The Reluctant Heiress_A Novella Read online

“You’re a horrible actor,” he says, pushing off the wall and striding toward me. “You look good. Healthy. How’ve you been?”

  I glance behind him, like any second his super-hot girlfriend is going to slink around the corner in a designer cocktail dress. Alex gave me the heads-up that Sebastian was bringing her, presumably so I wouldn’t embarrass myself. I told him I didn’t give a shit, then hung up on him.

  “I’m great, thanks. You?”

  Sebastian frowns. “I’m fine.” He glances at the office door. “Really, why are you going in there? We all know it’s their ritual to yell about politics and their investment portfolios the night before Thanksgiving.”

  He’s right. But there’s no way I’ll admit my reason for seeking them out. “It’s nothing—not important. So, where’s the girlfriend?”

  A smile twitches his mouth. “There is no girlfriend.”

  “What?” I shake my muddled head. He’s standing too close to me. It’s overwhelming. Too much heat and muscle and enticing scent and smooth olive skin. Flustered, I take a step back.

  He takes another step forward.

  “Bast, what the hell?”

  “We need to talk. Your room or mine?”

  Never in my adult life have I run away from someone out of cowardice. As in physically turned around and booked it in the middle of a conversation. Albeit, the exchange between Sebastian and me hadn’t felt like a conversation. More like an interrogation. Intimidation. Impending conflagration.

  Whatever Sebastian wanted to talk about, the look in his eyes instantly regressed me twenty years, to when fight or flight were perfectly logical responses to adolescent discomfort.

  My feet fly over wood and carpet. I don’t stop running until I’m back in the kitchen. Vera and Nona turn from the stove, both of them gaping at me like I’m seconds from a meltdown. Maybe I am. At the very least, I look the part, my face flushed and breath rasping.

  “Tesoro mio, what on earth is wrong?”

  My wide eyes swing to Nona, then to Charles, who sits on a stool at the island munching on carrot sticks. His brows lift, hazel eyes widening.

  I abruptly change my plans.

  “Charles, I need to talk to you right now.” When he doesn’t move, I repeat, “Right now. Please.”

  “Okay, sure.” He tosses a half-eaten carrot to the counter and slips off his stool, walking quickly to me.

  I offer Nona and Vera a quick and false, “Everything’s fine,” before grabbing my brother’s arm and pulling him from the room.

  As we walk upstairs and down a hallway, I’m not certain of my destination until the destination appears before us—our mother’s art studio. Yanking open the door, I flip the light switch, pull Charles inside, and close and lock the door behind us.

  “You’re making me nervous, Candace.”

  As soon as I look at him, I know this is the right decision, if a completely selfish one. Charles may have a reputation as the most even-tempered of us, but it’s because his inner strength is fathoms deep. In many ways, he held our family together after Mom died. Whether he was playing the role of court jester, mediator, or simply being his strong, silent, and dependable self, he was never given due credit for putting his own grief on the back burner to keep us afloat.

  “You know you’re the rock of this family, right?” I ask softly.

  His brow pinches. “What’s going on?”

  So I give him my burden—the burden of truth.

  “I might have breast cancer.”

  25

  The cold should bother me, but it doesn’t. Dry leaves crunch under my boots. My breath expels in puffs of pale mist. Above, branches rub and squeak, their bare limbs directing soft shafts of moonlight to the forest floor.

  I feel separate from myself, insulated by an almost supernatural calm. While my teeth chatter and my fingers tingle with the need for gloves, my mind is soothingly disconnected. I wonder if this feeling, right here, is why people go to confession. Not that I unloaded my sins—well, except for my initial avoidance of calls from my doctor—but I do feel unburdened.

  Poor, unlucky Charles, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t deserve him. Any of them, really—the small, incomparable army of Hughes men. The first thing Charles did after I told him was drag me to my father’s office. I could barely meet my dad’s worried eyes or Deacon’s searching ones as Charles in turn unloaded his new burden onto them.

  Where does a confession stop? What happens when there’s no one left to hold the secrets?

  After my mother’s diagnosis, my parents decided not to tell us right away. They wanted to protect us, to give us a little more time to be innocent, untouched by true suffering. But fear itself is a cancer that spreads—must spread—according to its very nature.

  Perhaps some part of us hopes that like ink dropped in a pool of water, fear dilutes as it gains surface area. But it doesn’t. It retains potency, only multiplying. A virus.

  A cancer.

  I understand a little better, now, the weight of what my father carried for my mother. How it must have torn him apart to keep the truth from us for six months. Then how, throughout her long treatment, his drive to protect his children had outweighed his need for unburdening. And how eventually he broke, sharing his pain with someone else.

  Can I blame him that the person wasn’t my mother? God, I want to. I want to hate him. The teenaged-me would have hated him for it. The confused, rock-bottom me of just months ago did hate him. Or at least I thought I did.

  Now? I can blame my father all I want for betraying my mother, but the fact remains that I don’t know the whole story. My mother’s thoughts. My father’s guilt. Abigail’s culpability.

  Life’s answers are often simple but rarely easy.

  The footsteps have been shadowing me for a while. At first I pegged them as belonging to Deacon. Fierce, protective Deacon, whose response to my news was instant fury on my behalf. Though my eldest brother and I have never been as close as Alex, Charles, and me, I don’t doubt if cancer was a person, Deacon would pummel it to death without blinking.

  But the person following me isn’t Deacon. He wouldn’t bother with subterfuge, but yell and chastise and drag me back into the warm house. Likewise, Charles or my father wouldn’t hesitate to make themselves known, albeit in a more subdued way.

  I know who it is. Who it has to be. No one else would follow me into the woods at night. The knowledge elicits equal excitement and apprehension. I want to see him, hear him, touch him… and I’m terrified that my heart can’t withstand another brush-off. Not when it’s already hanging by a thread.

  When I stop, it’s not because I feel brave or strong, but because the narrow path has opened into a natural clearing. I lift my face to the sky, where the moon sits full and radiant, so bright it mutes the stars.

  The footsteps crunch closer and finally halt.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Sebastian asks softly.

  Even though I knew it was him, my heart leapfrogs in my chest as I turn to face him. “Why are you following me?”

  “Who says I’m following you? Can’t I take a midnight walk if I want?”

  My shell of calm cracks a little. “I’m not in the mood for banter. What do you want?”

  “Among other things, to apologize.” He walks forward, right into my personal space, and before I can protest, a thick, soft blanket comes around my shoulders. “You’re not wearing enough layers.” The words ring oddly in my ears. He doesn’t sound reproachful—he sounds forlorn.

  “Who told you?” I whisper, searching his face, the eyes that are too dark to discern clearly.

  “I stayed up to greet Alex and Thea when they arrived and was in the room when Deacon told them.”

  My cocoon shivers with seismic activity, then shatters. “I’m not dying,” I snap. “There’s no evidence yet that I have cancer. It’s just a biopsy.”

  He nods calmly. “Yes, I know.”

  “Then what are you doing?” My voice raises sev
eral octaves. “What do you want?”

  “Like I said, I’m here to apologize.”

  “For what?” I snarl, off-kilter from the tenderness in his voice.

  I stiffen as his hands carefully cup my face. The heat of his skin is almost scalding on my cold cheeks, the touch itself shockingly intimate.

  “For avoiding you,” he says softly, the words forming mist between our mouths. “For turning you away, shutting you out. But most of all, for not telling you that I’ve loved you since I was sixteen, and I’ve never fallen out of love with you. I’m hopelessly, sickeningly in love with you.”

  My body and mind go utterly still. All I can think to say is, “What?”

  The beginnings of a smile curve his mouth. “This is me doing everything backward—the usual direction when it comes to us. No first date, no flowers or chaste kisses for us. I want you. I want to make love and argue and laugh with you until you eventually murder me in my sleep. Hopefully when we’re old and senile.”

  A hoarse laugh croaks from my lips even as tears leak from my eyes. “Is this real?” I blurt. “Because I’m suddenly scared I might be dreaming.”

  His thumbs brush my tears away, then he pulls me against his warm chest, wrapping the lapels of his leather jacket around me, trapping me in heat and musk and… Sebastian.

  “Does this feel real?” he murmurs.

  I nod, tucking my arms around him, fingers digging into his hips, the steady thump of his heart under my ear.

  “I might have cancer,” I whisper.

  His arms tighten, promising to hold me together. Promising to stay. So I fall apart for the second time since that first phone call, giving release to a potent cocktail of old grief mixed with anxiety and dread. For these brief moments, I let him carry the burden. And he does, his grip and murmured love not wavering as I sob into his chest.

  My tears are finally exhausted, leaving me feeling hollowed out and bone tired. I offer only a token protest as Sebastian tosses the blanket to the ground and swings me into his arms. My face pressed to the scarf around his neck, I don’t watch our progress, but I do recognize the distinct creak of the guesthouse’s stoop.

  Opening the door, he says, “Nona’s in the big house tonight.”

  I lift my face, smiling tiredly. “Cooking till the wee hours. She’s a saint.”

  Sebastian carries me across the threshold, his foot nudging the door closed behind us. Pausing under the soft entryway light, he tucks a strand of loose hair behind my ear as his dark eyes trace my features.

  “I’m going to seduce you now, Candace.”

  Everywhere that was cold is suddenly hot. And I’m not even a little bit tired. Swallowing, I nod. “Okay.” Then I freeze. “Wait—don’t you have a girlfriend?”

  He chews his lower lip, then admits. “No. Haven’t so much as been on a date since I saw you last.”

  “Then who’s the model in all the photos?”

  His brows lift. “Stalking me, were you?”

  “Answer the question!”

  My obvious jealousy turns his smile smug. “A favor to my agent. Nice girl, but she isn’t you.”

  “But Alex told me…” I trail off, frowning at the sudden guilt on Sebastian’s face. “He lied to me? Put me down!”

  I thrash futilely in his arms, which only makes him laugh. “It was my fault.” His tone turns serious. “I’m sorry. Alex only lied because I asked him to. I wanted to know if there was a chance you still cared about me but was too chickenshit to just ask. Not gonna lie, I was glad to hear you hung up on him.”

  “You lied to make me jealous? Unbelievable!” I thump his shoulder with my fist, but there’s no strength behind it. I should be angry—I really should. I’d cried myself to sleep that night.

  But the truth is I’m struggling not to smile.

  “Candace,” he says soberly, “I would tear down a mountain with my bare hands if I thought it would impress you. I’d lie to the whole goddamn world. You’re the only person on earth who makes me feel like I’m not wandering anymore. Please tell me you forgive me for being an absolute coward all those years ago.”

  Emotion punches me in the chest, hot and heavy. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to hear. All I needed to know.

  Summoning a smirk, I prompt, “And for being an asshole when I laid my heart at your feet?”

  His lips twitch. “That too. No more games. No more avoidance. Can you love me again?”

  Tears blur my vision. “I never stopped.”

  His lips find mine, urgent and hard and perfect. He tastes like coming home, like happiness and freedom. And I know that this, right here, is why I could never fall in love or commit to a relationship.

  Since Sebastian elbowed his way into my heart so long ago, there’s never been room for anyone else.

  “Upstairs,” I mumble. “Now.”

  Later, I make him put on his letterman jacket.

  26

  Sweaty, elated, physically and emotionally spent, I drift between sleep and waking in Sebastian’s arms.

  “I still feel like I’m dreaming,” I whisper into his throat.

  His hand smoothes down my naked back. “This does feel a bit surreal.” Shifting his head back on the pillow, he looks down at me. “I meant what I said. Everything. I don’t want to hide my feelings for you anymore.”

  My heart skips. “Okay. Me, either.”

  I know he means telling family, not the world. That will come soon enough, whether we want it to or not. He’s too famous. Too visible in entertainment media.

  A spike of anxiety sends goose bumps down my arms. My breath shortens as for the first time, the magnitude of what we’re committing to hits me. Flashing lights. Public image and appearances. Parties and red carpets and fake smiles and superficial conversations.

  “Don’t think about it,” he says softly. “Stay in the moment with me. We’ll figure it out as it comes.”

  “But—”

  He gently palms my face. “Candace, listen. Since I was a kid, all I’ve known is acting. Playing the part that was expected of me, trying so hard to find my place in the world. For the first time, I want to be only myself—with you.” He pauses. “Has Nona ever told you what happened, why I came to the U.S.?”

  I shake my head, confused by the shift in topic but curious in spite of myself.

  His gaze lifts, going unfocused as he stares into the past. Even though we’re pressed together, a line of heat where our bodies meet, I feel his sudden distance. When he speaks, his voice is distant as well. Reedy and strained, as if he’s digging the words from a hard-packed ground.

  “My father was a criminal. A con-artist. Most likely an alcoholic, but I didn’t know it then. When a con didn’t pan out the way he wanted, he would go into these week-long rages. He took his frustration out on my mother, and eventually—when I grew big enough to intervene—me.”

  “Oh, Bast,” I whisper, clutching him tighter. “I didn’t know.”

  He nods, gaze flickering to my face. “No one here knows except Nona and your parents. Not even Alex knows the whole story. For years after I came here, I couldn’t speak of it. Your mother eventually got me to see a therapist in Boston. He helped me process the trauma, or at least accept it and move forward.”

  By the rigidity in his jaw, I know the story isn’t over. I have a sudden memory of Sebastian punching a kid at school who made a joke about him not having a mother. Shortly thereafter, my mom started driving him into Boston two evenings a month. We were told it was bonding time for them—which I stupidly resented.

  “God, I was such an asshole to you. I’m so sorry for how I treated you.”

  Warm lips caress my forehead. “You didn’t know where I came from, just that I invaded your life. And let’s be honest, I liked your attention in whatever form it came.” He chuckles softly. “You’re so beautiful when you’re angry, amore mio.”

  My love.

  “I love you,” I tell him, softly and fervently.

  I feel his smile aga
inst my hairline. “I know.” A sigh passes my ear. “When I was ten, my father’s abuse became more frequent and severe. I was hospitalized twice, once for broken ribs and then for a concussion. After the last time, my mother checked me out of the hospital and we fled to some friends of hers in Florence. A week later, he found us.”

  Sebastian drags in a slow, trembling breath. His heart pounds fast; I feel the reverberations against my skin. Feeling helpless, I hold him and wait for the rest.

  “I wasn’t there,” he continues. “I’d gone for a walk. Florence is so beautiful at night. I stood on the Ponte Vecchio, the oldest bridge in the city, and stared at the water of the Arno for hours. I remember feeling… free. Hopeful. My mother and I had spent the last days dreaming about a new life in the United States with her sister. Nona had bought us plane tickets—we planned to get visas. When I finally returned to the apartment, there were police everywhere and a crowd in the street.” Another slow breath as he wills out the words. “He’d gotten his hands on a gun, killed my mother and her friends, then turned the gun on himself.”

  Blood roars in my ears. Already primed from earlier tonight, my tear ducts overflow. “Bast, I’m so sorry.”

  “Hush, don’t cry,” he soothes, smiling softly as he wipes tears from my face. “I survived. I’m here. It’s okay.”

  Sniffling, I groan. “This is fucked up. I should be the one comforting you.”

  He shakes his head. “I’ve had many years to come to terms with it. I don’t want you to feel pain for me, Candace, but I’m grateful for your tears because it means you have all of me now. I always hoped—dreamed—that someday I’d stop being afraid of you long enough to give you the last piece. Tell me this doesn’t change how you feel, that you’re not ashamed of my past.”

  I gape at him, shocked. “Are you kidding? Of course it doesn’t change how I feel. If anything, it makes me love you more. You’re an idiot.”

  Sebastian cracks a smile, his sleepy eyes glittering with humor. “I’m glad my confession hasn’t dulled your tongue. I was worried you’d treat me differently.”