Chapter 35
Thirty-Five
SLOANE
“Walker’s house is so clean,” I told Monroe as I passed a pristine and sparse spare bedroom and stopped at the threshold of an impressive home gym. “And the man works out. Every time I see this gym, it makes me want to do a hundred squats.”
Roe’s snort of amusement echoed out of the speaker on my phone. “Somehow I doubt that.”
“Okay, it makes me think about doing a hundred squats. The only exercise I get is—”
“Is working eight hours a day in a massive castle and running around after your child twenty-four seven.” Roe yawned suddenly.
“Not to mention all the sex you’re having at the moment.
I seriously don’t know how I’m going to manage returning to work, being a mum, and having the energy to jump Brodan.
I mean, I look at him and, of course, I want to jump him, but I’m so tired.
I’m exhausted all the time. And that’s with a husband who’s lucky enough to take time off work for a while.
Brodan and I have had no time for each other, and that’s fine because we’re getting to know Lennox, but it makes me anxious about the future and how we’re supposed to do it all. ”
Hearing the weariness in her voice, I felt a surge of guilt.
I’d been so wrapped up in my stuff with Nathan and then Walker that I hadn’t been a good friend to Monroe.
She’d done so much for me, and what had I done in return?
She and Brodan only found each other again after a bittersweet eighteen years apart!
I knew they were ecstatic to be parents and Lennox was the love of their lives, but they deserved time with each other, too, after all that time apart.
“Okay, this weekend, Callie and I are taking Lennox for the day, and you and Brodan are going to have some one-on-one time.”
“Oh no, Sloane, I didn’t say it for that—”
“I know you didn’t.” I turned on my heel and strolled to the kitchen. Callie was having dinner with the Adairs, so I’d come to Walker’s after work and he was out grabbing us takeout from the only Chinese restaurant in the village. “But I am doing this for you, and you’re going to let me.”
“I don’t know,” she mused. “I—”
“Lennox will be perfectly safe with me.”
“Oh, I know that.” Roe exhaled slowly. “Okay. If you’re sure?”
I grinned hard. “Yes! I’m very sure. And it’ll be nice for Nox to have some time with Aunty Sloane.”
“Nox?” I could hear her smile down the line.
“Oh yeah, we are figuring this kid’s nickname out right now, and it’s going to be the cool-as-shit nickname Nox,” I insisted. “Brodan and Monroe Adair’s son is not getting landed with the nickname Len or Lenny.”
She chuckled. “What’s wrong with Len or Lenny?”
“Len or Lenny is a sixty-year-old man.”
“Fair enough. You know … actually … I really like Nox. It’s different.”
I smiled at that, happy to assist. They’d named their son after his uncle Lachlan, whose middle name was Lennox, a Scottish surname on the maternal side of the family tree. “Nox it is. And I will see Baby Nox on Saturday.”
“Are you sure you have time, Sloane? Christmas is coming up, you’ve got Callie, the baking for Flora—”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay. Thank you. Now I know the sex is great”—maybe I’d been talking a little too much about my sex life—“but how are other things between you and Walker?”
I opened my mouth to say fine and then thought better of it.
As much as Walker, who was not big on the words, had told me he was mine, his actions said otherwise.
If he was truly mine, there wouldn’t be things about his life that he hid from me.
That he avoided talking about. And maybe I was asking too much of him.
Just because I was an open book didn’t mean everyone else was, right?
But if I was becoming to him what he was to me …
why didn’t he trust me enough to tell me everything?
Before I could say any of that to Monroe, I heard Lennox wail distantly through what sounded like the baby monitor.
“I’m sorry, Sloane. I have to go check on Lennox.”
“Go.” I gave her a strained smile she couldn’t see. “I’m supposed to find plates, anyway.”
After we hung up, I pulled open cupboard doors in Walker’s swanky kitchen, trying to find where he kept the plates.
While I’d ordered a heavy-on-the-calories sweet-and-sour chicken dish, the man had ordered a healthy, light-on-the-sauce chicken chow mein and vegetable sides.
I swear, he was almost guilting me into eating better, but while I still had a teenager’s metabolism, the plan was to enjoy the heck out of it while I still could.
Finding the plates, I then searched for cutlery.
Nosiness, however, got the better of me.
I began looking through all the kitchen cupboards and drawers.
Walker cooked for himself, and he had equipment like steamers and hand mixers and juice makers stacked inside.
Again, everything had order and a place.
I wondered how he’d cope with living with two messy Harrow girls.
I wondered if that would ever be a possibility.
In every other way, our relationship was the second-best thing that had ever happened to me after Callie.
Walker made me feel safe and cared for. The sex was utterly mind-blowing, and he was affectionate in his actions.
He was a good listener, he wasn’t judgmental, and he made me feel like I was the most capable woman in the world.
That I was a special mom and a talented baker.
The cherry on top was his patience and kindness toward Callie.
Oh, and that he still gave me butterflies when he walked into the room.
But he had a wall up between us, and that wall hurt me. Deeply.
As if to exacerbate my feelings, the drawer I pulled out made my heart race a little. The drawer was the messiest thing I’d found in Walker’s house so far. It was filled with bits and pieces, pens and measuring tape, scraps of paper, odds and ends.
And also photographs.
Old Polaroids.
My hands shook as I picked them up, because I knew I should put them back.
Instead, I flipped through them, the blood rushing in my ears as I tried to piece them together like a puzzle.
The photographs were aged, but there was no mistaking one woman in them.
The woman from Princes Street in Edinburgh.
The one with Walker’s eyes. She was younger in the photographs, but it was definitely her.
Unsurprisingly, she was attractive, and in many of the images, she was with a tall, handsome man who looked a lot like Walker.
There was also a girl in the pictures. An adorable photo made me stop flipping.
The girl, pretty, with the same blue eyes as Walker, and thick dark hair, stood behind a little boy with her arms wrapped protectively around him.
She’d bent her head so her cheek squished against his and he held on to her arms while they both beamed at the camera.
It shocked me to recognize the shape of those eyes, the mouth … and realize the little boy was Walker.
I couldn’t believe the adorable little boy with that wide open smile and heart in his eyes was Walker Ironside.
The girl looked so much like him, she had to be his older sister.
These pictures … I flipped through them again frantically … these pictures were of a family he never spoke about. Why? Why had he treated his mother like a complete stranger in Edinburgh?
I placed the photos on the kitchen island, and my stomach twisted with nerves as I waited for Walker to arrive home. At the sound of the front door opening, of his casual, “Baby, it’s me,” sweat gathered on my palms and under my arms.
When Walker strode into the kitchen, the sight of him made me want to hide the photos, to pretend I’d never seen them, to bury my head in the sand and just take of this man what I could.
The problem, however, was that I was in love with him.
I was completely, totally, head over heels in love with Walker Ironside, and I was greedy because I wanted all of him.
And it turned out, I was an all-or-nothing kind of woman.
His soft expression flattened at whatever he saw on mine. He rested the bag of takeout on the island, his gaze searching before it flicked down to the photos on the counter.
Walker’s expression blanked.
Queasy, I blurted, “I’m sorry. I was looking for cutlery … no. I was being nosy. And I found these photographs.”
He said nothing. He stood there, frozen like a statue, eyes blank on the Polaroids.
“Walker? Is this your family? Was that woman we bumped into in Edinburgh your mom?”
Suddenly, his features hardened and the look he gave me, like I was an intruder trespassing in his home, made me die a little inside. “It’s none of your fucking business.”
I flinched like he’d slapped me, but it was as if he didn’t see. Couldn’t see how much his words cut me.
He rested his hands on the counter, bending his head toward me. “Do I snoop around in your fucking house? Christ, Sloane, I thought you were better than that.”
I would not cry. I would not let him make me cry.
Biting back the burn of tears, I lowered my gaze and stepped away. “You’re right, I shouldn’t have gone looking. I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted,” Walker replied abruptly and strode around the island to grasp the photos in hand, yanked open the drawer I’d found them in, threw them inside, and slammed the drawer shut. “They were out of spring rolls, so I got you garlic broccoli.” He moved to open the takeout bag.
I stared at him, stunned, as he removed takeout cartons.
He flicked me a look. “You don’t like garlic broccoli?”
Was he kidding?
I let out a huff of disbelief and, hearing the anger in it, he stopped what he was doing. “What?”