Chapter Seventeen
Nash followed Kenzi through a family room, a lounge, a library, a pantry with nothing but dishes stacked neatly, up the grand staircase, and finally into a spacious bathroom. Although this wasn’t like any bathroom he’d been in before. The toilet was screened off by an accordion folding privacy screen made with dark wood and peach fabric. The floor was 16x16 white marble tiles, and there were three shag rugs in dark green. Pink pinstriped wallpaper covered every vertical surface and made his eyes swim. There was a small desk with a chair and an oval mirror, double sinks, and a window seat with pink and green cushions.
With a sigh, Kenzi plopped into the window seat and leaned her head against the glass. He checked the view and noted that she could see the party below, which was smart, considering who had crashed the gate.
“I shouldn’t have accepted his ring.” She spun her wedding band around and around on her finger. “I wish I could say that I don’t know what attracted me to him, that it was a whirlwind kind of thing and he swept me away, but it wasn’t like that at all.”
Nash sat down with his back to the window. He placed a hand on her knee in a show of support. He had no room to run away from hearing the bad parts of her life, considering the fact that he had his skeletons too. “How did he end up with Lunette?”
Kenzi choked a laugh. “They were never together. It was a one-night stand.”
“But if you were engaged …” He let the implication hang there.
She pulled a throw pillow across her lap. “My family came out for our engagement party. Clyde is the heir to his father’s title, castle, seat in the House of Lords.”
“Castle?” he asked dubiously to lighten the mood.
Kenzi scowled. “It’s a cold and drafty thing with heavy rugs and tapestries and coats of armor. I thought it was so romantic the first time he took me home. We had to dress for breakfast and for shooting and then for lunch and tea and dinner. I was overwhelmed and so thankful that he found me worthy to be a part of it all.”
Nash’s fist clenched at the thought that Kenzi didn’t feel worthy to be somewhere. She was a class act.
“Of course, he laid on the snobbery.Kensington, dah-ling, you simply must know that we don’t come to dinner in our day dress.” She spoke with an exaggerated English accent. “I got so caught up in pleasing him and fitting into his world that I was mortified by my own family’s behavior.”
“He did a real number on you.”
Kenzi pressed her lips flat. “They’d been there less than twenty-four hours when Raquel told me Clyde had come on to her. I didn’t believe her. I thought she was being jealous and petty and trying to ruin my happiness. If I had just listened …”
Her eyes went red and filled with tears. Nash scrambled for a tissue and found one on the makeup table thing.
“Thanks,” she whispered while dabbing under her eyes. She took several deep breaths before continuing. “I guess Raquel set him in his place, but Lunette—” Her eyes fell to the tissue. “—was as taken in by him as I was. He told her she was prettier than me, that had he known she was in the world he never would have looked my direction. He promised her the world.”
She ripped the tissue in half. “My family went home and I didn’t know. I continued to make wedding plans and play the part of the blushing bride, and Clyde acted like all was well.
“Meanwhile, Lunette found out she was pregnant, and when I came home for Christmas, she confessed. I didn’t believe her and I said some awful things. Just awful.” The tears fell, one after the other.
Nash put his arm around her shoulders. “We’ve all done things we regret.”
“It ruined us as sisters. We’ve never been the same since.” She leaned her head against his chest.
For a moment, he believed he was holding his wife and his heart surged with emotions he couldn’t name. A need to protect her, to dry her tears and tease out her smile, filled his every inch.
And yet, Raquel’s warning was in the back of his mind. He needed to know what she meant about Kenzi not being as innocent as she seemed. Yet he didn’t feel like he had the right to ask. He wasn’t a poster child for incorruptibility, and there were things about him that he would like to stay below the surface.
But he wanted to know so badly because he felt things when he was with Kenzi that he hadn’t felt before, and if he was going to give himself over to those yearnings, he needed an answer.
“Raquel said something today, about skeletons in your closet.” He let the statement hang there between them. He didn’t dare press, because he feared she would turn around and ask him the same thing one day. And what could he say that wouldn’t sound awful? But then, if there was more to her, darker secrets, then perhaps they were meant to be together—both of them running from a past they couldn’t outpace.
“I went back to Clyde and believed him when he said the child couldn’t possibly be his because I was the only woman for him.” She gave a self-depreciating huff. “I wrote off my family. Burned every bridge I could. A week before the wedding, Lunette sent me the results of a paternity test.”
Nash grinned. “I’ll bet Clyde was ticked.”
“He laughed in my face. Said he still wanted to marry me because I’d make the perfect wife—dumb enough not to see the affair right in front of me.”
Nash called him a name that was better used in bar fights and prison cells.
Kenzi giggled. “That about sums him up.” She leaned away from Nash, her shoulders rounded. “Maybe things would have been okay if I’d come home, but I was prideful and hurt and angry. I stayed in England, got a job, and ignored all communications from my sisters. I didn’t come home until Dad said he was dying.” She shuddered a breath. “I should have come sooner.”
Nash rubbed his hand over her back. She was small and his hand was large, and it didn’t take much to convince her to scoot closer to his side. “So that’s your big skeleton?”
