Hot Christmas Nights (4 page)

The shadow he continued to cast was far and wide, leaving very little light to shine on all Aiden had achieved in college and graduate school. His tolerance of his family’s disregard of his many accomplishments made him that much more extraordinary in Nyla’s eyes.

“You really are special, you know that? Most people would be bitter, but you’re not.”

“Not
too
bitter. I have my moments,” he said, a wry grin tipping up the corner of his lips. “I can’t really complain, can I? Just look where I am.” He gestured to their surroundings. “I’m spending the holidays in Rome. And I’m with you.”

His penetrating gaze locked on her, making the confines of the small hotel room even more apparent. “Seeing Rome at Christmas is one thing, but having the chance to spend the holiday with you—anywhere—means even more. I know I’ve said it already, but I can’t say it enough. Thank you for doing this, Nyla.”

“You’re welcome,” Nyla said, her voice suddenly huskier than it had been a minute ago. She averted her eyes, concentrating on her dinner. She glanced up to find that, thankfully, Aiden had gone back to his. He picked up his drink, took a sip and started choking.

“Good God!” He held the bottle out and stared at it. “What the hell
is
this?”

A peal of laughter tumbled out of Nyla’s mouth. “It’s soda. I know it has a bit of a bite, but it’s really popular here.”

“A
bit
of a bite? It damn near snatched my lips off.” He set the bottle on her side of the nightstand. “You can have the rest of that. I’ll stick to water,” he said, tipping back the half-full bottle of water he’d taken from her apartment earlier. “Good call on dinner, though. Whether it would make me give up Big Macs entirely is debatable, but I can stand to eat a meal like this five days a week.”

“I told you,” she said with another laugh. “Just wait until tomorrow. Your taste buds are in for the experience of a lifetime.”

His gaze dropped to her lips. “I hope that applies to more than just my taste buds,” he said, his voice low, husky.

It was obvious they were no longer talking about food. The air in Nyla’s lungs constricted as she stared at Aiden’s mouth. He swept his tongue along his bottom lip, clearing a droplet of water. A tingle started in her belly and moved lower.

“You’ll have to wait and see,” she returned in an equally hushed tone.

The lightheartedness of a few moments ago evaporated. In its place stood a heady dose of desire. It pulsed around them, saturating the air, and bringing the reality of their impending night together in this small hotel room into stark relief.

A silent warning rang through Nyla’s head. This felt all too similar to what she’d experienced three years ago, when their playful banter soon escalated into something much more serious.

Yet, in the face of every consequence she’d suffered for falling for Aiden once before, the yearning to climb into bed with him and explore all the new dips and contours of his body was so strong Nyla could barely stand it. The devil on her shoulder urged her to give in to the impulse. Everyone thought they’d done more than they had anyway; couldn’t she give in this one time?

What was she thinking?

Nyla jumped up from the bed. Avoiding Aiden’s eyes, she said, “If you don’t mind, I’ll go first in the bathroom.” She grabbed her toiletry bag from where she’d tossed it on the dresser.

“Nyla?” Aiden called. She looked back at him. “Ignoring this won’t make it go away,” he said.

She tried to tear her eyes away from the truth staring back at her, but she couldn’t, because it
was
true. This feeling wasn’t going away. It hadn’t lessened one bit in the three long years they had been apart. She wasn’t foolish enough to think that it would do so now that she was right here with him again.

But she only had to ignore it for two days. And she
would
ignore it. The high price she’d paid for disregarding her common sense and giving in to her feelings for Aiden had burned her once. She would not get burned again.

Without another word, she slipped into the bathroom.

* * *

Aiden stuffed the empty food cartons in the trash bin at the end of the narrow hallway and headed back to their room.

Their
room.

His steps slowed as he came upon the door. He captured the handle, then released it, his hands falling to his sides, his limbs suddenly so heavy it felt as if the entire weight of the world was pulling him down.

He took a couple of steps back, until he reached the wall opposite the door. He stared across the hallway to the room he would share with Nyla, and thumped the back of his head against the wall.

How was he supposed to get through tonight? His eyes fell shut as a pain-filled groan climbed from his throat. His skin felt tight, his stomach a jumble of knots. Every fiber in his body hummed with electricity just at the thought of being in that room all night with Nyla.

Why did she have to be every single thing he could ever want in a woman?
Everything
.

And it had nothing to do with the fact that she was beyond gorgeous—which she most definitely was. He’d dated attractive women in the past. Even though he suspected that some of them had only shown interest in him because of his connection to Cameron, Aiden was pretty confident that a couple of them had been genuine. Yet not one of them had ever elicited the feelings within him that Nyla had.

Nyla’s beauty radiated from the inside out. It was in that reassuring smile that came so readily, in her uncanny ability to sense when he needed to get something off his chest, or when he needed someone to silently be there, just so he knew he wasn’t alone.

What he’d told her earlier was the truth. She
got
him.

When others in his family brushed off the rejection he’d received on a paper he’d submitted to an academic journal, Nyla provided a shoulder to lean on. Even though she’d only known him for a few months at the time, she somehow understood what was important to him better than people who had known him his entire life. That’s just the kind of person she was: unique and special and giving.

And she was on the other side of that door.

“Just tell her how you feel,” Aiden whispered.

But he didn’t have to tell her. That was the thing that was driving him crazy. He would bet his last dime that Nyla knew exactly how he felt about her. She just wasn’t ready to face it, just as she hadn’t been able to face it three years ago.

She’d allowed others to shame her into thinking that she had taken advantage of him. Cameron, his parents,
her
parents, many of her friends; they had all put the blame at Nyla’s feet. She had even convinced herself that she had somehow led him on, as if he wasn’t mature enough to recognize that the attraction that had exploded that last night between them hadn’t been building for months.

He never should have let her get away without owning up to the fact that she had been just as attracted to him as he had been to her. She’d wanted that kiss. She’d wanted even more than just that damn kiss.

Aiden started for the door, but once again stopped before opening it.

If he went in there demanding she acknowledge feelings she wasn’t ready to admit to having, it could ruin these few short days he had with her.

“Dammit.”

He couldn’t bring it up again. Not yet.

But he would. Eventually, they were going to talk this through.

Shaking his head, he finally opened the door. Upon entering the room, he was met with the sound of the shower. His mind instantly conjured the image of Nyla standing naked underneath the spray of rushing water, her body glistening with rivulets of steamy moisture running down her skin. He nearly lost all feeling in his legs. Aiden fell back on the bed, covering his eyes with his forearm.

He would give up every single comic book in his Marvel collection—including the 1941 mint-condition Green Lantern—to be able to step inside that shower and have her wrap her arms around his neck. He wanted to feel her lovely, soft breasts pressed against his naked chest. He would give anything to wedge himself between her slick, soapy thighs and finally,
finally
discover what it felt like to make her his.

A groan tore out of his throat.

He could forget reenacting his favorite scenes from
Gladiator
at the Colosseum tomorrow. Pent-up lust would have him dead by morning.

“Hey, you okay?”

Aiden sprang upright. He hadn’t even heard when she turned the shower off. She was dressed in calf-length pajama pants and a black-and-pink tank top with a glittery martini glass on it. She looked ridiculously good with her soft brown skin freshly washed. She smelled delicious, like peaches, as if she’d rubbed a bit of Georgia on her skin.

“Aiden?”

He shook his head. He had to snap out of this.

“I’m good.” He grabbed his bag and headed to the bathroom, taking the quickest shower known to mankind. He wasn’t wasting any of this short time he had with Nyla.

When he reentered the room she was already in her bed, under the covers. She had the bedside lamp on and was flipping through the magazine that was on the table.

“You read Italian, too?” Aiden asked, gesturing to the magazine.

“Enough to get by.”

“You speak it like someone who’s lived here your entire life.”

“Working in Leoncini’s, I had no choice. It’s not as hard to pick up as you may think.” She pointed to the window. “It looks as if the snow is letting up. That should make it easier to get around tomorrow.”

Frowning, Aiden walked over to the window. “I was kind of hoping it would stick around for another couple of days. It would be my first white Christmas.”

“I didn’t think about that. Coming from Atlanta, you rarely get to see snow. I guess I’ve taken that for granted. It doesn’t snow often in San Gimignano, but the winter I lived in Paris was just awful.”

Aiden crossed his arms over his chest and leaned his shoulder against the cold windowpane. “What’s your ideal Christmas?”

“Hmm, that’s easy,” Nyla said, setting the magazine aside. She scooted up in the bed and brought her knees to her chest. “Back when I was eight or nine, my family started spending the holidays in the Smoky Mountains. My dad would rent a cabin and we would drive out there as soon as Christmas break started.

“We would sit around the fireplace and have eggnog and rice crispy treats. My mom would read ‘’Twas the Night Before Christmas’ and we would decorate the tree with garlands made out of popcorn. It was the corniest, most
Leave It to Beaver
thing you’ve ever seen, but I truly did love it.”

The light in her eyes dimmed. “I talked to my younger sister, Rae, just before you showed up at the bakery earlier today. They were heading out for the cabin. I’ve gotten used to not being around for birthdays or the big Fourth of July family picnic, but there’s something about not being at the cabin with everyone at Christmas that just slays me.”

“You miss them, don’t you?” Aiden asked.

She nodded. “I do. My younger brother and his wife have had two girls in the last sixteen months, and my other sister-in-law is going to have a baby any day now.”

Hearing the sadness in her voice triggered a deep ache in his chest. The thought that he had in some way contributed to the sorrow she was feeling caused him physical pain.

“Why haven’t you gone back, Nyla? Is it really because of what happened between us? You’ve allowed
that
to keep you away all this time?”

“You say it as if it was just this thing that happened, Aiden. As if it was no big deal.” She looked up at him, her deep brown eyes teeming with regret. “Everyone was there. My family, my coworkers, lifelong friends. Everyone I know witnessed that attorney coming to the church and telling me that Cameron didn’t want to marry me because I was sleeping with his baby brother.”

“But you weren’t sleeping with me. It’s Cameron’s fault that he didn’t give you a chance to explain. And are you seriously still giving him a pass, even after you found out that he was stepping out on you at the same time?”

She flinched. “One has nothing to do with the other.”

“How can you say that? He cheated on you the entire time you were together, Nyla. He’s cheated on every woman he’s ever dated.” The hurt that flashed across her face triggered a pang in his chest, but this was something that had bothered Aiden from the very beginning. “I still can’t figure out why you were ever with him in the first place. It’s common knowledge that Cameron has been a womanizer since birth.”

“I knew your brother had flaws when I started dating him, Aiden. Maybe I was naive to think he would give up his old habits once we got engaged, but all of that is beside the point. It doesn’t matter what Cameron was doing.” She pointed to her chest. “This is about what
I
did. Was I eventually grateful that I didn’t marry him after learning that he was still seeing other women? Of course I was. But that doesn’t erase the fact that I was unfaithful to him, as well.”

Aiden pitched his head back and groaned up at the ceiling. “You weren’t unfaithful. It was one kiss, Nyla.”

“It was more than just a kiss,” she whispered. “We both know that. If I hadn’t stopped us...”

An instant ache settled in his groin at the mention of that night. The memory of how close they had come to finally sleeping together was one he’d had to endure much too often these past three years.

It hadn’t been just about sex. He wasn’t the renowned ladies’ man his brother had been, but getting sex had never been a problem. It had been all about Nyla, about being with her in the most elemental way. They had been connected on an emotional level for months leading up to that night. He’d needed that physical connection.

“Does this mean we’re finally tackling the eight-hundred-pound gorilla?” Aiden asked.

She blew out a deep breath and dropped her forehead to her knees. “Please, Aiden. This is awkward enough as it is. Bringing that up will only complicate things.”

“Maybe it would do the exact opposite. You ever consider that? We’ve been tiptoeing around this ever since I found you on Facebook, Nyla. Think of how much simpler things would be if we just got everything out in the open.”