When the knock sounded at her door, she couldn’t even say she was surprised. But her heart skipped a few beats anyway.
After glancing through the peephole, she unlocked the dead bolt and opened it. Aidan lingered in the hallway, his expression hard to read.
“May I come in?” he asked, his formal tone at odds with the turbulence in his gaze.
“Of course.” She stepped back to allow him to enter.
He prowled the confines of her room, hands shoved in his pockets. “I thought you would be angry,” he said.
“About what?”
“Don’t play dumb. About what I told you this morning. The timing of my engagement.”
She debated how to answer him. “We both made mistakes, Aidan. I’m hardly one to criticize.”
“Are you even human?” he snapped. “Why aren’t you calling me names? Why aren’t you throwing things at me?”
“For the same reason that you’re in my room right now,” she said quietly, her heart breaking. “We don’t know how to be together because we ruined the past, but there’s something between us that we haven’t managed to kill.”
He ripped off his tie and ran a hand behind his neck. “I’m leaving in the morning.” The dark-eyed gaze dared her to protest.
Emma shook her head vehemently. “Your mother will be crushed, Aidan. She’s so looking forward to having her whole family together on Christmas Day. And the special events this week, the children’s party, the caroling—please don’t leave. I’ll go instead. You won’t have to see me again.”
“Where would you go?”
“Back to England, I suppose.”
“But your mother is traveling. That’s why Mia and my mom have included you as part of our family this past week.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not a Kavanagh. But you are, Aidan. You can’t forsake your family this year. If you do, they’ll realize that you’ve never gotten over losing Danielle. And somehow, I think you don’t want them to know that.”
“What makes you think I’ve never gotten over Danielle?” Hostility crackled in the words.
“I heard it in your voice this morning. You loved her. And you lost her in a tragic accident. Being here in Silver Glen at Christmas has revived those terrible memories.”
* * *
Aidan felt as if were being ripped apart. He knew exactly what kind of ass he would be to abandon his family now. But God knows, it seemed like his only choice at the moment.
Allowing Emma to leave Silver Glen would accomplish nothing. He was deliberately fostering the lie that Danielle was his long-lost love...that he had kept an emotional vigil for her all these years.
If that lie was supposed to be a punishment for Emma, then why was he the one who felt like hell?
“I can’t stay,” he said bluntly. “I don’t want to.”
Emma wrung her hands. “But you have to,” she cried. In her bare feet, and with her hair loose around her face, she looked more like the girl he had loved in Oxford.
“Perhaps you could convince me,” he said slowly. Bastard. His mind was made up, and yet he was willing to use Emma’s concern as a bargaining chip. In his defense, if he were never going to see her again, surely it wasn’t such a terrible crime to steal one more night in her arms.
She stared at him in silence. Even disheveled and upset, her dignity was unassailable. Inevitably, he felt like a peasant begging for crumbs.
“Say something,” he growled. “Yes or no?”
He watched her chest rise and fall. Blue eyes, tinged with some painful emotion, judged him and found him wanting.
“Yes.”
The exultation that swept through his veins was at odds with Emma’s expression. Her misery infuriated him. “You don’t have to look like a condemned woman on her way to the guillotine. If you don’t want me, say so. I’m done playing games.”
Her quiet laugh held no amusement at all. “It’s not a game, Aidan, believe me.”
When she turned on her heel and left him standing alone in the sitting area, he gaped. The bathroom door opened and closed. He heard water running.
Grim-faced, he pounded on the wood. “Quit hiding from me, damn it. And don’t undress. That’s my job.”
She swung open the barrier between them so quickly he almost pitched forward. Her eyes flashed blue fire. “Fine. Have it your way.” She stalked toward the bed and stood beside it, her back to him. She had swept her hair over one shoulder, baring the nape of her neck.
A pulse, low and sweet, began to thrum in his veins. He closed the distance between them. “I’m not a big fan of angry sex,” he whispered, kissing the top of her spine. “Let’s forget everything tonight except for the way we make each other feel.”
Glancing at him over her shoulder, she gave him a mocking smile. “You mean the way we want to strangle each other?”
Eighteen
How could she make him want to laugh at the oddest moments? He shook his head. “I don’t want to strangle you, Emma. At least not most of the time.” He was forced to add that last bit in the interest of honesty.
She sighed and bowed her head, her posture submissive despite her sarcasm. “We seem to make better enemies than we do friends.”
The phrasing bothered him. “I don’t want to be your friend.” These feelings he had were too strong for friendship and too complicated for anything else.
When she turned to face him, he held her by the shoulders...suddenly afraid she would bolt.
Emma was smaller and more vulnerable in her bare feet. She tilted her face up to his and studied him intently, as if trying to see inside his soul. “We were friends once upon a time.”
“No.” He shook his head, the word vehement. “We were lovers. I never had time to be your friend, because the first day I met you I fell head over heels in lust with you.”
“Lust? Not love?”
He had no doubt he was hurting her now. “Lust, Emma,” he said flatly, “a young man’s physical passion for a beautiful woman. Love lasts. Lust fades. That’s how you know the difference. If we ever had a shot at love, it ended before it began.”
“And yet you still want me.”
Only then did he see the trap he had set for himself. Damn. He backtracked quickly. “But only because we’ve been thrown together in this Christmas-wedding, romantic atmosphere. It’s not real. We’re not real. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’m leaving in the morning. And no matter what I intimated, you can’t change my mind.”
Her small smile was wistful. “Final answer?”
He steeled himself against her charm. “Final answer. Now, do you want me under those conditions, or not?”
Two soft hands cupped his face. Feminine fingers slid cool against his overheated skin. Her eyes searched his. “I love you, Aidan. I know you’d rather not hear it. Perhaps you don’t believe it. Or maybe our history discredits what I say. But before you leave, I want you to understand how I feel. I don’t know what Danielle has to do with all of this, but she’s gone and I’m here. I can’t change what happened in England. I’m sorry for that. But please, Aidan. Don’t live in the past.”
Every word she spoke was a shard of glass, piercing his skin and finding its way to his heart. Emma loved him. He wanted to crow with masculine triumph. Beat his chest. Shout it from the rooftops.
Yet in the midst of all that rose a terrible pain. He’d believed her once upon a time. Had handed over his heart with the carelessness of youth, not realizing what he risked.
Three times he’d been betrayed by love. His father had not loved his sons enough to put them before his obsession with finding a lost silver mine. Danielle had died, leaving Aidan with the guilt of knowing he hadn’t loved her enough. And Emma...Emma had made him believe in love. That was the cruelest blow of all.
His heart encased in ice, he removed her hands from his face and forced her arms behind her back, manacling her wrists with one hand. Her bones, delicate in his grasp, struck him as feminine and helpless. “I don’
t want you to love me,” he said. He crushed his mouth over hers taking the kiss he wanted, feeling the way her lips quivered against his. “All I want is you.”
* * *
Emma felt the sting of hot tears and blinked them back. She had gambled her all on one roll of the dice and lost. Gasping, she struggled to free her arms. “I want you, too,” she whispered. “But I don’t like angry sex, either. Come to bed with me, Aidan.”
He let her go instantly and stood stone faced as she reached behind her to lower the zipper. When she faltered, he finished the task, holding her hand as she stepped out of a sea of velvet. Carefully, he draped the dress over a nearby chair.
She saw Aidan’s eyes burn as he took in the matching bra, undies and garter belt she wore. Her nipples tightened in helpless pleasure. His hot gaze raked her from head to toe, leaving no doubt about his desire for her. A less pragmatic woman might have told herself that love was there buried somewhere under that brusque facade.
But she had come too far to fool herself now. Aidan wanted her body—not her soul, not her heart, not her whispered confession of devotion. And because she loved him enough for two, she would give him everything. If that left her with nothing, she would not cry.
Taking his hand, she climbed into the bed. He was on her instantly, his face flushed, the bulge in his trousers impossible to miss. They kissed wildly. He tasted of coffee and wedding cake.
“God, you drive me insane,” he muttered, sucking one nipple through a covering of ecru lace. “Tell me you want me.”
She unbuttoned his shirt with fumbling fingers. “I do, Aidan. I do.”
The juxtaposition of those five words so close to tonight’s wedding ceremony made him wince. Emma saw his involuntary response. Though she hadn’t meant to make the connection—obviously, he had.
He rolled away from her long enough to toe off his shoes and unfasten his trousers. When he freed his sex, it was dark red and rigid. “Can’t wait,” he groaned. “Not this time.”
The fact that he didn’t bother to finish undressing either of them was as arousing as the touch of his big warm hands on her body. “Then don’t,” she said, tugging him closer.
He took two seconds to move aside the narrow fabric between her legs. Then he positioned himself and shoved to the hilt in one forceful thrust that smacked the headboard against the wall.
A ragged laugh shook his chest. “Please tell me I didn’t bust a hole in the wall. I’d never live it down.”
“Do you really care?” She linked her ankles at the small of his back. Neither of them was naked. Yet this was the most intimate time she had shared with him since he’d arrived in Silver Glen.
For a flash—a split second—he looked down at her with the face of the young man who had stolen her heart. Carefree. Happy. Determined to make her his. “No. I suppose not,” he muttered.
Keeping his gaze locked on her face, he moved inside her. One steady push after another. His skin heated. So did hers. The pace was lazy, but the look in his eyes was anything but.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” she said, the words tumbling out impulsively.
It was a mistake. Instantly, his expression shuttered. His jaw rigid, he closed his eyes and closed her out.
Beneath her fingertips, his hair was soft and springy. Her thighs ached from the effort of clinging to him. He overwhelmed her suddenly, so much a man that she could almost forget the boy.
But even as he stroked her intimately, she felt echoes of sweetness from the past. Almost everything had changed. The world. Their lives. Their bodies. Yet when she closed her eyes and gave herself over to the intense pleasure of the moment, she could pretend she was back in England. Back with a young Aidan. Back under the influence of a love that was innocent and perfect.
Without warning, he shifted suddenly, putting pressure where her body craved his touch. She shivered, so close to her climax that she felt little flutters of anticipation in her sex.
Aidan nipped her earlobe with sharp teeth. “I’ll stay ’til morning.” The promise was hoarse.
“Yes.” It was all she could manage. He took her with him then to a place that held a poignant mixture of regret and physical bliss.
“Emma...”
She couldn’t answer him in words. Her throat was too tight. Instead, she rained kisses across his face and canted her hips to take him deeper. He groaned as if he were in pain when he came. And she followed him. But the pleasure was hollow and the end incomplete.
Because what he gave her was not enough. And it never would be.
Nineteen
Aidan huddled into his wool overcoat, turning up the collar in a vain attempt to escape the howling wind from the arctic front that had blasted through New York that morning. Snow fell, but it was dry and icy...nothing to hamper shoppers on the next-to-last shopping day before Christmas.
He’d been walking the streets of Manhattan for hours, his hands and his feet numb. The physical discomfort was some kind of punishment, though he didn’t know exactly what for or why. All he knew was that he’d been compelled to leave his apartment in search of relief from his pain.
Booze hadn’t done it. Nor back-to-back movies at the closest theater. Not even an impulsive volunteer shift at a local soup kitchen...though that last stint had at least reminded him that holiday misery took on a far more serious face in many corners and back alleys of the city.
Everywhere he went he faced incessant, relentless good cheer. Even the poor and downtrodden found something to smile about in the presence of an artificial tree and modest gifts from local charities.
Aidan was so lost he couldn’t even begin to find the path. The life he’d been so pleased with before he decided to spend Christmas at Silver Glen was gone, eradicated by the memories of Emma.
He saw her in every window display, in every shiny package carried by smiling passersby. Everything good and joyful and meaningful about Christmas conspired to remind him that true love meant forgiveness. It was that simple. And that impossible.
He could forgive Emma for just about anything, if the truth were told. But what if he had her and lost her again?
Imagining such a thing made him shudder with a biting chill that was far worse than any winter weather he could conjure. He wanted his old life back...the one where he didn’t have to feel anything. A satisfying job. A pleasant social life. And plenty of his own company.
Where was that Aidan Kavanagh?
At last, when his face was in danger of frostbite, he headed for home. Leftover pizza in the fridge would be his companion tonight. Hopefully, none of his family would ring him up again. He’d already fielded one tearful phone call from his mother that left him feeling like the worst kind of vermin on the planet.
Hell, Dylan had even texted Aidan from his honeymoon and called him a handful of choice names that were spot on. Without even trying, Aidan had become something worse than a Scrooge...if there was such a thing.
When he reached his building, he gave the doorman a fifty-dollar tip and a muttered “Merry Christmas.” But he never made it to his apartment. When he stepped off the elevator, Mr. Shapiro, his across-the-hall neighbor, appeared, wild-eyed.
“Help me, Aidan,” he cried. “Mrs. S. fell in the kitchen and she’s out cold.”
Aidan dashed into the apartment with him. “Have you called 911?”
The old man wrung his hands. “Yes. But how long will it take?”
As Aidan knelt beside the white-haired lady, he thought he heard sirens in the distance. “Hang on, Mr. Shapiro. She’s breathing.” That was a relief. Surely things couldn’t be too bad. Had she passed out and fallen, or had she fallen and passed out after she hit her head? “Grab me a pillow and something to cover her with. We don’t want her to get cold here on the floor.”
Aidan was not a trained medic, but even he could see that the poor guy needed something to do.
Fortunately, the EMTs made it upstairs in the next ten minutes. They loaded the elderly woman onto a gurney and
rolled her out into the hall. Mr. Shapiro looked pale enough to pass out himself.
A uniformed kid who looked all of twenty smiled encouragingly. “We’re taking her to Lenox Hospital. Don’t worry. She seems to be stable.”
Suddenly, the professionals were gone. Mr. Shapiro seemed at a loss. He had to be ninety if he were a day. And the poor guy was shaking all over. “Let me get you something to drink,” Aidan said. “I think you need to sit down.”
Suddenly the man’s spine snapped straight. “I’m fine. Take me to see her. Please?”
The naked entreaty in his wrinkled face was impossible to resist, even if Aidan had possessed a heart of stone. “Of course.” Aidan pulled out his phone and summoned a cab. When he turned around, Mr. Shapiro was standing in front of a menorah, his lips moving in a quiet prayer.
“Are you ready?” Aidan asked quietly.
The man nodded, plucking his jacket from an antique coat tree. “What should I take for her?” he asked suddenly, the agitation returning to his face.
“If she needs anything later, I’ll bring you back here,” Aidan promised.
Aidan’s apartment was only three blocks from the hospital, but the old man was in no condition to walk, especially not on a night that was as wickedly cold as this one.
The cab ride took no time at all. Aidan paid the fare and jumped out to help Mr. Shapiro. They didn’t need a broken bone to add to the evening’s trauma.
Inside the hospital, the emergency room admitting nurse was kind but firm. “No one can go back yet. Give them time to assess her condition and make sure she’s stable. I’ll keep you posted.”
Aidan found a couple of chairs, and the two of them sat down. Moments later, Mr. Shapiro’s chin rested on his chest. He was either sleeping or praying again.
When he lifted his head and spoke suddenly, it startled Aidan. His gaze was clear and sharp in a face that was worn with time. “We’ve been married seventy-one years. Came over during the Second World War as newlyweds. Our families pooled money for our passage. We lost them all in the holocaust. Esther is all I have in the world.”
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