Five Days Grace (17 page)

And yet, she'd taken it pretty well so far. He certainly liked her anger on his behalf much more than her feeling sorry for him or being scared of just how messed up he might be. The woman was no coward. No woman could be, if she was going to be involved with a man in his line of work.

Not that they were involved, exactly.

He just really didn't want her to leave.

They got inside the cabin and stowed the groceries they'd bought. He fed the dog and refilled his water, while Grace made sandwiches they ate on the screened porch. She sat on one end of the sofa/bed and he sat on the other, the dog hovering and begging shamelessly, Grace tossing him a bite here and there.

"I know I shouldn't," she told Aidan.

"Did I say anything?"

"No, but you were thinking it."

He laughed. Maybe she'd stay for the dog. She really liked the silly thing. Honestly, he'd go for any reason that kept her here.

Grace got up to take her empty plate to the kitchen and offered to take Aidan's. When she came back, she perched on the edge of the sofa, looking a little sad and uneasy.

"Aidan, are you in danger here? Is someone after you?"

"Someone made some threats. Anonymously. But I really don't think there's anything to it—"

"Nothing to it when someone... what? Threatens to hurt you? Kill you?"

"It's not like that. The threats are the official reason I'm here, but I saw what was written, and I don't know... It seemed off in some way, amateurish even. I make threat assessments for a living, Grace. I don't put much stock in this one. But it came at a convenient time, got me out of the hospital and away from everything. I needed that, and my CO knew it. I suspect when he thinks I've had enough of a break, the threat will prove to be nothing."

"Oh. Okay. I didn't like thinking you're in danger here."

"I wouldn't have let you stay here if I was. I would never put you in that kind of danger."

"No, I was worried about you. I wasn't thinking of me."

"Sorry about the gun," he said.

She laughed. "It was a first for me."

"Hopefully, the last time, too. Although, if it ever happens again, just do what the guy tells you, Grace. No arguing. Not with a man with a gun. Anything could happen. He probably only wants your wallet. Just give it up. Promise me."

She grinned. "Okay. I will."

"Good." He relaxed just a little, but she still looked uneasy, and then he figured it out. "So, time for us to search the place?"

She nodded.

"Sure you want to?"

"I have to," she insisted.

"Because you're trying to figure out if whatever he told you about this other woman is true? Because he's still trying to get you to forgive him?" God, he hated that thought.

"No. It's not anything like that."

"Then I don't see anything this could possibly accomplish except to hurt you even more, Grace—"

"You said you'd help me," she reminded him.

"I know, and I will. I'm just trying to understand. And I guess, to see if I can talk you out of it, because it sounds like torture to me. You thought I was crazy to walk into that hospital today. How is this any different?"

"Have you ever really loved anyone, Aidan?"

He sat back, thought about it. He'd known a great girl in high school. Another in college and he'd thought... maybe, just maybe... and then it was over, and he wasn't heartbroken. He'd never been heartbroken.

"I guess not," he admitted.

"Well, I would have sworn I loved him. I wouldn't have married him if I hadn't loved him and believed he loved me. I planned to spend the rest of my life with him. That's what marriage means to me. And to find out later that he didn't love me... I mean, to me, if you're married and in love, you don't have sex with anyone else. But he did, so I have to believe he didn't really love me."

"Okay," he said. "I'm still not seeing how whatever you find will help you. He did it. You're absolutely sure of that?"

She nodded.

"So, once that's been established, does anything else really matter? Details like where? How often? How many women? What does that do for you, Grace?"

"I don't trust myself anymore. I don't trust my own judgment about who I should trust, because I believed him, I built a life with him, and I was wrong about him. I need to know what happened. I need the truth. Maybe when I have it, I can look back and see some clues that I missed or things I dismissed. Otherwise, how do I know if I can ever trust myself, my own feelings, ever again with anyone else? Does that make any sense?"

"Maybe. I'm going to help you toss the place anyway. I just hoped I might be able to talk you out of it."

She shook her head back and forth, her face a sweet mix of defiance and vulnerability.

"So, what are we looking for exactly?"

"I don't know. Anything that says illicit sex happening here."

Aidan looked around and frowned. It was rustic, at best, and not in a quirky, interesting kind of way. "Not the kind of place I would ever pick to bring a woman I was hoping to convince to have sex with me."

"If you had to hide the whole relationship, you might. Because no one's going to just be passing by this place on the way to the grocery store or to work. Plus, you don't have to pay to rent it for the night or the afternoon, so there's no bill, no receipt, no money to track."

"Okay, it's got those two things going for it. But it belongs to your family? Your brother uses the place?"

"Yes. My father, my brother-in-law, their kids, Zach's wife's brother. All of them."

"Seems like a place where a man could easily get caught," Aidan said.

"Well, nobody comes here often, especially during the week. At least, I don't think so," she admitted. "Aidan, I have to do this. Not knowing is making me crazy."

"Okay," Aidan said as gently as possible. "Where do you want to start? The bedrooms?"

And then, she just looked scared.

"Honey, I'd look for you, but I don't know if I'd recognize anything significant I found." He sighed. "How about I do the bedroom with the double bed and you take the one with all the twin beds?"

"Thank you," she told him, and when she looked at him like that, he really would do anything for her.

* * *

Grace felt relatively safe searching a room with a set of bunk beds and one twin bed. Her nephews probably slept here, maybe her brother. She found a tiny bottle of bourbon with maybe an inch left in it and imagined one of the boys sneaking it in here, sipping furtively after the lights went out. She left it where it was. She found a couple of the most disgusting-smelling dirty socks, putrid actually, under the beds. Boys were gross creatures. What could they have done to make them smell this bad? She threw those away. The same for the remains of a sandwich.

Last thing of note, a pair of boxers, white with red hearts all over them.

Would her husband ever have worn anything like this? The man she knew wouldn't, but maybe she didn't know him, and this looked like something a woman would give a man and then want him to wear for her. Would Luc do it under those circumstances?

Would they even fit? Grace held them up, spread out between her hands. She couldn't be sure and ended up walking into the next bedroom, where Aidan was, holding them out to him.

"Would these fit you?"

He made a face, like even the thought of them pained him. "Don't think so."

She walked over to him and held them up to his waist to see. "No, I think they would."

"Please don't make me try them on to see for sure."

"Fine. What size pants do you wear?"

"Thirty-fours, although I lost a little weight in the hospital."

"No, wouldn't fit Luc." Grace frowned, staring at Aidan and comparing him in size to her brother, her nephews. "So, this means a girl is giving one of my nephews underwear with little hearts on it?"

"Poor kid," Aidan said. "Find anything else?"

"No. You?"

"I've got what looks like a girl's, maybe a teenager's shirt with a cartoon cat on it." He held it up.

"Hello Kitty. One of my nieces went through a phase."

"Pink nail polish." He held it up.

"Fuchsia, actually."

"There's a difference?"

"Not to a guy. Still, it looks like something a little girl would wear. My nieces all tried out the cabin a couple of times and rejected it as dull and primitive."

"And, last thing, a box of condoms."

Grace froze.

Condoms?

She sank down to the bed as her legs went all weak and shaky beneath her.

There it was.

He'd brought her here.

Her husband had brought another woman to this cabin her family owned to have sex.

Chapter 10

"Oh, come on," Aidan told her, hating the way she turned pale and sank down onto that bed. "It's a box of condoms. You couldn't possibly know they're his."

"No one else would be using condoms here," she insisted.

"I don't know how you could possibly know that, honey."

"Of course, I do. My father, my brother-in-law and my brother—all married. Happily married. Married people don't use condoms."

"Never?" For the moment, he ignored the fact that lots of people might think they were happily married or look like they were happily married, who actually weren't.

"Why would they?" she asked.

"I don't know. I've never been married. You never did?" That seemed so strange. In his world, sex equaled condoms. No question. "Not the whole time you were married? You never... I don't know, messed up with whatever kind of birth control you normally used?"

"No," she insisted. "Married people, faithful married people aren't worried about diseases. If they're using birth control, they're trying not to get pregnant, so they use something more effective than condoms. The pill. The birth control shot. That little ring thing."

"Ring? What ring?"

"It doesn't matter. Luc and I, once we were married, never used condoms."

Okay, he was a rat, but that had him thinking. Sex with Grace without a condom? He had to force the thought away. This was about her, and he really did want to help her.

"Married people really never use condoms?" he asked again.

She shook her head, thinking. Then she added, "I'm not saying it's unheard of. Maybe while my sister was breastfeeding? Before she'd gone back on the pill? I think one time she said something about not being willing to take the pill while she was breastfeeding, no matter who claimed it was safe for the baby."

"Well, there you go."

"No. She doesn't come here."

"Okay, but your brother?" he suggested. "He stashes people here sometimes. I'm one of them, and I have a box of condoms in the bottom of my bag."

"You do?"

"Yeah," he admitted. "Going away present from my brother. He told me to go get laid, that I'd feel better."

She looked surprised. "So, he doesn't know you..."

"No. You're the only person I've shared that bit of news with." A woman he found himself stranded with, a breathtakingly beautiful, kind-hearted woman. What an idiot he was.

"But these aren't yours?" she asked.

"No. This box has been opened. Mine hasn't."

She looked at the box again, like it was practically a written confession. Aidan didn't get it.

"Anybody could have brought these here," he said. "Anybody your brother loaned the place to. And you said there are kids in your family who come here? Teenage boys?"

She nodded.

"Boys hit a certain age, they carry condoms. Mostly, it's wishful thinking, but we do it, long before we actually need them."

"But to leave a box here? I mean, if Zach or Rye found these and thought they belonged to one of the boys..."

"They'd probably think, better safe than sorry, and leave it right where they found it," he insisted.