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“He was also an accomplished liar,” he reminded her, his nerves bristling when she mentioned the word love. From everything he’d heard of the man so far, Steven Clark didn’t deserve Louisa’s affection, and he certainly didn’t deserve her self-recrimination.
If his underlying message made it through, it wasn’t evident in Louisa’s answering sigh. “He certainly was. But he was also incredibly charming and romantic, and I was twenty-one years old.”
“Barely an adult.”
“True, but I was certain I knew everything.”
“What twenty-one-year-old isn’t?” he replied.
His attempt to lighten the moment failed. Tired of standing, and suspecting getting the entire story would take some time, Nico motioned for her to follow him a few feet ahead, to a small gap between plants. He sat down beneath the branches, the dirt cool and damp through his jeans, and patted the space beside him. Louisa hesitated for a moment before joining him.
“How did you meet him?” he asked when she finally settled herself. He told himself he was asking because he wanted to understand what happened, and not because of the burning sensation the man’s name caused in his chest.
“At work. My first job out of college. I was so psyched when I got the job, too,” she said, in a voice that still held lingering pride. “Clark Investments was the hottest business in the city at the time. Steven was a rock star in Boston financial circles.”
A rock star with twenty years on his starry-eyed employee, Nico thought, gritting his teeth. “You must have been very good to get the job.”
“I was.”
There was such gratitude in her smile, as if it had been a long time since someone had acknowledged her abilities. Nico laid the blame at the feet of her ex-husband. “Anyway, I met Steven a couple months after I started—on the elevator of all places—and all I could think was Steven Clark is talking to me. Later, he told me he was so impressed he had to ask me out.”
That, thought Nico, might have been the most honest thing Steven Clark had ever said. What man with two eyes wouldn’t be impressed by her?
“I felt like Cinderella. Here I was, a girl from a single-parent family in a blue-collar town while Steven was sophisticated and had experienced things I’d never dreamed of doing. Things like skiing in the Alps and diving with sharks.” She scooped a handful of dirt and let it sift through her fingers. “I should have known then, the stories were too outrageous to be true, but like I said, love—”
“Makes you blind,” he finished for her. Why that phrase bothered him so much, he didn’t know. Of course she’d loved the man; he was her husband.
“He flew us to Chicago once because I said I liked deep dish pizza. Who wouldn’t fall for a gesture like that?” she asked. “I thought I’d met Prince Charming.
“My friends didn’t think so. They said he made them feel uncomfortable. Steven said it was because they were jealous.”
“Perhaps they were.”
“My mother, too?” she asked. “She didn’t like him at all. Called him a slicker version of my father and said she didn’t trust him.”
That was why they were estranged. Nico could guess what happened. Her mother didn’t approve, and Steven took advantage of the disagreement to push them further apart.
“We had this awful fight,” she told him. “I accused her of not wanting me to be happy, that because she was alone and miserable, she wanted me to be alone and miserable, too. When I told Steven, he said, ‘that’s all right. I’m all the family you need now.’” The fresh tears in her eyes had Nico moving to take her in his arms again. She shook him off, getting to her feet instead. “I didn’t talk to her for almost five years. She could have died and I wouldn’t have known.”
“That’s not true.” She was letting her guilty conscience color her thinking.
“Isn’t it?” she replied, turning around. “Who would tell me? I cut myself off from everyone I used to know. Because they didn’t fit with my new life.”
And Nico could guess who had put that thought in her head. A chill ran through him as he slowly began to understand what she meant by Steven taking everything from her.
She’d turned away from him again, her face turned to the foliage. Nico could see her fingering the edge of one of the leaves. Her hands were shaking.
“You tell yourself you’re too smart to fall for someone’s lies,” she said. “You read stories of women trapped in bad relationships and you can’t understand how they can be so foolish. That is, until it happens to you.”
