“Go ahead and dry it. I require tools and product. Back in a jiff.”
The pile of supplies she returned with was mildly alarming.
“Did you go to beauty school when I wasn’t looking?”
“No, but my mom’s a beautician. I know a thing or three.” Autumn gest
ured to the edge of the bed. “Sit here.”
“Not in the bathroom?”
“Oh no, no mirrors. You don’t get to see until I’m done with you.”
Riley looked askance in her direction.
“Come on. Would I steer you wrong?” Autumn demanded.
“You are a serial matchmaker. I know this about you. You might not deliberately steer me wrong, but you want to see love everywhere, whether it exists or not.”
“It exists, and my role in life is to help nudge it along. Besides, tonight is not about love. It’s about inspiring lust. Now sit.”
Riley sat, back to the dresser mirror, and felt like she was going to crawl out of her skin.
“Stop fidgeting.”
“Sorry. I’m just…”
“Nervous. I get it. Do all these doubts have to do with that complicated history you won’t talk about?”
“Yeah.”
“Well sugar, you’re going to have to either get some resolution there or let it go entirely. Otherwise, you’re gonna be stuck in this weird-ass limbo. Given he’s back for good, I’d say that’s a pretty uncomfortable place to be.” She did something with the curling iron. “You might feel better if you talked about it.”
God, maybe she would. Autumn would tell her if she was being an idiot, maybe save her some embarrassment tonight.
Riley took a bracing breath. “You didn’t know me when we were younger, but you know I’ve always been up in the middle of the Montgomerys. Wynne and I were thick as thieves from first grade on. Her brothers were my brothers and her folks were another set of parents—a much appreciated, much needed second set, since Mom and I were on our own.”
“Your dad was military, right?”
“Air Force. He was killed in action when I was five. My mom didn’t take it well. They had a really traditional marriage, with traditional gender roles. Despite the fact that he was deployed a fair bit, he still managed to take care of everything. So when he died, she not only had to cope with the devastation of losing the love of her life, but she was suddenly responsible for all this stuff that she’d never had to worry about before. She tried. She really did, for a long time.” Riley had to acknowledge that. “But she just…couldn’t deal. She started looking for a replacement for Daddy. Somebody who could fill his role and take of her. Of us.”
“That doesn’t seem so surprising.”
“No. And it might’ve been fine under other circumstances. But she…wasn’t as discriminating as she should’ve been. She had this complete fairy tale with my dad. He swept her off her feet and made it so she never had to deal with any harsh realities. And she was naive enough to believe that most men were as good as he was. So from the time I was about seven, there was this parade of men through our lives as she tried to find the stability she was missing. Some stuck longer than others. But it wasn’t until I was thirteen that one of them got serious and asked her to marry him.”
To buy a moment and gather her thoughts, she dipped her hand into a jar of moisturizer and began to smooth it over her skin. “I didn’t like Cliff from the beginning. He didn’t say or do anything wrong. I just had a…vibe. Mom thought I was just being difficult and that I wasn’t going to like anybody who wasn’t Daddy. I’ll admit there was some truth to that. But this was something else. Not that it mattered. She said yes, and he moved in.”
Autumn stayed silent, curling a hand around Riley’s shoulder.
“He didn’t do anything overt. Nothing I could point to and say. ‘This. This is not okay.’ He just made me uneasy. He…watched me.” Even thinking about it now made her skin crawl. Riley waved to her body. “This developed early. I was already catching harassment from the boys at school, and because there wasn’t anything specific, when I mentioned it to my mother, she convinced me that I was overly sensitive and imagining things.”
Autumn winced.
“Anyway, Molly and John ended up throwing an engagement barbeque for Mom and Cliff. Mom was so damned happy.” It hurt to remember that.
“I don’t know what Liam saw. It’s odd, I guess, that I never asked him. But before we left that night, he cornered me and told me to leave my bedroom window unlocked, that he was coming by later. It was such a strange thing and he was so deadly serious, even at that age, that it didn’t occur to me to ask why or to do any different. So when he came later, I let him in. He told me he was sleeping under my bed, and even though he didn’t ask any questions or offer any explanations, I knew that he knew. That he’d somehow sensed the creeper vibe.”
“Under your bed?”