ASHFORD (Gray Wolf Security #5) (34 page)

In one of those rare moments when both babies were sleeping, I wandered into the kitchen to talk to Constance. It felt like we hadn’t talked to each other in weeks about anything other than the babies.

“You should be sleeping,” she said the moment she saw me. “A mother should sleep when her babies are sleeping.”

“Yeah, well, I feel like I’m either sleeping or nursing twenty-four hours a day. I wanted to do something different for once.”

“I don’t know about that. You don’t seem to sleep much at night.” She winked at me. “I change the sheets on the beds in this house, remember?”

I blushed. I’d spent every night with Nicolas for the last month or so, since that night he found me in the nursery alone with Cole. We hadn’t officially moved my things into his room, but they were migrating there, a stitch of clothing and a toothbrush at a time. I’d thought it was our little secret, but I forgot how much the housekeepers and maids and other household staff tended to see in a typical home.

“You don’t approve,” I said.

Constance shrugged. “It’s not mine to approve or disapprove,
mija
.”

“Actually, it is. You’re the closest thing I have to family now that
mi mami
is gone.”

Constance just nodded, dropping her eyes to the task at hand. She was washing dishes left over from breakfast while watching over the tamales she was steaming for lunch. The kitchen smelled like my childhood, so filled with Mexican spices that I wanted curl up there and live in the memories it conjured.

I missed my mom.

“You don’t approve.”

“I worry,
mija
.”

“Why?”

She glanced at me. “There are things you don’t know about Nicolas Costa.”

A blush burned my cheeks. “I don’t think we have as many secrets as you think.”

Constance made a face. “I don’t talk about sex.”

“We do other things, Constance. We talk.”

“About his past?”

“I know about this mother.”

“Yes, because Adam told you.”

I settled down on one of the low chairs set around the kitchen table, pulling my legs up underneath me. “Nicolas would have told me,” I said, watching her turn back to the dishes, a snort the only response to my comment. “He would have,” I added, a little wiggle of doubt waking up in the back of my mind.

“He is not as perfect as he seems, and I blame myself for your assumption that he is. If I hadn’t told all those stories in front of you, maybe you wouldn’t be in this position now.”

“My choices have nothing to do with your stories.”

“Don’t they? Didn’t you volunteer to be their surrogate because of me?”

“I agreed because
mami
needed expensive medical treatment, and I needed her to be okay.”

Constance crossed herself as she turned back to face me again. “Your mother would feel very guilty if she was still here.”

“Everything turned out alright. Nicolas is a good man, and we’re going to raise the babies together.”

“Are you? What happens if that woman gets custody?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it.”

“Do you think he’ll want you around then? A reminder of what he’s lost?”

Fear sliced through me. Did I know what he would do? Was our relationship solid enough to survive that? Was I strong enough?

“You said he was a good man, that he was generous with his staff, that he didn’t act like the other rich people you’d worked for. You told us stories about the parties he threw here and the people who came by and the things he did. How could you be so kind to him in your stories, but so afraid of a relationship between us?”

Constance grabbed a hand towel and wiped her hands as she walked to the table and took a seat across from me. “I was entertaining my friend and her young daughter. It never occurred to me that you would grow up and fall in love with him.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and studied her as she studied me.

“What do you know that you think I don’t?”

Constance glanced over her shoulder as though she was afraid Nicolas might walk in on us. Then she focused on me again.

“He has a drinking problem,
mija
. It wasn’t bad when I first came to work here. I would come in sometimes and find him sleeping on the couch, an empty bottle of bourbon next to him. Just, once or twice a month. Then it was once a week. Then several times a week. And then there were the parties, the girls, all of it alcohol fueled. I overheard arguments between him and Adam—that’s how I found out about his mother. Adam compared his drinking to his mother’s addiction and Nicolas threatened to fire him.” Constance reached over and took my hand. “It got worse and worse, until one day I came to work and found an ambulance outside. Adam found him passed out in a puddle of vomit. He breathed it in and was in the hospital for a week, fighting pneumonia because of it.”

I felt the color drain from my face as she talked. I remembered coming back here after Nicolas’ arrest, finding him drinking glass after glass of bourbon. He was so drunk he almost couldn’t stand up as I maneuvered him into the shower. But then…he drank a lot, but it didn’t seem to faze him for long.

“He doesn’t drink.”

Constance nodded. “He went into rehab after the pneumonia. It was all very hush-hush. I wasn’t even sure that was what had happened until he came back and I found the sobriety chips on his dresser one morning.” She squeezed my hand. “Things changed after that. No more parties, no more women. He took on more projects, worked longer hours. And then he came home with Aurora.”

“She was the first woman he was with after rehab?”

“As far as I know,” Constance said. “And he was so in love with her. She looked at him and there were dollar signs in her eyes. She never really loved him.”

“You knew that?”

“Oh, yes.” Constance sat back, pulling her hands from mine. “There is very little a person can hide from their housekeeper. I knew what was going on in that marriage. Aurora was a cheating little
puta
.” She spit on the floor and then rubbed the spittle away with her foot. “There were men coming and going in this house all the time while Mr. Nicolas was out. But, still, he loved her.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, sitting back in my chair. “What you’re saying, he sounds like a good man who chose the wrong woman. Why would you object to me and him together?”

“Because he stopped being a good man,
mija
. He got sober, and he couldn’t hide his emotions in alcohol, so he started indulging them. The fights they had—sometimes I expected to come into work the next day and find her murdered and him on his way to jail.”

“He was violent?”

“Very violent.” Constance gestured to her wrists. “Some mornings, Miss Aurora would come downstairs to breakfast and she would have these horrible bruises on her wrists. Once or twice, there were bruises on her throat. If she’d lifted her shirt, I’m sure there would have been bruises there, too.”

I shook my head. “I don’t believe you.”

“I saw it with my own eyes,
mija
.”

I stood up, still shaking my head. I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it. I knew he was sober; I knew he attended meetings, even up to the time I was meeting with Aurora at the beginning of our surrogacy contract. She mentioned it once or twice; I was just too dumb to realize what she meant. She told me he was out with his friend Bill—Bill W., one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. She told me she thought it was ridiculous. I should have seen…I mean, I knew he had a temper, but I couldn’t make myself believe he was capable of beating his wife.

“He didn’t hurt her. And he definitely didn’t kill her.”

Constance shrugged. “Believe what you want to believe,
mija
. I just want you to have all the information before you go running into this thing. I know you love those babies, but you—”

She stood and came to me, resting her hands on my shoulders. “Your mother was always more than
mi amiga. Ella era mi hermana
. I can’t just stand here and watch you make a mistake without putting my nose in it.”

I nodded, aware that she was doing this because she thought she was looking out for me, but I still couldn’t make myself believe Nicolas was capable of this kind of thing.

“Why did you take those drugs I found in his bathroom away if you thought he was guilty? You could have told the police.”

“And risk it coming back to hurt you? I couldn’t do that.”

“Then you think he’s capable of murder.”

“I think a man who loves that deeply is capable of many things when the woman he loves does not love him back.” She touched my cheek. “Please, think about what I’ve told you. Don’t let yourself become someone your mother would not be proud of.”

I kissed her cheek lightly. “You’re wrong. And you will see that someday soon.”

I went to settle in the living room, the baby monitor in my hand, thinking I’d do a little reading while the babies continued to sleep. But then I realized that the book I’d been reading in the hospital—the book I hadn’t had a chance to even pick up since the babies were born—was upstairs in my bedroom.

I climbed the stairs, wondering if that counted as exercise, humming a song I’d heard early that morning on the radio under my breath. It was something about loving the same person until each was old and thinking out loud or something…I couldn’t remember all the words, so I was murdering the lyrics as I pushed through the bedroom door and came up short.

Nicolas was sitting on the edge of the bed, a bag of drugs in his hands.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Why are you in here?”

“It’s my house.” He got up and came toward me, the bag extended between two fingers. “Why is this in here?”

His voice was low, steady, but there was anger dancing in his eyes. He looked at me the same way he did on Thanksgiving Day, the same way he looked at me just seconds before he grabbed me around my throat.

“I found it. I didn’t know what to do with it.”

“Where did you find it?”

I backed up a little, Constance’s words, so recently uttered, dancing through my mind.

…bruises…on her wrists, her throat…if she’d lifted her shirt…

“Did you hit her?” I asked before I even realized the words were on my tongue.

That shocked Nicolas into stopping his forward progression. He stared at me, anger turning into confusion.

“Did I hit who?”

“Aurora.”

“What?” He stared at me, disbelief in every line of his handsome face. “Why would you ask me that?”

“Constance saw bruises. She thinks…” I stopped, my eyes falling to the bag of drugs. Xanax. The same drug that killed Aurora.

Did she take them willingly? Or did someone force her into it?

“Constance thinks I beat Aurora?”

There was genuine hurt in his voice. He stared at me and then something clicked. He opened his mouth, a sound like someone might make if they’d been punched in the gut slipping from between his perfect lips. He stared at me for a long time, his gaze unwavering, but the emotion rushing through them ever-changing.

He turned away, balling up the bag of drugs and throwing them against the far wall. The bag hit with nothing more than a slight tap, falling to the floor undamaged.

“Do you believe her?”

“I don’t want to, but there are so many secrets between us still that I don’t know what to believe.”

He nodded, his shoulders drooping as though a heavy weight were resting on them. “Then I guess it’s time we fix that.”

He gestured for me to join him on the small couch pushed into a corner of the room, him on one end and me on the other. And then he just started talking.

He told me about his mother, of the horrible things she made him do when she needed a fix and didn’t have the money to get it. The long days and nights she abandoned him on his own when he wasn’t even tall enough to see over the top of the stove. The things he heard and saw her do to survive.

He told me about coming to Los Angeles on his own, only sixteen and with less than a hundred bucks to his name. He told me how he talked his way into a job on one of the studio lots, lying about his name, his age, and his experience.

He told me how he convinced the studio to back an unknown director on a loser project that was bound to lose more money than it would cost to make it. And how he became a golden child over night when the project became a sleeper hit.

He told me about the women, the drugs, and the will it took for him to resist falling prey to his mother’s disease.

“I didn’t think alcohol was that big of a deal,” he said. “My mother’s drug of choice was heroin. I thought, as long as I stayed away from the hard stuff—heroin, cocaine, meth—I would be okay. It never occurred to me that something as innocuous and common as alcohol could be my downfall. Even when Adam told me I was making a fool of myself, when he warned me that I was walking down the same path we’d barely escaped, I didn’t see it.”

I looked at me with honesty so painful I could hardly stand to look at it in his eyes.

“I thought I could conquer everything. But alcohol got the better of me. So I went to rehab, got sober, and did everything I was supposed to do. I did it all right. And when I was sober, I was ready to have everything they promised you. I was ready for the beautiful wife, the perfect children, and the American dream. I had the money, the dream job. I wanted the rest.

“That’s when I met Aurora.”

I reached over and touched his knee. He took my hand between both of his.

“I thought I loved her. She was the first woman I dated after rehab. I told her everything: my childhood, my drinking problem, my dreams for the future. And she swore she was right there with me, ready to settle down and have a good life together. I thought, hell, I’d made it through. I was that rare survivor of drug addiction. I was going to have everything my mother pissed away with her addiction.”

He laughed as he thought about it, a bitter laugh that chilled me down to my soul.

“All I did was marry my mother. I just jumped right back into the deep end of that shit hole.”

He lifted my hand and kissed the palm lightly. “At first, it was little things. Comments she made, texts on her phone, weird looks from other men at parties. And the rumors. There were a lot of rumors, but I was so blind. I ignored them. Put it down to jealousy. And then, less than six months after the wedding, I caught her with that hors d’oeuvres plate, her cocaine lined out on it in perfect stripes. When I asked how she could do it to me, how she could do drugs in my house after everything I’d told her about my mother, you know what she said?”

I shook my head, but I could imagine.

“She told me I should get off my high horse. I’d be a better person if I did it too. And then she laughed.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “I called my lawyer right then and there, tried to file for divorce. But she told me if I went through with it, she would OD and I’d have to explain that to the press.”

He dragged his fingers through his hair, exhaustion clear in his eyes. “I put up with it for two years, and she seemed to think she’d won some war between us because her behavior grew increasingly worse. She had open affairs. She showed up late to important dinners and parties, usually stoned out of her mind. She picked fights with me on the sets of my movies.” He shook his head. “She took every opportunity she could find to embarrass me until I had enough. I filed for divorce and she kept to her word. She OD’d on cocaine downstairs in my office. Adam found her passed out on top of the paperwork my attorney sent.”

“Oh, wow…”

Nicolas nodded. “So I couldn’t divorce her. I couldn’t do anything. She was unstable. So I stayed and tried to make it work. She moved into the guest room down the hall, continued to have her boyfriends over, continued to do whatever the hell she wanted to do. I managed to keep most of it under wraps, thanks to my loyal friends and staff. But, I guess, that turned out to be a mistake, too, because the public had no clue how bad things were when she died.” He ran his hand over my palm. “She would attack me. She’d come at me with her claws out, trying to tear out my eyes for some perceived slight. It could be almost anything that set her off. I wasn’t home on time. I gave an interview she didn’t know about. I didn’t tell her that her mother called. It didn’t matter. And she would attack me, and I would grab her wrists to hold her off.”

“And leave bruises.”

He looked at me, his eyes sliding to my throat. “I tried not to hurt her, but sometimes I had no choice.”

I slid closer to him, pressing my forehead to his shoulder. “And the night she died?”

He stiffened a little, but his hands came around me and the tension slowly left his body.

“I went to ask her for a divorce.” He kissed the top of my head. “I kissed you that night, and I realized that I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t pretend anymore. I had to get out. But she was belligerent, as usual. Told me she’d agreed to the surrogacy to keep me happy. That she was giving me a family just like I’d wanted when we got married. The least I could do was continue to play along. She said if I waited until the baby was born, she’d consider giving me a divorce then. But if I left before she was ready, she’d make sure I never saw the kid.”

I nodded, almost aware of what he was going to say before the words were out of his mouth. It all made so much sense. Aurora needed Nicolas. She needed his name and his money to be someone in Hollywood. She had a few movies under her belt when she met him, but she never would have become the starlet she was if she hadn’t married him. It was his star that made hers shine brighter. She knew she couldn’t lose that if she had any hope of taking her career any further. So she used everything she could to keep him under control. His sense of decency, his kindness, and his desire for a family.

No wonder she’d been so excited about the babies. She knew how he would respond to any threat against his child.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

“For what?” He took my face in his hands and lifted it so he could see me. “What do you have to be sorry for?”

“For doubting you, even briefly. I knew this couldn’t be true, that you would never—”

He kissed me, cutting off my words. I moved closer to him, grateful he wasn’t angry with me, that he didn’t just get up and walk away from me. Grateful that we might have a chance to survive all of this. Grateful that Aurora’s schemes and deceit had brought us together.

“I love you,” he whispered against my lips. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you all of this before.”

“The pills—”

“No,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“They’re not mine. I thought they were yours.”

He pulled back. “What do you mean?”

“They were in your bathroom, in the false bottom of a drawer.”

He cursed, using words I don’t think I’d ever heard in English before. I’d heard them all my life in Spanish on the lips of the laborers who lived in our neighborhood, but never in English.

“They’re Aurora’s, aren’t they?”

He nodded. “She hid drugs all over the house. I hunted for them constantly, throwing them out whenever I found them. But I never thought to look in the bathroom.”

“I hid them. I was afraid someone would think they were the ones used to kill her.”

He groaned, running his hand over the top of my head. “I’m sorry you were in that position.”

“I’d do anything to protect you.”

“I know.” He kissed me again. And then he was reaching into his pocket and sliding to the floor. I must have paled because he hesitated, his hand reaching up to caress my cheek. “I wanted to do this at a more romantic time, but there never seems to be time for anything with the babies.” He opened his palm and a small, but perfect diamond solitaire on a gold band sparkled in the lamp light. “I looked at all these huge, ostentatious rings, and then I saw this one. And I knew it was perfect for you.”

I pressed a hand to my mouth. “Oh, Nico…”

“Marry me. Be my wife. Be a mother to our children. Help me build our unique version of the American dream.”

I just laughed through my tears, as I fell into his arms.