you think that’s wise?’ Aimee slumped back onto her side of the bench and into the shaft of dappled light streaming down through the tangle of flowers overhead. It made her mop of blonde hair shimmer like a halo, like some angelic being. But all that did was make him feel more like playing the devil.
‘No. Not if it means I can’t get to know you.’ She flinched, and he regretted causing it, but Aimee was fast becoming one of the important people in his life and her opting out was not on the cards. ‘I like you, Aimee. I like how you think so differently to me in many ways but on the essential things we’re in tune. I don’t like being told that I can’t be friends with you just because of Melissa.’
But he didn’t like that he’d referred to the woman he’d married as ‘just’, either. And he really didn’t like the resentment that had started oozing through the moment Melissa had become an obstacle between him and getting to know Aimee better. He frowned internally. He’d been working so hard on managing that ugly, unreasonable side of himself, but apparently it was alive and well.
Aimee lifted one prosaic brow and the corners of her mouth tightened. ‘It’s not actually your call, Sam, whether I’m friends with you or not, or what kind of a friend I am. If that’s what you’re expecting, then …’
She leaned down for her own shopping bags and her reach had a tremor in it. Ugh, idiot! She was breaking away from under the controlling thumb of her family and here he was going all caveman on her. He rushed in to undo his damage.
‘I respect you, Aimee.’ That stilled her fingers just as they started to pull on the handles of her bags. ‘And that goes for whatever decision you choose to make about this. About us.’
She straightened up and brought her green eyes back to his, and he hated the caution he saw there. Partly because he’d caused it, and partly because he knew she was never going to tell him who’d put it there in the first place. One of a thousand things he’d never get to know about Aimee Leigh if she got her way.
He folded his arms in front of him on the table and leaned towards her. ‘Keeping our friendship shallow feels like a crime against nature. But I’m not about to force the issue. I know you well enough to know that you’ll walk if I do. Like it or not, you’re a part of my life now, Aimee, so I don’t want you to do that.’ He wasn’t about to look too closely at why. Not today at least. He smiled and hoped it seemed genuine. ‘So, even though I don’t agree with you, I’ll take whatever you’ll give me.’
Her eyes darkened and dropped briefly, but when they rose they were flat. ‘I like and respect you, too, Sam. But you have a wife. She’s where your emotional investment should be.’
She was right. Of course she was. And Lord knew if ever a marriage needed emotional investment it was his and Mel’s.
But he still hated it.
He shook off the growling doubts in his stomach, stood when he should have been reassuring her, and waved a hand towards the bright fabric sticking out of his bag. ‘Come on. How long has it been since you flew a kite?’
Kites were superficial. Harmless and pretty. She couldn’t be suspicious of a bit of recreational fun, right?
But her eyes could.
‘I’ve never flown one. I think my mother was afraid of friction burns on my hands.’
A long-dormant part of him deep inside roused, lifted its slumberous head. Aimee had been so protected from life … The things she must not know … The things that he could teach her …
If she was his to teach.
But all he said was, ‘Come on. Time to add a new life-skill to your repertoire.’
Sam’s heart was simultaneously warmed and saddened by the enjoyment Aimee got from her lesson. His urge to protect her clashed headlong with his anger at the selfishness of her parents—raising her in an over-cautious bubble and robbing her of simple childhood joys.
Like flying a kite.
She set off again, in a long-limbed gallop across the open parkland, with the fuchsia fabric eel trailing behind her, lifting higher, flirting with the current. This time it caught and held, and she jogged to a halt and looked back at him across the foreshore, with triumph in her whole body as it climbed.
‘It’s up!’ she cried in astonishment, bouncing on the spot, returning her eyes to the feminine kite wavering and folding in the air high above her.
‘She’s like an alien,’ Sam muttered as he jogged across to her, his own yellow and black kite in his hands. A big-brained alien who existed on learning new things.
‘If she starts to drop,’ he called out, ‘pull on the line. If she veers left, you pull right …’
In under a minute Sam was by her side, staring up into the electric blue above the park, his hawk kite dominating the sky, expertly keeping his strings from tangling in Aimee’s.
‘You’re good!’ She laughed as her eel tumbled momentarily.
Sam reached one hand over on top of hers and showed her how to moderate its altitude. Her hands were warm and soft and fitted perfectly in his. He had to force himself to let go. ‘I flew kites as a kid. It’s like riding a bike. You never really forget.’
‘I never learned that, either.’ She squealed as the eel cut to the left sharply, but she’d already started correcting it.
‘You have good instincts.’ He smiled.
‘I’m not exactly tearing up the sky.’ She laughed. ‘I’m too scared to move out of my safe little orbit.’
‘You just need the right motivation. Watch out.’ A flick of his wrist turned the sharp-winged hawk back towards the eel and he cut it back and forth on her tail like a predator toying with its prey. Its two long ribbons streamed like twin vapour-trails behind.
‘Quit it!’ Aimee grumbled, laughing.
‘Make me.’
She kicked into top gear then, weaving her kite ahead of his, trying to anticipate whatever stunt he’d pull next, her frown pronounced as she concentrated on besting him. She wasn’t bad, but half an hour’s experience was never going to beat a lifetime love of the skies, and he had plenty of easy time to glance back at what the eel’s pilot was doing.
A light sheen of sweat glistened on Aimee’s golden forehead and determination blazed in her heaven-lifted gaze. His eyes dropped to her full mouth. Lingered.
‘Does biting your lip help?’ he teased.
The guilty lip sprang free and she smiled, broad and brilliant, but didn’t take her eyes off his hawk. ‘Yes. It improves my aerodynamics.’
Immediately his mind was filled with thoughts and images that she’d have been horrified to know he harboured. He shook them loose and disguised them with a laugh. ‘Interesting technique.’
Above, Sam wound his hawk in tight circles around the eel, trapping it in the spiral of the twin-tails, but she broke free and let herself soar high above him, before circling back around and down to meet him from the side. He dodged away and twisted back, to race the eel through the sky.
