Page 87 of Nothing to Deny
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWO THINGS became apparent when she reached the long breakfast table. Her aunt was in overdrive cooking. The spread was more than all of them could eat in a week. And the other thing? Donoghue wasn’t wrong.
Although the affianced couple sat together, they wouldn’t look at each other. Their body language said “get away from me” not “let’s get married and have babies.” Uh oh. No wonder her aunt was amped.
Pure relief lit Holly’s eyes when she noticed her arrival. Her cousin sat straight and gestured her over quickly. Donoghue was keeping her uncle entertained a couple of spots up. Both men were still eating. They’d be eating for a while if they were looking to make a dent in her aunt’s efforts.
The moment Freya sat, Holly grabbed both hands and tucked them on her knees under the table, getting closer.
“Where have you been?” Holly asked in a rushed breath. “I’m dying down here on my own. Kelly knows something’s up.”
Well, at least she’d been right that the sisters confided in each other. They were close. Usually close. She wouldn’t want their bond undone by anything. But Holly wasn’t telling the full truth, she hadn’t revealed Nickson’s past. Kelly would know, right? That her sister was holding back? This was an unnecessary stress on all of them. Unnecessary? Maybe. Avoidable? That was another story.
Though she didn’t actually know what the sisters had communicated to each other. Only way to find that out was to ask.
“Have you spoken to her? About Nickson’s past?”
With their voices low and heads almost touching, no one else should be able to hear them. Her aunt and uncle weren’t blind though, they’d sense something going on. Hence her aunt’s cooking overdrive.
“No. They’ve been arguing, snapping at each other, Kelly said he was fine yesterday. Enthusiastic. Excited about meeting her family. He wanted to make a good impression, she says there’s a fat chance of that while he’s in this mood. Since we showed up, he’s been grumpy, quiet, snapping every time she speaks to him.”
“She said that? Since we showed up?”
Oh no, had Kelly linked their arrival to the discord?
“No, no, she says just since we were all talking here yesterday. She thinks someone said something to upset him and is confused why he won’t tell her what it was. Apparently, they have this thing about being real with each other.” Whatever that meant. If being real meant honesty, the guy didn’t have a great track record. “She says he’s never been like this before. And is pretty sure…”
“Sure…? She’s sure what?” And why wasn’t Holly finishing the thought? “What does she think it is?”
Her cousin relented, releasing a held breath. “She’s noticed the guys glaring at each other. Thinks one of them said or did something out of line.”
Oh, shit, what did that mean? Like Kelly thought the men knew each other from before, or that one of them had spoken out of turn since they’d arrived?
“Did you tell Donoghue?”
“Not yet. There hasn’t been time. I was talking to my mom in the kitchen when he came down. Kelly followed me to the bathroom to talk, this is new information. What do we do? We have to come up with a plan. Have some idea how the hell we are going to figure this out. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t knowwhat he used to do. And are we totally sure that heusedto do it? Are we sure he quit? Are there other agencies? Maybe he went there. And even if he did quit, she still has to know, right? We can’t not tell her this. How can she not know? How can she marry a guy and not know the truth we know? We can’t keep this from her.”
Though it was reassuring to be on the same page as her cousin, it didn’t really help them out. All her concerns were still valid.
“Of course we have to tell her or give him a chance to come clean. But here? With everyone around? I don’t want to lie to her. To spend the next two weeks smiling and chatting while we know this thing she doesn’t know. But is it a good idea for them to have a confrontation with your mom and dad around? How will they get a chance to talk it out?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. This is horrible. Not in a million years could I ever have predicted… What do we do?”
“If there’s any chance of them keeping their relationship, it has to come from him.” Holly was nodding, her eyes widening in hope, that she was about to dash. “Except we can’t force him. We don’t even know him. When would we get a chance to talk? To convince him—”
“I know,” Holly whispered in an exhale. “How bad will it be if she thinks we’re all whispering behind her back? That we know something she doesn’t know.” Except they kind of were doing exactly that. “What an asshole. She shouldn’t marry him at all if he’s a liar. Liars are usually cheats. Maybe we should be telling her not to marry him at all. Imagine if we didn’t go to Squires, if we didn’t bring our guys. We wouldn’t have known, she’d never have found out. This guy could be the father of her children, her children, Frey.”
“I know.”
“No, she would’ve found out. Just in like five years, in the supermarket, or a restaurant, or something. When some random woman comes over to chat it up with him. ‘Oh, how do you know each other?’ Kelly would ask, and then what?”
Her cousin painted quite the picture and she wouldn’t like to be in that position. It was one thing knowing a guy’s past and accepting it, it was another to be blindsided by something your partner kept from you for years. The escort thing was surmountable. The lying…? Not so much.
“It’s never going to come to that because we’re going to figure this out. She thinks there’s something going on between our guys and hers—”
“We could ask them to do it,” Holly said. “Get the guys to talk Nickson into telling Kelly the truth?”
“They can try, but from what I hear, he’s not too open to talk to them either.”
