Page 58 of Settling the Score

He moved his hand. She was instantly cold.

‘Sorry ’bout that,’ he muttered.

‘It’s fine,’ she demurred, voice crisp. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Yeah,’ he responded. ‘I guess it was just habit or something. Muscle memory.’

She moved then, shifting away from him a bit, towards the edge of the bed, the safety of space, before she flipped onto her other side, so she was facing towards Aiden.

And immediately regretted it.

If feeling his arm around her had been intimate, then this was somehow so much more. The sheet was down around his waist, revealing his tatted-up torso, and his face had creases in it from the pillow. His eyes were sleepy, his lips parted, hair all messy.

It was like being sucked back in time.

And being hit with a sledgehammer of his life since then. His success. His modelling work. His being a spokesperson for so many global brands.

‘How did you sleep?’ Her voice was softened by the earliness of the morning.

‘Better than I have in a while,’ he said, one side of his lip twisting upwards in a half-smile.

‘No cricket.’

‘No cricket.’ He lifted one shoulder. ‘No dreams.’

‘Same,’ she said, after a beat. ‘And if you snored, I slept right through it.’

‘So I was a good house guest?’

‘You were acceptable,’ she said.

His laugh was deep and rumbly, doing funny things to her stomach. ‘That might be the first time I’ve been described that way.’

Her heart stammered. Anger seared her. No, not anger. At least, not solely anger. But outrage. Jealousy. Irritation. A swirling current of dark, brooding emotions that caught her unawares because of how instant – and unexpected – they were.

‘Does that mean you’d invite me back?’

Her heart lurched. Anger – or whatever she was feeling – evaporated, to be replaced by a rushing pulse and a hotness in her lungs. ‘I – I’m sure you’ll deal with the cricket today.’ Mentally, she made a list, and at the top of it? Get the girls toremovethe noise-making thing from his room, pronto.

‘But if not…’

‘Aiden.’ Her sigh was soft, and final. ‘I don’t know what last night was.’ Her eyes lifted to his. ‘A temporary truce, I guess.’

‘A truce?’ He seemed to shift closer. No, hedefinitelyshifted closer, because a second later, his hand was on her hip and his gaze seemed to be probing hers, looking right into her consciousness. ‘Are we at war, Sienna?’

His touch was incendiary. His eyes were like a spark, turning her pulse into a livewire.

‘Worse. We’re nothing,’ she forced herself to say. Wishing it were true. Wishing their history wasn’t still such a huge part of what she thought and felt.

‘It doesn’t feel like we’re nothing.’

Her breath hitched in her lungs. ‘No?’

He shook his head slowly, but something seemed to change in his features, giving him a look of hesitation. He didn’t move, but shefeltlike he did. It was almost as if the air between them thickened and grew warm. Almost as if they were stuck in mud. She could hardly breathe.

‘Then what are we?’ she managed to squeak out.

‘Hard to define.’