Between Commitment and Betrayal (Hardy Billionaire Brothers, #1)(29)

She left me on my own driveway, staring after her like an idiot.

An idiot who hadn’t even offered her a ride to work.

Sure, I’d miss Carl, but I wasn’t above damning him to hell for the shit he was pulling from the grave.





12




EVERLY





THE FIRST MORNING I awoke as a married woman felt about the same as any other day except there was a knock at my door and a woman with thick black-framed glasses and bright-red lips greeted me as I opened it. “I’m Maggie. Ignore me while we move in your items from your apartment. Mr. Milton had the extra key. You don’t have a car, do you?”

“No, but I—” Wasn’t it five in the morning?

“Good. We don’t have to worry about that. Declan said you can use any of his in the garage.”

I shook my head and tried to wake up.

“Well, I have a team here to organize. Go about your day as you like. Also, Declan requested lingerie and work attire.” She snapped fingers behind her, and I immediately moved aside as people marched in with clothing racks of athleisure and literal panties of all colors dangling from gold hangers.

“I don’t need more clothes.” I tried to stop her but she walked past me like I was insignificant.

It was too early to argue, and I escaped to my bedroom when my phone rang. I grabbed it like a lifeline but groaned as I answered. “Mom, it’s too early, like still-dark-out early,” I croaked into the phone.

“You’re fine, Evie. You know I’m an early bird. Talk to me a minute, and then go back to bed.” She knew me well enough to know I would sleep until the last second I could. “Tell me how things are going.”

“Everything is fine. I already told you.” It had been via text, however, because I’d avoided talking to her directly. Which was normal. My mother had her own life and we didn’t need to talk unless big things were happening. I yawned and stretched before getting out of bed. “I’m staying with Declan as we iron out the details of the will.”

“Hmm. Are you dating him? What aren’t you telling me?” I wanted to say the same to her. She hadn’t ever told me my father owned the yoga studio or our home.

“Not dating him.” That wasn’t a lie. “It’s nothing. There’s some nuance to the terms, and I want to make sure—”

“Do you think maybe you should come home?” She hesitated over it, like she wasn’t sure she should even offer the idea.

Still, I wondered the same. But going back to my hometown wouldn’t solve anything, not now.

And I’d left for a good reason.

“I don’t know if that’s a smart idea.”

“I don’t either.” She sighed. “When he gets out, I’m going to make sure to—”

“Don’t go to the courthouse. Don’t do anything. Andy has a lot of ties everywhere. The judge already gave him his sentence.” I walked through the guesthouse again, opening the linen drapes to see the gardenias outside my window. To avoid the smell, I’d make sure not to open it. “Plus, we can’t keep living with the fact that we don’t think he got what he deserved. We have to accept it, remember? You told me that.”

Still, moving on from a past sometimes wasn’t that easy. It infected the present, made you hesitate about your future.

“Yes, you.” She grumbled, “I told you that. I’m your mother. I teach you how to do better than me before I rip someone apart for hurting you.”

That was the problem with us though. My mom had reacted badly once in the media. She’d stepped over the line when the cameras were on her, lunged at them when they called me a liar. And, according to my lawyer, they’d never forgiven us.

From that point forward, the attorney thought it best to keep her out of the limelight and made sure every time a camera was on me, or I was in the public eye, I dressed the part, held my pain and anger, held my fear, held my heart at bay. My composure was the only weapon I had.

I sighed in the phone. “I love you for that, Mom.”

“I hate me for it,” she grumbled back as if remembering the day, “but we’re through some of the hell, right?”

“Right.”

“So,” she ventured tepidly, fiddling with her braids, the beads clinking over the phone line. “How are you?”

I shrugged, not knowing what to say but also knowing she couldn’t see me.

Still, my mother’s intuition was always at work. “He was your father, Evie. It’s okay to be sad you lost him. It’s only been two weeks. The funeral was hard on you.”

We’d all sat in the pews and listened to Melinda and her daughters and Declan and his brothers give eulogies.

The family that he loved, that he built, that he’d surrounded himself with had everything all mapped out. I understood it. I’d done the same already for my mother. We knew she would be cremated and given back to the land like she wanted. We’d talked about her belongings, and she’d said she was giving the studio and house to me.

Now, I questioned all that. Yet, I couldn’t question her. Giving her the burden of pointing a finger at her wouldn’t help.

“I’ll be fine.”

“You don’t always have to be fine, Evie,” she said quietly. Yet, my mother had always been fine. She’d never cried about the divorce or about being a single mom. She got up, ran the yoga studio, and taught me to do the same all on her own.