by Nikki Logan
A kind of half-asleep worship.
He’d practically scrabbled out from under her, the big thumping muscle in his chest near exploding. Because it had almost looked like—
No, he wouldn’t go there. Going there had consequences.
He sipped the scalding coffee as his eyes trailed over the explosion of bright, happy photographs stuck to Tash’s fridge, trying to piece together a timeline of her happiest moments. Moments of joy. Moments of love. He got another flash of those chocolate eyes blazing into his with such...sleepy optimism. He drank a gulp so hot his eyes literally watered, and it banished all other thought effectively away.
He’d faced this moment of realisation many times in the past. It was part of his process. It was also why he never brought anyone back to his place. If you’re in your own place you can’t leave. And he left the moment things turned sticky. The moment he got the slightest sense that the woman he was with was getting entangled.
Or, in this case, he was.
The very fact it was happening against his better judgement meant it shouldn’t happen at all. He stared at the biggest of the photographs on the refrigerator. Tash with her mother, somewhere beachy, both blissfully happy.
The Porter-Sinclair women.
The most unsuitable woman in the world for him if he also wanted to have any kind of relationship with his mother. Which he did. She’d been abandoned enough by men for one lifetime. He wasn’t about to add to that.
His eyes drifted upwards to the top of the fridge and then froze as they encountered a translucent bluey-orange leg, complete with a series of delicate nubs beneath it, bent over the top edge of the white appliance. A chubby little sea star, with its perfect sucker feet and almost living appearance. He touched one of his fingers to one of its.
His starfish. The exact same one he’d watched her make yesterday. How was it even possible that so much could have changed in thirty-six hours? He’d been sure that this little guy would end up in the shards bucket on principle; she’d thrust it into that cooling kiln with such perfunctory disinterest. As if it was valueless to her.
Yet, here it was. Squirreled away in her house.
It dawned on him then that, for a woman who made her living working with glass, this little starfish was woefully outnumbered in her cottage. Which made its presence painfully significant. He took its slight weight in the palm of his hand and let those cool, hard legs hang off the edge of his hand into space. It was far from perfect—the legs were irregular and its colours not evenly distributed. Then again, Tash had made it under duress. But, overall, he found the flaws, partly hidden by the smooth beauty of the glass, rather appealing.
It reminded him of him.
Except he liked to think he did a much better job of disguising his flaws.
But then the reality sank in: women didn’t collect things like that for no reason, at least not practical women like Tash. If she’d been planning on giving it to him, she would have done so earlier when he picked her up for dinner. So that meant she was keeping it as a memento—his chest tightened up hard—and that wasn’t good news.
The keepsake put that honey-blast she’d fired at him from her beautiful chocolate pools into a whole new light. And the trust she’d shown in revealing her wild side, too. And just about every smile and glance she’d sent his way these past weeks. It meant they weren’t the casual kind of looks, or smiles, or actions that you just walked away from. Responsibility surged in thick and awful as he stared down at the little fella in his hands. Then up at the fridge.
Yeah, the starfish was him, all right. And Tash had put it where she displayed her most precious memories.
Which meant it was time to leave.
And the sheer force of his desire not to meant that he absolutely had to.
* * *
Funny how a bed could feel empty even when it normally was. After just a few hours of cohabitation.
Tash stirred into wakefulness, skirting her fingers over the cool sheets beside her and forcing gritty eyes open. Five in the morning was not enough sleep at the best of times, never mind when several hours had been occupied with intense, exhausting physical activity. She trained her ears to her left, towards the en suite.
Nothing.
Frowning, she pushed her pleasantly aching muscles into a half-upright position.
‘Aiden?’ she murmured, holding back with forced positivity the chill that wanted so badly to settle.
He hadn’t left. He hadn’t.
He wouldn’t do that to her.
She switched on the bedside lamp and glanced around, breath suspended, for a hastily scrawled note. Nothing. She flipped over on a groan and swung her feet to the floor, before sliding on her robe to further keep the chill at bay. Was no note good news or bad news? Did it mean he hadn’t left or he had but didn’t feel obliged to even tell her? Absence in a house this small was a rather self-evident thing, if you looked. And Aiden was a logical guy.
Just look! She scolded herself, wishing she was cool and collected enough not to need to; the sort of person who could have just rolled over in bed and gone back to sleep. Eight o’clock would have been a much better time to be having this crisis of confidence.
Light footfalls took her out into the living area.
Nothing. But her nose told her everything she needed to know.
‘Needed the caffeine?’ she murmured, stepping into the entry to the kitchen.
Aiden stood in front of her refrigerator, staring at the clutter pinned to it with cheerful magnets. Behind him through the window, the navy sky sat heavy as her heart. As he turned, Tash glanced at the coffee pot and saw the remnants of the high tide mark ringing the glass.
That had to be at least three refills given the size of the mug he’d borrowed. How long had he been out here staring at her fridge?
When her eyes returned to Aiden’s, his were guarded. And intensely apologetic.
The chill officially won.
‘Oh.’
It was all she could manage past the sudden gridlock in her throat. It seemed incredibly inevitable now and she wondered how she could possibly not have seen this coming last night. But here it was.
The moment.
‘How are you feeling?’ he murmured.
She didn’t want him asking that. How are you feeling? implied he gave a toss. How are you feeling? suggested she’d done something she should have felt awkward about. How are you feeling? was a prelude to Well, I should be going.
‘What happened, couldn’t work the inside deadlock?’ she asked, folding her arms across her chest.
His lips pressed together. ‘I wasn’t leaving.’
‘Overdosing on caffeine instead seems a bit extreme.’
His smile didn’t deserve to warm her. ‘I wanted to wait until you woke up.’
But you are leaving? ‘I’m awake now.’
‘Why are you?’
Because you weren’t there and the absence felt wrong. She might as well tattoo ‘high maintenance’ to her forehead. ‘It’s odd to have someone else in the house. I must have sensed you moving around.’
He didn’t believe her and she didn’t blame him.
‘So...this is a world record,’ she squeezed out, hideously brightly, ‘even for me. Is there such a thing as a half-night stand?’
His eyes fell shut. ‘Tash—’
‘No, I get it. Now. I didn’t really get it before, though. The way you looked at me earlier.
..’
Ugh. She so didn’t want to be one of those women that said ‘but I thought’. But she really had thought.
‘I shouldn’t have come here.’ He shook his mussed-up head. ‘We shouldn’t have slept together.’
She blinked at him and tightened her arms one more notch. So maybe she was broken after all. She’d come on way too strong and freaked him out. Though she’d truly believed him un-freakable. He was Aiden Moore. A man with his reputation had to have encountered stranger than her.
‘Nobody forced you,’ she defended, and then got an instant visual of her slamming him against the wall and buttons flying around them both. ‘Initially.’
‘I care for you, Tash. And I knew this wasn’t going further so I shouldn’t have started it. It wasn’t fair of me.’
She stared at him and heard echoes of Kyle and even her father. Making lame excuses. Taking responsibility in the patronising, masculine way that made it patently clear it was secretly all her fault. As if they were doing her some kind of favour. It was beneath a man like Aiden and she was offended for him as much as by him.
She nodded and turned to leave the kitchen, as dignified as she could manage, but at the last minute the social justice campaigner in her—the part that wasn’t much troubled by dignity or lack of it—forced her to speak.
She spun back from the doorway. ‘Sorry... Why isn’t this going further exactly?’
‘Tash, don’t do this.’
Every part of her tightened.
‘Hold you accountable for your actions?’ Suddenly she very much wanted to hear what he had to say, precisely because it was unpleasant for him to say it. She shouldn’t be the only one feeling the pressure here. ‘All those lusty stares, the coatroom kiss, the paddle-boat day...I would have thought you have had plenty of opportunity to have a crisis of conscience.’
Come on, Aiden, say it. Even Kyle-the-gutless had managed to say it. You came on too strong, Tash. Just as she had with Kyle. Just as she had with her father the one time she tried—really tried, but failed—to find some common ground with him and begin patching their fatally flawed relationship.
Seemed like try-hard was just her thing.
‘You looked like you were enjoying yourself,’ she gritted. And he’d willingly given her control. Did he not expect her to actually take it?
‘This isn’t about tonight, Tash.’
Of course it was. She’d been here before. Stupid her for imagining this time would be different. ‘Then what’s it about?’
What did I do?
‘I don’t want—’ He swore and turned away, but then thought better of it and turned back. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Tash.’
‘Too late.’ Her chest rose and fell several times as she gathered the courage to say what needed to be said. ‘You gave me control, Aiden. You wanted me to take it.’
Ironic that she should be speaking of control while her voice was demonstrating so little of it.
‘I told you, this isn’t about tonight. Tonight was amazing.’
Pfft...words. He tried to touch her arm but she shook him off. ‘Then what is it about?’
He curled his fingers back into his body. His blue eyes roiled with indecision. ‘You’re not someone I can see...fitting into my family.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Long term.’
Her stomach clenched hard and ice washed through her veins. It was only slightly better than what she’d feared. Both were rejections of who she essentially was. Humiliation surged up fast behind the ice. ‘I must have missed your proposal.’
That did bring his eyes back to hers. ‘A few weeks isn’t going to change that. So why waste your time?’
Huh. If she’d imagined him overwhelmed with desire, she must have been projecting. Madly. ‘Or yours?’ she pressed.
He tipped the remnants of his mug into the sink and tightened his lips. ‘This isn’t about me.’
‘No. It’s about your family, apparently. But let’s be honest. You mean your mother.’
‘I have six aunts and uncles and their respective partners, too. None of them are going to accept the daughter of Adele Porter in their backyards, let alone their family.’
Tash’s eyes strayed to where he’d been looking at the fridge. To the central display of a photo of her with her mother. And her heart ached.
‘No. Not while no one challenges their prejudice.’
He hissed his frustration. ‘You’re expecting me to go up against my family for you.’
Yes, of course. How inconceivable. Clearly, she was nothing to him. ‘Then why not do it for your father?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Leave my father out of this.’
‘Poor Nathaniel must have been living in a war zone all these years. Enemy territory. With a bunch of hysterics who can’t put the past in the past.’ The steam was building pressure now. Every affront and resentment she’d ever felt at the hands of people who were blind and judgemental and stupid poured out onto her kitchen floor and onto his family. ‘He abandoned the woman he loved to do the right thing by Laura and give you a father. And yes, he gave in to a momentary impulse when you and I were young but he stayed with Laura for twenty years, Aiden. To do the right thing by her again. But that’s not enough for any of you, is it?’
He stood straighter and loomed a warning over her. ‘Tash—’
‘What the hell do you people want from us? I’m sorry he didn’t love her more. But that’s not my fault any more than my heritage is.’
‘I could ask the same, Tash.’ He breathed down on her hot and passionate. ‘What the hell do you want from me? Give me some credit for trying to do the right thing by you, here. It would be so easy for me to just carry on with you, hiding the truth and having a good time for the weeks it would take me to bore of you.’
Was it so inevitable?
‘You’re every bit the cracker Jardine claimed. Why wouldn’t I just take what you were so eagerly offering and enjoy it?’ She winced but it didn’t slow him any. ‘But I’m not; I’m being chivalrous—and, believe me, gallantry is not my natural habitat—and ending it now before it goes any further with a woman who can have no place in my future.’
His words ricocheted off the shiny surfaces in the kitchen, making them endure painfully longer than the original. Once they subsided, the only sound was the respective heaving of their chests and lungs. In Tash’s case, muted by the tight wadding of agony that pressed in around her thoracic cavity like saturated gauze around an open wound. She reached for the starfish she’d made with him the day before and clutched it to her heart for courage.
Would it be this way for ever, for her? Tash Sinclair—for a good time but not a long time.
‘You’re right,’ she squeezed out past the bracing hurt, rich with sarcasm. ‘Thank you for putting me out of my misery.’ Unspent tears clogged her throat but she was damned if she’d let him see how much he’d hurt her. She ran her hands repeatedly over the cool, smooth glass of the sea star. ‘It’s ironic, really, that for you to be a man worthy of me you have to walk out that door.’ She shuddered in a breath. ‘And if you stayed then I’d be settling.’
His eyelids fell shut again.
‘I don’t know why I expected more. Everyone warned me that I shouldn’t trust you, your father included. Turns out you’re no different from the Kyle Jardines or the Eric Sinclairs.’
It wasn’t until the words were out that Tash realised she never planned on calling him her father again.
Aiden’s lashes lifted to re
veal blazing anger.
‘He beat his wife and six-year-old child for having the strength and character he lacked. It must have killed him to have that deficiency reflected a dozen times a day. Kyle, as well. Too emotionally insecure to maintain a proper relationship. I was stupid to think that you would be different. You’re just as emotionally stunted as they are. You just dress better.’
His nostrils flared. ‘Careful, Tash...’
‘Or what, Aiden?’ She pushed the challenge past the fist lodged in her throat. ‘Do you imagine that you can do anything to me that my father didn’t? Or say anything to me that Kyle didn’t? I am over feeling diminished at the hands of men. If you’re not into me enough to throw a single pebble into the dysfunctional surface of your family pond then that’s fine, but at least own it. Don’t preach to me about what a great man you’re being by saving me the discomfort of not being welcome in your home. Your family would be lucky to have me in it. Maybe I’d add some character and strength to your diminishing gene pool.’
The insult hung, potent and awful, between them.
‘It wouldn’t be a pebble, Tash. I would be lobbing a grenade.’
She turned and threw the sea star against her hallway wall. It exploded into a hundred orange glassy fragments. ‘Then hurl it, Aiden! Like the man I believed I’d fallen in love with. A strong and exciting and worthy man. God, I am so tired of boys.’
His body sagged and his voice, when it came, was tortured. ‘You don’t love me.’
She straightened, her chest racked with tight agony. ‘Please don’t measure me by your own standards. And please see yourself out.’
