Page 28 of Settling the Score

Then, right in that torturously perfect imagining, his eyes wrenched to the left and clocked her running companion, so everything froze. Chuck Dufus Daly.

‘I could have got you if you hadn’t cheated!’

‘So says every loser,’ Chuck replied, but he turned around to face her and Sienna stopped running just a few inches away from the other man. Aiden’s gut tightened. He stood entirely still, breathlessly watching, hoping that neither of them would turn and see him.

‘You’re really calling me a loser?’ she demanded, hands on hips. Did sheknowhow good she looked? Somehow, he doubted it. Sienna was the least vain woman he’d ever known.

Then again, he didn’t really know her, now. A teenager was not the same as a woman in her twenties, and Sienna would have every reason to have confidence in her looks.

‘As long as I can call you something,’ she heard Chuck reply and Sienna laughed, reaching out and playfully punching his arm.

Anger flared in Aiden’s stomach, hot and irrepressible. The kind of anger that he hadn’t felt in a long time. The kind of anger that scared the living crap out of him, because he knew what that anger was capable of. He felt it in the tingle of his fingers, the need to form a fist and punch something.

Like his father had.

All his life, he’d avoided feelinganythingstrong enough to make him care. He’d become a master at switching off his emotions, on operating like an automaton. He and Blake had both developed their coping techniques – they’d had to.

He couldn’t believe that, after all these years, Sienna still had the power to pull at that control. To pull at it until it very nearly snapped.

He took a step backwards, as if he could physically distance himself from his worst fears that way, but the anger didn’t subside.

He hated seeing them together.

He hated seeing her with anyone else.

He knew he had no right to feel that way.

She was her own woman, and the day he’d walked out on her was the day he’d stopped having any say whatsoever in how she spent her time, and who she spent it with. He’d been with other women since Sienna. Lots of other women.

What did he care if she’d been with other men? He presumed that to be the case – obviously.

But he’d never had to see it.

He didn’t want to see it now.

He particularly didn’t want to see it with Chuck ‘Perfect Smile’ Daly, who was the biggest player in hockey, well after quitting the game. He went through women at a rate of knots. Did grown-up Sienna really go for guys like him?

She laughed again and this time when she punched his arm, her hand lingered. Aiden saw red, but held his ground.

Maybe if he’d moved, he would have been grateful, though. Because a second later, a hissing noise sounded and then the whole garden was deluged by pop-up sprinklers in full flight.

He let out a sound of surprise, a deep groan, and was still staring across at Sienna and Chuck, so saw the moment they turned towards him. And they laughed. His anger – an anger he would have said he was generally an expert at controlling – went from flame to incinerator.

He turned on his heel and, utterly saturated, stalked away from the garden, his mood truly and totally tanked. Ice was a distant memory.

* * *

Just Desserts WhatsApp Group. 09.10 EST.

Bella

Ohmygod. Did you guys see?

Paige

Yassssss. So funny.

Astrid