King’s Queen by Marie Johnston

Chapter 5

Aiden

My mind struggledto register what I was seeing. Three red-faced and sweaty people, two kids and one adult, laughing in a carefree way I hadn’t heard since before Mama died. My nephews peeled away, leaving Kate in the middle of the brown lawn. Her hair was a tangled flurry and her shirt had ridden up to reveal a patch of creamy skin above her yoga pants.

Her wide smile died and took the mischievous glint with it. I was tempted to back up, retrace my steps like I could rewind life, just to put that gleam back in her eyes. Sexy. Alive. Unreserved.

Kate was a mess. I’d never seen her in such a state. When we went to King’s Creek to work cattle, she kept to the fringes and made coffee runs. She came out the cleanest out of all of us. But in a trailer park in Billings, in the middle of a lawn, after she’d been wrestling—and I’d been here long enough to see that she knew what she was doing—she was the dirtiest of us all. And I fucking loved it.

She stood and dusted herself off. Randall rose, towering over me like usual. He was older than Dad by several years, but age hadn’t stooped his back.

“Jason,” Randall said. “Why don’t we go help your mom set the table.” He clapped a big hand on my shoulder but I couldn’t take my gaze off a stunning Kate. “You staying for a bite?”

I couldn’t tell from his tone if he wanted me to. Randall would offer to be polite, but he’d boot me the hell out if Kate asked him to. “I just want to talk to Kate.”

Kate glanced from me to her stepdad and gave a little nod. In less than a minute, I was alone with my wife. I stood on the porch and she didn’t move from her spot on the grass.

“Hi,” I said.

She pushed her hair off her face, but half of it fell over her eye again. “What’s going on?”

“We should talk.”

She crossed her arms. In typical Kate fashion, there wasn’t an ounce of cleavage showing, but my gaze was drawn to her breasts anyway. It’d always been drawn to her breasts since the first time I’d seen her. I’d always been drawn to her tits, and when she was naked and underneath me it was hard to keep my brain powered up enough to keep from doing anything but staring at them.

“You had a chance to look at the papers?”

Fuck the papers. “Not yet.”

She blinked and shoved her hair behind her ears. She didn’t wear much makeup normally, but today she didn’t have an ounce on. The natural beauty that made her stand out in a crowd kept me riveted.

“Then what’s wrong?” she asked.

I took the steps down to the cement landing and kept going until I reached her, my athletic shoes crunching through the grass. “I know the timing looked bad, and no, I wasn’t going to let that money go to the neighbors when Mama left it for us, but us—you and me—it wasn’t about that.”

If I’d expected her to fall into my arms, it wasn’t working. Her gaze grew guarded. “You’re going to have a hard time convincing me of that when fifty million’s riding on the divorce. I told you I don’t want it.”

“I don’t either. I’d rather have you.”

She took a step back, creating more distance between us. “You had four years to show me that you wanted to be with me. You did everything but be with me.”

“I can change.”

She worked her lower lip between her teeth and stared at the ground between us. What was she thinking?

“Please believe me, Kate.” I didn’t know what else to ask. I didn’t know how else to ask. Please look at me like you have been since I first saw you. The way only you ever do.

I was so far out of my element. There was a reason I’d left my messy emotions in my childhood.

“And then what?” The question overflowed with challenge.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re going to have the same job. Grams won’t trust anyone else in the inner office. If we take the trust out of the equation, you’re still married to your job, not me.”

“I’ll work on it.” I’ll work on me.

She tipped her head and gave me a dubious look. This was a side of Kate I hadn’t seen before. Just like the side that put her nephews in a headlock. How many other parts of her didn’t I know? How many times had she been hiding her real feelings around me?

I thought I’d been the only one to do that.

“I’ll work on it,” I said with more authority.

She squinted into the neighbor’s yard, where overgrown weeds encroached on an old warped metal swing set. She wouldn’t look at me. “For fifty million?”

“Kate, it’s not about the money.” I stepped closer to her. I wanted to cup her face, capture her plump lips, and kiss her until she melted under me. But I kept my hands at my sides. “Can I have a chance to prove it?”

“We’re going to keep circling back. Your job, the money. I…don’t trust you anymore. I don’t know if I ever should have.”

“What do you mean?”

She gave me another look that I’d never seen before. One filled with disappointment aimed at me—and staggering insecurity.

Why the insecurity? Dad’s hard words in my office trailed through my brain. The one time he’d gone full parent on me and he’d been right. If he hadn’t talked to me, would I even get what she was asking now?

My brows drew together. “Do you think I’ve been with someone else?”

Before Kate, my dating life had been dismal. I’d gotten hit on enough, and if I’d wanted to get laid, it hadn’t been hard. But by the time I was done with college, I’d gotten tired of the small talk. The shallow get-to-know-you phase that didn’t dive too deep because neither of us wanted to waste time on someone who would prove temporary. I had been old enough when Mama died to know what it’d been like between her and Dad. They’d been best friends and I’d wanted the same.

I thought that was what I’d had with Kate, but after today, I was coming to the awful realization that I didn’t know her very well. And it was my fault she didn’t know me.

“I don’t know what to think anymore.” Bare vulnerability shone in her eyes. “Short of lipstick on your collar, you displayed all the signs.”

My brain churned in confusion, but hadn’t Dad asked the same question? “There’s never been anyone else. Never.” I was faithful. I didn’t want anyone else. It shouldn’t need to be said.

She nodded, but disbelief lingered across her expression. I shouldn’t have had to tell her I was faithful, but I clearly hadn’t done enough to keep her from thinking it was a possibility. “Remember when Beck first brought Eva home and they had that engagement party?”

“Yeah?” My skin rippled with dread.

“You were on your phone the whole time until some girl you went to school with sat down to talk to you. You ignored me the entire night.”

“I never ignore you.”

She barked out a laugh. “You do. All the time. It’s rude. It’s disrespectful, and you know what? I don’t have to put up with it anymore. I don’t care if your excuse was work or a piece of ass, I’m done.”

“My excuse was never a piece of ass. I don’t just work at some company. It’s my family’s company. I’m the company. In a small city, surrounded by rural towns, I can’t disconnect from it. I don’t have that luxury. I can’t ignore anyone, because they might be a contact I have to deal with in the future.”

“But it’s okay to ignore your wife?”

I snapped my mouth shut. That was what I’d done. I hadn’t wanted to ignore her, but there was the trust between us. My work. As each brother married, I’d waited. Waited for Kate to learn what I had done. I hadn’t cheated on her, but I wasn’t much better than her father.

“Listen to yourself, Aiden. You came here to, what? Ask for me to come back? Only you’re arguing about everything I’m saying. You’re not even trying to understand.” She edged around me. “Do you realize this is our first argument? We’ve been together for over four years and we’re only now arguing. Our relationship wasn’t healthy.”

“We’re talking now. We can work on us.”

“I don’t like how I am with you.” She put her fingers to her lips like she wanted to stuff the words back in.

Silence fell between us as we both processed what she’d said.

The Kate I saw today wasn’t the Kate I was married to. What she didn’t know was that this Kate was the one I wanted. The one I thought I’d married. Yet I’d been too ignorant to notice she’d changed.

“I didn’t realize you were so unhappy,” I finally said. I should’ve. I should’ve gotten to know my wife well enough to know that her smile was a cover.

“I didn’t either,” she replied softly. “I think you are too.”

Unhappy was better than fucking miserable. There wasn’t a mental box big enough to shove that emotion into. “Where are you staying?”

“Here.”

She could buy her own house and be moved in a day. We had the money. But then she’d be alone, and wasn’t that what she’d just told me was part of the problem between us?

“For how long?”

“As long as it takes.”

Shadows darted past the window. The kids were watching us. The adults were probably getting updates from them. The screen door banged open and Matt’s daughter, Violet, ran out. She sprinted past Kate and jumped into my arms. I didn’t see her often, but whenever I was around, she was my shadow, firing off a million questions.

“Uncle Aiden, guess what?” she asked like she hadn’t intruded on the most important conversation of my life.

“What?”

“Chicken butt.” She chortled, her seven-year-old little face lighting up.

A chuckle I hadn’t thought was in me escaped. I set her down. How had she grown twice as much as the last time I’d seen her? “I used to get my brothers with that all the time.”

“Uncle Jason taught me.” Her proud smile displayed two top teeth growing in. “Come inside. It’s time to eat.”

I wished I could take her hand and follow her in. But I’d only make a large family gathering awkward. Kate’s family was here to support her, not me. “I can’t stay, kiddo. Run on in.”

She grinned and skipped inside.

When my gaze returned to Kate, my chest grew tight. Sadness filled her eyes. I was the cause.

I couldn’t quit trying to make things right between us. “Can you give me some time? I don’t want to rush this.” I took a step closer. “It’s too important to me.”

You’re too important to me. I had feared losing her, of being the villain in her fairy tale. My silence had done exactly that. I didn’t know how to rectify that. Yet I had come here, knowing I had to try.

She inspected me like a bloodhound on the scent for a lie. Would she see the sincerity in my gaze? I didn’t know what else to say. I fought for words, but they weren’t there. All those years of not talking, of stuffing my emotions down, had left the well dry. Practice made perfect and I’d benched those skills long ago.

“Yeah, fine.”

Relief almost made me sag. I’d take what I could get. “Okay.” I had a chance, and that was all I was going to get today. “Bye, then.”

She gave me a small smile. I turned toward the gate on the side of the house to get to my pickup parked on the street. But before I reached it, the screen door opened again. My mother-in-law came out with a plastic container. She held it out over the porch railing. “I made more than enough.”

My stomach chose that moment to remind me I’d had little more than sandwiches and beer in the last two weeks. Other than when I went to Dawson’s, I rarely had home-cooked food. Dad and I stocked the office, and I was hardly home in time for a meal. I accepted the food. Giving back the container would give me another excuse to stop by. “Thank you, Sharon.”

“Mm-hmm.” She turned away.

I caught Kate’s perplexed expression before she smoothed it over. She did that a lot. Hid what she was really thinking. From me. Did she do that with everyone else? Were her parents and brothers the only people she was comfortable being Kate McDonough around? Around me, my family, and the rest of town, she was Kate King.

I should’ve seen it. I came across it often enough in the boardroom, being told what someone thought I wanted to hear. I hadn’t expected to find it in my own house, with my wife. But now that I knew, I wouldn’t forget. All those hours in the office were going to be good for something.

* * *

Kate

I walked out of work,keys in my hand. The sun was sinking low. I’d only worked until five tonight, but the sun set early this time of year. I walked past my coworkers’ cars to mine. Movement by the back end caught my attention and my heart leapt, then fell. After Aiden had appeared at my parents’, I’d been looking for him everywhere over the last week.

Kendall gave me a tentative smile, looking young and sophisticated in a way I could never attain. Her hands were shoved into her long beige knit coat, which matched her wedge boots. Her hair was in a long, sleek ponytail. “I should’ve messaged you, but I wasn’t sure how much you hated us.”

“I don’t hate you.” I couldn’t deny the reverberating disappointment that’d been a constant companion with my loneliness and heartbreak. “But I’m hurt.”

“Want to grab a drink with me and talk?”

I didn’t really. I missed chatting with Kendall. She’d become a friend I didn’t get to see often enough, but the betrayal left behind after learning about the trust couldn’t be ignored. Avoiding it wasn’t going to do me any good though. “Sure. It’s been a long day. Can we go somewhere quiet?”

The Kings weren’t the only ones who could keep a secret. No one outside of my family knew about the divorce yet. But if I showed up at the Irish pub any more times this week, people were going to talk.

“We can grab a beer and burger down the road. It won’t be quiet, but less eavesdropping.” Kendall didn’t want anyone overhearing her business either.

“Meet you there.”

I found parking easily enough on the street. Thursday nights could get busy but it was early yet.

The noise in the bar and grill was a low thrum as we were led to a table in the corner. I skipped the beer and ordered a burger and water. Kendall did the same.

“How did you know when I’d be done with work?” I asked when the server left.

Kendall flashed a small smile. “Aiden.”

I bit the inside of my lip to keep from asking how he was doing. He’d asked for time. I hadn’t bothered him. I dreaded hearing that after another week to think he was ready to sign the papers. I dreaded it as much as I anticipated his name flashing on my screen.

“He’s eased back into work after that first week,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

Her brows lifted. “He took a week off. Just walked out after…” She pursed her lips. “Walked out isn’t accurate. Gentry ‘suggested’ he go home after he threw his computer screen across the office. Didn’t you know about that?”

Why would I? “I haven’t really talked to him in the last couple of weeks.”

Sympathy filled her gaze. “I can’t imagine how you must feel.” She flattened her hands on the table. “We all feel terrible. I don’t know if it’ll help you to know that it wasn’t like a big conspiracy to keep you in the dark. It was just…as individual couples, we all suspected that you didn’t know since you never mentioned it. None of us wanted to be the one to spill the beans.”

“I know it wasn’t, ultimately. Aiden should’ve told me.” I lifted a shoulder. “You’re right. It felt like a conspiracy.”

“I don’t know what happened when Aiden learned about the trust. I know that he met you after, and I don’t know what he was like before then, but he doesn’t seem like the type to use people.”

“He fosters relationships that might be good for business later.” Always an agenda. Just like Dad. No, that wasn’t fair. If Aiden hadn’t cheated, then no, it wasn’t like my dad. But I’d kept Dad in my life even after I had heard all the stories about him. He was my father. I didn’t want another man who talked to me when it was convenient for him and didn’t think about me otherwise.

Kendall leaned forward, her gaze earnest. “But the money, Kate. You and I didn’t grow up like them. We know the struggle of a family that needs to support a lot of kids. Money doesn’t affect them like it does us. It was the fact that the Cartwrights would get it when Danny was alive.”

“It’s still a lot of money. And he thought he’d lose half, but I don’t want it.”

Kendall’s gaze turned confused and she chewed the inside of her cheek. “If that was the case, why hasn’t he done anything with it? Why sit on it? He only needed to be married a year. It’s been four, but he hasn’t touched it. Even if he fears losing half, what is he going to do with it? Why hasn’t he done it yet?”

Those were just some of the constant stream of questions I had that needed answers, but I wasn’t sure I could trust his answers. “I don’t know.”

“He might’ve been afraid of losing you. Because then he’d have to tell you about all of it.”

“I don’t get why he thought I wouldn’t find out.”

Kendall was quiet for a moment before she said, “I’m sorry. We all are. It just turned out really shitty.”

“Agreed.” I didn’t elaborate. My marriage had been shitty for a while. It had taken the talk with Taya to know why.

Our food arrived, and right as Kendall took a large bite, I blurted, “Did he really not work for a week?” To save Kendall from an awkward silence while she chewed, I continued, “I saw him last Friday and he looked…” Hot. Sexy. Like divorce suited him. “Good.”

“Beck saw him the weekend after…” She winced. “Aiden was hungover. Liquid diet for days, if you know what I mean.”

“Aiden doesn’t really drink.” He had a few beers when he got together with his brothers, and maybe one drink if he was schmoozing other execs.

“He did that weekend. A lot.”

I scanned the restaurant. Happy couples dining together. A family with an older baby. The mom was trying to feed the little boy a french fry, but he wanted to wave it around like a baton. I shifted my gaze away before I started thinking about what I’d put on hold at Aiden’s request.

How was I supposed to interpret the information about Aiden? Aiden didn’t lose control. The only time Aiden lost control was when he was coming.

Heat washed through my body and I squirmed. For my own sanity, I couldn’t think about anything sexual with him.

“Anyway,” Kendall continued, “Gentry moved some projects around to take the pressure off all of us and is running interference with Grams.”

“Does she know?”

“We haven’t told her. Neither of you need that right now.”

“Thanks.” A whole week off from work? And Aiden had just walked out? “Did he really throw a computer screen?”

“Right after you walked out. Gentry got it all cleaned up, but Aiden kept not coming in for work. Gentry couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen him in sweats. He’s taking it hard and, sorry if I’m out of line, but I don’t think it’s because of the money. When he’s around you, he’s…lighter.” She fiddled with a fry. “I shouldn’t say this, I’ve stepped in enough that’s not my business, but Gentry says that when Aiden’s around you and his brothers, he sees more of the kid he was before Sarah died. He said Aiden was a true mama’s boy.”

My lungs deflated. This trust mess had all started with Sarah’s death. Why hadn’t I connected the dots backward a little more? He’d lost his mother, and he rarely talked about her. But sometimes when we were in King’s Creek, he’d get this faraway look that tugged at my heart. He’d shake himself out of it and look around like he hoped no one had seen him. I’d pretend like I’d just caught his gaze and smile, and I’d leave it at that.

“And the way Gentry dealt with it afterward”—Kendall waved her hand around as if she could conjure a glimpse of the past—“wasn’t good. He was there for the boys physically, but not emotionally. He’s talked before about how he was afraid it affected the guys. I mean, if Sarah hadn’t made those trusts for each of the boys, they all might still be alone.”

I nodded and dug into my food. For the rest of the conversation, I steered clear of my divorce, and if she noticed, she didn’t make any attempts to return to it. After an hour and a half, we parted ways and I went to Mom and Randall’s place.

I’d been staying with them for three weeks. They said it was fine, but I doubted they wanted their grown daughter crashing their time together. Both of them worked full-time and then there was me, invading their evenings and taking up bathroom time in the morning.

Finding my own place would be easy enough. I could go back to apartment life. Live in a place that would fit into the garage of our house. His house. My gut clenched. No doubt the apartment I found would have a bigger bedroom than the one I slept in now.

I pulled up in front of the trailer. The streetlight in front of my parents’ place was out. The rest of the street was quiet. I enjoyed the quiet of the neighborhood and the bite of cold in the air that promised snow in the near future, taking my time going to the door. The talk with Kendall was on my mind, but I wanted to wait until I was in pajamas in bed before I thought about everything she’d told me. When it was dark, I could think clearly.

That was what I told myself.

Inside, I was taking off my coat in the entryway when Mom appeared around the corner, her hands clasped together.

I set my tote bag on the washing machine. “Sorry, Mom. I didn’t think to let you know I wasn’t going to be home in time for supper. I already ate.”

“No problem. We ended up having company, so there won’t be too many leftovers.”

The street was lined with vehicles, but I hadn’t paid attention. “Who?” I asked as I followed her to the dining room.

Aiden rose from the table. He was in his business clothes, but he’d shed his suit coat and tie. The top button of his shirt was undone. I forced my gaze to stay on his face instead of tracing down his wide shoulders and admiring how his defined chest tapered to his waist. If he turned around, all bets were off. His ass was unfair.

“I returned your mom’s container, and she invited me to stay since you weren’t home.”

Mom grunted and picked the serving dishes off the table. Randall rose to help her. Stuffed pork chops. Damn. My burger had been good, but not miss-Mom’s-stuffed-pork-chops good.

“I admit to being selfish,” Mom said. “He eats my food like he can’t afford the best in town.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Yours is the best in town.”

Mom rolled her eyes but turned her back before we could see her smile. Randall lifted his chin toward the hallway. “Go on and talk in your room or something. I’m afraid there’s not much privacy anywhere else.”

“And outside is too cold,” Mom added. Their backs were to us. Were they pushing me and Aiden together?

I shifted my gaze to Aiden. He hadn’t taken his eyes off me. I could kick him out, but after my earlier talk, maybe Aiden and I needed a few more words. “You mind?” I asked.

His shoulders relaxed. “No.”

I should’ve picked the office, but there was only one chair. The way Aiden sat in an office chair was sinful. He did that lean thing, with one elbow on the armrest. He’d been sitting like that when I’d dropped the papers off and I might lose my nerve if I saw it again. But having him tower over me while I asked him personal questions wasn’t the answer either.

That left my bedroom. My tiny bedroom with the twin bed.