Page 43 of Settling the Score

Silence.

He kept waiting.

Silence.

But the moment he flicked the light off, it chirruped again, and he cursed, the noise ripped from his chest. But it wasn’t really about the insect, he admitted to himself.

It was Sienna, yet again.

It was their kiss; it was their fight.

It was the way she’d been after the kiss, so nonchalant and unbothered. Like her world hadn’t just been shaken to smithereens. Like she went around kissing guys on the beach every day of the week.

Like he was nothing to her.

Which was what you wanted, a voice reminded him stubbornly. But the voice was wrong.

Aiden didn’t want to be nothing to her.

He didn’t want to hurt her, but he did want her.

He did need her.

He wasn’t stupid enough to fantasise about an impossible future.

But he could offer this week, just like Blake had said.

He could ask her to consider spending some time with him.

Not in a golf cart, with everyone waiting on them to return, but here, in his room, or her room, away from the madness of the wedding, and all those prying eyes. Just him, her, and the unfinished business that had exploded into his present-day life and was making it impossible to think about anything else.

He could ask her to let him have this week. Just one week. And then, this time, when he let her go, it wouldn’t just be on his terms, but on theirs, because they’d both be ready for it. They’d both know it was what they had to do, to get on with their lives. No harm, no foul, but quite possibly a shit tonne of fun, if she agreed.

* * *

‘You look like death warmed up,’ Paige, Astrid’s curvy red-haired friend observed cheerily, over a plate of sausages and egg.

‘Thanks,’ Aiden responded wryly.

‘Trouble sleeping?’ Bella, with her posh NYC accent, asked next, long blonde hair swooshed over one shoulder.

He grunted across the breakfast table. ‘There was a cricket in my room.’

‘A cricket?’ Edvin Larrson, the Titans’ goalie, with his blond hair pulled up into a messy bun, glanced down the table at Aiden. Everyone stopped talking.

He shrugged. ‘I had the doors open all day. Fucker must have got in then.’

He nearly missed the way Paige looked at Bella, who dipped her head forward and pressed her lips into her napkin. But he sure as hell didn’t miss the way Sienna was staring at him, eyes narrowing thoughtfully, lips pursed, as though hanging off his every word. He was tempted to tell her that the cricket had been the least of his nocturnal worries.

‘Did you find it?’ Astrid asked conversationally, reaching for some bacon and piling it on her plate.

‘Does this look like the face of a man who was able to find – and get rid of – the damned thing?’

‘Oy,’ Blake cautioned, and Aiden winced, because he had unfairly taken his bad mood out on his future sister-in-law.

‘Sorry.’ He held up a hand placatingly. ‘It drove me crazy,’ he muttered, sipping an orange juice. ‘I reckon it must have been in the mattress or something.’

Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Sienna turn and look at Paige, one brow crooked.