdalena but a man like that would be on the lookout for a woman with class, culture, and breeding. Like the Christine Desantro type. You know, rich-bred, not somebody whose father owns a cabinet-making business.”

“Says who?” Rex had some strange notions about what drew a man and a woman to each other and made them stick, and it was not a last name or the way they pronounced
tomato
. “I never knew you to have such a low opinion of your own daughter and such a high opinion of a person with a fat wallet.”

Rex turned whiter than the flour Pop used to make his pizzelles. “I love Bree more than my own breath. She’s the princess of my world and there’s never been a man who deserved her, nor will there be. I’m just saying a rich guy like Adam Brandon isn’t going to see Bree’s qualities, other than her looks and her gullible nature, and he’ll take advantage of both.”

Pop slashed a hand in the air and scowled. “The boy’s a real gem. I had a nice conversation with him and he gets my vote. Mimi’s, too. And Sal Ventori said he was a class act.” When Rex raised a bushy eyebrow, Pop shook his head. “Don’t worry, I didn’t give my opinion about what you did and Roman wouldn’t tell his father about your plans either. Confidentiality and all that. Nope, that’s on you, Rex, but you should have heard Sal talking about Adam like he wished his daughter were home so he could introduce them. But then he laughed and said all the boy needed was a wife and a few babies and did I know of anyone. Something about the way he looked at me made me wonder if he knew the boy was already head over heels for Bree.”

“You really think I was wrong for trying to protect her?”

Pop shot him a look. “That depends. Did she ask for protection?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean anything.” He snatched a pizzelle. “That girl didn’t know she needed protection from that loser she married either, so how would she know about this one?” Rex let out a big sigh and chomped on the pizzelle.

“Brandon isn’t a loser and you know that.” Pop tapped a finger against his chin. “He’s a keeper. What were you really afraid of, Rex? That he’d whisk Bree and the girls off to Chicago and it would be good-bye Magdalena?” The stricken look on Rex’s face said,
Bingo
! Pop had nailed the truth or a good piece of it. “So,” he said in a knowing voice, “You wanted to make sure your girl stayed close and what better way than to give the Brandon boy the boot?”

“It wasn’t like that, Pop.” Rex set his half-eaten pizzelle on his plate, clasped his hands. “At least not on purpose. I want her to be happy; is that too much to ask?”

“Whose definition of happy? Yours or Bree’s?” The shrug told Pop that Rex had been the one doling out the happiness recipe and hadn’t bothered to ask his daughter if she agreed. “You got to make this right by Bree.”

“How the hell am I going to do that?” His eyes grew brighter than a hundred-watt bulb. “The girl won’t talk to me; said she can’t trust her own father. If I want to visit with the girls, Kathleen has to bring them to the house because Bree doesn’t want to see me either.” His sigh filled the room, said he was sorrier than all get-out. “If I could undo this mess, I would. All of it. I’d keep my mouth shut and tell Bree straight-up if she didn’t get a life, I was selling the place. Maybe she could have respected that and respected me.”

Pop
tsk-tsked
. “Nothing’s so bad that you got to sink in a hole over it. There’s always a solution, even if it’s not the easiest or the most obvious. We’ll figure a way out of this, don’t you worry. Bree will be inviting you to dinner before you know it.” Pop slid him a smile, added, “’Course we both know Kathleen will have to bring the dinner seeing as Bree’s never been the greatest in the kitchen.”

That made Rex smile. “Damn straight, Pop.” The smile spread. “Damn straight indeed.”

P
op was
in the kitchen getting ready to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for him and Lucy. One thing about his granddaughter, come lunchtime, she wanted to eat, and nothing stopped her—not nerves, worry, excitement, not even her current situation with Jax and Jeremy Ross Dean. He’d heard the two young men had an altercation of sorts, but Harry Blacksworth, the eyewitness, said fists and weapons were not involved, unless you counted a smart mouth a weapon. Lots of accusations and phrases Harry had never heard before, and the dang conflict went on in the back room of Harry’s Folly with Harry serving as referee and voice of reason. Pop wished he’d been there to witness that. Harry had a good heart and when he settled down and didn’t let his heart take over, he had a good amount of sound judgment, too. That’s why Pop had started preparing him for his future role as the Godfather of Magdalena. You never knew when the good Lord was going to call you, and Pop wasn’t about to leave the town without guidance. Mimi knew what she was about, had suffered enough heartache for the compassionate part, but if you were gonna listen with an ear toward guidance and understanding, you dang well ought to know what the other side of good looked like. Mimi was a no-nonsense person, but she hadn’t jumped in a pool of bad intentions like Harry had…like Pop had, too, though not many in town knew of his “other” side. Thank the good Lord his Lucinda came along and rescued him from his own self-importance.

He laid out four slices of bread, had just opened the peanut butter when the front door creaked and he heard Lucy talking to somebody. A male voice, not strong like Nate Desantro or Ben Reed’s but kind of nasally. Only one person had that sound: Jeremy Ross Dean. Now that was interesting because Harry told him just yesterday that the boy was ready to give up on Lucy because as the kid put it,
There was no hope left, not since the tattooed competition showed up
. But that voice in the other room sure sounded like Jeremy. Pop rested his knife on the open peanut butter jar and inched toward the living room. A step closer and he could investigate…

“So, what have you been up to?”

“Just working. Harry has me creating a few more dishes and we had a sample night last week. Pasta primavera was the favorite pick.”

Yup, that was Jeremy Ross Dean, all right. If he didn’t sound like a sad sack, then Pop didn’t know who did.

“That’s good. I like pasta and vegetables.”

“Yup.”

Silence. Too much silence. Pop had half a mind to swat Jeremy on the back of the head and tell him to shape up and stop with the woe-is-me routine because nobody wanted to live around that.

“Jeremy?”

“Huh?”

“What’s wrong? You haven’t called in five days and you haven’t stopped by in six. Teresina misses you.”

The hurt and sadness in Lucy’s voice said Teresina wasn’t the only one who missed him. No siree. Pop had an ear for interpreting the meaning between the words and Lucy’s said,
Miss you
.

“Why do you think something’s wrong?”

Was the boy serious? He came across like a cow in labor and now he asked a question like that? Pop really should give him a swat on the back of the head.

“Jeremy. Tell me.” And if that wasn’t persuasive enough, she finished with a “Please?”

The truth or something close to it burst out like a broken water pipe. “Are you with Jax?”

“What?”

“I want to know if you’re with Jax and if you are, why? He might act cool and cover his body with tattoos, but so what? He doesn’t care about you, not the way a man should care about a woman if he wants a real relationship with her…not the way I care about you.”

Well, how about that? The cow in labor had her baby. Pop knew the boy could get the words out; he just didn’t know if it was going to be today or three days from now. He wished Jeremy would hurry up because Pop was hungry.

More silence. Throat clearing. Shuffling feet. Pop snuck a peek around the corner and spotted the two of them—awful close together, Lucy’s head tilted back to look up at the boy who was a good several inches taller. And Jeremy Ross Dean looking at her like she was the princess of his world. That was young love, dipped in syrup and covered with powdered sugar.

“You care about me?”

The boy turned redder than Lucy’s ponytail. “I’ve always cared about you, Lucy.”

“A girl likes to hear it, Jeremy.”

He shrugged, stuffed his hands in his pockets like he didn’t know what else to do with them. “That’s what Harry said, but…”

“You asked Mr. Blacksworth for advice?”

Jeremy slid her a look. “I wasn’t going to, but the man just knows stuff like that. He could tell something was bothering me five seconds after he walked in the kitchen, so I told him.” He shook his head and let out a low sigh. “That man knows women. And then, when Jax and I had it out at the restaurant, Harry said it was time to either state my intentions or walk away, because either way, you and I couldn’t go on being just friends.”

“Can I ask why it took another guy coming to town for you to admit your feelings? You could have told me you cared a long time ago.”

“I couldn’t risk you giving me the boot and I figured it was better to be your friend than nothing at all.”

“Oh, Jeremy.” She reached up, touched his cheek.

“So, what’s with you and Jax?”

The boy didn’t crumble like a hunk of bleu cheese when she touched his cheek. Pop gave him credit for standing his ground and getting to the bottom of Lucy’s tie to this Jax character.

“He’s just a guy.” She stumbled over the words, looked away.

That was code for “wants to be more” or “should be less.” Now which one was it?

“Meaning?” Jeremy squared his shoulders, held her gaze.

Score two points for Jeremy Ross Dean. Who would have thought the boy had it in him to fight for what he wanted and not settle for less?

“We hung out together freshman year in college.” She paused, cleared her throat. “But then he dropped out and started touring with his band. I saw him once in a while, but mostly just an occasional text and a picture of wherever he was playing. Colorado, Texas, Missouri, Ohio. When he hit this part of the country, he remembered my grandparents lived here and he got in touch.”

“So, he just popped in?”

“Kind of. He said he was playing along the East Coast until fall and maybe I could travel with him sometime.”

“Huh? You mean he wanted you and Teresina to pack up and go on the road with him like nomads? What kind of life is that for a child?” He blew out a sigh. “What kind of life is that for
you
?”

“I know.” She looked away, said in a voice so soft Pop almost couldn’t hear. “He didn’t invite Teresina.”

That pulled a scowl from the boy’s face. “What kind of guy does that? What’s he think Teresina is, a doll baby?” The scowl deepened and his voice grew louder. “He wasn’t interested in long-term, Lucy. No way. That guy was short-term parking all the way.”

She nodded. “I found that out.” Lucy leaned on tiptoe and kissed him square on the mouth. Just a quick peck, but you’d have thought it was a marathon smooch from the dazed look on the boy’s face.

Way to go, Jeremy!
Pop swiped at his eyes, blinked. Dang wrong time to shed a tear when he had a show to watch involving his granddaughter and her new boyfriend. He blinked again, fixed his gaze on the young couple. Jeremy Ross Dean got his vote. The boy had a level head on his shoulders and he loved Teresina. Pop inched away and headed back to the jars of peanut butter and jelly. He picked up his knife, slathered a slice of bread with peanut butter. Lucy might not have figured it out yet, but Jeremy loved her, too.

W
hen Tess opened the door
, Bree burst into tears and almost crumpled right in front of her. “I know you must all hate me, but I need to talk and I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Bree! Come inside. What’s wrong?”

Bree swiped at her tears and made her way into Tess and Cash’s house and straight into the lioness den where Gina and Christine sat. Gracious, this was probably the worst idea she’d had since high school when she’d given herself a perm. But she didn’t know what else to do and these women knew her, had stood beside her when she lost her baby, and again when she buried her cheating husband. And she’d pushed them away because she didn’t want to see their happiness. What a selfish person she was: selfish, cruel, and inconsiderate. “I am so sorry I turned you all away. You’ve only ever shown me kindness, but I haven’t done the same. Not at all. I sank in self-pity and pushed you away because I didn’t want to witness your happily-ever-afters.” The tears poured out, faster and harder than a summer storm. “I am so, so sorry.” She moved toward Gina, rested a hand on her friend’s protruding belly. “Forgive me, Gina, for not having the goodness in me to congratulate you on baby number two.”