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But that was precisely why she wanted to talk about him. She was desperate to. It wasn’t only last night and his reaction that was getting to her, but the fact she actually cared about it. She cared what he thought about her – and that was the most frightening thing of all.
“Aiden Black. Joan’s son.”
Her mom slowly dropped her hand, the smile on her face dissolving as her eyes widened. It wasn’t often Lilian was silent, but for a moment all Brooke could hear was the low hum of chatter from the diners surrounding them, and the noise of traffic from the street outside. Beneath her perfectly-applied make-up, the color drained from her mom’s face.
“What’s he doing here?” Her voice was a whisper.
“I saw him at the Silver Sands site. He runs the business redeveloping the hotel there.”
“Oh.” Lillian’s hand fluttered to her neck, pulling at the cameo bracelet pinned to her collar. “I didn’t know he was back.” She shook her head as if in answer to a silent question. “Why didn’t anybody tell me?”
Brooke stared at her for a moment. Yes, the Blacks had left town in a hurry, but it didn’t explain why her mom had turned so pale. Lillian lifted her glass and took a deep mouthful of water, closing her eyes for a moment.
When she opened them she seemed almost back to normal. The shocked expression was gone, replaced by her usual poise.
“Did you know Joan died?” Brooke asked her. “From cancer.”
“That’s very sad,” her mom said evenly.
“Yes it is.” Brooke was vehement. “Really sad. How long was she with us? Sixteen years or more? And we weren’t even there to pay our respects.”
“We hadn’t seen her for years.” Lillian kept her voice even. “And she wasn’t a friend, she was staff. She wouldn’t have expected us to be there.”
Her mother’s cool dismissal of a woman who’d meant so much to Brooke growing up rankled her. “She was more than staff,” Brooke told her. “She was
a friend. Practically family. She was the one who got me dressed in the morning, the one who took me to and from school.”
“Because that’s what we paid her to do,” Lillian pointed out. “I worry about you, Brooke. You have no idea what it takes to run a home or manage staff. When you do move into your own place, you’ll need to learn very fast. Otherwise people will end up walking all over you.”
The server arrived again, passing them each a leather bound dessert menu. Brooke took it gratefully, desperate to see the end of this conversation. She should have known talking about this with her mom would end up in them both feeling frustrated.
Lesson learned, she told herself as she opened the menu, taking in the sugary options printed on the page. Trying to talk to her mom about Aiden was a stupid idea. She wouldn’t do it again.
9
“How much is this costing us?” Robert Carter asked, as he and Aiden watched the construction team moving the red Spanish tiles from the pallets they’d arrived in to the bungalows they were working on. “Twenty men, eight hours, all at double time.” He winced. “Have you heard back from the suppliers?”
“They’re willing to pay half the overtime,” Aiden told him. “We’ll have to cover the rest.
At seventy-five, Robert Carter was still as strong as an ox, and his sharp brain missed nothing. When Aiden first met him he’d found him as intimidating as hell. But Old Man Carter had seen something in Aiden which caught his interest – maybe the fact they were both born dirt poor and weren’t planning to stay that way. Whatever it was, eight years of working together had taught Aiden that his boss’s bark was way worse than his bite.
“Daylight robbery,” Robert muttered, taking a tile and turning it, checking out the finish. “Still, they’ve got us over a barrel. What choice do we have?”
“We still have the contingency,” Aiden said, his voice reassuring. “We’ve budgeted for problems like this.”
“The contingency isn’t bottomless. We’re less than a year into the project, we shouldn’t need it yet.”
Aiden raised an eyebrow. He’d heard this lecture before, about a hundred or more times. “I’ll go over the schedule, see where we can make some savings.”
Robert turned to him. “You do that. And now you can tell me what’s really on your mind; you’ve been distracted all morning.” He looked around the site. His visit had always been planned, though neither of them had thought there would be any construction happening on that Saturday morning. He might have been head of the company, but Robert still liked keeping an eye on every project, driving down from LA early that morning to check out the Silver Sands Resort.
You could sum up in two words what was bothering Aiden. Angel Sands. It was that simple, wasn’t it? And that was complicated, too. Because it was more than the town or the people who lived in it. It was him, and the emotions he’d been burying for years. The unfamiliar feelings rising to the surface.
And it was her, too.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have come back,” he said, turning to look at the man beside him. “There are too many bad memories here. I thought I could deal with them but…” Aiden shrugged. “I don’t want my personal life to stop me from bringing my A game to this project. You gave me a job when nobody else would, you put your trust in me when everybody else thought I was a punk. I don’t want to let you down.”
“Your personal life, eh?” Robert pursed his lips. “And what personal life would that be? Last I heard you were married to this job.”
