by Exley Avis
“If you can read my mind, you’ll have worked out that I’m not the trusting, naïve girl I was five years ago.” Her internal chaos sharpened her reply but Aiden was undeterred.
“You were never a girl to me – only a very desirable woman.” He raised his eyebrows provocatively. “And if it’s of any interest, those feelings haven’t entirely disappeared.”
Erika quickly turned away, not daring to let Aiden see the reaction this idea had provoked. She fought against the memories but found that, having unlocked them already, her mind now plundered them. It didn’t help that he was standing so close and looking so gorgeous. The smell of his cologne and the warmth coming off his body tipped her over the edge and her mind spiralled into the most deliciously indecent thoughts she’d had in too long.
“Give up, Aiden,” she warned as she pulled herself together, determined not to show how much he’d affected her. “The damage goes too deep for there ever to be anything between us. Know when you’re beaten and give in.”
Aiden’s lips twitched as if suppressing a smile. “OK. Why don’t we chalk up Round One to you?” he said, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “Although I suggest we continue this discussion in the car. The longer we stand here, the more chance there is of Marty finding us.”
Not even Erika could disagree with this and followed him out to the car park where a black 4x4 stood, splattered with mud and looking like it had been abandoned there by thieves.
“Glad you’re going all out to impress me,” she said, starting to laugh in spite of herself. “I’m used to something a little more luxurious these days – or, at least, clean.”
“Like I said, no one will expect to see you in a muddy car in the wilds of Yorkshire.”
His smile broadened and his shoulders lost some of their tension. Erika wondered briefly whether he might have been anxious about meeting her again but dismissed the thought immediately.
Men like Aiden Thirstan didn’t go to pieces at the prospect of seeing their ex five years down the line.
“I was on site yesterday,” he explained. “We’re building a factory complex in east London. But, when I heard you’d arrived in England, I grabbed a bag and headed north.”
As if to confirm this, Erika saw the back seat was loaded with files and blueprints, with a yellow hard hat perched on top.
“I’m flattered you were in such a rush to see me.”
“Hardly a rush. I’ve waited five years for the privilege.”
Without giving her chance to reply, he started the car and reversed out of the space, wrapping his arm around the back of Erika’s seat when he looked behind him.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Past Harrogate and into the Dales. Shouldn’t be many people out walking today.”
“It only takes one person with a camera.”
Aiden gave her another of his devastating smiles. “Don’t worry. I’ll be there to look after you.”
Erika decided this was exactly what she was afraid of.
Chapter Two
Erika’s legs failed her close to the top of the hill and she stopped to catch her breath, bending double with her hands on her knees as she gasped for air. “Wait,” she wheezed, the word barely audible. “I can’t keep up.”
Aiden managed to hear her above the roar of the wind and turned back, holding out his hand to her. “Here. I’ll pull you the rest of the way.”
As she didn’t have the strength to argue, let alone walk the last hundred yards, Erika took his hand and allowed Aiden’s long, easy stride to propel her the few remaining steps. She collapsed onto a rock, relieved to be sitting down and yet completely enraptured by the glorious view out across the rugged Yorkshire landscape.
Her heart quickened. She’d forgotten how much she’d once loved this part of the world and how happy she’d been there. Every chance she’d had, she’d escaped from her music studies in York to walk miles across the moors, or explore the remote villages, finding peace and musical inspiration in the isolation and craggy beauty.
“I’d forgotten how beautiful Yorkshire is,” Aiden said, spookily echoing her thoughts. But then, he always had been able to read her mind. He sat down next to her and looked out across the fields and open dales that stretched to the grey-misted horizon, almost unbroken by road or village. “I haven’t been here since…”
He’d been about to say, since we broke up, but thought better of it and allowed the sentence to trail away unfinished.
“Me neither.” Erika knew exactly what had been on his mind but couldn’t even go there. She deftly changed the subject. “In my final year at uni, I composed a classical piece inspired by all this.” She swept her arm around her. The opening bars played in her head, transporting her back in time, but she stopped the thought abruptly before she had time to remember everything else that had happened around then.
“I always wanted to hear it performed but Marty had other ideas. A piano concerto isn’t exactly sexy.”
“Depends who’s performing it.” Interest flared in Aiden’s eyes again as he looked at her, intimating that he’d find her sexy, whatever she did. But the spark died just as quickly and he stared back out into the distance, looking thoughtful. “Do you regret not pursuing a classical career?”
Erika shrugged. “I’m paid a great deal of money to make music. Millions of people download my songs and I’ve performed all over the world. I might not have had those chances elsewhere.” Not that a classical career had ever been an option. “When Marty appeared with his contract, I was broke. I’d been singing in Los Angeles bars for a few dollars a night and frankly, I’d have taken any job he offered. Added to which…”
“…you had no reason to come home,” Aiden finished for her, looking down at his hands.
“I had every reason not to come home.”
A subtle difference but she made the point forcefully and Aiden nodded as if he accepted the truth of it. An uncomfortable silence settled around them while the icy wind whipped Erika’s breath away and found its way into the gaps in her clothing. She shivered and pulled her coat closer, wrapping her scarf tighter around her neck. It seemed inconceivable that, twenty four hours earlier, she’d left Los Angeles wearing a T shirt and short skirt. Despite her initial objections, she was now glad that Aiden had insisted upon buying her a heavy hiking jacket on the way through Harrogate and snuggled down into it.
Realising they’d probably freeze to death if they sat there much longer, Erika moved the conversation on. “So,” she prompted. “You wanted to talk to me somewhere private. Is this quiet enough for you?”
Aiden laughed. On top of a windswept hill, in the middle of the Yorkshire dales, they could have been the last people on Earth. The summit sat so high above the road that the cars passing below looked like toys, and there wasn’t another human being in sight for miles. No one else was apparently brave enough – or foolish enough – to go walking in such cold weather and they had the world to themselves.
“Five years ago, you ran away from me,” Aiden began, unusually uncomfortable and staring out toward a distant peak on the other side of the dale. “I wanted the chance to explain what happened that night.”
“What is there to explain?” Erika frowned. “I arrived unexpectedly at your flat to find you naked on the bed, on top of an equally naked woman. I’d had sex with you often enough to know what it looked like.”
Aiden saw her point but hadn’t driven over two hundred miles to leave it there. “I need you to know she meant nothing to me. We’d met that night at a friend’s party. We had too much to drink and ended up in bed together.”
“Oh, please!” Erika dragged out the words to show she had no patience with lame excuses. “Don’t insult me like this. Next you’ll be saying you didn’t realise how much you loved me until I left.”
From the look on Aiden’s face, this was exactly what he’d been about to say but now thought better of it. “I want you to know, I bitterly regret what happened.”
>
“What? Sleeping with her, or getting caught?”
“Both.” At least he was honest. “But most of all, I regret hurting you.”
For the first time, Aiden stopped staring at the horizon and turned to look at Erika, forcing her to return his gaze. His intense, hazel eyes narrowed slightly as he searched her face for some emotion to react to, or even a hint that she believed him, but she gave him nothing. Erika had had too much practice shutting down her emotions, and maintaining her inner privacy in an over-exposed life, to let anything slip now. She looked back at him, her face unreadable, even though her mind swung violently between pretending it no longer mattered and admitting that he’d broken her heart beyond repair.
“Hurting doesn’t even begin to cover it,” she told him after the longest pause, struggling not to think of how close she’d come to emotional collapse. “You reached in and tore out my heart. It was months before I could think of you without breaking down.”
“I know.”
“How could you possibly know?”
Unable to hold back her emotions any longer, she rounded on him; all the anger and hurt she’d kept buried for five years, rushing to the surface and boiling over in white-hot rage. Tears spilled down her cheeks and she swept them away furiously.
“You weren’t there,” she raged. “You didn’t see me struggling to make it through a day without you. You weren’t around to hold me at night when I couldn’t catch my breath for crying. How could you possibly know?”
“Because it’s in your music.” He quoted her lyrics. “Crying a river so I can build a bridge and get over you. A love so pure, I was so sure, shame you never felt it too. Living in the shadow of love. I’m in every line of those early songs.”
“So what? I had to get my revenge somehow.”
“Is that what you wanted? Revenge?”
“There’s a fine line between love and hate. Finding you in bed with another woman made me cross it. I wanted to hurt you as much as you’d hurt me. And when I sing those songs, the whole world knows what a bastard you are.”
She dried her eyes on her sleeve, wishing for all the world that she could get up, walk into another room and lock the door on Aiden Thirstan for good this time.
“Do you still hate me?” Aiden held his breath, as if dreading the answer.
“Don’t flatter yourself.” Erika almost laughed in his face as she fought to bring her emotions back under control. “To hate you I’d need to think about you. And the truth is, you never cross my mind these days.”
“Except when you sing,” Aiden contradicted her. “I saw you perform an acoustic version of Love, Honour, Betray on TV last year. There were tears in your eyes. It seemed so raw still.”
Erika fixed him with a contemptuous glare. “It’s called musical interpretation. Great performers don’t simply sing songs – they live them. All you saw was the emotion I needed to carry the lyrics. It had absolutely nothing to do with you.”
She prayed he wouldn’t spot the outrageous lie, or work out that she didn’t sing most of her early songs live because they still remained too painful to perform.
Many had never been heard at all and stayed locked inside her head, too distressing to give voice to.
Aiden was right and it was still raw – like old scar tissue that had never properly healed and remained tender to the touch. The question she’d longed to ask for five years bubbled up inside her and forced itself out.
“Why?” she said. “Why lead me on for five months, and pretend you were in love with me, if you were only going to fall into bed with someone else as soon as my back was turned?”
If she hadn’t known better, Erika could have sworn she saw a look of shame cross Aiden’s face but doubted he’d ever been troubled with much of a conscience.
“I didn’t pretend about loving you,” he told her, the tiger’s eyes sparkling angrily. “Everything I felt was very real.”
“But not real enough, apparently. Why else would you be in bed with Little Miss Naked?”
“Because I panicked. Before I met you, I’d played around. I dated a different girl every night and had no plans for a long-term relationship. Then you appeared, out of the blue, the most beautiful, intelligent, sexy woman I’d ever seen, and I couldn’t help falling for you in a big way.”
“Don’t tell me – you only slept with her to prove you were in love with me.” She couldn’t believe him. This man was a walking cliché.
Aiden rushed to justify himself. “You went back to York to complete your final year. I returned to London where I told myself that the love and passion we felt for one another couldn’t possibly have been as intense as I’d remembered.”
“Funny, I never doubted it.” This guy was incredible. How could she have crossed an ocean and cried herself to sleep for six months over him?
“You were twenty-two, for God’s sake, and on the verge of a career. I hadn’t hit thirty and was building a business. Neither of us was ready to commit.”
“Who’s talking about commitment? I never intended trapping you into marriage and forcing you into a cosy little life.” She refused to be the villain in this. “But that didn’t stop me loving you with every fibre of my being. I deserved better, Aiden. You should have been honest with me. Finding you in bed with another woman broke my heart. It took me a long time to get over you.”
“But you’re over me now,” he guessed although it hadn’t taken a great deal of thought to work it out.
“Absolutely. One hundred per cent guaranteed. Whatever we were to one another, it’s gone.”
Aiden’s jaw flexed as he clamped down his teeth, not trusting himself to reply immediately. “You make it sound very final.”
“You don’t mean…” The absurd idea that Aiden had appeared in Yorkshire with the intention of rekindling their relationship made her laugh. “You didn’t race up here expecting me to fall into your arms again, did you?”
“Of course not.” He answered sharply, making no effort to conceal his rising anger, although Erika also saw some other emotion she couldn’t define, but which had obviously chipped away at his self control. “We parted badly and I’ve never had chance to tell you how sorry I was, or how much I regretted hurting you.”
“Any therapist in L.A. would call that closure but, the truth is, I shut the lid on you years ago. You may have broken my heart but you also taught me a very valuable lesson. There’s only one person in this world I can rely on absolutely, and that’s myself.”
“Would that same therapist call that trust issues?”
“I prefer to call it inner strength.”
Her cheeks flushed furiously, despite the cold and her body tensed. “In fact, I should be thanking you, Aiden. Had we stayed together, I might never have gone to America. I certainly wouldn’t have met Marty in a seedy bar, or made millions out of writing songs about broken hearts.” She allowed herself a quiet laugh. “Little Miss Naked turned you into a two-timing bastard and me into a very rich woman. Seems I got the better half of the bargain. I hope she was worth it.”
Aiden couldn’t help himself and his full lips softened into a slow, sexy smile. “Trust me. Compared with you, no one since has been worth it.” Taking her by surprise, he pulled off his glove and trailed a warm finger down her cold cheek, sending shivers through Erika. “You’re still the most beautiful woman I ever saw.”
Erika jerked her head back, breaking the contact. “You and ten million other men share the same thought. Join the queue.”
She’d heard all she wanted to and got to her feet, ready to go back down the hill to the car, but Aiden caught her hand.
“Sit down,” he ordered. “You’re not fit to walk back yet.”
He unzipped the rucksack he’d carried up the hill and produced a flask of coffee. He poured a cup and held it out to Erika. The prospect of feeling warm again for the first time in hours proved too tempting and she sat down, tucking herself into an alcove in the rocks out of the wind. Aiden joined her there, h
is broad, warm body shielding her from the worst of the cold as she laced her fingers around the mug and felt sensation returning to her hands.
“You came prepared,” she said, nodding toward the bag. “I wouldn’t have had you down as a boy scout.” Far too naughty for that.
“The art of survival on freezing building sites,” he confessed. “Thick coat, warm boots and hot coffee.”
He took a sip and it glistened on his lips, drawing Erika’s attention to the sensual curve of his mouth. It became impossible to ignore the memory of those lips scorching her skin as they’d trailed kisses along her spine and down the backs of her thighs.
Or the way Aiden had held her face between his hands as he’d kissed her so deeply she’d been transported beyond herself on a tide of passion and longing.
What was it about Aiden Thirstan that had her cursing his existence one minute and then remembering the most disturbingly erotic things about him the next?
As if it were yesterday, she could recall the warm, masculine scent of him, and the taste of his skin as she ran her tongue from his navel to the hollow at the base of his neck.
She closed her eyes to slam down the shutter on such mutinous thoughts and hide the alarming pictures passing behind them. She let the steaming coffee warm her face.
“How’s business?” she asked eventually, desperate to take the conversation onto safer ground.
“Good.”
He was casual but Erica knew it was a colossal understatement. In the space of fifteen years, Aiden had turned his father’s ailing property maintenance company into a multi-million pound commercial construction firm, heavily involved in building London’s Olympic park. Thirstan Property Holdings rarely slipped out of the financial pages, where analysts lauded it as one of the few companies to ride out the recession. By shrewd investments, coupled with calculate risks, Aiden had more than quadrupled his turnover since his split with Erika, making it one of the most profitable firms in Europe. He’d consolidated his fortune by floating the company on the Stock Exchange the previous year, his majority shareholding elevating him to the ranks of the super-wealthy – and, as a consequence, the gossip columns.