Page 55 of Settling the Score

But Aiden had known she wouldn’t want to. Or maybe he’d just been too ashamed of his own behaviour to attempt it. Maybe he’d been scared he’d see Sienna and feel the same desperate pull to her and Ashbury Falls that had damned near grounded him all those years ago.

Only now, he had a career, and a whole team that counted on him to earn the big bucks in order to support them. From his agent to his manager, his assistant, his sponsorship agent. He could hardly just pack it all up and head back to Small Town, Nowhere.

What the hell was he even thinking?

That wasn’t remotely on the cards.

At that very moment, his manager and assistant were negotiating his next contract, and it was going to be huge. Going back to Ashbury Falls was nowhere on his bingo card for this year, nor the next, or any other year. He’d left that shithole in his rear-view mirror a long time ago.

Hadn’t he?

‘Aiden?’ She put her hand on his forearm and he startled at the unexpected contact. Warmth seemed to simmer just beneath his skin. ‘How was your dad, when you saw him?’

He looked right into her eyes and wondered if she could easily read the sadness in his?

‘The same as always,’ he admitted. ‘Drunk as a skunk, angry at the world. I half wished he’d tried to hit me. I fantasised about having to defend myself.’ His smirk was angry. ‘He didn’t. He always was the worst kind of bully – really only went for people who were too small to pose a threat. The day Blake and I outgrew him was the day he stopped giving us a hard time.’

Her nostrils flared as she sighed, and then, to Aiden’s absolute shock, she slid her hands around his hips and to his back, pressing her palms flat and holding him against her. She held her head to his chest, her ear over his heart, and he wondered if she could hear how hard and fast it was beating?

‘Life can be pretty cruel, huh?’

‘Shouldn’t I be saying that to you?’ And if he’d been surprised by her hug, he was even more surprised to find himself dropping his head lower and pressing a kiss to her hair, holding his lips there, closing his eyes and breathing her in. Unlike their kiss on the beach, this moment wasn’t driven by white hot sensual heat. It was a connection of two souls who understood the complexity of family trauma, who’d been through something together, a long time ago, that had somehow bonded them. Even after not seeing each other for so long, he felt the kind of connection to Sienna he hadn’t known to anyone else, ever.

It still had the power to scare the crap out of him because connections like this were strong enough to thaw even the thickest ice sheets.

He would pull back from her. In a minute. He just wanted to feel this for a while longer. To smell her, to experience her soft curves against his body.

It was Sienna who pulled away, anyway, just far enough to look up into his eyes. ‘Are you tired?’

His heart slammed into the wall of his ribs. He had been. Before he came into this room, he’d been exhausted, courtesy of that cricket, and Dream Sienna.

‘I think so.’

‘You think so?’ She arched a brow, teasing him, breaking through the reflective sadness that had swirled through the room a second earlier.

‘I mean, yeah. Probably.’

She laughed then, a sound that reminded him so viscerally of their teenage years he felt the slippage of time once more.

‘You?’ He returned the question just because he had no idea what else to say.

‘I’m okay.’ Her lips twisted. ‘How bad is this alleged cricket?’

‘Hey, I’m not making it up. The thing’s a menace. How long do crickets live, anyway?’

‘How would I know?’

‘Isn’t your friend some kind of cricket expert?’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘Hamsters are more her jam.’

‘Damn it. I was hoping we could get someone to find the damned thing.’

‘I think you’re going to have to put up with it.’

‘There’s probably another room,’ he said, looking towards the door, wondering at the twisty feeling in his stomach.

‘I mean, maybe. The place is pretty full now, but you could always, you know, go door to door.’