In his pocket, his phone vibrated. Thinking it might be Hitch again, he pulled it out, only to see the name Nita.
Rising from the bed, he swiped the screen and answered it softly. “Hi.” He walked back to the kitchenette—hardly miles away, but it might mean he was less likely to wake Bridget.
“Hi. How is it going?” she said in her strong Spanish accent.
“Yeah, fine. We’re making a Lego digger for the umpteenth time.”
“You should not keep buying him Lego, Aaron. We have so many boxes of it.” Her voice was full of irritation and he’d only said a couple of sentences. Clearly, it was going to be that sort of conversation.
“I know, but the boy’s got to have something to do in the hotel room.”
“So take him out.”
“Have you seen the weather?” He didn’t want to argue with her, not now. “Do you want to speak to him?”
“Yes, please.”
He walked back to the bed and handed his son the phone. Gesturing to Bridget, he put a finger to his lips, and Mateo nodded.
“Hi Mum,” the boy said in a mock whisper. He listened, then whispered, “Yes, we bought some ice cream but it was raining so we came back.”
Nita obviously then asked him why he was whispering, because he answered, “Because Bridget’s sleeping in the other bed.”
Aaron closed his eyes momentarily. He should have asked Mateo not to mention her, but it wasn’t fair to ask the boy to keep a secret from his mother.
“Um… we found her on the quay,” Mateo said. “She was getting married but the man didn’t turn up… Because she was wet. She’s wearing Daddy’s sweatshirt… Um… I’ll give you back to Daddy.” Mateo passed the phone back to him, pulling a comical eek face.
Aaron tried not to laugh and walked away. “Hello?”
“What the hell is going on?” Nita’s tone was clipped and curt. “There is a woman in your hotel room?”
“It’s not what you think. She was in trouble and we helped her out.”
“That is unacceptable, Aaron. It is disgusting. You cannot bring women back to your room when our son is there.”
“She’d been jilted at the altar,” he said, starting to get irritated. “She was on the quay in her wedding dress, soaked through, and I offered to help.”
“What is it with you? Why do you always have to help?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do.”
“If it is not people it is animals. Hundreds and hundreds of them, running riot in the house, spreading diseases.”
“At the most there were three dogs and a couple of cats, Nita, don’t exaggerate. It’s my job.”
“It is your job to stitch them up. You have a surgery. It is not your job to take them home and personally nurse every one of them.”
Aaron gave up. He’d never win an argument with her in this mood, and he didn’t even want to try. “I’ve got to go—it’s time for Mat’s tea.”
“What are you giving him?”
“Burger and chips, non-diet soda, and ice cream with sprinkles full of E numbers.”
“Aaron!”
“I’ll speak to you later.” He hung up.
He turned and then stopped, surprised to see Bridget awake and watching him.
“I’m causing trouble,” she said, pulling back the covers and sitting up. “I should go.”
“Absolutely you’re not.” He put his phone in the pocket of his jeans. “I’m sorry about that. Nita is…” He glanced at Mateo. He never criticized her in front of the boy, even though at times he wanted to call her all the names under the sun. “Complicated,” he chose.
Her eyes told him she understood. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
He shrugged and checked his watch. It was nearly five o’clock. “How do you feel?” he asked, looking back at her.
“A bit better.” She looked better too, calmer, less panicky.
“I thought we could go down to the hotel restaurant and have some dinner. Would you like to join us?”
“I… I couldn’t. I’ve imposed on you enough. I really should go.”
“Why don’t you have something to eat?” he said gently. “Later, you can call your brother if you like, or whatever you want.”
“I don’t have any money,” she admitted.
“It’s okay, I’ll pay. You can always send me a check later.” He smiled.
She nibbled her bottom lip. She probably hadn’t eaten since the morning, and maybe if she’d been nervous she might not even have had breakfast. “I am a bit hungry,” she admitted. Then she looked down at her herself. “I can’t go looking like this, though. Everything’s too big, and I don’t have any shoes.”
“Ah. Yeah. I could nip out and get you some clothes.”
“Can’t we have room service, Dad?” Mateo asked.
He hadn’t thought of that. He raised his eyebrows at her. “Would you prefer that? They have a good menu here.”
Her face lit up a bit, and she nodded.
“Okay.” He retrieved the menu. “How about I order a few things and we all dip in?”
She nodded again, her eyes light as they rested on him.
“Don’t forget chicken nuggets,” Mateo prompted.
“Of course. No meal’s complete without nuggets.” He rolled his eyes at her. “Any requests?”
“What do you recommend?” she asked Mateo.
The boy studied the menu solemnly. “I like the meat pizza.”
“Pizza it is, then.”
“No ancheevees though.”
She kept a straight face. “Definitely no ancheevees.”
Aaron hid a smile, picked up the hotel phone, and dialed. He could think of worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon.
Chapter Five
They ate pizza—without anchovies—chicken nuggets, fish bites, fries, and a variety of other food that probably had limited nutritional value, although Aaron did order up a couple of salads too, giving Mateo a spoonful of one which, in spite of his complaints, he ate.
Aaron also ordered a bottle of Marlborough Cabernet Merlot, and Bridget didn’t refuse a glass when he offered it to her. She sipped it, enjoying the taste of blackcurrant with notes of cloves and spice. Mal hated red wine. For some reason, that seemed to make it taste even more delicious. It slid down to her stomach, warming her all the way, and she welcomed that too, feeling as if she’d been cold for millennia.
For a while, they didn’t talk much, not about anything personal, anyway. They watched a quiz show, Aaron and Mateo obviously playing an old game where they gave random answers to each question, making each other laugh the more outrageous the answers became until in the end Bridget was smiling too, caught up in their camaraderie.
He had a lovely relationship with the boy—firm and yet friendly. She could imagine he was great with dogs—they’d be well trained and well behaved, but they’d adore him, and she understood why.
He was obviously divorced from Mateo’s mother—or separated, at least. His tone on the phone to her had held a frustration she knew only too well. Why was he in a hotel? Did he stay here all the time? She wanted to ask, but she didn’t want to question him in front of his son.
She studied him while he chatted to Mateo about the Egyptians after the boy had asked a question about Tutankhamun. He was kind and gentle, and yet very much a man. He called his son ‘mate’. The sweatshirt she wore smelled of his aftershave. He was serious and she imagined he worked hard at his job, but he was ready to laugh too, and his chuckle was quite infectious. He was polite and courteous, and yet when his gray eyes looked at her, they held an intensity that gave her a little frisson down her spine. He liked her, but he wouldn’t dream of saying so under the circumstances.
At the thought of what had happened earlier that day, Bridget’s spirits sank. For a few moments, she’d put it to the back of her mind, but she was stupid if she thought she could avoid thinking about it. At some point, she was going to have to face the cold, hard truth. Mal had d
umped her in the cruelest, most hurtful way imaginable, and she was going to have to deal with that at some point.
“Are you okay?” Aaron bent his head to catch her eye.
Her appetite vanishing, she pushed away the half-eaten food and picked up her wine. “That was lovely, thank you.” She finished off the glass. “I should go, though.”
“Of course.” He put his plate aside. “If that’s what you want, I can call you a taxi. Where will you go? Your parents?” he suggested.
“They’re both dead.”
Mateo looked up, halfway through eating a chicken nugget, and stared at her.
Aaron’s brow creased. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “I was only ten when my dad died. Fourteen when my mum followed him. Hitch—my brother—looked after me while I grew up.”
“What about his place?”
“I could… I have lots of friends, but I don’t really want to see them right now.” She didn’t want to talk about it, and she didn’t think she could bear to see the pity on their faces.
“I’d better go home,” she said. “I was supposed to be moving in with Mal when we got back from our honeymoon so everything’s packed up, but the rent’s paid for another two weeks.”
“Are you sure you want to be on your own?” Aaron asked cautiously.
“What do you mean?”
“Will you be okay if your… ex turns up?”
Her ex. Yeah, that was what he was now. For real. No short term breakup anymore.
She shrugged. “I don’t see why he would.”
“It’s only… Hitch told me that he turned up—I’m not sure where.”
Her eyes widened and her head spun. “You spoke to Hitch?”
“Only briefly, after you finished your call. Just to reassure him you were all right.”
“What… why did Mal turn up?”
“Hitch told me not to tell you.” He ran a hand through his hair when she glared at him. “He wanted to apologize.”
She inhaled, fury sweeping through her. If Mateo hadn’t been sitting next to her, she would have sworn violently. “I see. What happened?”
“Apparently one of Hitch’s mates gave him a right hook.” Aaron’s lips twitched. The notion pleased him.
She stared at him. Which of her friends would have done that? Gene, maybe, as he was a trained protection officer, although she wouldn’t have put it past Rhett either. She felt a warm glow in her stomach at the thought that they’d stood up for her. She wasn’t alone in all this. Mal might have taken the hope of marriage and babies away from her, but he couldn’t take her friends.
Her gaze slid to Mateo. “Do you think he deserved it?” she asked. The boy nodded. “So do I,” she said.
Aaron gave a short laugh. “I’m glad.”
He was right though—she didn’t want to go back to the house if there was any chance of Mal turning up there and catching her alone.
“You don’t have to make your mind up now,” he said easily, obviously picking up on her hesitation. “Stay a bit longer, have another glass of wine. Mat’s going to have a shower—”
“No I’m not.”
“—and then Shrek is showing on the movie channel.”
Her lips curved up. “I haven’t seen that for ages.”
“That’s settled then.” He slapped Mateo on the leg. “Come on, boyo. Let’s clean you up.”
“Aw, Dad…”
Aaron stood, picked the boy up in a fireman’s lift, and tickled him as he carried him through to the shower. Smiling, Bridget took the plates over to the kitchenette, scraped the scraps into the rubbish, and washed the plates.
Aaron came out after a few minutes and dried up beside her. Singing emitted from the shower, the theme tune to Transformers, if she wasn’t mistaken. The two of them exchanged a smile.
Bridget finished the last plate and wiped her hands. “I am sorry for interrupting your day,” she said as she leaned against the counter. “I’m guessing that your time with your son is precious, and I’m sure the last thing you needed was to play knight in shining armor to some hopeless woman on the quay.”
“You’re not hopeless.” He dried the last plate and hung the tea towel over the rail. “In fact I think you’re coping well. It’s no small thing to have a relationship end, and the way it’s happened to you is just… well…” He glanced at the bathroom door to make sure that Mateo couldn’t hear him. “…fucking awful,” he finished.
Her lips twisted. She scratched at a mark on the counter. “Do you know the worst thing?”
“What?”
Normally she wouldn’t have said it out loud, but she felt liberated by the fact that Aaron was a stranger and she’d be unlikely to see him again.
“I think I’m more upset by the humiliation of being jilted than I am about actually losing Mal.” A weight lifted as she said it, even though it was an awful thing to admit.
Aaron didn’t say anything, and eventually she lifted her gaze to his. His gray eyes studied her, interested, thoughtful.
“Does that make me a terrible person?” she whispered.
He gave a short laugh. “It sounds as if you had a lucky escape.”
Lucky… A few hours ago it would have been the last word she would have used to describe herself. Maybe he was right, though.
Aaron was still watching her. His gaze dropped to her lips, and she wondered whether he was thinking what it might be like to kiss her.
Of course he wasn’t. Her cheeks warmed at the irreverent thought. He must be desperate to get rid of her. He must be cursing himself for walking up to her on the quay.
“Dad!” A voice echoed from inside the bathroom. “I’m done!”
Aaron turned away. “I won’t be long.” He picked up a pair of pajamas and disappeared into the bathroom. Soon, the sounds of a boy being dried and dressed filtered through the door.
Bridget walked back to the bed, stared at the empty glass of wine on the bedside table, and then at the half-full bottle. Sighing, she poured herself another glass. At the moment, she was living from one minute to the next. It would soon become clear what she was supposed to do, she was sure.
Before long, Mateo emerged in his Transformers pajamas and, to her surprise, ran toward her and jumped onto the bed, moving up next to where she sat with her back to the headboard. He flicked on the TV. “Shrek’s started, Dad! Get the snacks.”
“On my way.” Aaron rustled around in the bag he’d been carrying when she’d seen him on the quay, produced a few packets, then retrieved a tub of ice cream from the freezer before coming over to the bed.
He handed her the tub and a spoon. “Your share of the chocolate fudge brownie.”
She took the spoon from him and smiled. “Thank you.”
He went around the other side of the bed and sat beside Mateo. The two of them opened the packets of popcorn and chocolate buttons. Clearly, this was a recurring ritual.
Bridget took the lid off the ice cream, dipped the spoon in, and tasted the ice cream. The rich chocolatey taste filled her mouth, and she knew then that it would always remind her of this moment, sitting curled on the bed, with her life in tatters but somehow feeling that everything was going to be okay, even though she didn’t yet know how.
They watched Shrek, not talking much but laughing at the jokes and singing along to the songs, and that led into another movie as the light gradually faded and the day came to an end. The rain had eased off, and outside, the clouds had parted to reveal a tangerine sky.
Bridget looked down to see that Mateo’s eyes had closed and the boy had dozed off. She reached out and touched Aaron’s arm, and he looked down and smiled.
Together, the two of them got up gently, took out the empty bowls, and then Aaron covered Mateo up.
Bridget swallowed the last few drops of wine in her glass. Aaron came over to where she stood by the window and held up the bottle.
“Seems a shame to waste it,” he said.
She sighed and gave a little nod
, and he poured most of it into her glass and the rest into his.
“To the future,” he said, holding his glass up.
The last rays of the sun fell across him, warming his skin to a caramel color and turning his eyes to silver.
“To the future.” She touched her glass to his and sipped the rich, red wine. When he gestured to one of the seats at the table, she took a chair, and he sat opposite her.
“He’s a lovely boy,” she said, nodding toward Mateo.
“Yeah, he’s all right.” He grinned and leaned back in the chair, hooking one arm over the back. He had big, strong hands. She could imagine him handling restless animals, holding them still until they calmed.
“Mateo’s an unusual name,” she said. “Is it…?”
“Spanish. Nita’s from Barcelona—her full name’s Juanita. She came over here on a working holiday. She was picking kiwi fruit in the orchards in the Bay of Islands, and I bumped into her in Kerikeri. She was beautiful, exotic—long, dark, wavy hair down to her hips, black eyes, curvy figure. I fell for her immediately. Within six weeks, I’d proposed. A month later, we were married.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. I tend to be impulsive. I shouldn’t say it was a mistake because she gave me Mat, and I wouldn’t be without him. So for that I’m glad I met her. But it’s been a rocky road. She missed her home, for a start. I understood that, but my life, my career, my family, are all here. We went to Spain once a year, and the journey grew to be something I dreaded. She’d be ecstatic for the weeks leading up to it—manic, almost, and when we were there she’d be her old self—energetic, beautiful, lively. Then as the holiday drew to an end and she was due to go back, she’d get sadder and sadder, and angry—at me, at everyone. When we came back, she’d sink into a depression for months. We argued about it all the time until, eventually, there was nothing left but the bad times.”
“I’m sorry.” He looked sad, she thought, his shoulders slumping, the lines on his face illustrating his unhappiness.
Persuading Spring: A Sexy New Zealand Romance (The Four Seasons Book 4) Page 4
