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“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.
Chapter Two
Aiden tried not to stare at Colleen’s pink, open mouth, tried not to let her wide-eyed, horrified expression cut too deep. Obviously she thought going away with him was akin to taking a vacation with Charles Manson. Searching for levity to break the thick tension that had sprung up between them and calm the dull pain knifing in his gut, he said, “A fly will get in if you leave your mouth hanging open like that.”
She clamped her mouth closed and glowered, drawing her perfectly arched, dark blond eyebrows together, presumably to look stern. “Very funny.” Obviously she didn’t appreciate his attempt at humor.
“Hey, whatever works,” he said with forced lightness, determined not to dwell on the fact that he had to work with the woman who’d crept under his skin eight years ago and dismantled his heart like a one-woman wrecking crew.
“You think this is amusing?” She began to quickly shuffle through the masses of papers covering every square inch of her desk, nervously jumping from pile to pile. Odd, she’d never been the twitchy sort before.
He let out a heavy breath. “No, not amusing. But not the end of the world, either. C’mon, Colleen, lighten up.” If he could deal with this after she’d cut a hole in his heart she damn well could, too.
She yanked out a sheaf of papers and began to thumb through the stack. “I wish that were possible.”
“Why isn’t it?”
Her worry-studded gaze flicked up and held on him for a long moment, then darted back down to peruse the papers in her hands. “I told you. I don’t want this assignment.”
“Why not?” he asked before he could call the words back, irritated that he cared about her reactions at all. Nothing but trouble there.
“I just don’t.” She shot to her feet, turned away and opened a file cabinet, ignoring him again.
He stood in silence, staring at her narrow back and blond, curly hair. A memory of her on the beach, smiling at him, the blue sky behind her, her hair blowing in the ocean breeze, popped into his brain—
He stopped the image in its tracks. Those were the memories of Colleen that had tortured him while he huddled against bombed-out buildings in the dark during cold, endless nights. Funny how those memories had also kept him warm deep inside, encouraging him to go on when scenes of death and starving children and leveled villages had cut across his heart and soul and branded themselves in his brain forever.
Fortunately he didn’t need memories of Colleen to get him through anymore, to keep him warm. His new, life-affirming job taking pictures of babies would do that.
Dragging his gaze away, he fisted his hands at his sides. He had to concentrate on his work, not how his memories of her had helped him through the darkest hours of his life.
Despite that one and only benefit of his past relationship with her, he couldn’t ever let himself forget that she’d coldheartedly eviscerated him. End of story. He refused to let himself care about her beyond working on this article together.
“Dammit, Colleen.” He reached out and tugged on her elbow. Her soft, peachy scent assaulted his senses. “We have to work together.”
She spun around and the papers in her hands fluttered to the floor. She jerked away. “Do you mind?”
He dropped his hand. She was right. He shouldn’t be touching her. “All I want to do is talk—”
“We’ll talk about the story, nothing more.”
“Hey. Cool. That’s exactly what I was going to say. So you’re going to find a way to work with me so we can collaborate on a quality piece?”
She froze, staring, and a whisper of naked vulnerability flashed in her eyes. She looked down and slowly turned back to the file cabinet, shutting him out again.
He opened and closed his fists, determined not to let himself wonder or care about her vulnerability—or anything else about her. “I’m not going to let you ruin the spread. This is too important to me to let you do that.”
She twisted back around and met his gaze, then opened her mouth to speak, but clamped it tightly shut. She closed her eyes briefly, and when she opened them, a studied blankness assailed him.
To his irritation, right on cue, as if he’d been plunked down in the past, his chest pulled tight. He ignored the tugging sensation, determined not to give a rip about Colleen again. He’d seen that expression before, more times than he could count. Thankfully her utter blankness, so familiar, so damn steadfast, didn’t matter anymore.
He wouldn’t let it.
“I…uh, I need to get something. I’ll be right back.” She walked from behind her desk and left him standing alone in her cube.
He swore under his breath, looked at the ceiling and rubbed the back of his neck. Casting a glance around her tiny cubicle, he again noticed the mounds of paper covering every inch of her desk and most of the floor. A yellowing, half-dead plant swimming in water sat in one corner, and its brown, dried-up twin sat on the corner of her desk. Stacks of file folders and empty office-supply boxes crowded the top of the file cabinets. The place was an absolute mess.
He frowned. He remembered Colleen as being pretty neat and well organized, and her appearance today was polished and put-together. Why was her office so filled with clutter? Was she just too busy to straighten up once in a while? And why was she so damn fidgety?
He shook his head. He had to admit, she seemed different. The glimpse of vulnerability he’d seen in her eyes earlier was totally unexpected and so unlike what he remembered about the confident, wisecracking Colleen he’d fallen in love with.
And why was she so bothered to be working with him? She’d seemed to escape absolutely unscathed by their breakup. He’d seen her in a bar the night before he’d left for Afghanistan, happily dancing up a storm with every guy in the place. Stuff like this didn’t usually bother her.
Yeah, Colleen had changed. Despite that observation, she was as much a mystery as she’d always been, a mystery he would solve only for the sake of “The Baby Chronicles” and his career as a baby photographer.
As much as he hated it, to build the new life he wanted, he had to discover a way to work with her effectively.
Taking a deep, shaky breath, Colleen dropped into a chair in the small room that served as the break/lunch area for the employees of the Beacon, thankful lunchtime was over. She needed a few minutes alone to get a hold of herself.
To find a way to keep Aiden from getting to her.
She plopped her chin in her upturned palm and looked around the room. The light blue walls were adorned with gold-framed copies of old issues of the Beacon. One wall held a new white refrigerator, shiny black dishwasher, gleaming chrome sink, speckled blue counters and white wood cabinets. Newspapers and magazines covered the surfaces of the three small, round metal tables, and unwashed coffee cups sat on the counter between the sink and microwave oven, along with an assortment of plates, empty junk-food containers and pop cans. The place was a disaster.
Kind of like her. Looked good on the outside, a mess on the inside. Mercy, she was such a product of her loveless childhood, spent first with her neglectful, flaky parents, and later, in a verbally abusive foster-care home. She shuddered, remembering the terrible, lonely place where her only purpose had been to act as a live-in baby-sitter for the rest of the younger kids and as a verbal punching bag for her alcoholic foster mother.
She shook her head, recoiling from those terrible memories, focusing on the here and now, which, unfortunately, was inevitably intertwined with her past.
Was that why Aiden had thrown her into such a tizzy? She frowned and pinched the bridge of her nose, taking control of her spiraling, disconcerting emotions. Tizzies, she’d discovered at an early age, were useless and only brought on someone else’s anger, targeted at her. She always made sure that she managed herself well enough to avoid them. But not today.
She’d run from her office like a frightened little girl, letting Aiden take control of her emotions.
What was wrong with her?
She didn’t have the answer to that important question, just as she hadn’t had the answer eight years ago. Aiden’s ability to open the door to her wants and desires and her inability to fight that power had scared her to death and forced her to break up with him.
But that was then, and this was now, and Aiden was back in her life for the next few days. She had to find a way to keep an even keel, to keep herself under protective control.
A startling thought occurred to her. Had he deliberately sought her out?
No, he’d been genuinely surprised when he’d discovered he was going to be working with her. It was just an odd coincidence they’d been thrown together again. Though not all that odd when she thought about it. She and Aiden were both journalists. Also, most of Aiden’s huge family probably still lived close by in Oak Valley; it made sense he’d return to Portland to be near his four siblings and parents. Just another reason she’d run, having been unable to deal with the prospect of being around his big, traditional family, light-years from her horribly dysfunctional one.
And whether she liked the current situation or not, she had a job to do. She was going to have to go away with him to complete the article. It was time to buck up and do her job without letting Aiden bother her.
Standing, she paced around the small room, forcing herself to fall back on the things that had helped her survive her childhood. Be analytical and rational. Review the situation and formulate a plan.
One. Aiden was in as photographer. Bad news, but unavoidable.
Two. They were going to go to Sun Mountain, a resort in central Oregon about four hours from Portland, for a long weekend. Again, too bad, but a done deal.
Three. Four babies and their parents, all strangers, would be going along, but she and Aiden would be the only other adults there. They would be spending long hours together, working on the article. Just the two of them, for an entire weekend…
That would be torture.
Nervous dread twisted her stomach into a knot. How could she do her job but spend as little time with Aiden as possible?
She stopped pacing and gazed into space for a long moment, her brain humming.
An idea materialized in her head. She smiled. Yes. She needed a friend to accompany her who would act as a safeguard between her and Aiden, someone she could hang out with to avoid having to deal with Mr. Gorgeous Green Eyes.
And her neighbor Maggie was just the person she needed. She was a single mom with a baby the right age. Colleen would have to pull some strings to get Maggie’s daughter, Laura, included in the spread, but that was a manageable detail. She was sure she could persuade Joe to include Laura, and knew she could talk Maggie into agreeing, even though Colleen deliberately hadn’t spent much time with Maggie since Laura had been born. Being around Laura, who drew Colleen’s attention like a fly to sugar, was just too hard to take. And while she would have to spend more time with little Laura this weekend, which would be a test in itself, it would be worth it to have Maggie act as a buffer.
Feeling better, she clenched her hand into a fist and pumped it in the air. “Yes!” she mock whispered. Score one for ingenuity.
A male voice startled her. “Wow. You must be feeling better.”
She twisted around, widening her eyes, and met Aiden’s vibrant, emerald-tinged gaze. His large body filled the small room and it was suddenly difficult to drag air in.
She swallowed and pressed a hand to her chest to calm her racing heart and wobbly nerves, then forced herself to smile broadly and spread her arms wide. “I guess I am.”
He hoisted a lone eyebrow. “What gives?”
A valid question given the hasty exit from her cube. “I’ve been thinking, and I’ve decided to bring a friend and her baby along on the shoot.”
“Because?”
I need protection from you. “Well…because the baby is adorable, and I’d like to include her in the spread.”
He moved closer, shaking his head. “I’ve already approved the four kids I need for the shoot. Five won’t work.”