Clark stopped drawing, spinning in my desk chair until he faced me. “She do a good job?”
“Yeah.”
As it always seemed to, without my permission and without any approval or forethought, my attention strayed to her. She was an irritation under my skin, not because of anything particularly vexing but simply because I felt like she was hiding something. Hiding herself.
And I didn’t like how that felt.
Because it lit the fuse on an urge that I’d long since buried.
Interest.
Everyone else at the gym had made a concerted effort to seek me out and get to know me. And it was the exact opposite with her. Maybe that was why I found my gaze drawn to her.
The softness she’d shown my daughter was the most disconcerting of all. Before that, all I’d seen of Isabel were shifting pieces that I couldn’t pinpoint, like she was standing in front of a fun-house mirror.
Clumsy one moment, graceful the next.
Impenetrable with a client, blushing in the next interaction.
Kind with the employees, refusing my kindness in turn.
Warm with those who knew her, candidly wary with me.
She was beautiful, as my daughter had said. Rarely smiled, rarely laughed. Not that I’d seen yet.
And I hated, more than I could’ve put into words, that I wanted to figure her out.
Hated that I’d checked her employee file, musing uncomfortably over the fact that she was a decade younger than I was yet seemed so much older than her age.
None of those things would I verbalize to my brother, who was already watching me with that analytical brain of his. I’d probably said too much as it was.
Because the second I saw her making Anya laugh, the second I watched them interact, the very first thing in my mind was absolutely terrifying:
Not this one. It can’t be her.
For a host of reasons. Too many to count.
Before I knew what Anya had asked her, I’d mentally cataloged each piece of Isabel that I knew. When she came up as the opposite of each thing Beth had listed to our daughter a million hours earlier, I felt the impact of it like a blow.
Disappointment.
“Aiden?” Clark asked.
“Forget I said anything,” I murmured. “I’ll get over it.”
I had to.
Chapter Seven
Isabel
“Could you possibly be more of a bitch?”
Not a single person at the table blinked when Molly glared at me. I smiled because surrounded by the sheer chaos of our family, I was in my happy place.
“Because of this?” I lifted my fork, each tine loaded to the edge with rotini noodles. My gaze stayed right on Molly as I sniffed deeply. “Mmmm, the sauce smells so good, doesn’t it?”
Her eyes narrowed. I shoved the entire bite in my mouth and groaned. Molly picked up her own fork and stabbed her salad like it was a teeny tiny Isabel voodoo doll.
My sister’s fiance, Noah, rubbed her back and set a small piece of bread onto her plate. “You can have some carbs, Molly.”
“Yeah, Molly,” I said, “you can have carbs.”
She threw the bread at me, and I caught it with a laugh.
Paige sighed. “Isabel, don’t poke the carb-deprived bear.”
She set her jaw, my happy, kind, friendly sister who was so carb-deprived angry that she looked like she was plotting my death. “Easy for you to say, you work out for a living.” Then she glanced around the table. “Oh my gosh, half the people here work out for a living. This is bullshit,” she grumbled, spearing a piece of asparagus.
She wasn’t wrong.
Logan held up his hand. “Don’t include me in that. Coaches don’t have to be in shape.”
“You sure expect your players to be, though,” Noah grumbled between bites of his own pasta.
Logan exhaled happily. “Great conditioning today, wasn’t it, Griffin?”
Noah gave him a long look.
“Speaking of people working out for a living,” I said, “where’s Bauer?”
Claire sighed. “He’s up in Vancouver for some training thing that he couldn’t miss.”
I held my fist out across the table. “Hey, now I’m not the only single one at the family dinner.”
She bumped my fist. Our nephew, Logan and Paige’s ten-year-old son Emmett, scoffed. “I’m single too. Thanks a lot.”
Claire fist-bumped him, and I reached across to do the same.
Paige grinned over the rim of her wineglass. “This is the closest we’ve had to the whole zoo at one table in like … a year.”
“Is that why it’s so loud?” Logan asked.
“Yes,” Claire and I answered.
From the kitchen, Lia walked toward the table, balancing two plates in her hands. Behind her was her boyfriend, Jude, carrying a sound asleep Gabriel. He glanced around the table. “Anyone want a sleeping baby?”
Paige, Molly, and I all raised our hands.
Jude cast a skeptical look at all three of us, then lifted his chin at Molly. “You’re up, then.”
“Rude,” Paige muttered.
I frowned. “You’re just picking her because she’s got that look in her eye like she’ll cut you.”
Noah choked on his food. Molly sat back down in her chair, Gabriel tucked into the crook of her arm, with a beatific smile on her face. “I can’t wait until you get engaged someday, Iz, and we’ll see how you act when you’re a couple of months away from your wedding, and you don’t want bread making you puffy because you ordered your dress just a little bit too small on accident.”
Isabel Ward Hennessy. Isabel Hennessy. Isabel and Aiden 4-ever.
If I pinched my eyes closed, I could see the purple-inked doodles in my head. That damn diary might not be in the metal box, but it was probably still up in my old bedroom, and oh, my gosh, I wanted to go find it and burn it.
I may never send this letter, but would you come to my junior prom with me? I have a light purple dress that my brother bought I bought for myself. And I love daisies, if you’d want to get me a corsage made of those. Only if you want.
Shutting off my brain would’ve been lovely because my face immediately went flame hot. After that, Aiden’s face was what popped into my head like an asshole. And my older sister noticed immediately. “What’s that face?”
“Nothing.” I shoved another bite of pasta in my mouth. “Involuntary physical reaction at the idea of giving up carbs.”
She rolled her eyes.
I could feel the weight of Paige’s gaze on the side of my face, which was why I ignored her.
At some point, I’d always known that the right person would wedge their foot in the proverbial door before I could slam it shut.
But it would have to be a big foot. No pun intended. The thought of big feet and big hands and big … arms had me shoving food in my mouth again. It was just hard to imagine how everyone else seemed to have such an easy time letting that happen, opening up, and just being normal.
But because it was me, of course it wasn’t that easy.
The first guy to flip all the right switches was part fantasy, part forbidden reality, and all fricken perfect from what I could see.
“How’s the new boss, Iz?” Logan asked.