Made For Us (24 page)

Zoe forced a small smile to her face. “It’s not a good-bye, but I think you and I both know Aidan is not happy right now and I’m going to bear the brunt of some of it. It just may be a while before we see each other again.” Leaning in, she kissed his cheek, then walked over to Aidan and picked up her purse.

They silently walked out of the house and to their cars. Earlier they had discussed going to Zoe’s place after dinner. As much as she hated the thought of hearing his answer, she knew one of them had to speak. “So I’ll see you back at my place?”

Aidan looked at her with hard eyes and shook his head. “I don’t think so. Why don’t I call you tomorrow?”

“Why? Because of what happened inside?” He didn’t respond. “I think we need to talk about it.”

“I don’t,” he said firmly and turned toward his truck.

“Hey, I’m talking to you, damn it!” She stormed after him and got right in his face. “If you’re angry at me, then say it. Don’t just walk away and pout because you didn’t get your way!”

“I’m not going off to pout,” he said, his rage barely contained. “I just don’t feel like talking right now.”

“Bullshit.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. I said bullshit. I think you have a lot to say right now, but you’re going to go off alone and try to work it out on your own because that’s what you do. You don’t let anyone else in because then you might actually be like the rest of us. And you think you’re so superior, that you don’t need anyone, that you’re the only one with the answers. And to that I say bullshit.”

“You want to talk?” he asked loudly.

“Yeah, I do,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Fine, we’ll talk. But not here.”

“We already had plans to go back to my place,” she reminded him.

His eyes were near black when he looked at her. “I’ll meet you there.” And without another word, he climbed into his truck and drove away.

Fifteen minutes later, they were climbing the stairs to her apartment and the door was barely closed before Aidan spoke. “You had no right to involve yourself in that conversation tonight! None!”

“I had every right to get involved,” she countered. “I was sitting right there! Your sister is crying out for help, and you all keep ignoring what she’s saying! What she’s asking for isn’t so outrageous!”

“She’s none of your concern!”

“Well then, I’m making her my concern! Like it or not, Aidan, not everyone has to agree with you and your decisions!”

“Oh, I get that. You’ve always been up front about when you agree and disagree with me, but that’s business. I won’t tolerate it with my family.”

“You won’t
tolerate
it?” she mocked. “So basically, I’m good enough to sleep with and it’s even okay for you to let me be around your precious family, but I’m not allowed to have an opinion of them? What exactly are we doing here, Aidan? I thought we were in a relationship.”

“We are,” he said with frustration. “But my family is off-limits!”

“For how long?”

“What?”

“You heard me. How long?” When he didn’t respond, she stepped closer and continued. “We’ve been involved for a couple of months now, and you’re telling me that even though I’ve gotten to know most of your family, they’re off-limits to me. What happens a couple of months down the road? Will they still be off-limits? How about six months? A year? When will you deem me worthy of being a part of your family?”

“Is that what you want? Are you so desperate to cling to my family because you don’t have one of your own?” he demanded.

A slap in the face would have hurt less. “Wow,” she whispered. “I can’t even believe you went there.”

“I’m just saying…it seems odd that you want to be so involved in someone else’s family. You don’t know us and you don’t know what you’re talking about where we’re concerned. I know what’s best for them. I’ve helped raise each and every one of my siblings. You don’t know anything about it and I want you to stay away from them.”

Everything in Zoe went cold. She knew he had issues where his family was concerned; she even thought she understood them by now. But this? This she couldn’t understand. This hard, cold, and callous attitude was more than she could bear. She looked up and saw Aidan staring at her expectantly.

“I wasn’t trying to cling to your family, Aidan,” she said, even though she felt as if she was going to be sick. “They’re a part of you and that’s why I wanted to be with them. I fell in love with you and it was a natural progression to fall in love with them too. They’re all amazing.” Tears began to well in her eyes and she quickly swiped them away. “But I can see that it’s something you really don’t want. So I’ll respect your wishes. I won’t get involved.” She gave another sad laugh. “With any of you.”

Doing her best to force her legs to work, Zoe walked over to the door and held it open. “I think you should go.”

Aidan held his ground for a long moment, just staring at her. “Zoe… I…”

She held up a hand to stop him. “No, you
really
need to go.” There was a brief moment where she thought he was going to argue, but then he simply nodded and walked toward her. He stopped when he was right in front of her, his expression blank. “Good-bye, Aidan.”

Once he was down the stairs and she heard the door close, she sank to the floor. There was nothing left inside of her. This was the last loss she could handle. And although she didn’t think it was possible, there were still enough tears left inside her to give in to one final cry.

* * *

“I fell in love with you…”

The words were on a continuous loop in Aidan’s head as he drove around. He was too wound up to go home and yet didn’t know where to go or what to do with himself. How the hell had the night gone downhill so fast? One minute everyone was having a good time, just talking and laughing and the next…?

Why couldn’t Zoe just listen to him? Why couldn’t she just understand that he obviously knew his family better than she did and that things would be better for everyone if she just stayed out of it? It wasn’t difficult. If she had, he wouldn’t be driving around right now; he’d be in bed with her, kissing her and making love to her, like he had thought about all damn day.

Now what did he have?

Flashing red lights appeared in his rearview mirror and he couldn’t believe his luck—it looked as if he was getting pulled over. “You have got to be kidding me,” he muttered, parking his car on the side of the road. A minute later, Bobby Hannigan was at his side.

“Hey, Aidan. Where’s the fire?”

“What are you talking about?” he snapped. If it were any other cop, he’d just hand over his license and whatnot, but seeing Bobby right now irritated the hell out of him.

“You were pretty much doing double the speed limit. What’s going on?”

“How is that even possible?” Aidan took a look around and finally realized where he was. “That’s only because the speed limit is twenty; it’s not hard to do double and still feel like you’re crawling.”

Bobby chuckled. “Be that as it may, you were speeding. Is everything all right at home? Your dad okay? Darcy?”

Aidan threw his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes. “Just give me the damn ticket.”

Bobby stood silently next to the car for a minute. “Maybe you’re heading toward a hot date. Word around town is that you’re dating the sexy decorator.” He waggled his eyebrows and almost fell on his ass when Aidan slammed the truck door open.

“Dude, what the hell?”

Aidan felt nothing but rage. “Don’t… Just don’t call her that, damn it! She has a name!”

Bobby looked at him curiously. “Okay, okay…relax. Sorry. Word around town is that you’re dating
Zoe
. There. Happy?”

No. No he wasn’t. “We’re not dating,” he mumbled and leaned against the truck.

“Wow, the grapevine is losing its touch.”

“No…it just happened.”

Again, Bobby studied him. “You okay?”

Aidan just glared at him. “Never better. Are you going to give me the ticket or not?”

“I’ll let you off with a warning this time. Just…slow it down a bit, okay?”

“Yeah, whatever.” Climbing back into the truck, he drove off. Slowly. And headed home. There was nowhere else for him to go.

Not anymore.

“What in the
hell
did you do?” These were Quinn’s first words when Aidan opened the door.

“What are you doing here? It’s after midnight,” Aidan said. Even though he wasn’t asleep, he still felt tired and worn out.

“I’ve been on the phone for so damn long I feel like a teenage girl,” Quinn said, sitting down on the sofa. “I’ve talked to Dad, Darcy, Hugh, and Anna. Seriously, man, what did you do?”

Figuring his brother wasn’t leaving anytime soon, Aidan shut the door and joined him on the couch. “I went to dinner at Dad’s like I always do. Why? What have you heard?”

“Don’t be a smart-ass. I’m tired and I’ve got to be up before the sun. I’m here because I’m worried about you. Now what happened?”

Aidan let out a sigh and then relayed the events of the evening, including what happened at Zoe’s. “I don’t even know what happened,” he said honestly, finding that it felt good to finally get all of it off his chest. “I just…snapped.”

“Well, we all knew it was coming.”

Aidan glared at his brother. “Oh really? All of you?”

Quinn nodded. “Dude, you’re my brother and I love you, but you are a royal pain in the ass.”

“Did you draw the short straw? Is that how I ended up with you here to cheer me up?”

“I hate to break it to you, but I’m not here to cheer you up.” When Aidan just stared at him, Quinn smirked. “And for the record, there was no drawing of straws because no one wanted to come here. I just decided to be nice.”

“Great. My day just keeps getting better and better,” he mumbled and rested his head back against the couch.

“Here’s the thing, you have been everyone’s rock for, like…ever. Even before Mom died, you always made sure that you made time for all of us and you were always there when we needed you. And I believe I can speak for all of us when I say we both appreciated it and took advantage of it.”

“What? That’s crazy. No one took advantage—”

“We did. All the time. Hell, you made it easy. None of us ever had to make a serious decision. Why? Because you were there to make it for us. None of us had to work hard at getting jobs. Why? Because you always knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who would hire us. You helped with homework, job interviews, house hunting… I mean…how the hell did you do it all?”

“I don’t know. I just did.” Aidan shrugged.

“Well, stop it.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said to stop it. We’re all grown-ups—well, Darcy is almost a grown-up—and it’s time for us to handle our own stuff.”

“Yeah, but—”

“But nothing,” Quinn interrupted. “Look, I know that I would not be where I am today without you there cheering me on and pointing me in the right direction. And you can ask Hugh, Riley, Owen, and someday you’ll even be able to ask Darcy; they’ll all tell you the same thing. But there comes a time when you need to back off and focus on your own life. We all thought you were finally doing that with Zoe.”

“Why is everyone harping on that? It’s not like I never dated before!”

“Yeah, yeah…you dated. A random, one-time event every now and then. You never got seriously involved. I thought that’s where you and Zoe were at. We all did. And we were thrilled. How could you’ve messed that up?”

Aidan sighed with irritation, stood up, and began to pace. “Everything was changing,” he finally said. “I could tell everyone was treating me differently and I knew it was because of Zoe and…I didn’t like it. I didn’t want anything to change. Why couldn’t it all stay the same while I was with Zoe? Why did everyone feel the need to freak out?”

Quinn chuckled. “The only one freaking out was you.” When Aidan made to defend himself, Quinn cut him off. “You were totally different around her. You seemed happy and content. You were more relaxed than I’d ever seen you, and yet you acted like an ass every time she interacted with anyone else. Like that lunch…”

“Okay, enough with the lunch!” Aidan yelled. “I get it. I was a jerk! It just seemed weird to see Zoe hanging out with Anna and then you and I were there and it was like a double date and it just… Okay, it freaked me out! Sue me!”

“You just never got comfortable with her being around us, and I don’t know why. She’s great. We all love her and the last I checked, we’re not all that bad either. So what gives?”

Aidan shrugged again. “I don’t know. I like things the way they are. I like the dynamics the way they are. Other than Darcy’s recent obsession with going to school out of state, there are no surprises. Life is…simple. Neat. Uncomplicated.”

“Life’s not neat, Aidan, not if you’re actually living. Sometimes things go wrong and life gets loud and messy and complicated. I believe some people even call that ‘interesting.’” He laughed but noticed Aidan hadn’t joined in. “Seriously, what’s wrong with things being a little…unorderly?”

As much as Aidan didn’t want to get into this any deeper, he figured he might as well unload it all. “Do you remember our lives before Mom died?”

Quinn looked at him oddly. “Yeah. Of course. Why?”

“What do you remember?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Everything was just…normal.”

“Do you ever remember Mom and Dad having a fight? Do you ever remember there being any chaos in the house?”

“There were eight of us living in the house, Aidan. Of course there was chaos.” When his brother just continued to stare, Quinn caught on. “Okay. No. We were up at the same time every day, seven days a week. Ate the same meals: Monday was meat loaf, Tuesdays we had spaghetti…” He chuckled. “We took the same vacation every year—Myrtle Beach for five days not including the day it took to drive there and the day to drive back because we made them stop so damn much. We had the same meals on the holidays. What about it?”

“That’s what I want,” Aidan said.

“Why?” Quinn asked, clearly perplexed. “Why would you want that? I mean, it was all fine and good when we were growing up, but you do realize why it was like that, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“For crying out loud, Aidan, our mother was a stay-at-home mom and Dad worked like a beast. She wanted things to be peaceful when Dad was home. Having a structured routine helped keep the peace. We took the same vacation because it was all they could afford with all of us kids. It wasn’t like that by choice. It’s just the way it was. God, Dad used to talk about wanting to go on vacation to New York or Florida but we couldn’t do it. It wasn’t in the budget.”

Aidan was perplexed. “How do you know this? How did I
not
know this?”

“You didn’t want to know. You were content. After Mom died, I was still living at home, and sometimes late at night, Dad and I would sit up and talk. He used to tell me how he felt bad that he didn’t give Mom more, that he spent so much time working and how…” Quinn paused and tried to get past the lump in his throat. “How they had always planned on having time to travel together. But they never did.”

In all the years their mother had been gone, none of them really talked about what it would have been like if she were still alive. Aidan sat back down on the couch. “She would have loved Hugh’s resort in California,” Aidan said. “I think she would have gotten a kick out of spotting the celebrities.”

Quinn laughed. “Remember all of the tabloid magazines she used to buy?”

“She used to make Dad crazy with all of her Hollywood stories,” he said as he felt some of the tension leave his body. “Just think of what she would have done with Riley. She just might be up on stage with him!”

“Nah, she never liked rock music. She would have made an awesome manager though.” They sat silently for a few minutes, each lost in their own versions of what could have been. “All I’m saying, Aidan, is that you shouldn’t romanticize the past so much. Your future doesn’t have to look like their past. You’ve got a successful business and a great place to live, and you did a great job helping to raise all of us. Go and do something for yourself. Go and work things out with Zoe.”

He shook his head. “I can’t,” he said gruffly. “You have no idea the things I said to her tonight. I’m pretty ashamed of myself.”

“So tell her you’re sorry. Tell her you’re a jackass; she’ll believe you,” Quinn said as he elbowed Aidan in the ribs.

“It’s not that easy. She’s been through so much and all I’ve done is add to it. She deserves someone who’ll put her first and treat her like she’s the most important thing in the world.”

Quinn studied his brother for a long time. “And you don’t think you’re that guy?”

“Maybe someday. But right now, I don’t even know how I can face her after the way I behaved tonight.”

“Aidan, she worked with you before you started dating. She knows how you can be. In a day or two I’m sure you’ll both be fine.”

There was no way he was going to argue this right now. It was too late, both time-wise and where Zoe was concerned.

He was too late.

* * *

“I don’t think I understand.”

Martha looked Zoe in the eye, and Zoe did her best to keep from shaking too much.

“I’m asking you to take me off the Shaughnessy job,” Zoe repeated. “I can’t work for Aidan anymore. There are plenty of other designers on staff who can do the job. I’ve got all of my files and everything is laid out for them. All they have to do is follow the plans, which have already been approved by Aidan, and they won’t have a problem.”

Martha looked over the rim of her glasses at Zoe and frowned. “I’d ask why but unfortunately the gossip mill works quickly in this town.”

Zoe blushed. “It was wrong to get involved with a client, and I am so sorry that I put the reputation of your firm on the line because of gossip. It wasn’t my intention. I would completely understand if you asked for my resignation.”

With a roll of her eyes Martha sat up straighter in her seat. “Please, if I were twenty years younger, I would have played the cougar and jumped Aidan Shaughnessy myself,” she said with a girlish laugh. “I know his father is quite the handsome devil too, but the man never goes out and socializes. It’s a damn shame.” Zoe’s eyes went wide at the comment. “Oh, knock it off. I may be getting old but I’m not dead yet. I can appreciate good-looking men and the Shaughnessys are good-looking times five!”

It was hard to stop the small smile from crossing her lips. “That they are.”

“Okay, so you don’t want to work with Aidan for obvious reasons,” Martha stated, getting back to business. “I can’t just okay that request without speaking to him first. If he agrees to another designer taking over, then we’ll be fine. But if he doesn’t, then I’m afraid you’ll have to tough it out.”

“Believe me,” Zoe said sadly, “he’s not going to argue it.”

“That remains to be seen. In the meantime, why don’t you take the rest of the day off? I’ll call you after I’ve spoken with Aidan.”

“Thank you.” Not that she wanted the day off since all that managed to do was give her time alone to think. Still, she seriously didn’t want to work on anything Aidan related.

It felt weird to be standing in the parking lot at ten in the morning with nothing to do. It was a beautiful day out and after a few minutes to contemplate it, Zoe decided to face at least one of her demons and go to the beach.

Traffic through town was relatively light and it was easy to find a place to park. Leaving everything except her keys in the car, she walked out onto the sand, kicked off her shoes, and moved closer to the shore before sitting down.

The sun felt wonderful on her skin and the sand beneath her toes still gave her the thrill it always had. But looking around, she didn’t have the peace she’d had a month ago. She thought of her mom and wondered what her advice would be. “I wish you were here with me,” she said softly. “I feel completely defeated and alone and…I honestly don’t know what to do with myself here.”

Waves continued to crash along the shore as she sat down, just watching and thinking. “This was supposed to be my big adventure, my new beginning. But nothing has gone right since I got here.” With a shrug, she drew circles in the sand. “I like my job but everything else is a mess. The house is gone, Aidan is gone, and I’m not making friends here as easily as I thought.”

There was a depressing thought. “Maybe I need to go home.” She looked up at the sky. “I gave it a go and although I know you didn’t raise me to be a quitter, I also know you didn’t raise me to keep fighting a losing battle. I came, I saw… I failed. We all can’t be winners, right?”

Zoe had no idea how long she actually sat in the sand. When she finally got up to leave, there were more people milling about and her stomach was growling. Her first instinct was to go to the pub to see Anna and grab some lunch. But Anna was semi-family to the Shaughnessys and she didn’t think that would be appropriate. She was going to miss her friend.

Walking back to her car, Zoe looked back one more time at the ocean and sighed. So many hopes and dreams, and most of them were gone. On her way back to her apartment, she went through a drive-through and grabbed herself the most obnoxious burger she could find plus fries and a milkshake. What good was going through a hellish time in your life if you couldn’t curl up with junk food?

Doing her best to juggle the large bag of food, the drink, her purse, and her keys, Zoe didn’t notice Anna standing at her front door until she was practically tripping over her. “Oh! Holy crap, Anna, you scared me!”

Anna raised her eyebrows at her and then looked at the bag. “Seriously, we have fabulous food at the pub, and you’re cheating on me with fast-food burgers? I’m crushed.”

Chuckling, Zoe unlocked the door and walked up the stairs and opened that door too. It was a given that Anna was behind her. Placing her food down on the kitchen island, along with the myriad of other things, she turned and faced her. “So what brings you here?”

“Knock it off. I talked to Quinn Friday night and kept waiting for you to call me, but you didn’t,” she said, looking sad and offended. “Then I went to your office and Martha said she’d given you the day off. I had someone cover my shift at the pub and I’ve been sitting outside your door for an hour. How are you? Why didn’t you call me?”

Ugh…where did she even begin? With a fortifying breath—Zoe figured Anna wouldn’t appreciate being lied to—she just blurted out the truth. “It’s over between us. Aidan doesn’t want me to have anything to do with his family. You’re like family to him, so that’s why I didn’t call you. Sorry.”