Page 25 of Settling the Score (The Karma Club #4)

He listened in complete silence as she matter-of-factly described the night her father had driven into another car, killing a young mom.

How the evidence suggested the mother had actually fallen asleep at the wheel and clipped Nico Mastrangelo’s car, rather than the other way around.

But the fact Nico had a couple of drink driving charges to his name meant he hadn’t really got much leeway from the local cops.

It was, what they’d called then, an open-and-shut case.

‘After the baby, I couldn’t bear the thought of working in medicine.

Just the smell of hospitals makes me sick,’ she admitted, in a way that just about broke him.

‘But my grades were good. You know Mrs Polanskova? Well, she wouldn’t let me get away with not applying to college.

I decided I’d study pre-law. I wanted to make a difference. To help people like Dad.’

‘You’re telling me your father’s in jail?’

‘He’s due out in three years,’ she admitted.

He turned his back, stalking across the room to the bureau that housed the tea bags and kettle, and braced his palms against the flat surface.

Memories of the man burned his brain. Sure, Sienna’s old man hadn’t been any kind of paragon of virtue, but he’d been a good guy.

Salt of the earth. And he’d doted on Sienna.

Aiden thought about him, locked up, and a shudder racked his whole body.

‘And you go see him regularly?’

‘Every week, when I’m home.’

‘How is he?’ He couldn’t look at her.

‘I mean, it’s prison,’ she muttered. ‘But it’s low security and he’s well-liked.’

Something tightened inside Aiden but one side of his mouth lifted in a half-smile. ‘I can imagine that.’

‘He’s studying, too,’ she said. ‘He’s learning French, if you can believe it.’

At that, Aiden laughed. Nico was not exactly the most cultured guy you’d ever meet.

‘And he’s sober,’ she said, softly. ‘I mean, I wish on every star there is that he hadn’t gone away, but at the same time, Aiden… you know what it’s like to live with an alcoholic.’

He turned then, bracing the top of his butt on the bureau instead.

‘He was never violent with you,’ he said, knowing that to be the case but still desperately seeking her reassurance.

Because if he found out that the older guy had ever, ever laid a finger on Sienna, and that that had also been because Aiden hadn’t been around to keep her safe, then he had no goddamned idea what he’d do with himself.

‘Of course not. Dad’s as gentle as they come; you know that.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, eyes locking to hers in a way he couldn’t shake. ‘I know.’

Silence fell in the room. Heavy and pervasive.

‘Do you ever see him?’ For a second, she frowned. Like she was confused. ‘My dad,’ he clarified.

She was very still for a moment, and then she took a few steps towards him. ‘Yes.’

He clenched his jaw. It was like prying open the door to a room he’d intended to keep permanently locked shut.

‘He disappeared for a spell, but he’s back in town, even comes to church, sometimes.’

Aiden made a short, deranged sound. Not quite a laugh, so much as a scoff. ‘To save his immortal soul?’

‘I mean, he’s got about as much right as the rest of us to try.’

‘Nah, not by my reckoning.’

‘Probably just as well you’re not the big guy, then,’ she said, then sighed. ‘Not that I necessarily disagree with you.’ She moved another step closer. ‘I take it you don’t see him?’

‘When I came back to town, a couple of years back, I needed him to sign some papers to do with the house.’

‘Your house?’

He shrugged, a bit dismissively. ‘It was either buy the house for him or risk him coming back into our lives, asking for money. Contacting Mom. It was a small price to pay to keep him the hell away from us.’

She looked away, staring at a point over his shoulder, aware of how conflicted he must have been about giving his father anything, even when she understood his reasoning. ‘I didn’t realise you’d been back. I was… surprised.’

‘I was in and out in twenty-four hours. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.’

‘Did you—’ She clamped her lips together, physically stopping herself from asking whatever was on her mind.

He waited though, somehow sensing it was important.

‘I mean, did you even think about seeing me, Aiden?’ The words were heavy with a mix of anguish and accusation.

‘Honestly? I mean, I thought about it, yeah. But I knew it wouldn’t be a good idea. I was heading right back to my life in New York, just as soon as I could.’

‘Right,’ she said, nodding a little uneasily, then crossing her arms. He wanted to know what she was thinking. Feeling. But he didn’t have any right to ask. ‘So, how was he?’

He was trying to keep the conversation neutral, avoiding the fact he’d let her down, again , by coming to Ashbury Falls and not looking her up.

Which was a pretty fair way to feel. Wouldn’t it have been normal to go grab a coffee or something with a girl who’d once meant the world to him?

It wasn’t like she still meant the world to him – he’d moved on, so had she.

They could have shared a pot of coffee and some pie and just shot the breeze, for old times’ sake.

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.’

He nodded, stepping back from her, keeping his hands firmly at his side.

‘Unless you want to stay here.’

He stared at her. Like, really stared. Because he couldn’t speak. It was as if every single word in the English language had upped and left his brain, all at once. A mass exodus of verbal language skills. Of thinking skills. Of everything. Like he was having a stroke or something.

‘The bed’s huge,’ she pointed out, dropping her gaze to the floor between them before piercing him once more with her direct gaze.

‘It is,’ he agreed, glad some words were back, even if they were monosyllabic.

‘I just mean to sleep, obviously. And then tomorrow you can go back to your own room and track down the cricket.’