Free In Her Secret Fantasy by Marie Treanor Page A

the beach had hurt her, Aidan would have beaten him to a pulp. Only immediate care for her had kept the emotion in check, but it had swamped him—fury and pity and the urge, the need to protect.
    Oh yes, he was broken. He’d known her what, three days? She was nothing to him, and yet he cared. He cared too much.
    Or perhaps he was trying to distract himself from the impossible problem of his parents. They were his responsibility. So was Louise. And he’d been neglecting them for far too long.
    When he got back to the B & B, Louise was making dinner. His dad was rocking in his chair, making a tuneless humming noise reminiscent of a baby. It was probably a blessing his mum couldn’t hear it. She smiled sweetly at Aidan, though.
    “There you are!” Louise called from the kitchen. “Izzy says she doesn’t want the flat and she’ll come round tomorrow and make sure all her stuff’s out, so you can move up there when you like.”
    “Great,” he said. It would give him space, a bolt hole from the continuing tragedy downstairs.
    It wasn’t until the evening that he got the chance to talk properly to Louise. They’d got their parents to bed and collapsed in the living room. Instead of the hot chocolate Louise had first suggested, he’d poured them both a whisky from the New Year bottle Glenn Brody had left.
    “It’s much quicker when you’re here,” Louise observed. “Thanks!”
    Aidan shrugged irritably. “They’re my parents too. You’ve been flying solo too long.”
    “I wasn’t keeping it from you. It got worse so gradually, and we’re not very good at staying in touch.”
    Aidan took a mouthful of whisky, let it burn down his throat. “True. But I know now, and you can’t go on like this.”
    “It’s not always easy, but I cope.”
    “I know you do. What you don’t do is have much fun.”
    Louise shrugged. “It won’t be forever,” she said bleakly.
    He stared at her. “Louise, it could be years. Neither of them is that old. You can’t do this alone.”
    She glared at him. “Are you offering to stay?”
    “No, I’m saying there are other options.”
    Her eyes widened. “Stick them in a home in Fort William?”
    “I don’t think you need to ‘stick’ them anywhere. Professional care isn’t a bad thing.”
    “They’ve lived in Ardknocken all their lives. How could we take them away from that?”
    Aidan blinked. “Dad doesn’t know where he is, and Mum barely goes out. They can come back for days out. I’m not suggesting Outer Mongolia.”
    “You might as well. It’s not happening. I don’t mind doing this. I want to do it.”
    “Shit, Louise, you can’t want to. No one wants to do this. You think you should , because they looked after us when we were helpless, but it’s not the same thing. We were tiny kids and we grew.”
    “They’re our parents !”
    “Yes, and they’d want that chance for you too. You can’t let life go right by you like this.”
    Louise knocked back her whisky in two gulps and stood up. “What gives you the right to dictate my life? Or theirs? You don’t even live here, Aidan, so stop pretending that you do.”
    When she’d stormed off, Aidan refilled his glass and stared into space.
    Well, that didn’t go too well.
    In fact, it hadn’t really been a day of successes. Although at least Chrissy was talking to him again. Stupidly, he still felt the pleasure of her running to him and that had little to do with his job.
    He downed the whisky, poured himself another, then picked up the bottle and took both to his old bedroom, where he sprawled on the bed and opened his laptop. He didn’t really want to know the details of the attack on Chrissy. His research so far, on all the residents of the house, had been general and to do with crimes and connections. Now it was time to know about her. At least the whisky would take the edge off.
    He called up police reports and newspaper articles.
    One of her clients, Robert Howard, a big, heavy man convicted