The Baby Chronicles

She pulled in her chin. “You don’t think I’m sorry?” Figured. They had never been on the same wavelength emotionally.

“What I think about what happened eight years ago doesn’t matter.” He pierced her with those intense, emerald eyes. “You just look damn unhappy to see me.”

He always was too perceptive. “Why would you say that?” she asked, cursing the hitch in her voice.

“Oh, come on.” He stepped closer. “You look like you have a stick up your…uh, well, you just look pretty unhappy.”

“I’m not particularly happy or unhappy to see you,” she said, lying. At this moment, she would have been happier to see Jack the Ripper, who would spare her and just kill her. But Aiden, well, Aiden had the ability to make her bleed inside, just as her parents had, and that terrified her.

He snorted under his breath and rolled his eyes. “Still the same old Colleen.”

She bristled, but then reminded herself whom she was dealing with here. This was Aiden, for goodness’ sake. He’d always had the amazing, frightening ability to turn her inside out. She would go to her grave before she’d let that happen again.

A slow, hot burn started in her chest. Thankfully, anger was the one emotion she could handle right now. Embracing her anger, she deliberately stood, placing her hands on her desk. She stared him down. “How dare you sashay in here after eight years and take up where you left off, badgering me. You don’t have a clue about me.”

He didn’t flinch from her caustic tone. Instead, he looked at her for a long, significant moment, and then leaned in so that only inches separated their faces. His pine-clean scent hit her like a Mack truck and his nearness sent hot tingles of awareness shooting through her body. And darn if her hair didn’t almost catch fire.

He drilled her with sharp, assessing eyes. “I know you well enough to tell when you’re royally pissed off. You never were very good at hiding that, were you?”

Her cheeks warmed even more and she jerked away, needing to breathe in air that wasn’t tainted by the big man in front of her. She took a deep, shaky breath and fought the urge to check her hair.

Mercy, she didn’t want to deal with Aiden and his unwanted emotional analysis, she never had. The day he’d asked her to marry him and she’d had to walk away, her flaw oozing like acid inside her, she’d realized that she was so emotionally incomplete she’d never have a normal life with a family of her own and a man who loved her.

Over the years, she’d learned to deal with that harsh reality, but here Aiden was, picking her apart, dredging up memories that were best forgotten, pain that she didn’t want to go through again.

She tore her gaze from his and sat down, swallowing a huge, burning lump that had grown in her throat. “Look, none of this is relevant,” she said, her voice quivering. “Let’s just talk about ‘The Baby Chronicles,’ okay?” She tried to smile to cover up the turmoil inside her, but all that she could manage was a half grin that made her eyes twitch.

He searched her face, then his expression softened ever so slightly. “Hey, I didn’t mean to upset you.” He rubbed his neck and cast a quick glance at the ceiling. “I was just a little ticked off that you couldn’t even manage to give me a cordial greeting.”

Now she felt like a total louse. She had given him a pretty shabby reception. She met his gaze and gave him a genuine smile. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she said, unwilling to say she was glad to see him when she really wasn’t. “You just…threw me off guard. I was upset about having to take on this assignment, and your showing up when you did was just a bit too much to deal with all at once.”

“Hey, I’m not that happy about the situation, either.” He frowned and his mouth thinned. “Are you upset about having to take this assignment because you have to work with me?”

Of course. “I didn’t know I’d be working with you until you walked in,” she said, uncomfortable with sharing the truth about needing to put a wall between herself and things like cute babies and…him.

“Then what’s the problem? From what I’ve been told, the last two features, on—what were they—?” He dropped into the rickety metal and plastic chair jammed in the corner of her cube. “Brides and bachelors?”

She nodded.

“Apparently those features were hugely popular and increased readership for the Beacon. I would think you’d want the byline.”

“Yeah, well, you’d be wrong,” she muttered, gathering up the usual assortment of paper clips and pens that lay scattered across her desk.

As she sorted the paper clips and shoved the pens into her desk drawer he said nothing, just sat and stared, and she could almost hear the gears turning inside his head while he tried to figure her out.

Boy, did she wish she’d kept her mouth shut about not wanting this assignment. Aiden would undoubtedly pick her motivation apart the way he always had, in hopes of making everything “all better.” And that was impossible. She couldn’t be fixed—her flaw ran too deep and too wide—and she couldn’t bear the sadness that would overcome her when she was reminded of that over and over again.

And was reminded of how she’d had to walk away from someone as special as Aiden.

He leaned forward, his eyes reflecting a resigned unhappiness that tugged on her heart in a way that always filled her with a dull sense of despair.

He broke the nerve-racking silence and said, “Look, Colleen, obviously you’re upset about something, but I’m not going to waste my time trying to get you to tell me about it.” He shook his head. “I know from experience that that would be a waste of time. So we’ll skip the small talk and get down to business. All I want is to take pictures of babies. Okay?”

No, it wasn’t okay. Being near him again, the possibility that he might be able to get under her skin again, absolutely terrified her. “Why do you want this job in the first place?” she asked, hoping to come up with something to get out of working with him.

He sat back, his eyes suddenly shuttered, and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I’m a photographer. I want to take pictures of babies.”

“And?”

“And what?” He looked away. When he looked back, a dark shadow lingered in the depths of his green eyes. “That’s it.”

He was holding something back. What? She ruthlessly squelched her burgeoning curiosity, determined to stay uninterested, and leaped to the heart of the matter. “I was hoping you’d reconsider taking the job.”

He pulled a face. “Are you crazy? This assignment could launch a new career for me. Why would I turn it down?”

Again, she wondered why he needed a new career, why he was back. Rather than give in to her nosiness and ask him, she gave him a sweet, hopeful smile in an effort to charm him into doing what she wanted. “Because I asked you to?”

“And why should that matter?”

She held up a hand and wiggled her fingers in a mock wave. “Because we’re old friends?”

He laughed humorlessly, snagging her gaze again with his intense green eyes. A hot arrow of fire shot through her, relighting a compelling need, reminding her of how hot and heavy their physical relationship had been, how much time they’d spent in his bed. But sex hadn’t been enough for him, even though that had been, ultimately, all she’d been able to give.

“Let me get this straight,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “You can’t give me a ‘Hi, how ya doin’?,’ and obviously don’t give a rip about our past…relationship. But I’m supposed to turn down this job because we’re old friends?”

Shame marched through her stomach like angry ants. She had been rude to him, even though she prided herself on never letting things bother her, something she’d perfected at an early age out of sheer necessity. It was time to act like the woman she wanted to be. Calm. Rational. Unflappable. She owed Aiden another apology, and she owed him this job.

Okay, she didn’t exactly owe him the job, but she couldn’t make him give up something that obviously meant so much to him, although she wondered why it meant so much to him. Did he need the money? What was going on in his life now?

Hold it. She wouldn’t go there, she wouldn’t let Aiden’s current situation matter. She didn’t care, couldn’t care about him again in any way, no matter how small. She had to protect herself.

And there was one tiny little detail she couldn’t ignore: he could take the job if he wanted, whether she liked it or not. And after the way she’d behaved today, there was no way he was going to be doing her any favors.

So, it looked as if she was stuck with him as her photographer. And she accepted that. She’d learned long ago, at her neglectful parents’ knees, not to rail against cruel fate for very long—it never made any difference.

She threw him a sheepish, contrite smile. “You’re right. It was unreasonable of me to ask you to turn this job down. I’m sorry. Obviously I overreacted.” Aiden had always had that effect on her.

He relaxed back into the too-small chair and nodded. “Let’s just move on, all right?”

She nodded slowly, wondering why he was letting this go, why he wasn’t pressing her as he’d always done before. She gave a mental shrug, determined not to wonder about Aiden anymore. She needed to concentrate on dealing with “The Baby Chronicles.” The best thing for her would be to schedule the shoot, get it over with in a single afternoon, spending as little time with Aiden and the babies as possible.

“All right,” she said in a curt, businesslike voice, forging ahead. “Let’s discuss which afternoon next week we’ll take the pictures.” She shoved a thick stack of papers aside, looking for her day planner.

“Afternoon? What’re you talking about? We’re going on location.”

Her hands froze on her planner, still half buried beneath several old issues of the Beacon. She narrowed her eyes and looked at Aiden, praying that she’d suddenly become hard-of-hearing. “Excuse me?” she asked, barely moving her lips.

He leaned forward, his eyebrows raised high. “Which part don’t you understand? Joe gave me permission to go on location to Sun Mountain for a long weekend. I want to take pictures of the babies outside 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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