Keeping You (2 page)

And then, his hand was sliding beneath the waistband of the old gym shorts she slept in, down until he found the place where she ached and needed and wanted him so badly and his fingers began to move, building the tension inside of her until she was breathing hard, body tensed as his lips trailed hot kisses down her neck, her eyes squeezed so tight that she didn’t see the flashlights coming through the woods until it was too late.

Too late for her and Nash to pull apart; too late to avoid being caught in a
very
compromising position.

What followed was one of the most mortifying nights of Aria’s life.

After scrambling back into their clothes in front of three senior counselors, she and Nash were taken to the camp director’s office and forced to sit silently on opposite sides of the room while they waited for their parents to arrive.

Since the Gearys lived closer to the camp, Nash’s mom arrived first.

She wasn’t anything like what Aria had imagined she would be. She was tiny, for one thing—only coming up to the middle of Nash’s chest—and dressed in cheap, ill-fitting jeans and a faded t-shirt, with her thin brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. It was obvious she had once been very pretty, but now she looked worn out, and not just because she’d been awakened in the middle of the night.

Nash had mentioned that his mom and dad both had to work really hard at their jobs, and often work extra night shifts to pay for everything their children needed, but Aria hadn’t understood how hard, or how poor Nash’s family must be.

The realization came to her in a rush, the moment Nash’s mom’s watery green eyes met hers with a knowing look that made her feel small and stupid and very, very young.

Nash’s mom listened to the report of the incident without saying much then asked, “Am I going to need to take him home?”

The director, Phil, a man close to Aria’s daddy’s age who looked sick to his stomach with nerves, exchanged a loaded look with his wife, who stood in the corner across the room, biting her lip. “Well, that’s up to Aria’s parents to decide,” he said. “Since she’s the minor in this situation.”

Nash’s mom frowned. “Nash only turned eighteen last month.”

Phil sighed again, a sound that seemed to pain him. “I know, but she’s fifteen and if Mr. March wants to press charges, I—”

Phil never got to finish his sentence.

Aria’s daddy came roaring into the room like a rampaging rhinoceros, his thinning blond hair standing up in a crazy fuzz-halo around his head, his deep voice making the walls vibrate. Even dressed in suit pants and dress shoes paired with an old
Bob and Sue’s Smokehouse
t-shirt from before Aria was born, back when Mom and Dad opened the first of their chain of BBQ restaurants, he managed to look terrifying, not ridiculous. Daddy was only five ten, and on the slim side for a man with a deep and abiding love of red meat, but he had a presence about him that could knock larger men off their feet at ten yards.

He took one look at Nash and started breathing fire.

He used words Aria had never heard come out of his mouth before, but it was the moment he called Nash a “low life piece of white trash not good enough to lick the ground his little girl walked on” that would always stick with her.

She couldn’t believe her dad would judge someone for having less money than they did. She was still in shock from it when Daddy demanded Nash be removed from the camp immediately, and promised to press statutory rape charges first thing in the morning.

It was then that Aria started to cry, loud, terrified, panicked tears that made her father come sit next to her on the couch. He put an arm around her and drew her in for a hug, finally acting like the dad she had always loved to bits.

By the time she pulled herself together, Nash and his mother were gone, led away by a senior counselor to Nash’s cabin to collect his things.

Nash wasn’t there to hear Aria convince her daddy that he couldn’t file charges against Nash. He wasn’t there to hear her father apologize for saying things he shouldn’t have. He wasn’t there to hear Aria tell her dad that she and Nash cared about each other and wanted to be together, or to hear her daddy say they’d talk more about
that
when she came home from camp in four weeks.

In the days that followed, Aria called directory assistance from the pay phones in the rec room, and tracked down Nash’s number. But for some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to call him, not while she was stuck out in the wilderness. She convinced herself it would be better to call when she was back in Summerville, when she could get a ride from one of her friends to meet him and talk face to face.

She called him the second she got home, but an answering machine picked up. She dropped the phone back into its cradle, too nervous to leave a message.

What if his family hated her for getting Nash kicked out of camp? She didn’t think Nash would blame her, but she didn’t want the first time he heard her voice again to be on an answering machine, either.

So she waited, and called again. And again and again—five times in her first week home—but she was never able to get anyone human on the line.

The first time she saw Nash outside of camp was a week before school started, at the Summerville Mall where she was shopping for a first-day-of-school outfit with her friends. She spotted Nash and a few other boys from River Valley High School in the food court and rushed over. She didn’t hesitate for a second, not imagining Nash would be anything but happy to see her.

Though, looking back on it later, she realized she should have.

She had stayed at camp; Nash had been sent away. Her daddy had made Nash feel like trash, but, out of respect for Daddy’s position on the Arts Council, everyone had pretended that Aria had never broken the rules in the first place. Nash had paid the consequences, while Aria walked away scot-free, and Nash hadn’t heard a word from her for six weeks.

She shouldn’t have been surprised when he greeted her with narrowed eyes and a sarcastic, “Well, if it isn’t the Little Princess.”

But she was.

Surprised, and hurt.

“
Nash?” she’d squeaked, sounding about ten years old. “Can we talk?”

“
I don’t think so,” Nash said. “Wouldn’t want to piss off your daddy, Princess. Besides, you’re too good to hang out with white trash, remember? Might get those freakishly long fingers of yours dirty.”

His friends laughed; Nash smiled a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“
How could I forget?” she asked, covering her hurt with a bitchy sneer. “I guess I had to get close enough to smell the cheap detergent.”

Nash flinched, but barely, just enough for Aria to see it and feel bad for a second before he said, “I’m poor, but at least I’m not a spoiled brat. Or a liar.”

Aria wanted to scream that she wasn’t a liar, that what they had shared meant so much to her, and that all she wanted was for him to smile at her the way he used to and be the sweet, wonderful, sexy Nash she’d known at camp before everything went wrong.

But he wasn’t that person anymore, and Aria wasn’t the type to take abuse without fighting back.

For the next three years—while Aria finished high school, and Nash graduated and started working construction with his uncle—Aria and Nash were firmly committed to exchanging hateful words every time their paths crossed. Which, in a town the size of Summerville, was more often than either one of them would have liked.

By the time Aria flew to France to study to be a pastry chef the summer before she turned nineteen, she could barely remember feeling anything for Nash except contempt. She had forgotten the way Nash had knocked her off her feet when she was just fifteen, and refused to admit, even to herself, that no one had made her feel so consumed, or treasured, ever since.

She forgot she’d ever dreamed of a future with Nash…until the night she was forced to remember.

Chapter One

Twelve Years Later

“
Ms. Aria March?” The man at the door was dressed in a nice white polo shirt and khakis. He was reasonably attractive, but Aria couldn’t remember meeting him before, and the way he’d said her name wasn’t exactly friendly, more…determined.

“
Yes?” She hitched Felicity higher on her hip, wondering if she should have left the baby in the backyard with the rest of the family.

They were having a barbeque to celebrate her sister, Lark’s, engagement and there were plenty of willing hands ready to hold Felicity. But the baby had been clingy lately. And whiny. And not inclined to go to anyone but her mama without a fuss.

They were both tired and fussy. Neither of them had slept through the night since Felicity was born, and eleven months was a long time to go without a full night’s sleep.

Later, Aria blamed the lack of rest for her difficulty connecting the dots when the man on the steps held out an envelope and said,

“
You’ve been served, ma’am.”

“
Served?” Aria blinked, staring at the manila envelope for a long beat before reaching out to take it. “What? Why?”

“
It’s all there, ma’am,” the man said, backing down the walk at a swift pace, heading for a beige Volvo idling at the curb, poised for a quick getaway.

Aria blinked again. This had to be the weirdest special delivery in the history of special deliveries.

“
What’s all there? What is this?” Aria called after him, lowering her voice when Felicity began to chant—

“
No, no, no, no, no,” at the top of her lungs.

Felicity knew three words: “No,” “mama,” and “deer.” The last thanks to her grandpa’s twisted fascination with taking his only granddaughter down to the basement to see his vast collection of mounted deer heads.

Which Felicity loved. For some inexplicable reason.

“
Oh, hush,” Aria whispered, kissing the baby’s forehead half a dozen times, until Felicity’s chant became a yawn and she leaned in to put her cheek on Aria’s chest.

Aria smiled. She might be sleep deprived, exhausted, overworked, strapped for cash, and a reluctant single mom, but she had never been more in love with anything or anyone than she was her daughter. Felicity was her world, and the major reason she was still able to work up a smile most days despite the fact that Felicity’s dad couldn’t be bothered to send money for diapers or baby food, let alone come see his daughter the way he’d promised to do when Aria left their house in Nashville to move back in with her parents in Summerville, Georgia.

But then, Liam was probably still busy. With Carrie, or Sherry, or Char, or whatever the heck his latest conquest’s name was.

Aria had done her best to forget their names,
all
their names, every girl Liam had slept with in the three years they were together. She didn’t want to think about Liam rolling around in bed with other women while putting off their wedding again and again, until Aria ended up pregnant and giving birth to their baby outside of marriage.

If her parents knew…

The thought made her shiver as she closed the door against the August heat, and moved back into the air-conditioned house to find a place to put Felicity down before opening the mysterious letter.

If her parents knew she and Liam had never been married, they would blow their combined, conservative, old-fashioned lids. It would be a family tragedy and Aria and Felicity would never hear the end of it, either one of them.

Aria didn’t want her daughter to grow up feeling like there was something “not good enough” about her birth—at least in the eyes of her grandparents—and so, Aria had lied and told her parents that she and Liam had eloped a year before they split.

It was easier that way, and it wasn’t like anyone was going to check up on her. Liam hadn’t been showing up to visit Felicity and, even if he did, none of her family would bother asking for his side of the story. Her family had always hated Liam. She’d known that from the beginning, even though Mom and Dad were civil and Lark and Melody did their best to hide their lack of enthusiasm for her Brit boyfriend.

Of course, in the end, her family had been right about her record-producer ex. They had better creep-dar than she did—though Aria would wager hers was a lot better now, after everything her lying, cheating, smarmy ex had put her through.

Had put her through…

Served.

Oh god, oh no.

Aria shivered again, a horrible suspicion creeping up her back like a spider wearing spurs.

She put Felicity down on the carpet near the couch, where the baby promptly pulled herself up to a standing position to track her way back and forth along the length of it, practicing her domination of the art of walking before twelve months.

Usually the sight of Felicity’s determined little face made Aria laugh, but not tonight.

She tore into the letter, her heart beating in her stomach, her lungs popping up to lodge somewhere in her throat. By the time she read through to the last page, she was so upset all she could do was squeak in panic and try not to hyperventilate.

It took a full five minutes—and the aid of a paper bag snatched from the kitchen cupboard—to bring herself under control. When she did, she scooped Felicity up with one shaking arm and the legal documents in the other hand, and hurried out to the back yard.

Her Mom, Dad, Lark, and her fiancé, Mason, were playing horseshoes, while Melody manned the grill, reworking all her old cheers from high school to fit horseshoes instead of basketball.

It was a warm, happy, family scene.

One Aria was going to crash like a baseball through a window.

“
Daddy, I am going to kill you,” Aria said. “For real. Kill. Dead. Forever!”

Her father looked over with a frown bunching his eyebrows. He was almost completely bald, but his eyebrows had gotten bushier with age, until they looked like wild caterpillars set loose to roam his forehead. He was turning into a cute old man, but right now Aria didn’t find anything about him cute, not his eyebrows, and certainly not his recent ridiculous behavior that had, no doubt, contributed to making Liam think he had a shot in hell of pulling off his latest stunt.