“Well, if you wouldn’t mind, that would be helpful,” she said, her tone more gracious than before. “Thank you.”
Liz gave her mother a key to the house, then leaned in close to Aidan to whisper, “If my dogs attack them, don’t try to stop it.”
He laughed and held open the shop door. “Ladies.”
Fifteen minutes later he’d deposited the three women inside Liz’s house, calmed the barking dogs, discreetly avoided answering a single one of the myriad questions posed about his relationship with Liz and walked back to Main Street.
“They’re safely tucked away at your place,” he told Liz as he returned to Pet Style. “They’re a curious bunch, aren’t they?”
She groaned. “What did they ask you?”
“I believe my preference for boxers or briefs came up at one point.”
Her eyes widened with dismay. “I’m going to kill them. I really am.”
He laughed at her reaction. “It’s okay. They didn’t go quite that far.”
“But close enough,” she said wearily, then gave him a plaintive look. “Can I spend the night with you? Maybe the whole weekend?”
His jaw dropped, even though he knew she was only teasing. “I wouldn’t say no.”
She chuckled, as he’d intended. “Of course you wouldn’t, but I suppose I can’t escape my own family just by hiding out. What on earth was I thinking when I invited them to come for a visit?”
“That you wanted to see them?” he suggested. “Or wanted them to see where you live and how wonderful it is?”
Her eyes lit up. “Ah, yes, that was it.” She sighed heavily. “I think it was probably a bad idea. LeeAnn especially is much more excited about meeting you than she’s likely to be about anything else Chesapeake Shores has to offer. She’s already criticized half a dozen things about the town and the store and they’d only been here about fifteen minutes when you walked in.”
“I could join you for dinner, keep their attention diverted,” he suggested, thinking that would serve his own purposes very nicely. Plus it might give him more insight into Liz and the marriage she was so clearly reluctant to discuss.
“I think you’ve already stirred up enough speculation for one day,” she said. “But thanks.”
“Are you sure you want to turn down someone who’s offering to sacrifice themselves for the cause of keeping the attention off you?”
“Trust me—the attention will always come back to me. They’ve come with an agenda. They want me to come back to North Carolina, or at least my mother does. Nothing about Chesapeake Shores or my life here will meet their expectations.”
“Not even me?” he asked with a grin.
“You’re just a complication. I can’t explain you away, and, in case you couldn’t interpret that expression on my mother’s face, she doesn’t think I should be done mourning yet. In their eyes Josh was a saint.”
There was an unmistakable edge in her voice that caught his attention. “He wasn’t?” That would definitely explain the heartbreak she’d experienced.
For an instant it looked as if Liz might answer honestly, but then her expression closed down. “I was taught not to speak ill of the dead.”
“Which says quite a lot just on the surface of it,” Aidan commented. “Maybe it’s time you did talk truthfully about your past. I’m getting a very strong feeling you’ve been glossing over the truly important parts.”
“Aidan, please, not now,” she pleaded. “Having the three of them here is stressful enough.”
Reluctantly, he backed off—again. “By the way, I had a message from Bree that she’d left a ticket to the playhouse for me for tomorrow night,” he told her.
“Did you now?” Liz said, looking amused. “Something tells me I’ll be seeing you there.”
“She left a ticket for you, too?”
“Four, as a matter of fact. You can play buffer then, assuming any of us is still alive by tomorrow night.”
He laughed. “I have great faith in your restraint.”
“Really? I can’t imagine why. This is the first time you’ve seen me with my family. They can drive me over the brink faster than any O’Brien you’ve ever met.”
“Then I’ll look forward to tomorrow night,” he said truthfully. He had a feeling it would give him yet more insight into Liz’s past and whatever secrets she’d been so determined to keep. He’d already picked up more just this afternoon than she’d obviously intended.
* * *
Liz dallied over closing the store for as long as she thought she possibly could without causing a major uproar when she finally did get home. As it was, there were bound to be weighted remarks about how hard she was working. They wouldn’t be worded as compliments.
When she walked into the house, the dogs were nowhere in sight. She could hear them barking frantically from the laundry room by the kitchen. She found her mother and sisters gathered in the kitchen. Pots of vegetables were simmering on the stove, and a casserole was apparently in the oven.
Ignoring the chatter, she opened the door to the laundry room. Both dogs and the cat bounded out and raced past her, clearly intent on getting far away from their captors.
“Why did you put them in there?” she asked, trying to keep her anger in check.
“We didn’t think you’d want them running all through the house,” her mother said. “Who knows what damage they might do.”
“Didn’t it occur to you that I was the one who’d left them out in the first place?” Liz asked. “Please don’t shut them up like that again.”
Her mother blinked at her hard tone. “Sure, honey, if that’s what you want. Let’s not get the evening off to a bad start over something so silly.”
Liz was about to argue that any mistreatment of her pets was hardly inconsequential, but managed to stop herself. “You’re right. I’ve been looking forward to playing cards or Scrabble and having some fun the way we used to.”
“So are we,” her mother said. “Now, why don’t you change your clothes and take a shower. That’ll relax you. Dinner will be ready in about twenty minutes.”
Since changing and a
