sight of himself in a large mirror as he reached the top of the flight of stairs, he smiled wryly. He guessed he couldn’t blame them. He looked like hell.
He stared at his own eyes in the reflection. They were the only part of himself he still recognised.
Everything else had pretty much gone to pot. His dark hair stuck out in varying curls where it reached the collar of his favourite old checked shirt. His hair was longer than he’d worn it since his university days. And as for the hair on his face. Well, Caitlin was right. It had to go. He looked as if he’d just walked off a desert island.
His dark eyebrows quirked up under his long fringe as he realised that technically he might as well have.
He’d spent the last six months in solitude, with only a ghost for company. And work. His own work and the ghost’s work. It had been fairly surreal.
Moving away from the mirror and along the softly lit hall, he found himself looking at frame upon frame of photographs. Caitlin Rourke’s life laid out before him. Pictures of her laughing, smiling at the people around her with love in her eyes. Close-ups of her curled up on a sofa, caught off guard as she looked up into the camera lens. Shots of an autumn day when she’d had longer hair tossed by an unseen wind. Every one showed scenes of a happy, contented woman, in love with life and living.
Caitlin Rourke was everything he wasn’t. And a familiar ache, so old it burned like a physical pain in the pit of his stomach, made him unexpectedly angry with her for that.
‘Are you out of your mind?’
Still reeling from the fact that her new fiancé had just pinched her behind, Caitlin blinked at her sister. ‘What?’
‘What are you doing?’ Cara glanced at the invasive camera beside them, turned her back on it and whispered, ‘You’re planning on marrying him?’
It didn’t take much searching to see the disapproval on her sister’s face. With a deep breath Caitlin prepared to take the steps to weave her lie. ‘You don’t know him like I do.’
A burst of sarcastic laughter hit the air. ‘Obviously not. Because whatever it is about him is hidden under about twenty feet of hair.’
Which would be gone by the morning if Caitlin had her way. She couldn’t abide men with facial hair. As a child they’d had an uncle with a beard who had made her cry every time she was asked to kiss him goodbye.
‘You just need time to get to know him, Cara.’
‘Like you have?’ Cara shook her head. ‘This is just too weird, Caitlin. How can you possibly know this man well enough to want to marry him?’
‘We’ve been talking for months.’
‘On the internet?’
‘Yes. On the internet.’
‘And you know him well enough from that to spend the rest of your life with him?’
‘Yes.’ The lies came almost too easily, ‘And you can’t know him well enough in two minutes to make a judgement on him.’
Cara stared at her for what felt like for ever but was probably only a minute. Then she shook her head. ‘This isn’t like you, Cait. He’s not like anyone you’ve ever dated, and all this camera stuff is mad.’
Caitlin sighed. ‘I told you—it’s just a programme about people who’ve found love over the internet.’
‘And you’re telling me that every time any of us talk with you it’s all going to be filmed?’
‘It’s just a few months and then they’ll be gone.’
‘Well…’ She glanced over her shoulder at the camera again. ‘With any luck it won’t be the only thing that’s gone.’
Caitlin reached a hand out and squeezed her sister’s arm. ‘Give him a chance, Cara. He can’t be that bad.’ She frowned at her mistake. Surely she would know herself that he wasn’t that bad if she was marrying him? ‘He’s a great guy. At least I think he is. Just give it some time.’
Eyes as dark as her own stared at her before Cara sighed. ‘I think I’m more hurt that you didn’t tell me before now. We always talk about everything. This is the first time we haven’t.’
Caitlin’s throat threatened to close at the words that were only too true.
‘It just feels like something has changed with you and me.’ Cara’s voice broke slightly, betraying her emotions. ‘And I hate that.’
Caitlin blinked back tears as Cara pulled her into a hug before turning to leave, with an ‘I’ll talk to you tomorrow’ thrown over her shoulder.
‘This sucks already.’ She glanced into the camera, ‘You have no idea.’
She frowned down at the carpet, then glanced up at the ceiling. It was time to go and meet her fiancé. With a silent plea to the overhead light that a book really couldn’t be judged by its cover, she turned on her heel to go upstairs.
CHAPTER THREE
BY THE time Caitlin reached the hallway he was halfway down the stairs. She tilted her head back and looked up at him, her eyes meeting his. They were the one feature she could see that she liked. So blue they belonged on a movie screen, and they seemed to spark back at her. Surely someone with eyes as blue as a summer’s sky couldn’t be all that bad?
‘Hey.’
She blinked up at him. ‘Hey.’
‘So you’re my fiancée, then?’
She smiled at the statement. ‘So it would appear.’
He nodded and his eyes sparkled with amusement. ‘Big hit with your sister, wasn’t I?’
Caitlin quirked a dark brow beneath the annoying fringe that kept on falling in her eye. ‘Mmm, well, she’s a bit protective. You’re in for a lot of that, I’m afraid.’
Shoving large hands into the pockets of his faded jeans, Aiden studied her before asking, ‘Your family is close?’
Caitlin nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Then this can’t be an easy thing for you to do.’
She suddenly felt vulnerable as he studied her, her head beginning to pound at the temples. She’d never been with someone who could make the very air around them feel oppressive to her. It wasn’t a nice sensation. Particularly not in her own home.
‘And lying comes naturally to you, I suppose?’
Aiden merely shrugged at the question. ‘I’ve done it from time to time, growing up. When it was called for.’
Her fringe fell back out of her eye as she tilted her head and studied him. This stranger. How could anyone with eyes so warm be so cold? And how would she ever know a word he said to her was true if he was so open about
