Page 73 of Settling the Score

‘I don’t have it tattooed on my forehead.’

‘Yeah, but, we know. And if anyone sees you, and asks me, I’m going to have to make up an excuse, and I’m a terrible liar.’

‘So, worst case, they’ll know how we spent the night. Oh,thinkof the scandal! That two grown adults should have had consensual sex…’ He clasped his hands to his chest in a gesture of mock outrage.

‘I’m serious,’ she said, but her lips were twitching with a need to smile.

‘Who cares?’

She stared at him, bemused by his approach. Did he have a point? Was this even a big deal? People hooked up. So what? They were two consenting adults with history up the wazoo. So what if they’d done the horizontal mambo and everyone guessed it?

But, the girls. Sienna worried at her lower lip, trying to imagine how she could explain this to them. Them, who would be so worried about her. Worried she’d get hurt all over again. Worried she wasn’t taking care of herself. Worried she was biting off more than she could chew. Or worse, excited that maybe this was the beginning of something big and exciting. That maybe she and Aiden had buried the hatchet and were about to become ‘a thing’.

She shook her head. ‘Bad idea.’ She locked her eyes to his. ‘This is Blake and Astrid’s wedding. I don’t want to overshadow that by getting people to speculate about what’s going on with us. And peoplewillspeculate. Whether that’s your mom, or Chuck, or the girls, and I really don’t want to have to think about how to explain this to them.’

‘What would you say, out of interest?’

‘I just said, I don’t want to have to think about it.’

‘How about, “we had sex”?’

‘For old times’ sake,’ she added, but with a roll of her eyes. ‘Yeah, that’ll placate precisely nobody.’

‘And it’s nobody’s business,’ he said, in a careless, relaxed kind of way.

She snorted. ‘Since when has that stopped people from being concerned? Come on, Aiden. You’re in the public eye. You’ve had a decade of being tabloid fodder. You know it’s human nature to be curious, and even more so when it’s someone you care about.’ Her cheeks flushed pink. ‘I mean they care about us, not that I care about you.’

‘Naturally,’ he said, but with a hint of something flattening the word.

‘Okay.’ She expelled a shaky breath. ‘So, you’ll sneak out of here without getting seen?’

‘I mean, I’m not going to climb out the window, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’

‘Heaven forbid. You might fall and break one of those very valuable legs of yours. I could do without incurring the wrath of your fans, believe me.’

‘More like my team,’ he said, with a grin.

She plucked at the sheet between them, eyes focused there, instead of on Aiden. ‘You love it?’

He was quiet, like he hadn’t understood the question.

She glanced at his face to find him staring at her with a hollowing-out sort of intensity. ‘Hockey.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Do you still love it like you used to?’

‘I guess.’

‘Youguess? Is a bajillion dollars and the adoration of puck bunnies and the bro crowd everywhere a little boring these days? Just gimme a second while I analyse the underwhelm of that.’

‘Nothing to analyse,’ he said with a crackly laugh. ‘It’s a job.’

‘But… you alwayslovedit.’

He frowned, his gaze focused now on a point beyond her shoulder, like he was stepping back in time. ‘Did I?’

‘You’re serious?’

He didn’t answer.

Sienna’s lips parted. ‘Aiden, you never could wait to get to the rink. When you couldn’t skate, you and Blake used to just run at each other in the backyard. You were obsessed with all the teams, all the stats. You lived and breathed hockey.’