Almost Home. Debbie Macomber

would have taken their shirts if he could have, Aiden. Ripped them right off.”

      “When the scandal broke, there were cameras and reporters stalking you and your family. During the trial, one of the disgruntled clients tried to shoot your father in open court. He missed and was tackled by a guard. Luckily you and your mother and Christie were already gone by then. Your father went to jail for ten years.”

      He put his hands on his hips, pushing his leather jacket back. “Your mother arranged to have everything sold, your apartment in New York, the house in Connecticut, the house in the Bahamas, the art, the furniture, and signed it all off to a fund set up to reimburse her husband’s clients. She made no claim to anything in the divorce, and in fact left home with you girls and nothing else. You later drove West and came to Whale Island, a place she had vacationed with her own family several times as a teenager.”

      There went my world.

      It had imploded.

      Was the article being printed as we spoke? Was it already online?

      “You all changed your names.”

      “Yes, we did. We spent much of our time in the car thinking up new names, and when we arrived my mother legally changed our names. A new identity, a new life.” Why hide anything now? “We covered up our old lives. My mother told everyone we were from the East Coast, she was divorced, and she was a housekeeper. She got jobs as a housekeeper and maid. On the side, she started her own small business.”

      “And you disappeared.”

      “Yes, from all those furious people, people who had a right to be furious, but not a right to take out their fury on me and my sister.”

      He groaned. “Want to hear what else I’ve learned? Something that makes me feel like pummeling your father?”

      I knew what was coming, and I braced myself for a nauseous cascade of black, annihilating memories.

      “Police were called to your apartment on Fifth Avenue three times for domestic abuse. Your mother went to the hospital on a number of occasions.”

      “Well, aren’t you the sleuth.” I felt hot tears swim to my eyes. “Want to know a tad more, Skyscraper? My mother told me later that when she went to the hospital for her injuries, my father told the doctors there she was mentally ill and had done it to herself. I doubt the doctors believed him, I’m sure my mother denied it, but it put my already unstable mother in an emotional tailspin.”

      “I can’t believe this.” He was furious, but I could tell it had shifted somewhat from me to my father. “I can’t believe you lived through that.”

      “Me, either.” When I remember that time, I don’t know how I survived it—except that my dad was gone a lot on business. “Once, when my mother got up enough courage and left with us when we were very young, he called a private investigator, then hired these huge, scary thugs to bring us back. We left again another time, a year later, same thing. Both times he physically took his anger out on my mother. She was beaten to a pulp.”

      “Oh God,” Aiden breathed.

      “My father convinced my mother that no judge would ever let her have me and Christie since she was mentally ill. What a threat to hang over an emotionally devastated woman’s head! At that time there was nowhere for an abused mother to run, certainly nowhere that she knew of. They hardly talked about that then. She had been an only child, and her parents were in poor health and living in a facility. She was trapped.”

      “And to you, Chalese?” he said, his voice low, pained. “What did he do to you?”

      I tilted my chin up. “You mean besides the neglect, his hatred for me, the constant fear he evoked? My father always told me I was fat. He said my skin was a dirty color, not pretty compared to Christie’s super-white skin and blond hair. He said I waddled, identical to a penguin, and he would make these penguin calls at me when I walked by. He always said Christie was the smart one and I had a brain born in a freezer. He’d tell my crying mother to give me whale or seal meat for dinner. ‘She’ll gobble it right up, you’ll see,’ he told her.

      “He would turn off the heating vent in my bedroom and tell me since I was a penguin I was used to the cold and I’d be fine. So here we were, living on Fifth Avenue, and I had no heat. And that’s just the start.”

      Aiden was pale, his face tightly drawn. “Chalese, come here, honey, come here.” He pulled me into his arms, hugging me close, then swung me up, into my home and onto my couch. One sad story followed another, as if they’d all lined up in my heart and were now pushing each other to get out.

      “I am so angry, Chalese. I haven’t been this angry in years. I want to pound his face in.”

      “Aiden, I didn’t want to tell you about my past, because I didn’t want it printed. I would have told you after the article came out ….”

      “I am mad about you not sharing your past, for not trusting me, but I understand. I do. But damn, I’m furious about what you went through as a kid! When I was reading the reports, I wanted to smash your father. I wanted to find him and tear him apart. I am so sorry about what happened to you.”

      “I’m sorry, too,” I said, trying to make light of it. “But it’s over. It’s done. I have a new life. I’m chasing down goats, drawing talking beavers, and going to poker contests now.”

      Aiden rocked me back and forth. “So help me, if I ever meet this man, he will not be able to peel himself off the floor again. He was a sick man, Chalese. No sane man would ever treat his wife or a child as he did.”

      I nodded. In my head, away from him now for decades, I realized that. It was my father’s issue, not mine. But I remembered the kid I was, how unbearably hurt, how despairing, I had been.

      He stroked my back, his cheek next to mine, and I clung to him. At one point I tilted my head up, and Aiden was wiping his tears. Huge, manly stud man, toughened, roughened Aiden.

      “Aiden, it’s hurting me to see you cry.” His tears made me cry. A man who cried for what we went through! A man who cared enough about me to cry in the first place! Through all that pain, I saw this light, this golden, sparkly light.

      My lips found his. Aiden kissed me back, pulled away, kissed me again, pulled away. I knew he was fighting within himself. He was kissing me, the subject of his newspaper article.

      I should have pulled away, made it easier for him, but I couldn’t. I would have given up my yellow house with all my art and quilts before I would have given up the next hour of my life. We gave in together in a rush of passion, of bottled-up lust, of trusting friendship, of shared intimacies. My arms went around his neck, he picked me up, and we were on my bed, on my periwinkle comforter, chasing down that heaven I knew I’d find in his arms.

      I tried not to sniffle or let any more tears escape, but when I did, Aiden pulled back, kissed my cheeks, cupped my face, and told me I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever known.

      In my head I heard these words: I love you, Aiden, I do. I trust you, too. Whatever happens with this, I trust you.

      And, whew! That Aiden Bridger was indeed comparable to the mighty Zeus in the bedroom.

      “Don’t print the article, please, Aiden.” I leaned over him in bed the next morning, sunlight streaking through the French doors, and kissed his neck. Instead of responding, I felt him go rigid beneath me.

      “What?” he rapped out. “What did you say?”

      “I told you everything last night, so now you understand why I don’t want the article written.”

      He whipped back the periwinkle blue comforter, stalked to the windows, and glared at the ocean.

      “Is that what this was all about?” he shot at me, turning around, his arms crossed over that muscled chest. I had enjoyed that chest last night.

      “What are you talking about?”

      “You