Twenty-Two
Two days after the big party, Emmie came downstairs as dawn was breaking, surprised to find her house full of male voices. Worry grabbed at her for a second – some new club drama? – but they didn’t sound concerned. Quite the opposite: someone laughed, and she thought it was Shane.
She hit the kitchen first and found Bea at the island pulling muffins from a baking tin with aid of a butter knife.
“Good morning, dear!” she said brightly. “I’m just getting ready to take this in to the dining room. Will you fetch me the butter?”
“Sure.” She did so, bemused, accepting the kiss her mother-in-law pressed to her cheek. “What’s going on?”
Bea was glowing, her smile bending her eyes to tiny crescents. “It’s wonderful. They’re having a brother breakfast.”
“All of them?”
“All that are here, darling.”
Emmie nodded. “That’s good.”
“Isn’t it? I keep trying to get them all together, but King won’t listen to me about it. It’s important, I think, to spend time with your brothers and sisters. If you have them, that is,” she said in deference to Emmie’s only child status. “I never had any myself, but I always wanted a few. How fun it would have been to have a brother. Girls need brothers, I think, just as much as boys do.”
Bea could get wound up and chatter on for hours if left to her own devices. Curious, Emmie said, “Have you met King’s sisters?”
“Oh yes. Lovely girls. There’s Raven, who’s just a few months younger than Shane. Her mother’s a model,” she said in a confidential tone. “Willowy thing, all legs. Eccentric name, you know.”
Emmie nodded with pretend graveness.
“And then there’s Cassandra, who’s the youngest of the nine. Just turned sixteen.”
Emmie tried not to show how staggering that was to hear. Walsh was forty, and he’d said his oldest brother, Phillip, had just turned fifty-three. She didn’t want to do the math.
“Will you help me carry these in?” Bea asked of the two heaping baskets of cinnamon muffins.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Walsh was sitting at the head of the dining room table; it was his house, after all. To his right was Phillip, on his left Shane. Fox sat beside Phillip, and there were no traces of tension.
Emmie set the muffins down on the table, snagged one, and went to kiss Walsh. His smile was easy, relaxed, and her chest swelled with gladness. He’d been edgy and nervous lately, and it was good to see him like this.
“Busy day?” he asked when she pulled back.
“Yeah. I’ve got Sam bringing her sister in for a lesson this afternoon.”
He frowned. “Sam?”
“Samantha. Aidan’s girlfriend.”
“Yeah, love, I know who she is. I also know his last girlfriend keeps her horse here. You really want them running into each other?”
“Tonya hasn’t been around much lately.”
He stared at her.
“What? Am I supposed to tell her she can’t come because things might get awkward? She’s not some flighty airhead. And God knows she has to be aware of his history. If Tonya shows up, I’ll keep them apart. It’ll be fine.”
“Famous last words.”
“What?”
“Nothing, darling.”
~*~
At Emmie’s suggestion, Sam bought her sister a pair of cheap paddock boots, a helmet, and drove her out to Briar Hall for her very first riding lesson one cool, bright Saturday afternoon. At the Halloween party, Sam had admitted her struggles with Erin to Walsh’s old lady, and Emmie had immediately suggested lessons. “It can’t hurt,” she said. “And who knows, she might take to it.” Given that jazz, tap, chorus, gymnastics, piano, ballet and cheerleading had all failed to hold Erin’s interest, no, throwing horses on top of the pile couldn’t make her aimlessness any worse.
Erin stared out the car window, arms folded, frowning like a child during the drive. But when she climbed out of the car and saw Emmie coming toward them with a tacked-up chestnut gelding in tow, some of her belligerence melted.
Now, perched unsteadily up on Sherman’s broad back, Erin’s brow was crimped in concentration, listening intently to Emmie’s instructions as the horse plodded along at the end of a longe line.
“Good job,” Emmie said. “Thumbs up on top of the reins – there, there you go. Bring your shoulders back a little. Chin up. Good.”
Sam folded her arms over the top rail and rested her chin on her wrist. She liked the sight of her sister working hard at something, even if it was only keeping her heels down at a slow walk. She liked the barn smells, hay and dust and horsehide. She liked the contrasting beauty and simplicity of this place; the fancy siding on the walls as backdrop for the manure piles. It was windier here than in town, the breeze tugging her hair loose from its braid. She closed her eyes, let the sun warm the lids, let herself relax and bask a moment.
She heard the grass brushing against someone’s feet before a voice called out to Emmie, “Em, can I talk to you when you get a chance?” The words were polite enough, but the tone was cold.
Sam’s eyes snapped open and slid over toward the elegant brunette standing beside her at the rail. Tonya wore a long skirt with boots, a sweater and chic black trench. Her sunglasses alone probably cost more than Sam’s entire outfit.
“Sure,” Emmie called back, and began reeling the line in, pulling Sherman and Erin in toward her. “Hey, let’s step over to the rail for a minute,” she told her student, and something about her voice was wrong suddenly.
Sam swallowed hard and braced herself just before Tonya’s sunglasses turned toward her. “I haven’t seen you here before,” she said like she wished that were still the case.
It was on the tip of Sam’s tongue to remind the woman that they’d gone to elementary school together. Instead, she replied just as coolly. “My sister and I are new here. My boyfriend and Emmie’s husband are friends–”
Tonya made a derisive sound. “God, you’re with one of those bikers?”
Emmie was walking toward them, towing along the horse. “Tonya, I’m coming.”
Sam stared at the spoiled woman-child’s white face, her flawless complexion, her designer everything, her red lipstick sneer. She’d never done anything like it in her life, but in that moment, she couldn’t contain the venom boiling in her blood. Just once, it would be nice to have the one-up on someone. Just this time, it’d be good to be the one to drop a bomb.
“Yeah,” she said, raising herself up, hands clenched on the rail. “I am. Actually, I’m with the biker who dropped you like a hot rock for being a heartless bitch.”
Oh God, she’d actually said it. The word bitch had left her lips. She thought she might faint; she wanted to smile.
Tonya’s perfect brows lifted above her lenses. “Aidan? Then take it from me, honey, and make sure he wears a rubber. He did tell you what happened between us, didn’t he? He got me pregnant.”
Everything stopped. Her heart, her lungs, her mind. Time. All of it ceased to function, as if a switch had been pressed. Funny, some distant voice in the back of her conscience thought. When your life derailed, wasn’t there supposed to be an awful crash? A terrible screech? Record scratch effects and gasps and sudden ugly sobs?
Instead there was this vacuum, this emptiness, the farm fading to a white blur, Tonya nothing but a black coat and glasses in front of her.
“Oh, he didn’t tell you,” she said. “He didn’t tell you he was going to be a dad. That asshole.”
Emmie’s voice seemed to be coming down a tunnel. “Tonya!” It was furious, but it was so far away. “What are you – oh shit. Sam? Sam?”
Why was she calling her; she was right there, holding onto the…
Wait, no. No rail. Nothing in her hands. Nothing but air. She was…
The jarring impact of her ass hitting the ground snapped her teeth together. She bit her tongue and it was the hot copper taste of blood that jerked her out of the void. She was sitting in the grass, numb head to toe, and she couldn’t pull in a breath.
Emmie hopped the fence, still holding the longe line, and crouched in front of her, snapped her fingers. “Sam? Hey, it’s alright.”
No. It wasn’t anywhere close to alright.
Aidan. Her Aidan, who she’d kissed and hugged and slept with; who she’d confessed her love to, entrusted her heart with. Aidan who she’d hesitated to trust, since the beginning, since that first walk to the vending machines. But who had persevered, convinced her, made her fall for him…And beneath all of that, their fragile, tender beginning, a lie that was a life, growing in the belly of another woman.
~*~
“Sam.” Emmie gave her shoulder a gentle shake and got no reaction. She sat there splay-legged like a broken doll. “Shit.”
Management mode. Emmie turned to Erin. “Scramble down and come help your sister. There’s cold drinks in the fridge in the tack room. Get her one.”
Erin, eyes big, nodded and awkwardly dismounted, hopping the fence. Her young voice was high and scared as she said, “Sam. Sam! What’s wrong?” She glanced back at Emmie. “Is she sick? Should we call nine-one-one?”
“No, she’s okay,” Emmie assured. “Take her up to the barn, get some Coke in her, and she’ll snap out of it.” She knew from personal experience that this was the calm before the emotional storm, that initial shock that scraped you clean inside.
Sam had described Erin as “at that age” where she hated every voice of authority, even if those voices belonged to loved ones. There was nothing of hatred in the girl now as she took her sister’s arm and pulled her to her feet. Sam moved like a mannequin, and Erin clenched her hand tight.
“Sam? Sam, come on, we need to go inside.”
How sad that it took a shock to bring a bratty teenager to her sweet side.
Emmie made sure the sisters were well on their way to the barn before she rounded on her star student. “What in the hell did you say to her?” she snapped, surprising herself, surprising Tonya, if the woman’s expression was anything to go by.
“Excuse me?”
Oh yeah. Tonya was used to having her ass kissed. Emmie flushed hot with anger, head-to-toe, and it was nothing like the impotent fury of the majority of her life. This wasn’t the blind, grappling sense that she could say nothing, do nothing, must only nod and say “yes, ma’am.” No, this was clear-edged, focused anger, backed by the knowledge that she half-owned this farm with her husband; knowledge that he would calmly and completely devastate anyone who dared set her off. She’d always had convictions; now she had support, and that was a deadly combo.
“No, Tonya,” she said. “Excuse you. What did you just say to her?”
The air between them crackled with a new electricity. Silence. Then an awareness, a quiet understanding that the balance had shifted.
Tonya collected herself – she always was the picture of decorum, after all – and calmed her tone. “She indicated that she was dating Aidan. I wanted her to understand what she was getting into.”
“And that is?”
“That Aidan got me pregnant.”
Holy fucking shit.
“Clearly,” Tonya continued, sighing like this was all so burdensome, “he hasn’t told her. And according to his sister and stepmother, he wants the baby. So the dumbass was going to bring the damn baby home and then tell her? Fool. The poor girl needed to know she was being lied to. I just did her a favor. Aidan Teague is a disease.”
A dozen thoughts collided in Emmie’s head. Aidan and Tonya? Pregnant? Did Walsh know? Why hadn’t he said anything?
“Tonya,” Emmie said through her teeth. “A little advice. It’s not polite to drop bombs on people like that.”
Tonya shrugged. “It’s not like I set out to. She started it.”
Emmie bit the inside of her cheek to keep her temper in check. She sighed. “So you’re pregnant.”
“Yes.”
“And Aidan is the father.”
“Yes.”
“I thought you were engaged to that banker guy.”
“I am.”
Was this bitch for real?
“That’s why I came by,” Tonya said. “I wanted to turn in my thirty day notice. I’m going to be moving Chaucer to Glenda’s barn.” That would be Glenda Demarco, the premiere trainer in the greater Knoxville area. “She’s going to keep him fit while I’m unable to ride.” She said the last with obvious irritation.
Emmie should have felt punched. Tonya was her highest level student, the one who made her look good as a trainer. She had plenty of youngsters who would eventually grow into the role, but for the moment, Tonya was the only superstar. Losing her, and her family’s patronage, should have been a real blow.
But in this moment, Emmie was one-hundred-percent a Lean Dogs old lady, and she felt like taking care of her own.
“You aren’t keeping the baby?” she asked, appalled by the notion.
“No. I was going to find an agency to place it, but according to Aidan’s family, he wants it.”
Holy shit again. Emmie didn’t envy Sam right now. Not at all.
~*~
Erin was being so sweet. Sam couldn’t comprehend it. She curled her hand around the cold Coke can and struggled to understand why Erin, of all people, was staring at her with concern and love.
“Sam?” her sister whispered in a small voice. “What’s wrong?”
The room made sense around her, then. Cheap table and chairs, equestrian photos on the walls, fridge and microwave and space heater. She was in the office at Briar Hall Stables, where she’d taken her sister for her first riding lesson. Where Tonya Sinclair had just informed her that…
A raw, ugly sound tore from her throat and Erin jumped.
“Oh God,” Sam whispered, hand tightening on the Coke until the can flexed.
“Are you sick?” Erin asked. “Do I need to call Mom?”
Yes, she was sick alright. Sick enough to think that Aidan had ever loved her, that he’d been honest with her. All those times he’d looked troubled, been stuck in his head – they made sense now. He’d been preoccupied with this. This child he’d kept from her.
Erin stared at her, working her hands together, face screwed up with worry.
Emmie came barreling into the room, curly blonde hair flying loose from her ponytail, expression a photocopy of Erin’s.
“Sam,” she said, voice sorry, appalled, sympathetic. “I had no idea. I swear. She just now told me. I had no idea…”
Sam stared down into her lap.
He hadn’t trusted her with this knowledge, hadn’t told her.
And she loved him…