“No. That’s sorted. This is strictly unprofessional.”
He closed his eyes. She almost turned away, but he reached for her, took her hand and led her into the house. “This is another bad idea, but I’d rather it happened in the house than on the doorstep. I like my neighbours.”
She followed him down the hallway, past the now half open door of the baby’s room and into a living area she’d not seen before. He had his laptop open on a coffee table the size of Bailey’s bathroom. He sat on a couch as big as a king-sized bed and gestured for her to do that same. She stood, too nervous to sit. Too nervous to talk. She’d been so brave when she got in his face last night and dared him to kiss her, where had the girl with all that trash talking, smart mouthing gone?
“You’re moving around better.” He was sprawled back on this giant couch, his bare feet up on the coffee table, his ankles crossed. It was a relaxed posture. He wore his wariness in his eyes.
“Ice baths. If you can stand them they work wonders.”
He smiled then he waited. And when she did nothing but stand and stare at him—taking in his broad shoulders, the definition of his chest, and the curve of his abdomen to his hips, the long legs and arms, the elegant hands and feet—he smiled again, and patted the space beside him.
“You’re very strange tonight, Bailey. I’m starting to worry.”
Once she was close to him, there’d be no way she could keep her hands to herself. Once she was close to him, and could see the flecks of black in his green eyes, and smell the warmth of his skin, hear the smoothness of his rich voice close by her ear, there’d be no chance to turn back.
She was facing hope and humiliation armed only with lust and longing, and a sense he felt the same way too.
She didn’t move so he sat forward, held out his hand. She ignored it and sat beside him. He looked at her with concern. “What have I done?”
“You’ve made me fall in love with you.”
He pushed out a breath with the same force he might’ve used if she’d slugged him in the guts.
“I know you didn’t mean to. I know it’s my problem, not yours. I want to fix it so it’s right between us.”
“I don’t know what to say.” He might’ve said he felt something for her too. He was pushed back in the wide seat, as far away from her as he could get. This was a disaster but the only way through was out the other side.
“I want to have sex with you so I can get you out of my system.”
He was deadly still. She couldn’t hear him breathing. She didn’t see him blink. “You can’t pretend you don’t feel something for me physically.” She was blushing and couldn’t hold his gaze. She looked down at her hands. “We almost burst into flames when we’re touching. I think if we played that out, we might be able to douse the fire. I might be able to leave you alone. Stop trying to get you to change. What I said to you, what I did to you last night was appalling. I’m ashamed of myself.”
He moved, sat forward, put his hand down over hers. “Wait a minute. Are you saying you’re ashamed you gave me a well deserved kick in the head but not that you’ve come here to seduce me?”
When she said yes, her voice was small and soft.
He laughed and it was pleasure all on its own to hear it. “That’s my kinda girl. Are you sure that’s what you want?” His voice got gravelly, red wine over hot rocks. “You know you make me lose myself. You can’t know how much I want to own that feeling for a while.”
“It’s a bad idea isn’t it?”
He reached for her, put his arm around her and pulled her into his side, pressing her against his hip, chest and thigh. “A shocker.” She looked into his eyes and saw the wariness was still there, but so was the slow burn of want. “I’m not going to ask about Chris. I’m going to trust you know what you’re doing and you’re not too hurt to do it.”
“I do and I’m not. I wish I looked prettier but then it doesn’t really matter.”
He brought the knuckles of the hand not holding her to her cheek. “You look fine to me, Bailey. You’re beautiful.” She angled her face against his hand and he exhaled on a sigh. “It’s been a while for me.” He pulled her closer and kissed her bruised jaw with the softness of a summer breeze.
She pressed against him. “It’s been a while for me too.”
He lifted his head, looked at her with narrowed eyes. She didn’t want him to misunderstand, to think she was cheating, though what was this if not cheating on Chris. “He’s on the couch.”
Aiden went “Hah!” and hauled her across his lap. “You minx, you’ve been playing with my head for weeks. You’ve been sending me messages, the couch, the school kids. I thought this should be slow but perhaps I’ll torture you instead.”
His laugher made the wings beat an erratic tattoo around her heart. She waited for his lips to meet hers, for her senses to take flight, but he held back.
“Bailey. This won’t change anything. I’m still no good for you. I’ll make love to you tonight with everything I’ve got, but tomorrow I’ll be the same screwed up person with nothing much to offer and we go back to being colleagues.”
Hearing him say it made this quest all the more ridiculous. If she had any ounce of self-respect she’d leave now. If she had any love for him she’d give him a better choice.
“I have to tell you something.”
He wasn’t listening, he was kissing her throat, humming against her skin.
“I knew you before we met.”
He mumbled, “Though Blake. I knew you too.”
“No. I took something from you. It was a long time before we met.”
He stopped, breathed, “Go on,” in her ear, and she almost forgot the facility for language.
“One morning early, I was doing my White Balance thing and I saw you at the beach, against the rock wall, that natural amphitheatre. It was this morning’s pic.”
He drew away, but kept his hand behind her neck. Now he was listening. Now it was harder to tell him.
“You were sitting there watching the sun rise, watching the sea. I thought you were in pain. You looked so impossibly sad. I had this urge to go to you, hold your hand, and tell you it would be alright.”
He frowned, puzzled. “When was this?”
“The day I had my surgery. More than two years ago.”
He bent his forehead to hers. “Ah, Bailey. I used to go there when I couldn’t sleep, when I missed her so badly I could hardly breathe.” He straightened up, closed his eyes. “That you should’ve seen me like that.”
“I feel like I stole from you. That’s why I didn’t want you to know I was White Balance. I would never have used the image, but when we met I felt this connection to you. I thought it was just Blake’s stories, but that night at dinner with David, you looked so destroyed, it reminded me. I went looking for the image, and then I knew why I’d felt like we were supposed to know each other.”
“I did my best to hide all that from people, but you knew it already.”
“It didn’t stop me loving you.”
She thought he might move away, put distance between them, but he pulled her into him and grasped her tightly, his face close. “Why? What is it you see in me?”
“I see cleverness and honour and commitment. I see a man who understands devotion and knows how to love.”
He closed his eyes and his fingers dug into her arms. “You knock me over, Bailey.”
“There’s something else.”
His eyes flared open. “I look strong, but I don’t know how I’m going to take too many more shocks tonight.”
“I kissed Blake.”
He sighed, a mix of relief and humour. “Of course you did. Bastard said you’d never done anything like that.”
“No, you don’t understand. This morning. We kissed this morning?”
Aiden’s whole body started. “Jesus Christ!” He dropped his arms and she sat back from him on the sofa, to give him this choice.
“It’s nothing. We felt nothi
ng. We’ve always had this bond. It’s never been anything sexual but it was always deeply personal. That’s why we fight. It was confusing and I guess we always wondered if we should’ve done something about it, especially before Olivia.
“I don’t know what happened this morning. But I freaked Blake out because he thought I wasn’t going to take the partnership. And I yelled at him for not telling me about your baby and we both got upset, and it just happened.”
Aiden was watching her with an expression of disquiet. He was the cool change come after the heat of a February day. This was another unrehearsed moment where her plan might come undone.
“It was really ordinary. Neither of us felt anything.”
“Did you know you were going to come to me before it happened?”
“No, but after I talked to Blake, I knew I had to be with you. I’ve wanted to be with you since the beginning.”
“The night at your place?”
“No, since I took your picture.”
Aiden shook his head, put his hands over his face. She let him rest until his silence was a change of season, and anxiety put lumps of sand in her throat.
“Aid, say something.”
He lifted his face, but looked across the room as if he needed to block her out. His voice was a rasp, laden with emotion. “I want you so much right now it scares me.”
“I was never frightened of you and I’m not now.”
He stood, still facing away. “You’re sure?”
She followed him to stand, hope surging through her limbs, making every muscle quiver. She wrapped her arms around his waist, rested her face against his back. “Love me for tonight, Aiden.”
He led her through the house, through the kitchen and dining room. In the hallway, he stopped, backed her against a cool plaster wall and kissed her, slow and firm, hot and insistent. Oh, God, she was on fire.
She didn’t need a bedroom, she needed this. Him unbuttoning her shirt, putting his warm hands on the soft flesh of her ribs and belly. She plucked at the hem of his t-shirt. He stood back and pulled it over his head, and her breath came shorter and faster. This was really going to happen. Aiden was made of lean muscle and strength, his narrow hips curving out to the triangle of his shoulders. The need to feel his skin on hers was a ravenous hunger. She peeled off her own shirt and he grunted at the sight of her bruised shoulder, the raw red scrape on the crest of her hip bone.
“You’re too hurt for this.” He kissed her shoulder, he traced over the green skin with light fingertips. He dropped to his knees and blew a stream of warm air across her hip, his hands holding her still. Abruptly he let go, sat back on his heels, looking stern. “Not tonight. I can see how hurt you are.”
She bent to take his face in her hands. “I can see how hurt you are.”
The shock of that, the acknowledgement, registered in his eyes. “It’s not the same thing.”
“No, but it’s what we both need tonight. I need you to love me once.”
She straightened up, gave him her hand, and he stood, his final reserve broken. He took her to a guest bedroom: spare of extraneous items, a beautifully made bed, a stark, bright bedside light. He turned it to the wall so it cast a less clinical glow.
“I need to see you. I don’t want to hurt you.” He was working on her other clothes, the zip on her boots, her jeans, her underwear.
“You won’t. I trust you. They’re only scrapes and bruises.”
He stepped back when she was naked, still in his own jeans. “God, you are beautiful.” He pushed pillows aside, pulled the bedcovers back and stared at her till she knew her face was flushed pink. She stepped forward and ran her hands up his abdomen and over the sublime flare of his chest, and he growled animal deep in his throat. He moved quickly, deliberately. Lifted her under the knees, brought her to the bed, and got rid of the rest of his clothes.
Her skin on his skin was an instant wild head rush. A blast of sensuality that made her senses spin. His touch was like the shock of ice against sunburn. It surprised. It stung, it soothed. It over powered. It made her writhe. It made him groan his pleasure. It was a new kind of pain. Intense. Transcendent. Altering. It made the bedroom edgeless, the house cease to exist, the world a ball of dust. It made the only consciousness their shared bliss.
There was no end to the hope they found in each other. No limit to the places they could travel, together, separately, for the other. There were no rules, no restraints, no questions. There was nothing hesitant or restrained, only a fine balance of male and female, tenderness and strength, gift and demand.
Bailey was cocooned in Aiden’s attention, wrapped in his affection and care. She fought against coming down, wanting to stay in the ether of this perfect togetherness for as long as possible. He was equally reluctant to let go, coming back to her mouth for one more kiss, again and again, curling around her while they caught their breath, only to use his body to bring her senses to boiling point once more.
When it was impossible to feel more, when their breathing aligned and sleep threatened, Bailey’s mind came back to order. Aiden had flipped them again. She lay across his chest, her head tucked into his neck. They were both too hot, but rapidly cooling. He pulled a sheet and a cotton blanket over them and nestled her closer. She couldn’t find the words to tell him how he’d made her feel, and to speak would make it less extraordinary.
She knew he was asleep when the weight of his arm across her back grew heavier. She was warm and secure, but the twitch of anxiety wound its way from her centre into her limbs. Starting this was meant to finish it. Finished, this was a dreadful thing. A bruise that might never fade. He wasn’t out of her system. He was the blood that fed it, the hand that stirred it, the flame that fired it.
But he was also the hard cut of denial. To know they could be like this together and he would still walk away from it. She could hate him for that. She was overexposed to him and no amount of white balancing would fix the picture. It wasn’t wrong to want a sign she meant more to him than a pretty distraction. It wasn’t wrong to want him to fight for her or to despise him for not.
Blinking furiously to try to hold back her tears she eased his arm off, and slipped across the bed away from him. He didn’t stir. She found her clothes and dressed in the hall under the watchful eyes of the big old tabby cat. He wanted to go out with her, staying close to her legs as she got to the door, ready for his chance to escape. She knelt down and stroked his thick coat, whispered in his flickering ear. “No, puss. You have to stay with him. He has to have somebody if he won’t have me.”
She managed to get out the door, but the cat wailed in annoyance at being left behind and the sensor light went on in the driveway. She half expected Aiden to follow her out into the night.
Then she remembered he wouldn’t.
It was close to 3am when she got home. There was a light in her bedroom she hadn’t left on and another in the hall. Chris met her at the front door.
“Where’ve you been? I was worried. You didn’t call.” He had his dressing gown on over pyjama pants. The hallway was alive to the flicker of the TV from the lounge room, whites and blues, an ad for a swingers dating service. He’d been waiting up.
“I’m home now.”
“You look... I don’t know. You look different, are you ok?”
“I’m tired. I need to sleep.” She should shower, but she wanted to sleep with the feel of Aiden on her body this once. She moved past Chris to her bedroom. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Bailey?”
It was too late, too early, too much. She didn’t want to have this conversation now.
“I blew it didn’t I?”
Chris was tugging on the tie of the dressing gown, belting it tighter. “I’m not going to get a second chance with you. It’s ok. I know it. I think I knew it when I left.”
She didn’t want to look at Chris. She didn’t want him to understand how she’d changed before she had a chance to camouflage it. “Let’s talk in the morning.�
��
He hugged her, but didn’t try to kiss her, and she was grateful for that.
46: Alternate Ending
When Aiden woke, he was immediately conscious of four things. He was alone. Everything had changed. He felt fantastic, and he was, without a doubt mankind’s biggest fuckwit.
There was no end to his dullness, his deliberate self sabotaging stupidity. He should’ve known he could never let her go. Should’ve known she’d be gone. Should’ve set a trap. Tied her to the bed and rigged an electric fence around it.
There had to be something terminally wrong with a guy who could let a woman like Bailey believe for a nano-second he didn’t want her. Didn’t need her so badly to balance him, it made his hands shake to think about losing her.
He was a screw up. But he could change.
He had changed.
Once he realised he was alone, he couldn’t rest, didn’t need to, felt refreshed. No, better, purged, renewed. Whole. Alive. There were hours and days and years in front of him, and no need to look behind, for anything other than perspective. Unless he screwed up again, and that was bitterness and ugliness. And incentive.
Nothing better than the imminent threat of utter and complete failure as an incentive.
It was early. He bolted out of bed. When had he last done that? Scarfed toast and coffee. Showered. Wrote prose and narrative in his head. Discarded it. Started the draft again. He couldn’t let Bailey begin her day thinking they were finished. He couldn’t let her end it without knowing he was ready to fight for her.
In his own bedroom he dressed. Then fished Shannon’s sarong out of the drawer, sat on the bed and held it. It’d been freshly washed when she died so it didn’t carry her scent but he put his face to it anyway. He loved Shannon. He always would. There would always be a gap in his life where she fitted. But that couldn’t be his whole life. He wanted to live again. He’d found someone who made that choice real. He wanted so much.
He put the sarong in the drawer and turned on his laptop. He had a plan. And Shannon would approve. He started to write. When he was satisfied with the draft, he went to Bailey’s blog. She hadn’t yet posted, so he waited. Thought about that split second when he’d believed that of all things, he’d lost her to Blake. That sent a cold shudder up his spine. That was so done as an issue. Blake didn’t stand a chance because if Olivia didn’t mess him up for it, he would.
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