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Brooke shook her head. “Mom, no…”
“Oh you’re infuriating.” Lillian shook her head. “We’ll talk about it later. I’m sure Daddy could find you a lovely little run-around. Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. Since I couldn’t get ahold of you, I called Cora. She’ll be here at eight.”
“You called my babysitter?” Brooke frowned. “Why?”
“That’s why I was trying to get ahold of you. Daddy wants you to come to dinner tonight.”
“But I promised Nick a movie night. You heard him. He’s excited.”
Lillian paused for a moment, and Brooke wondered if she’d found her weak spot. But then she remembered her mom didn’t have a weak spot. You didn’t get to be the uncrowned queen of Angel Sands without having a skin made of armor. “I’m sure Cora will watch a movie with him. And there’s always tomorrow if you want to reschedule.”
“I have an assignment to do tomorrow. I don’t want to fall behind.”
“Stop making things so difficult. Your father specifically asked me to invite you. It’s important to him. He wants his daughter with him tonight while he entertains some important guests.” Her voice was clipped.
Brooke’s thoughts turned to the low rent her parents charged her. The rest she paid in ways like this. They’d been having this conversation in one form or another for the past nine years – ever since she’d brought shame on them by admitting she was pregnant at the age of eighteen. It felt as though she’d been paying for it ever since.
As though she sensed a softening, her mother pounced for the kill. “And anyway, Daddy wanted to talk to you about Nick’s hospital statement. The latest bill came in yesterday. Why didn’t you tell us you took Nick to the ER last week?”
“It was the middle of the night.” Brooke rubbed her face with the palm of her hands. “He was at a sleepover and had a reaction. I met the ambulance at the hospital.” Maybe she should have told them, especially as they were the ones who paid for his insurance and medical bills. And thank God they did. Nick’s peanut allergy was manageable, but the older he got, the more freedom he wanted. It was frightening knowing he could stop breathing if he had the smallest mouthful of peanuts.
And those damn things were everywhere. At home, Brooke was like the nut police, constantly scanning their surroundings for danger. But when she wasn’t with him, she had to rely upon the vigilance of others – teachers, sports coaches, and of course, the parents of his friends. It was inevitable something would go wrong.
“He’s fine now,” she told her mother. “He thought it was an adventure. And they’re so good at the hospital. They took good care of him.”
“So they should. They’re charging enough for it. Daddy said he could have bought a new golf set for the amount it cost.”
Brooke swallowed. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Maybe you can tell your father about it when you come over tonight. You know we don’t mind helping you out, you’re our family. We like to take care of you.”
Brooke knew defeat when she saw it. All thoughts of her soft pajamas and curling up on the sofa with Nick disappeared from her mind. She started to calculate how long it would take her to get ready. And that meant Newton ready. Hair washed, a cocktail dress on, legs free of any hairs daring to peek out of her skin. An hour? Two? Why hadn’t she washed her hair this morning? Oh yeah, she’d been dragging Nick out of bed at some ungodly hour to get him to breakfast club so she could make it to her classes on time.
“I might be a bit late,” she said, a sense of resignation washing over her. “I need to feed Nick and take a shower.”
A satisfied smile lifted Lillian’s cheeks. She uncrossed her arms, and turned back toward the bigger house, her court shoes crunching on the gravel. “I’m sure it won’t take you very long. We’ll see you at eight.”
2
“How did it go?” the old man asked him.
Aiden loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar, rolling his thick neck to relieve the tension. “It was fine. I met with the project manager and discussed the plans. We’re looking at eighteen months until the work on the resort is finished.”
“That’s not what I’m asking about and you know it.” Robert Carter raised an eyebrow and tipped his head to the side, his thick helmet of silver hair glinting in the sunlight. “Did you do what you needed to?”
Aiden nodded. His hands curled into fists, his biceps bulging beneath the white cotton sleeves of his shirt. He paid handsomely for them to be tailored to fit him – his broad shoulders and muscled arms had caused more than one shop-bought shirt to come apart at the seams. One of his ex-girlfriends had once described Aiden as a wrestler in a designer suit, thanks to the physique he’d inherited from his father.
“Yeah, I scattered her ashes on the clifftop like she’d instructed.” His voice was thick. He closed his eyes, remembering the moment when he’d opened the urn and said goodbye to his mom for one final time. Releasing her into the wind at the place she’d always loved the most. She hadn’t been back to Angel Sands in almost a decade, yet her one request was that she be scattered there in death, back in the town where she’d been born.
“How about your brother? Did he turn up?”
“The prison wouldn’t let him out for a second time. They allowed one day for the funeral and that was all.” Aiden shrugged. He wasn’t phased by Jamie’s absence. In fact, he welcomed it. Though there was little more than a year between the two brothers, everything else about them was completely different.
Where Jamie had spent most of his teenage years and early twenties drugged and waist deep in crime, Aiden had worked his way up from nothing. Putting himself through college and business school, before joining Robert Carter’s hotel chain as an intern.
“Was it strange being back there?” Robert poured them both a glass of whiskey. “Because you know, it’s not too late if you want to pull out. I can send Francis down to oversee the development instead. There’s plenty of work for you here.” He smiled warmly at Aiden. “You know that.”
Aiden wasn’t sure how to answer that one. The three of them – Aiden, his mom, and Jamie – had left Angel Sands under the blackest of clouds, heading to LA to try to find somewhere to settle down. That had been almost a decade
