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‘You’re late.’

Blake hadn’t meant to sound surly with his brother, but he’d been through hell and back in a day, every emotion imaginable making itself known and now they were all rolling inside him and he couldn’t shut it down.

He’d barely touched his dinner which was stupid considering they had a game tomorrow and instead of hitting the sack, he’d stayed up, cracked open a beer and replayed the entire interview, over and over again.

He’d spilled his guts. Confessed his deepest darkest secret to a woman he’d only just met… a woman he hardly knew. Though it didn’t feel like that. Not with all that they had shared. Her as much as him.

And here he was now, feeling yet another emotion that he didn’t want to acknowledge. Jealousy.

All over a woman who should mean nothing to him. But there was something about her. The candid way she’d opened up from day one, the way her eyes always gave her away – vulnerability, compassion, desire – all raw and unfiltered and equally effective at drawing him out.

He’d been putty in her hands.

And he hated being putty in anyone’s hands.

‘Who are you? Our mother?’ Aiden joined him in the kitchen, pulling a ready prepped meal out of the fridge and sticking it in the microwave to warm up. He leaned back against the counter and pinned Blake with his stare. ‘What gives?’

‘It’s not like you the night before a game – especially when we’re playing away against a team like the Kings.’

He cocked a brow. ‘You were worried about me?’

‘I worry this chick has got you acting out of character, yeah.’

‘Got me acting out of character? Don’t you mean you?’

Blake sipped the beer he’d been nursing all evening. It was warm, funky, flat. Though he couldn’t blame it for the face he pulled. ‘No.’

‘I don’t know, bro, you’re looking a little green around the edges.’

He gave a tight laugh. ‘Whatever.’

‘You’re not going to ask where I’ve been?’

‘I know where you’ve been.’

‘You do?’

‘I think the entire team know that you’ve been teaching Twinkle Toes to skate.’

Aiden pressed his lips together, blue eyes bright in the low hanging aluminium light that stretched along the breakfast bar. ‘And you still say you’re not green?’

‘No.’ He shoved the bottle away and stood.

‘Not going to ask me how she was?’

‘No.’ He was already moving off.

‘She really is true to her name,’ he called after him. ‘Spent more time in my arms than on the ice.’

‘Not listening.’

‘She’ll get there though, just needs a lot of one-to-one attention from the best…’

‘Night, bro.’

His brother’s soft laugh worked its way through him, provoking every green nerve. He was jealous. So jealous. And that bothered him more than he’d care to admit.

Because he’d never been jealous of his brother. He’d coveted his cool. His ability to shut down every emotion and focus. But he’d never been jealous of him. Until now.

And over a girl, of all things.

Hell, he needed his head examining.

Or a good game to thrash it out of him.

Tomorrow’s face-off couldn’t come soon enough.

* * *

‘Do you like hockey, Astrid?’

‘I can’t say I know hockey enough to like it or dislike it.’

Astrid stripped her clothes as she listened to the replay of her interview with Blake, catching up on all he had said after Aiden’s interruption and realising it had mostly been him asking, her talking – some journalist!

But she’d been lured in by his bad boy blues and his recounted truth.

Listening and sharing because he’d done the same.

And she was as caught up in his voice now as she had been then.

Only vaguely aware of the candle-lit room – the scent of soothing spice on the air, the steam rising from the bath she was pouring, the soft music playing in the adjoining bedroom – as everything about her stayed attuned to him.

‘Hockey saved me from the worst in my life, what saved you?’

‘Me?’

‘I had hockey, you had…?’

‘Books. Games. Whichever worked best…’

‘What kind of books?’

‘Fact or fiction, I wasn’t fussy. The written word always fascinated me.’

‘And games ?’

She recalled how he’d cocked a brow with that one.

‘Console games. A bit of role-play action and adventure, one vs one… Sometimes it was easier to lose myself being someone else when Mum was going through a particularly bad spell.’

‘Because of your father?’

‘No, not always…’

She heard the way her voice faltered in the recording and her heart did a little flutter now as she listened to herself admit, ‘ Mum has PMDD.’

‘What’s that?’

She stared at her phone on the side of the bath, shocked she’d said it. Shocked even more that she’d sat and explained it. How it dictated her mother’s moods and affected her childhood growing up.

She’d stopped before confessing that it had become a part of her too as she’d got older, driving her into the deepest, darkest of places. Though she’d never been as bad as Mum, probably because she’d developed well-ingrained coping strategies by that point. Plus, she had Mum.

But she had days, days where she’d rather hide under the duvet.

And those days she’d drag herself out of bed and run.

Or throw herself into a beastly hot yoga session.

Ring Mum for a mindless chat. Lose herself in a gaming session when reading wouldn’t cut it.

Anything to get outside her own head. And it worked.

The day it didn’t, then she’d worry.

‘That must have been hard. Her a single parent and you an only child.’

‘It was. After Dad, the men who came and went… they never stuck around through the worst of it. Never took the time to understand it – hell , we barely understand it, but we have to live with it…’

She shook her head at her brutal honesty and picked up her glass of red.

Taking it to the bath, she turned off the taps and slid beneath the water.

A sigh escaping as the warmth cocooned her, soothing every bump and bruise already making itself known after her session with Aiden.

Not one blackened spot was his fault. He was a great teacher, an attentive one. A great brother and son too. A hero?

Gah . How could she seek karma on a man who at the age of eighteen, became the head of his family, desperate to save them, so desperate he’d run and blocked his past from view. And Sissi with it.

She sipped her wine, hoping it would ease the chill so deeply rooted with the tale Blake had shared. Of Aiden’s control. Blake’s loss of it.

She hadn’t been Bambi on the ice because of her twinkle toes, she’d been useless because her head had been elsewhere.

Going over the interview, the interview that hadn’t been an interview at all, it had been a conversation.

Because every other question, he’d brought it back to her, had her sharing things she hadn’t shared with anyone before.

She closed her eyes and his own shone back at her, sparkling with compassion and understanding as his voice filled her ears:

‘Distraction is a powerful thing.’

‘Far better than any medication.’

‘Too true.’

‘And you’re distracting me from my questions, from giving me more of you.’

‘Not intentionally.’

‘No?’

‘No. I find myself intrigued by you. I want to know about you. I want to know everything there is to know about Astrid Sinclair. The woman, the daughter, the foxy reporter…’

A breathless laugh. ‘And how’s that going?’

‘The more I know, the more I want to know…’

She’d never had a man look at her like he had then, like he could see inside her soul to all the fractured pieces she kept hidden and wanted more. More and more. Until he had it all and then what? Would he try to piece her back together, healed and whole?

‘I can assure you, Blake, you’re far more interesting than me.’

‘Spoken like someone who doesn’t value who they are enough and is too used to focusing on everyone else but themself. Am I right?’

‘Perhaps… It’s a career hazard.’

‘A hazard I’m more than willing to tease you out of…’

His voice caressed her through the phone, and she sank beneath the bubbles with a groan. Maybe listening to his voice, all low and sincere and vibrating through her speakers , while she lay naked in the tub, wasn’t the best of ideas.

She wanted him. More than any man she’d ever met. More than Chase…

Fuck, Chase!

The man who had driven her to this point…

his wife’s face at the hotel room door. All that hate.

She eased back up the bath and reached for her phone, quit the recording and fired off a text to Bella, needing to be grounded by her friend and their plan.

Not her neglected libido – or her heart – that could be calling this all wrong.

Astrid

Wanna come to a hockey game in a couple of weeks?

Bella

You’re joking right?

Astrid

No, I’ve got a spare ticket. Promises to be ‘intense’… Aiden’s words.

Bella

I think I’d rather cut off my right arm, unless… do you need me to come with you?

She paused. What she really wanted to say was, ‘Yes, damn right I do. Because someone has to help me make sense of Aiden and keep my cakehole off Blake!’ but her friend was in the thick of it with Chase, all on her own and all for Astrid’s sake. The least she could do was cope the same.

Astrid

Of course not. I can go rogue for the night

Bella

Go rogue? Heaven, help him/them!

Astrid

Bella

Things going well then?

She pondered another white lie, a bending of the truth, but she didn’t have it in her. She loved these women like sisters, and they had her back. Plus, a problem shared…

Astrid

The article’s coming along nicely, but I’m not gonna lie, I’m not sure I have what it takes to deliver tit-for-tat on Aiden…

Her phone started to ring with an incoming video call, Bella’s chic avatar coming up in a circle. She should have known her friend would ring. She eyed the bubbles floating on the surface of the water and happy she wasn’t about to flash her friend, she swiped the call to answer.

‘Woah, are you in the bath?’

‘Yeah, but you can’t see anything, look…’ She did a quick sweep with her phone, laughing when she brought it back to her face and found Bella squinting. ‘Sorry, babe.’

Bella gave her a flushed smile. ‘Don’t be. I’m almost used to you now.’

‘Only almost?’

She laughed. ‘So, what’s going on?’

Astrid chewed her cheek.

‘Honey?’

‘I think we might have called this wrong, called Aiden wrong…’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I’m just not sure he’s… he’s a bad guy.’

Bella frowned. ‘He left Sienna high and dry, what more do you need to know?’

‘But it was ten years ago, and the more I uncover about that time the more I question whether he deserves this now. He had good reasons for leaving, B.’

‘Like what?’

‘I can’t… I can’t say. It’s complicated. But it’s all linked in with his brother and?—’

‘Are you sure this hasn’t got more to do with said brother and how you feel about?—?’

‘No. Absolutely not. Not really. No.’

Bella brows twerked with Astrid’s response.

‘What I’m trying to say is that Aiden was only eighteen when he left, barely a man himself and he had some serious shit going on.’

‘Didn’t we all, but we weren’t taking it out on others and ghosting people who cared about us and deserved better.’

‘No, but…’ Astrid stopped; she couldn’t tell Bella about the fight, she couldn’t tell anyone. She’d promised Blake.

‘Did any of those reasons stop him from answering one of her calls? From being there for her when she needed him the most? When her father got sent to prison and she had no one?’

Bella made a very good point. There’d been nothing to stop Aiden being a friend on the other end of the line… unless…

‘No, but I wonder if it was a self-preservation thing. I’ve got a feeling Sienna isn’t the only one feeling the mark of their relationship ten years on.’

Bella jerked back. ‘Seriously?’

‘I don’t know anything for certain.’

‘And you can’t go telling Si something like that unless you know know. She’s been through enough misplaced hope.’

‘I know, you’re right.’

‘I’m always right.’

Astrid chuckled. ‘Does Chase know this yet?’

Bella coloured a little. ‘He’s a slow learner, but he’ll get there.’

‘How are things going in Chase land and the gallery?’

Astrid eased back into the bubbles and let Bella recant her endeavours so far, enjoying the twinkle in her friend’s eye and happy that she was happy. Or at least, happier than the jilted bride she’d been at the airport a month ago…

Perhaps knowing that Olly was getting his comeuppance in Cornwall had put that twinkle there or Bella’s own karma mission. Either way, Astrid was glad of it.

She just needed to get her own twinkly toes back on track now… twinkly toes, urgh!

Those Carter men had a lot to answer for. One more than the other. No prizes for guessing which…