A slight wind off the lake blew a couple of tendrils from her ponytail to dance around her smooth skin. “Always.” She smiled and jumped in her Bug.
Oh, I finally had a project. Slipping into my seat, I started my car and headed away from the condos and around the lake to my cottage. Who should I get as an accomplice? I had to be careful who I chose. My thoughts were still clamoring around when I parked and walked by the pretty smattering of Petunias I’d planted that led to my front door, catching sight of a large figure lounging on my porch. “Aiden.”
His gaze raked me, head to toe. “Nice clothes. Basanelli’s?”
Chapter 10
Why did my entire body react to him? My toes tingled, my fingers clenched, and my abdomen flipped over. Yeah, I’d had a crush on him for years while he’d been away, but then we’d gotten together, and I knew how he kissed. How he had the ability to concentrate so fully on me that I felt both safe and challenged in the same second. So inspired. I drew in air. “What are you doing here?”
He stretched to his feet like a lazy panther. Today he wore ripped jeans, motorcycle boots, and a washed-out green tee that showed his impressive biceps. Motorcycle riding clothing. Interesting.
“I wanted to talk to you,” he said.
“You have my phone number.” If he had ridden his bike, where was it? Down the road and behind a tree? Why?
“This isin personinformation.” He glanced at the rolled up sweats again, and his jaw tightened until a vein showed along his neck.
I reminded myself to breathe in through my nose and not mouth so my body wouldn’t freak out and think it was under duress. Yeah, I’d learned that in a yoga class, but right now, the adrenaline flooding my system wanted me to mouth breathe. “What is it? I’m kind of busy today. Please get to it.” I sounded properly frosty.
A smile tugged at his mouth. “Sleeping with your boss is a bad idea.”
“Sleeping with you was a worse one,” I countered quickly.
“I don’t disagree,” he said mildly, the narrowing of his blue eyes showing more emotion than did his level tone. A light scruff covered his jaw, and my palms twitched to rub along it as I had done so before. “Let’s go inside.”
Considering the borrowed sweats were too big and about to fall, I held the waistband in place and strode for the door in my flip flops that thankfully had been spared the chocolate horror. I dug my key out of my purse to unlock the door. “Fine. I can give you about five minutes.” He had saved my life, after all.
His sigh stirred my hair as he followed me inside and shut the door. “Do you want to change first?”
Well now, sometimes I can be a jackass. It’s a fact, and I guess I should accept it. “Nope. I’m good.” Hitching the sweats up, I ambled for the breakfast nook and sat across the table that my Nonna Albertini gave me, still wearing Nick’s clothes. “Please. Sit.”
Aiden watched me and then took a seat, overwhelming the oak chair that was a hand-me-down from my Nana O’Shea. I used to like how he did that, but right now it ticked me off. He cleared his throat before speaking. “When I was in California—”
“Recruiting new members for your drug-running motorcycle club,” I interrupted.
His chin lowered a fraction and made him look a little more dangerous than he had on my porch, which frankly was already plenty dangerous. “All of the drug runners were arrested, and we don’t do that anymore.”
“Right. So you recruited all of these new members to do…what?” I slightly turned my head as if I wanted to hear him better. “Well?”
“God, you’re a brat,” he muttered.
Brat? I was aiming for full on bitch. “Sorry. I forgot how mean and nasty you like your women.”
He smacked his hand against his forehead. “Jesus,Aingeal. I’m not seeing Jolene O’Sullivan. She was a snake in high school, and we have not kept in touch, so I can’t vouch for whether or not she’s still a calculating shrew. Maybe she is, or maybe she isn’t. Either way, I don’t know.”
I wish that didn’t make me feel a heck of a lot better. I so wish my heart didn’t just flutter, warm, and thump like it had been asleep for the last day. “Then what was she doing at your apartment?” Yeah, I had no right to ask. But I did, anyway.
He lifted a shoulder. “Hell if I know. She said she was back in town, heard I was back, and wanted to meet up. Since I had not planned on being at my apartment—” His voice lowered into a growl as he reminded me of exactly why he’d been there— “I had other plans to return to and couldn’t stay and find out what she really wanted.”
“Oh,” I said rather lamely.
He looked pointedly at the JAG shirt covering my chest. “Not that you took some time off to grieve whatever we had.”
I sighed. “I didn’t sleep with Nick.”
“Oh?” One of Aiden’s eyebrows rose.
“Yeah. Not that it’s any of your business because it isn’t, but I ate too many brownies that turned out to be laced with a bunch of letters I didn’t recognize, but I’m sure was different cannabis stuff. Then I went to Nick’s, threw up in his flowers, and had a paranoia attack. He put me in a warm shower and called my sister, and we both slept over.”
