“Your head is gorgeous,” he countered, “just like the rest of you. I didn’t intend to hurt you, Sienna.”
“The road to hell...” she said, making her voice light. Pretending it didn’t mean anything to her that he’d come here tonight.
Not fooling either of them.
He encircled her wrist with his big hand. “I’m sorry.”
She nodded, ignoring the butterflies fluttering through her chest. “I probably would have freaked out either way. Somehow the idea of facing Jase and my dad is way different than the reality of it.”
“But you’re still here.”
“Call me a glutton for punishment, but I’m not ready to give up quite yet.”
“Good.”
She tugged out of his grasp, stood and walked to the window. “You’re in my bed,” she told him, stating the obvious.
He flashed a wry smile, sat up and placed his feet on the floor. “I should go.”
“You can stay,” she blurted, feeling color flood her cheeks as he arched a brow.
“Sienna.”
“I don’t mean I’m going to sleep with you.” She pressed her fingers to her flaming cheeks. “Or I guess I do mean sleep. But nothing else. No hanky-panky.”
“Hanky-panky,” Cole murmured.
She rolled her eyes, walking to the opposite side of the bed. “I remember my...Declan using that term when Jase and I were little, before Mom and I left, of course. There was a young couple that moved into the trailer next to ours for just a few months, but they were quite enamored of each other. When Jase asked why they turned off the lights and went to bed so early every night, Declan answered ‘hanky-panky.’” She reached down and smoothed a hand over the pillowcase. “I didn’t even understand what he meant, but the phrase stuck with me.”
“It’s strange the things we remember from childhood.”
“Tell me something funny from when you were a kid,” she said, slipping between the cool sheets and leaning back against the headboard.
Whether from her proximity or the thought of having to share something personal, she saw Cole’s shoulders stiffen. Maybe he’d shut her out, as he had the other night. But she wouldn’t regret her curiosity. He was like a puzzle she couldn’t stop trying to solve.
He straightened from the bed, massaged the back of his neck with one hand. “We moved every couple of years because of my dad’s career in the army. Me and my twin brother, Shep—”
“You have a twin brother?” she asked, stunned. “I thought you said your family was gone.”
His jaw clenched. “They are. My parents are dead, and Shep could be for all I know. We haven’t spoken in years, and he seemed hell-bent on destruction before he left. I don’t even know where he is at this point.”
“But you could—”
“Do you want the funny story or not?”
She clamped her mouth shut and nodded.
“Shep and I are identical, so we did a lot of pretending we were each other, especially when we first got to a new school. Fourth grade in Germany, we spent an entire semester taking tests for each other because we were in different classes. They wanted to suspend both of us but couldn’t prove anything.”
Sienna gave a small laugh. “Was your mom mad?”
“She dragged us down to a local barber and flipped a coin to decide which one of us had to have our head shaved.” As he spoke, he toed off first one boot, then the other. Sienna’s heart raced in response. “From that day on, we weren’t allowed to have the same haircut because she never wanted us to be able to play that kind of trick again.”
“I bet you found other ways to be bad.”
“Plenty of them.”
“I was a good girl,” she blurted as he moved toward the door and flipped off the lights, plunging the room into darkness.
