“Not in the way you think.”
“How many ways are there to talk about someone?”
“Okay, first of all, you’re taking this wrong,” she said. “And second of all, you’re misdirecting, purposely picking something out of that conversation that you can get all self-righteous about so you can ignore the real issue.”
You know what? Maybe he didn’t like drunk Bailey so much after all. “You’re the one who said you didn’t want a relationship,” he said carefully. “You’re the one who put it out there.”
“Didn’t mean I didn’t want to know you.”
“People who are not in a relationship don’t need to know each other’s deep, dark secrets,” he said.
She stared at him. “You’re twisting this whole relationship thing around and out of proportion,” she said with the very purposeful speech of the heavily inebriated. “And I think you’re doing it on purpose.”
“Why would I do that?”
“So you can do what everyone said you would, push me away. For real.”
Direct hit. “You think you’re in my head,” he said. “But you’re not.”
That apparently stopped her cold. She opened her mouth and then shut it. And then, dammit, a flash of pain crossed her face. “Bailey—”
“I think I’ll go home now,” she said, and started to slide out of the bed.
“No,” he said sharply and she stilled. “You stay,” he said. “I’ll go.” He hesitated but she didn’t try to stop him.
Congratulations, idiot, he told himself bitterly. You got what you wanted. You pushed her away.
Chapter 26
Bailey had never experienced a hangover, so it took her by surprise. Actually, it took her head by storm—pounding, drumming, beating behind her eyes, reverberating off her temples, throbbing mercilessly at the base of her skull. If she got lucky, she thought with a groan, if she got very, very lucky, her head would just blow right off her shoulders.
She didn’t get lucky.
Instead she opened her eyes and realized it wasn’t even dawn yet. She lay on soft sheets in a bed that wasn’t hers.
Alone.
She sat up, having to hold her head to do it. Someone, God bless them, had put a glass of water and a bottle of ibuprofen on the nightstand. She made liberal use of both and took stock.
Hud’s bedroom. The evidence of last night’s activities was strewn about the room. The most damning was her bra, hanging haphazardly off a lamp.
And then there was the fact that she was in Hud’s bed. She lifted the covers and stared down at herself. She was in a very large black T-shirt and her panties. One sock.
But the most troublesome was Hud’s absence. She’d never scared a man off before. Another first…
She slid out of bed and pulled her bra off the lamp. A flash of memory came at that, the memory of trying to do a sexy striptease for Hud and nearly knocking his face into next week with her boot.
And then another. She remembered telling him things. I think I’m falling for you because you’re everything I want in a man; strong from the inside out, steady, calm, smart… sweet.
She’d told him he could be The One.
Oh God. Why had she done that? The answer was painful. She’d told him because it was the truth. “Clearly he’d like me to go away,” she said aloud, her voice dry and rough.
Which was just what she suddenly needed to do because now he knew. He knew exactly how she felt and that was her own fault. Especially since in return, she had no idea how he felt. The heat of embarrassment flamed her cheeks. Yep, she needed to be gone and she suspected he wanted that as well. She wrangled on her knit cap, slipped into her jeans, and stuffed her feet into her boots. Then she snagged one of Hud’s shirts—which smelled like heaven—and made her way out of the bedroom to hopefully find a ride to where she’d left her car and get the hell off the mountain, where she could lick her wounds in private for the week.
Luckily, Hud wasn’t anywhere to be seen so she ventured out farther and found herself standing on the main floor in a huge open room. One wall was all windows, leading out to the still-dark morning where a small sliver of the black sky was lightening.
In front of the window stood a tall, broad shadow sipping at a steaming mug.
Her heart stopped.
“Just me,” Aidan said mildly.
“Oh,” she said on a breath of relief, and then hoped her sheer relief wasn’t too obvious. “I was just hoping to get a ride to my car.”
He turned and looked at her for a long moment. “I could do that. You know Hud’s downstairs, right?”
Bailey blinked. “I thought this was the bottom floor.”
“There’s a basement. We have it set up as a gym. He’s been at it for a couple of hours now. You might want to get down there and put him out of his misery.”
“How do you know it was me who made him miserable?”
Aidan laughed low in his throat, his smile real and genuine, and suddenly Bailey knew exactly what Lily saw in him. “I didn’t suggest you made him miserable,” he said. “I’m suggesting that your presence might chase away his misery.”
She managed a small smile. Because she remembered throwing herself at Hud last night and he’d…
Resisted.
Easily.
Aidan looked down at his mug and then back into Bailey’s eyes. “He ever tell you why he doesn’t easily get attached to people?”
“Because his plate is full,” she said. “He doesn’t have room. Especially since he’s determined to find Jacob.”
Aidan’s smile was humorless. “Yeah, he talks a good game, doesn’t he? He’s full of shit, Bailey.”
“So he lied to me?”
“He’s lying to himself. He blames himself for our dad leaving his mom—which, don’t even get me started. He blames himself for his mom not being well—more ridiculousness. He blames himself for Jacob leaving—a whole new level of ridiculousness.”
Bailey’s heart squeezed. “That’s a lot for him to put on himself.”
“No shit. But our boy likes to blame himself.” He took another drink from his mug. “The stairs at the end will take you down to the gym.”
“Oh. Well, actually, I think I’m just going to…” She gestured to the front door.
Aidan just looked at her for a beat. “My mistake then,” he said coolly. “Do you still want a ride?”
She looked at the door and paused. The silence in the room was deafening. “Dammit,” she whispered.
I’m falling for you because you’re everything I want in a man…
She closed her eyes. What if she did go see him? What would that accomplish? It’s not like she could take the words back. Nope, they were out there now taking root, making a life of their own.
Maybe he’d just shrug it all off as the ramblings of a cheap drunk…
No. No, she’d seen his face, had seen the regret, and worse, she’d seen the horror.
He didn’t want her to feel these things for him. Which made two of them. But if she left now, she knew she’d kill whatever this was. If she left now, she would be taking them down a path she couldn’t retrace, sending the message that she was ashamed of what she’d said last night.