LITMIR.BIZ

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the road briefly, just long enough to wish he could pull over and kiss her.

      How had this woman and her child become so important to him after only a week in his life, especially when he had been gone for half of that?

      “What about you? Did you enjoy yourself?” he asked.

      “Yes.” When she finally answered, her voice was small, as if she didn’t want to admit it.

      “You’re allowed to have fun, you know.”

      “I have plenty of fun,” she said, bristling a little.

      “How?” he asked, genuinely curious. He wanted to follow and tug and unravel all the tangled little pieces of her. “What brings you joy, besides Maddie?”

      She made a small sound of amusement. “That’s like asking someone how he breathes without air. She’s everything to me.”

      “But you’re a woman first, before you’re a mother. What does the non-maternal side of you enjoy?”

      “You don’t ask the easy questions, do you?”

      He shrugged and waited for her to think through her answer.

      “I love to run, when the weather is good,” she finally said. “It’s tough to do that with Maddie. It was easier with a regular jogger when she was smaller. Last summer I bought an oversize one and we still go, though I don’t know how much longer she’ll fit.”

      She was right, her world was inexorably tied to her daughter’s. He wasn’t really surprised. He had seen it in his siblings with their children. His three older brothers were all excellent fathers, patient and loving—which surprised the hell out of him, considering how they had all tormented each other growing up.

      “What else?” he asked.

      She was silent, gazing out through the windshield, her face in lovely profile. “On cold winter nights like this one, after Maddie’s asleep and the house is still, I love to read curled up on my sofa with a warm throw and a cup of tea. It’s a total indulgence. I love finding treasures at garage sales for next to nothing and repurposing them into something wonderful for our apartment. I love fresh-cut Christmas trees—who doesn’t, really?—and summer evenings that stretch out forever and crunching through dry leaves on a mountain trail that smells earthy and musty with autumn.”

      He smiled, enchanted with her. “I do believe that is the most you’ve ever said about yourself since we met.”

      She shifted, clearly uncomfortable. “Because I’m basically a boring person.”

      He would firmly disagree. She was one of the most fascinating people he had ever met, made up of textures and layers and subtleties.

      “What about you?” she asked. “What brings you joy? And since you wouldn’t let me say Maddie, I’m making the same rule for you. You can’t answer the obvious, your family.”

      Since that was exactly how he intended to answer, he had to regroup. “Fair enough. If you want the truth, I’ve had a little more time to think about this very question these last few months, especially in those few weeks before the doctors knew the tumor was benign. The possibility of everything ending long before you expect it to tends to distill everything in your life to the essentials.”

      She made a tiny sound, just an exhalation, really, and reached a hand out to squeeze his arm, a spontaneous comforting gesture that just about slayed him.

      Too quickly, she returned her hand to her lap. He suspected if he could see her in the dark, she would be blushing.

      He cleared his throat. “Okay. To answer your question. What brings me joy. I also love running—something we have in common. During the initial weeks after my recovery when I wanted absolute privacy, I leased a place on the coast between Carmel and Big Sur. After I worked up to it for a few weeks, I discovered I love to run on the beach there just as the sun is coming up behind the mountains.”

      “That sounds lovely. What else?”

      This was tough for him. He was an inherently private person. Not shy, exactly, just...self-contained. His brother Jamie would spill his life story to any girl he met in a bar but Aidan would guess that even Louise and his other close associates didn’t really know the heart of him.

      “The horses, naturally. I guess that’s obvious. I bought an entire ranch and half of a town, apparently, so I can have a place for them. I don’t know what it is, but just being around them calms me. It takes me back to my childhood and summers I would spend with my grandparents.”

      His mother had loved horses, too. She had always stabled a horse at one of the ranches outside of Hope’s Crossing and had gone riding in the mountains around town. Her mental vacation, she used to tell them. Of all the Caine children, he was really the only one who shared that love with her.

      “I love a good basketball game, playing it or watching it.”

      “Are you any good?”

      “Not really. Doesn’t stop me from enjoying it. I’m the unathletic one of my brothers.”

      “Somehow I doubt that,” she murmured.

      Heat swirled between them, not all of it coming from the vehicle’s ventilation system.

      “What else brings you joy?” she asked, rather quickly.

      “Hmm. I love sleeping on good sheets and that first sip of coffee in the morning and fine-aged Scotch. I love going to the opera, but if you tell my brothers, I’ll deny it with all the breath left in my body.”

      She laughed softly. “Secrets and more secrets. I’m not going to be able to open my mouth when your family is here.”

      He smiled and realized he was quickly becoming crazy about her, too. He had a sudden disorienting, unsettling urge to reach for her hand, to drive through the quiet, peaceful dark with her fingers tucked in his.

      Did she sense the connection between them? The fragile threads that seemed to curl and twine around them?

      He pushed away the impulse, curled his own fingers against his thigh and forced himself to continue the conversational thread.

      “That’s about it. Though—and this is probably going to sound arrogant as hell—I have to admit that I love what I have created with Caine Tech. It’s not really the material things that success has afforded me. I never sought that, though you won’t hear me complain about having them now. You were right earlier, I have been incredibly lucky in my life in some areas. Beyond all the perks of that success, I love knowing that a device or an app I created is making someone’s life easier—many people’s lives, more than I ever imagined. It’s an incredible rush. Indescribable, really. Sometimes I still can’t quite believe it’s real.”

      He also couldn’t believe he had spilled something so intimate with her. “I don’t think I’ve articulated that to another person before.”

      “Thank you for being willing to share it with me,” she murmured.

      “You’re probably sorry you asked.”

      She shook her head. “Not at all. How could I be? You’re a fascinating man, Aidan. More so now that I see a little of the man behind the Geek God legend.”

      To his embarrassment, he could feel himself flush at the mortifying nickname from an in-depth article one of the newsmagazines had done on him. Brendan and Dylan still called him that when they wanted to rile him, usually when they were head to head on the basketball court.

      Fortunately, he was saved from having to respond when they pulled up to the house. He glanced in the mirror and saw Maddie hadn’t stirred.

      “Will I wake her up if I carry her in?”

      “I doubt it. She can sleep through just about anything.”

      He scooped up the little girl. She made a tiny sound, snuggling against him, and he felt

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