Naked (34 page)

As he looked from face to face, he realized this was a perfect moment. He looked over at Violet. If she hadn’t come with him tonight, the moment would have still been perfect. He loved his family and he lived for these times when they were all together. But with Violet here, the moment was more than perfect. It felt complete.

After his siblings were satisfied with their interrogation of Violet and utterly embarrassing him, they cleaned up the dishes and Noah took Violet out to the backyard to sit on the canopied swing. She settled in beside him, tucking her legs underneath her body and linking her arm through his. “Tell me more about your childhood?” she asked, nestling her head against him. “Something that doesn’t involve you wearing a diaper on your head.”

Noah laughed. Damn Paige for telling that story. “That was pretty much the highlight.”

She slapped his chest with her hand.

With his feet planted firmly on the ground, he used his legs to rock them gently. In the distance, the leaves rustled in the trees.

“I had a great childhood. My mom works in the front office of an elementary school so she was home early and off every summer. My dad worked in construction. He taught me a lot. The basics, anyway. You already know he passed away when I was twelve, before he could teach me everything.”

“I’m so sorry, Noah.” Her finger brushed against the skin exposed at his wrist. “How did he die?”

“On the job. He was working for a large construction firm. He hated working for ‘the man.’ ” He used air quotes.

She looked up, resting her chin on his shoulder. “So I guess I’m the man.”

He smiled. “There was only one thing he wanted for all of us. To go into business for ourselves. He wanted us to be our own people. Follow our own paths. Paige is a real-estate broker and Charlotte is very close to opening her own event-planning business.”

“Oh.” He felt her heart rate pick up where her chest was plastered against his arm. “I’ll have to remember that. My mom likes to plan a lot of parties.”

“She’s actually planning the surprise party for my mom when we give her the house.”

Violet squirmed beside him.

There was a trail of screams from inside the house and the rumble of six munchkin feet.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have given them that candy.” Violet giggled.

“That’s my job.” He laughed and let his head fall back against the cushion.

Silence grew between them until Violet broke it. “So that’s why you flip houses? To get money to go into business for yourself?”

“Usually that’s the plan, but when Paige found this house, we knew what we had to do. It’s the house we lived in when our father was alive.”

Her head shot up, some kind of terror darkening her face. “So you grew up in the house you’re living in now?”

“I did, until my mom couldn’t afford to maintain the household and raise three kids on her own. So she moved us to the city to live with my grandparents. This was their house. They’re both gone now. We just wanted to give our mother the life she should have had if our father hadn’t died.”

Violet’s eyes darted between his face and the ground. She wanted to say something; that much was evident in the way her body had tensed up. Her lips moved, but nothing came out. As if she was practicing what she wanted to say.

But he wasn’t prepared when she finally got the courage to speak.

“Who’s Megan?”

His body tightened without thought. That’s what she did to him. That’s what thinking about, talking about, remembering Megan did to him. She caused a full-body tightness that seized his chest and churned his stomach.

But he wasn’t an asshole. Violet had asked a question, and he should answer it.

“Megan is my ex-girlfriend.”

She lifted her head from his shoulder and he saw out of the corner of his eye the small “oh” form on her lips.

“I’m sorry. I just heard Charlotte…” She lowered her gaze. “Did you recently break up with her?”

He shook his head. “Five years ago.”

“What happened?” She turned her head and he felt the burn of her eyes on his skin where she stared at him, waiting for a response. “You don’t have to tell me. We’d made a deal about no history, so I understand it—”

“Do you really think that still applies?” He turned to face her. Her eyes were the most mesmerizing sight. The tiny flecks of gold set against brilliant green were always shimmering. And once again, the moonlight illuminated her perfect skin. Every time he looked at her, he just wanted to reach out and touch her. His fingers itched to run along her skin. To curl into her flesh, branding her with the strength of his grip.

“I dated Megan for two years. She was a lot like you.” Hwqe smiled. There was no epiphany with that statement. He’d known exactly what he was getting into when he’d made the decision to spend time with Violet. But that was before he found out she was his boss. Before ending their relationship had turned out to be terribly difficult. “She came from a wealthy family. She had a high-powered, demanding job, and I thought she loved me. I thought she was all right with my profession.”

“She wasn’t?”

“I wanted to believe when she told me she was all in. That it didn’t matter that we came from two different worlds. But one day, out of the blue, she broke it off and two weeks later she was engaged to her college boyfriend—a stockbroker on Bay Street.”

Her hand squeezed his thigh. “Noah, that’s awful.” Her words turned sharp. “She’s awful.”

It was easy to say that. But he had every reason to believe that if given the choice, Violet would make the same decision. And once again, he’d be left in the dust.

All the more reason to work with Lewis to move up the construction ladder. The higher he was in the ranks, the more removed he’d be from actual manual labor. And maybe at the end of the day, it would be enough to make them being together make sense.

He turned to face her. Her eyes glistened, tears threatening to fall down her cheeks. He reached out and led the back of his finger down her jawline. “I just wasn’t good enough for her.”

“That can’t be true.”

There was no other explanation. She had been presented with a better option, and she took it.

He hated thinking about the past. He hated the insecurity it brought to the surface, but sharing was a two-way street. He wasn’t going to be the only one who spilled the secrets of past relationships.

“Are you ever going to tell me about Steven?”

Her whole body tensed beside him and she stopped caressing his arm in that absentminded way. “There’s nothing to tell.” She cleared her throat and settled herself on the other side of the swing, away from him. “He died.”

“And yet you’re here with me.”

She scoffed, bringing her head up, glaring at him. “Are you trying to imply that it’s too soon for me to be fucking someone else?”

“Is that what we’re doing? Fucking?”

“No…well…yes.” She let out a groan. “I don’t know. I didn’t…” She was extra adorable when she was flustered. Even more beautiful when she didn’t have the words to express herself. “I don’t know how to tell you any of this without coming off badly. So I’m just not going to.” She thrust her legs out from under her and planted her feet on the ground. When it became apparent she had every intention of walking away, he placed his hand on her thigh and pushed down, preventing her from leaving.

“You’re not getting away that easily.”

But instead of continuing their conversation, Violet did what she did best. Deflected.

She leaned over and pressed her lips against his. She knew exactly how to distract him. Exactly what she needed to do to take his mind out of conversation mode and into sex mode.

“God, get a room.” Charlotte’s annoyed voice carried through the sliding screen door. “Some of us are still digesting dinner.”

He lifted his hand and gave her the finger without even looking behind him.

“Mom…” She sang. “Noah just gave me the finger.”

“Stop being a tattletale, Charlotte.” Noah laughed when he heard his mother’s voice over the soft breeze.

Violet laughed beside him, too. “I always wondered what it would be like to grow up with siblings.”

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Especially being the only boy. Even the dog and cat were females.”

She laughed again.

Charlotte’s annoyance had broken the tension. He rested his hand at the side of her face, pulling her down gently so she could lay her head on his shoulder.

He had to tell her how he felt. The deeper he got into this relationship, the more interaction she had with his friends and family, the harder it was going to be to dig himself out of the hole if it didn’t work out.

Because he loved her. Deeply. Truly. Harder than he’d ever loved anything.

But she still didn’t trust him enough to tell him the truth, and he knew that eventually she was going to rip his heart right out of his chest.

But for now, he was content to sit in this swing and pretend that this was his future.

Chapter 29

Violet couldn’t do it.

She’d had every intention of bringing up the purchase of the house when Noah had picked her up Sunday night. But how the hell was she supposed to know that he’d take her to his mother’s house for dinner?

How the hell was she supposed to bring it up after finding out it was his
childhood
home?

Because she loved him. Damn it, she loved him wholeheartedly. And the only thing she could bring him was a scarred body and the destruction of his dream.

So she’d kept her mouth shut, adding another day to the many she’d been lying to him, and herself. She. Loved. Him.

Seeing Noah in his element, with his family, had given her the overwhelming urge to see her own family, small as it may be, despite the fact that she was still angry with her mother.

She only hoped when she walked through the doors, it
was
her family. Both her parents, not some stranger in her father’s body.

“Dad? Mom? Are you here?” Violet walked into the Tudor-style home and dropped her keys on the small table by the front door.

The house was silent. Still. An eerie feeling washed over her.

She at least expected the nurse to poke her head out and say hello. They’d had to get twenty-four-hour assistance in case her father left the house and didn’t remember his way back again.

Her childhood home was located in a west-end suburb of Toronto, and it was modest compared to the size of her family’s bank accounts. She had a lot of great memories in this house. She’d always throw her schoolbag at the bottom of the staircase to her right, then race to the back of the house to grab a snack from the kitchen. When she’d had sleepovers with her friends, they’d all sleep on the floor of the family room, huddled together so they could watch scary movies. And she was especially fond of using the cabinet to the left to practice her pliés.

“We’re going to be late, Bridget,” she heard her father yell from his study.

Her mother was here; she heard her muffled voice, but it was too low to decipher.

“Dad?” She tiptoed into his study. Her father sat at his monstrous cherrywood desk. As a child, she’d pretended that desk was a spaceship. She’d spent hours underneath it, in the space between the two pillared ends, traveling to faraway galaxies, meeting creatures she could only have made up in her head.

Her mother sat on the sofa to the side of the room, silently weeping in her hands.

The door creaked when she opened it further and her mother’s head shot up. Her mascara had run, black streaks now covered her cheeks.

“Violet!” Her father sounded in good spirits. So what was going on?

“Your mother forgot to pick you up?” She looked between them. “We have to get you to the gymnasium. You’ll be late for your recital.”

Recital?

Sadness gripped her chest. Not only for her mother but also for her father. She couldn’t fathom what was going on in his brain right now. How would he feel when he finally surfaced? Would he remember this?

“What recital, Daddy?”

“You’re the swan. The star.” He was talking about her ballet recital when she’d been the lead in a children’s version of
Swan Lake
.

She made her way over to his desk and rested her bottom on the wood right beside him. He looked frazzled. Anxious. As she would expect considering he wasn’t even in the right time and place.

“He thinks you’re ten years old,” her mother choked out between sobs.

Pride washed over her father’s face and he touched his hand to her cheek. “You’ll never be anything less than a star.”

In his mind, he’d lost almost twenty years, but his memory of that time was crystal clear. They had been late that day because her mother
had
forgotten.

“Your costume is in the car. Rosa had it dry-cleaned and she picked it up last night.”

Rosa had been their housekeeper and her quasi-nanny.

“Okay, Dad.” She placed her hand on his arm to comfort him. “Why don’t you stay here, and Mom and I will go get everything ready.”

She looked over at her mother and gestured for them to leave the room.

When the door was closed behind them, her mother slouched against the wall and whispered, “That’s not my husband.”

“Mrs. Walker?” Ruby, her father’s most recent nurse, walked down the hall toward them. “Your husband may be alive, but the man you knew…” She looked over at Violet. “The father you love is no longer present.” She looked between both of them, sincere worry darkening her eyes. “It is very much as if the man you knew has passed on even though he’s living and breathing right next to you.”

“So what…” Violet recoiled at Ruby’s words. “We’re supposed to pretend he’s dead?”

Ruby shook her head and walked closer to Bridget, wrapping an arm around her.

It made Violet feel like shit. Shouldn’t she be the one consoling her mother?

But you’re still angry with her for being so petty. So uncaring. So hurtful.

She wanted to sob for her mother. For her father. For their family. For the loss of everything they knew. Because nothing would ever be the same again.

“You’re supposed to mourn the man he was, and accept the man he is.” Ruby rested her red hair against her mother’s head. “He’s not dead, but he’ll never be the man you remember. It’s only going to get worse.”