with Mount Bachelor in the background.”
Her stomach clenched. “No way,” she intoned, shaking her head. She absolutely, positively did not want to go anywhere with Aiden. Being around him had always threatened her vow to stay unengaged, to keep her heart safe. She knew from past experience that Aiden was as far from safe as she could get.
He unfolded his big body and stood, towering over her. She slowly looked up at him and fought to keep her jaw from falling at his imposing, utterly masculine presence. Her heart expanded in her chest, bringing forth the absurd desire to stand up and walk over and bury herself in his warm, comforting embrace, to soak up all the love he’d been so willing to shower on her.
The love she’d had to walk away from.
Sadness weighing her down, she saw the new lines in the skin around his eyes, the shadows under his eyes and the slight hollows in his cheeks she’d noticed earlier. His face reflected a hardness she’d never seen before, a weariness that seemed to go bone deep, as if he’d gone through hell. What had happened during his years overseas to cause those changes?
She shook off her curiosity, determined not to get caught up in Aiden again. Nothing had changed; she still wouldn’t know how to love him. Not that he’d ever want her again.
He leaned down and placed his hands on her desk. “Yup, pack your bags, sweetheart. We’re going on a trip together.” His eyes glinted with cold, hard determination. “Soon.”
She sagged back in her chair and an absurd kind of panic rose in her, almost choking her. She’d spent years recovering after walking away from a wonderful man like Aiden. She was finally in a place where she was fairly happy, a place where she’d accepted that she was destined to be alone.
Now she felt as if she was in a frightening time warp, starring Aiden. In the last fifteen minutes, he’d marched back into her life and turned her stable, carefully crafted world upside down and made her feel things she didn’t want to deal with.
To make matters worse, he hadn’t just stepped back into her existence for an afternoon. Oh, no. She had to go away with him for a whole darn weekend.
Damn fate, anyway.
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