Page 12 of Settling the Score (The Karma Club #4)
‘Going somewhere, Mastrangelo?’
His voice ran down her spine like sun-warmed butter.
She threw a glance over her shoulder, aiming for flirty, but failing, because her heart did a horrible little twist and squeeze and she felt the bottom fall out of her world, momentarily.
She feared she was more wide-eyed doe in the headlights of an oncoming semi than siren-y vixen.
‘Shhh.’ She lifted a finger to her lips, covering the strange blip with determination and moving one hand to the spaghetti strap of her dress.
She ran her fingers along the length of it, sure she’d seen some beautiful actress do that in a movie.
Only the actress had looked sultry and desirable whereas Sienna suspected she looked as though she were scratching an itch on her ring finger.
She dropped her hand. ‘Don’t let Astrid hear. ’
‘You’re leaving?’
Sienna nodded. ‘I am.’
‘Can I twist your arm to stay for another coffee?’
She pulled a face.
‘Or a cocktail?’
She gnawed on her lower lip, eyes locked to Aiden without really seeing him. Not as he was now. For a minute, she was slipping back through time; he was a teenager and so was she. The world – their lives – were all before them, and the hope of that sparkled like diamond dust.
‘Or a walk?’
Her head cocked to the side. Now that had appeal.
The truth was, what she wanted was fresh air.
Between knowing she was in the same room as Aiden, even when he wasn’t anywhere near her, and the girls’ very, very well-intentioned encouragement to make him suffer, and Chuck Daly hovering in the wings waiting to get her a drink or chat to her about whatever he thought made it more likely to get her into bed, Sienna was feeling ever so slightly suffocated.
But would a walk with Aiden fix that?
‘Just down to the beach,’ he suggested. ‘It’s a beautiful night.’
It was a beautiful night. Warm and balmy with the slightest hint of a breeze to offer relief, the air was sweet with the smell of honeysuckle and jasmine, and the night was so dark out here that every single star could be seen twinkling up above.
‘Okay,’ she heard herself agree. Because the whole revenge plan was predicated on this, she reminded herself.
How could she make him want her again if she kept running away from him?
Wouldn’t it be satisfying to make him realise what he’d walked away from – and then tell him he’d lost his chance with her for good?
Teenage Sienna deserved that moment of glory. In fact, now that she thought of it, that had been one of the fantasies that had got her through the darkest nights. The prospect of one day making him regret what he’d done.
She straightened her spine, squared her shoulders and flashed him a bright, uncomplicated smile – a lying smile, if ever there’d been one, because this situation was complicated with a capital C.
But it didn’t have to be. It was just a week – and no matter what, at the end of the week, she had her one-way ticket back to Ashbury Falls, and her life there.
‘Sure.’ She shrugged and the spaghetti strap she’d been holding slipped down a little, so his eyes dropped to her shoulder. His hand shifted, as if he was going to reach for it, to lift it back up, but thank heavens for small mercies, he didn’t. ‘Just… give me a minute.’
‘I’ll give you two.’ He grinned, without a care in the world. Easy. Breezy. Rich. Successful. Living his best liar, liar, pants on fire life. She swallowed down the acid that clawed through her.
‘Great.’ She turned to make her way to the ladies’ room. ‘I’ll be right back.’
* * *
Once inside the spacious facilities with the forest green tiles and art deco mirrors, she pulled her phone from her clutch and wrote:
Just Desserts WhatsApp Group. 22.55 EST.
Sienna
We are going for a moonlit walk. This is not a drill, people.
Paige
Squeeeeee! You’ve got him, baby.
Bella
Whoop.
Astrid
Reel that sucker in!
Sienna
It’s just a walk…
Paige
Def not just a walk.
Sienna
Nothing’s going to happen.
Bella
He’s pacing in the foyer.
Sienna
LOL, are you spying on him now?
Paige
Isn’t that our job?
Astrid
He looks nervous!!
Sienna
Aiden doesn’t get nervous.
Paige
Are you hiding out to torture him?
Sienna
Astrid
Well, it’s working. Keep it up, sister.
Five minutes later, having finished the day’s Wordle – no way would even this wedding jeopardise her 237-day streak – and caught up on the news headlines, Sienna took a last glance in the mirror before deciding she was ready.
She sucked in a deep breath, expelled it slowly, then did her very best attempt at a wiggly hip walk across the foyer, towards where Aiden did indeed look kind of nervous.
Or impatient. Perhaps that had to do with the fact Chuck had come to stand beside him, though.
‘There she is.’ Chuck grinned as Sienna approached. ‘Astrid mentioned you might be heading down to the beach?’
Sienna’s heart dropped to her toes, even as she felt an overwhelming urge to giggle in the face of Aiden’s response to that – which was to clench his jaw tighter than a drum.
‘Yeah, we were going to go for a walk. D’you wanna come too?’
Chuck grinned flirtatiously. ‘Always, but after you, of course,’ he promised, so Sienna did burst out laughing at the double entendre.
‘You really are incorrigible.’
‘That’s one word for it,’ Aiden muttered, earning a raised brow from Chuck and a racing heart from Sienna. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was… jealous. Of Chuck Daly. Who she’d just met. Who flirted like most men breathed. To whom Sienna meant nothing.
Delicious heat flicked in her belly, a portent of what was to come.
Victory. Victory over Aiden, victory over the way he’d hurt her and cast her aside, victory over the place he occupied in her mind.
This week was going to be an exorcism; he just didn’t realise it.
He just didn’t know that a ghost of him had haunted her for more than ten lousy years and she was finally about to banish him, by giving him his well-deserved just desserts.
‘Hey, I’m just speaking the truth,’ Chuck said with an exaggerated wink. ‘Shall we?’
Sienna’s glance flicked from Chuck to Aiden, and then she shrugged.
Her spaghetti strap slipped down again; unlike Aiden, Chuck didn’t hesitate to reach out and slowly, so slowly his fingers grazed the flesh of her bare arm, littering her skin in goosebumps, slip it back into place. She was sure she heard Aiden growl.
Which only made her mad. How dare he be jealous after all these years?
And after the myriad – and by myriad she meant billions – of women he’d been with since Sienna?
She wasn’t an idiot. And she also didn’t have enough will power to be able to resist occasionally drinking a little too much red wine and googling Aiden ‘Horn Dog’ Carter.
The pics online were alternately of him playing hockey, or him out on the town, never alone, though admittedly his reputation was nothing compared to what Blake’s had been before Astrid had swept in and tamed him.
Bitterness rose inside of her; she covered it with an ultra-bright smile, which she aimed somewhere between the two men. ‘Yeah, let’s go.’
The mansion was up a gravelled, winding path from the cove the boat had pulled into earlier that day, and Sienna’s shoes crunched underfoot as she walked. Palm trees formed perfect silhouettes against the evening sky, spiky and artistic, and quintessentially beachy.
‘So, you guys grew up in the same town, huh?’ Chuck said, as they left the din of the party behind.
‘Yeah.’ Sienna nodded.
‘Whereabouts?’
‘Ashbury Falls,’ she and Aiden said in unison. She glanced up at him and then away again quickly. In the moonlit night, his face in profile was all harsh angles, and somehow it wiped away the years, so she was looking at him as a teenager and her heart skidded in her chest.
‘What’s it like?’
‘A dive,’ Aiden said, at the same time Sienna said, ‘Small.’
She furrowed her brow as she gave Aiden the full force of her attention. ‘It’s not a dive.’
He made a noise of disbelief. ‘So it’s changed since I left?’
‘Everything’s changed since you left.’ She struggled to keep her tone neutral.
‘It’s a one street town,’ he explained to Chuck. ‘There’s a run-down diner, a grocery store, a gas station, and that’s it. Population approximately one thousand.’
Sienna stared straight ahead, ignoring the way his words made her blood boil and bubble.
Toil and trouble. Because while he was technically right, his scathing rendition of the town skipped over so many of the best parts of it.
‘There’s a church and a playground, too,’ she said, a little defensively.
‘And a small school. Fun fact – the school’s been in the same building for over two hundred years. ’
Chuck let out a low whistle. ‘Sounds kind of quaint, actually. I think you’re underselling it, bro.’
‘Go check it out for yourself, bro,’ Aiden muttered.
‘Hey, what gives?’ She stared up at Aiden, a hand clenching into a fist at her side.
Forgetting about flirting. Forgetting about reeling him in.
‘When was the last time you graced Ashbury Falls with your exalted presence, anyway? Someone who hasn’t been in the town for more than ten years doesn’t get to pass themselves off as any kind of authority. ’
‘I was there a couple of years ago,’ he corrected. ‘It hasn’t changed.’
Sienna gawped at him. She could hardly breathe. ‘A couple of years ago?’ she repeated.
‘For a night,’ he muttered, dragging a hand through his hair. ‘Long enough to know it’s the same place we grew up in. The same place I left as soon as I could.’
Bitterness flooded every cell in her body.