Susan Mallery - Best Of My Love

Now that he was here, she didn’t know what to say. How to start. She’d been practicing opening lines for a couple of weeks now. Ever since she’d figured out what she was going to do. She’d known the what, but not the who. Not until she’d heard about what had happened on New Year’s Eve and had seen Aidan the next day.

He could have been blasé about what had happened, but he hadn’t been. He’d been angry at himself and ashamed. He’d wanted to change. All of which was in her favor.

“Cream and sugar?” she asked.

“Just black.”

She took her coffee the same way. Every calorie saved, she’d always thought. Now she carried two mugs to the table and took the seat across from him.

Aidan was tall, with broad shoulders. He still wore his workout clothes—a T-shirt over sweats. Both were loose, but she caught sight of the muscles lurking underneath. Given what he did for a living, it made sense that he was in good shape.

His face was nice, she thought. He was good-looking without being too pretty. She liked his dark brown eyes, the way they met hers steadily.

Silence stretched between them.

“This would be your meeting,” he said as he reached for one of her cupcakes. She’d picked chocolate with a nice coconut frosting. Simple, but delicious. The best desserts usually were.

She drew in a breath and said the first thing that came to her mind. “I want to buy a house.”

His eyebrows drew together. “I don’t sell real estate.”

“I know.” She swallowed against the sudden tightness in her throat. This was going to be harder than she’d thought.

“Yesterday, you said you were sorry about what happened with that woman.” She sipped her coffee. “Are you still?”

He nodded, then took a bite of his cupcake. “These are good,” he said when he’d chewed and swallowed.

“Thanks. I like that you want to change. It’s not easy. Old habits and all that.”

“Yeah. I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do yet. I’m giving up women. That’s for sure.”

“And how long do you think your antiwoman pledge will last?”

“I don’t know. A few weeks. A couple of months.”

“A long time.”

His mouth turned down at the corners. “Tell me about it. But I don’t know what else to do. I won’t be that guy again.”

“Do you want to fall in love?” She held up her hands. “Not with me. That’s not where this is going. But ever?”

“I don’t know.”

An unexpectedly honest answer. “Because you’d be stuck?”

“I shouldn’t have told you that.”

“You were hungover. You couldn’t help yourself. I won’t tell anyone.”

Emotions flashed across his face. She tried to read them and couldn’t.

“I want to not treat women badly,” he said at last. “No, that’s not right. I was honest about what I wanted and if the lady agreed, then we had a good time. It was supposed to be okay for both of us. I don’t know what went wrong.”

“One of your temporaries wanted more.”

“And I couldn’t remember her name.”

He spoke with what felt like sincere regret.

“Now you want to be different.”

He looked at her. “If you think you can change me,” he began.

“I don’t.” She shrugged. “I don’t believe people can change each other. We have to make the choice to be different ourselves and then make it happen. You want to act differently around women, but you don’t know how. Has it occurred to you that maybe the problem isn’t that you couldn’t remember her name, but that you never saw her as a person in the first place? That you don’t see any of them as people?”

He glanced longingly toward the door. “Okay then. While this has been great, I need to go.”

“Five minutes,” she said quietly. “Give me five minutes. I’m really going somewhere with this and I think you’ll be interested. Plus, it’s not scary. I promise.”

He deliberately glanced at his watch. “Five minutes.”

“Thank you.” She paused while she figured out the best and quickest way to say what she was thinking, in a way that would get him to see her plan had real merit.

“You do what you do to avoid getting stuck. Which is the same as being in love, right? You don’t want the serious relationship.”

He gave her a brief nod.

“Logically you go the other way. A series of short-term, meaningless flings. And while there is some pleasure in that, it’s not exactly who you want to be.”

Another nod, this one slightly less cautious.

“Now you want to change, but don’t know how. I’m suggesting that part of the problem is you see women as either wives or playthings. You don’t have any women friends in your life.” She waved her hand. “I’m not counting family. Your mom, cousins and the like. I’m talking about the everyday garden-variety woman you interact with.”

He leaned back in the chair. “Go on.”

She told herself it was great that he hadn’t bolted. Now came the tough part. Telling him about her.

“My mom was my dad’s second wife. Kipling and I are half brother and sister. My mom was great. Sweet and loving. She adored my father.” Shelby drew in a breath. She told herself to stick to the facts. To stay in her head and everything would be okay. It was only if she lost herself in the memories that she got into trouble.

“My dad was a difficult man,” she began, then made herself stop. Martina, her therapist, was always reminding her to talk about the past with authenticity, no euphemisms. “No. That’s not true. He wasn’t difficult. He was violent. He beat my mother and when I got older, he beat me.”

The stark words hung in the air between them. Aidan’s expression tightened but he didn’t say anything.

“One of my earliest memories was of my mom screaming as my dad hit her. I remember being so scared. But when I was little, he never hit me, so in a strange way, I was safe. He didn’t hit Kipling—not like he hit my mom. Maybe it was because Kipling was his son. I don’t know.”

She reached for her coffee, then realized her hands were trembling and put down the mug. “Kip left when I was about ten. He was a great skier and went off to train. He swore he would always be there for me if things got bad.” She felt her mouth twist. “That’s how we described what happened. In terms of how bad it was.”

Had he put her mom in the hospital this time? Were there broken bones? Because like so many families dealing with something awful, they spoke around the truth.

“I remember asking my mom why she stayed and she said it was because she loved him so much. It didn’t make sense to me, but I knew in my heart she would never go. And he didn’t hit me, so we just lived like that. With the unspoken rules. Don’t make Dad mad. Don’t try to protect my mom. Don’t get in the way.”

There had been so many awful times. Nights when she’d cleaned split skin and held ice against bruises. Times when she’d tried to figure out if a bone was broken and whether or not she should call 911.

“And then I turned thirteen.”

Shelby still didn’t know what had set off her father. Whether it was her birthday or the onset of puberty or what. But the day after she turned thirteen, he hit her for the first time.

“It hurts,” she said quietly. “I’d heard her scream a million times, but until he decked me with his fist, I had no idea how much pain there could be. The shock of it stunned me. The sense of betrayal, of helplessness. My mom tried to stop him, but he pushed her into the wall and kept coming after me.”

She’d been knocked unconscious. There had been dozens of bruises but no broken bones. To this day, she didn’t know if she’d had a concussion because going to the doctor was out of the question.