Stolen Hearts (Hearts 1)

Every time I put money in that envelope my mind was blank. Like I had no real idea what I was doing or why I was doing it. But at night, when I couldn’t sleep, I sometimes counted the money and wondered how much I needed to get free when Jim went too far.

And then I wondered what was too far?

Certainly, the night of the miscarriage . . . that had been too far. And yet, I was still here.

“Look inside,” Caroline said, smiling. “You’re going to be happy.”

I slid the envelope across the granite and opened it up, only to find old photographs.

“Oh my,” I gasped. Tears sharp and hot and sudden in my eyes. “It’s Mom.”

“Her sixteenth birthday and then,” she reached forward and pulled out one from the back, “a random Halloween and our high school graduation.”

“Look at you,” I sighed. They were both so beautiful and young. Mom wore a lace mini-dress at her birthday with long belled sleeves. Her long hair was parted down the middle, and her eyeliner was thick and black. Beside her, Caroline was wearing a black and white sequined mini dress with white boots. The 1970’s in full glorious effect.

“I’d give my leg for that dress back. And those legs,” Caroline said. “That night your mother stole a bottle of champagne and snuck on the roof and took off her dress. She drank that champagne in her underwear on the roof, and I thought her father was going to kill her.”

“He sent her away,” I said. “After that, didn’t he?”

“Boarding school in Connecticut. She stole a car at Thanksgiving and came down and snuck in my room.” Caroline’s smile was nearly heartbreaking with its tenderness. “She was . . .”

Troubled. A problem. Reckless. All those words could have applied. And I’d heard them plenty over the years. But all of that recklessness and danger had another side. And I knew all this all too well after the years with my sister. The light that came off my sister was worth some of the darkness. My mom was the same way, and only Caroline, my sister, and I understood the beauty of that kind of light.

It was part of why I forgave her for sending me back to Jim that night. It was part of why I always welcomed her into my home with open arms. We’d been through fire together.

“Amazing,” I said. Looking down at my gorgeous young mother burning far too bright.

“She really was.”

There was the click of the door shutting down the hallway, and suddenly Ronan was in my kitchen. Tall and thin, tugging the sleeves of his shirt down beneath the cuff of his jacket.

“You’re done then?” Caroline said.

“I am,” he said, and then he glanced at me, and I was frozen in his cold blue gaze.

“Would you like some tea?” I asked, remembering how I’d thought that night that I could sense warmth in him. There was no part of this man that was warm. He was ice, through and through.

What happened to that charming man in the shadows who’d made me laugh? He’d also pressed my lip into my teeth until I bled, but honestly, I’d pushed that memory away. That thought. Unable to hold it in my head with the same memories of the way the senator hurt me. Both made me bleed.

Why was one somehow exciting to me? The other abhorrent? I didn’t know how to hold both things in my hands at once.

Though, he was probably wondering the same kind of thing about me. That shy girl, cracking jokes and drinking out of a flask. That girl with her red hair and her ridiculousness, she was nowhere to be found.

Two years had happened. Two very long years, perhaps for both of us.

“We have to go,” Caroline said, her voice cooler than it had been with me, which was how Caroline talked to all her employees. Nothing personal. Ever.

Caroline kissed my cheek. “Don’t bother seeing us out. I know the way.”

She left me in a cloud of her perfume, and Ronan stepped out of her way, letting Caroline breeze by him, and in her absence, our eyes met again.

And I smiled, I smiled like we were old friends. Like we shared a secret. Like I . . . I don’t know, it was weird. It was stupid, but I smiled at him like I missed him. Because he’d been the last person I’d talked to who had no idea who I was. Or who I was married to. He was the last person who’d offered me whiskey and a piece of cheese and to beat someone up for me – just because.

No one had been as kind to me for two years.

And I always got stupid around kindness.

But he didn’t seem to recognize me.

I was standing close to him. Closer than I’d been to any man who wasn’t the senator. Close enough to see his eyelashes. His pulse in his throat. And his eyes went to my throat, and I wondered if maybe he was looking at my pulse. If he was thinking of my heartbeat and that was a ridiculous thing to think.