Christmas and Forever (2 page)

She curled her fingers into her palm. Aidan wouldn’t know it, but she was also familiar with death, with losing loved ones. She had lost both of her parents at a young age and just three years ago, after spending the entirety of her teenage years caring for her brother Henry, he passed away, succumbing to a congenital heart defect and leaving her completely without family members. Aidan and she were more alike than he would ever know.

“I know more than you think. As for being an expert on your life? Hardly. In the time I’ve been here working with you, I see glimpses of the person beneath the pain, and well, I don’t understand why none of your fri—”

“Colleagues,” he corrected. “I have no friends.”

“Fine, your
colleagues
.” She made sure to emphasize the word to point out the ridiculousness of it. “I don’t know why they don’t seem to care.”

Aidan pressed his hand to the wall, brows arched. “And you care? You care what happens to your lonely boss?”

“You’re lonely because you choose to be.” She hurled the words at him.

He narrowed his eyes and stared at her again in a way that made her lower belly tingle, a sensation she was fast growing accustomed to when he was around. “Don’t forget old, too.” Her sight launched upward so he could plainly see that she had noticed the gray hairs.

His lips slanted into a thin line. “Yes, of course that goes without saying.”

Liya’s lips twitched as she felt the laughter rising from within. She was about to let him know that she was only joking and playing along with his doom-and-gloom demeanor until he shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Go home, Liya. There’s no point in continuing this conversation.”

Unbelievable. No amount of prodding and teasing was getting through to him. She closed her eyes and inhaled deep, calming breaths. “Wait!” Aidan was halfway around the corner to his office.

“What is it?” His tone was low and bereft.

She joined him beside the door. Hesitating, she allowed her hand to lie atop his. Beneath her opened palm, his hand felt hard and capable. Skilled hands that would never again be able to do what Aidan loved and had worked so hard to achieve. Every inch of her body ached for the man standing before her.

“I really am sorry if my question caused you pain. I know you’re hurting.” He fixed her with a steely glare, as if her words offended him. “You don’t have to look at me like that. I never said I understood your pain. No one can, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care. And I do. A lot.”

The room fell silent, the air stilled. Nothing, save for the sound of her own breath coming out in tiny rasps, connected with her. She had said it. It was out there, tangible and unable to fade into nothingness. Plus, she couldn’t and wouldn’t take it back. Before allowing Aidan to get a word in and warn against her foolishness, Liya told him, “If I say something else to you, do you promise you won’t take it the wrong way and tell me to leave and never set another foot in the clinic?”

He raised his head, a slight frown marring his features. Concerned, dark-blue eyes seared into hers. “Damn it,” he whispered, pained. “You know I’d never tell you to leave. What is it now?”

“I want you to call me, if you ever need anything. I mean, if you ever need someone to talk to…besides your
colleagues
, that is.”

“Liya…”

She shook her head, trudging ahead despite the way his eyes centered on their hands, still touching above the doorknob. “I know we’re not friends. I have a lot of respect for you, however. I think I’ve made that clear, in my own way, since you hired me. I’d just hate to think you needed an ear and there was no one to listen to you. You can call at anytime. I swear.”

He meant to intimidate her with his detached tone, but Liya refused to take the bait. Putting distance between them, she grabbed her coat off the nearby rack and placed the hood, lined with grayish faux fur, over her head.

“Yep. You just made my night.” She smiled and winked, hoping he would lighten up a bit. No such luck.

He kept looking at her in a strange half-glare, half... She wasn’t sure if there was even a word for it, since the man confused the hell out of her. If Liya weren’t at least five shades darker than Aidan, her face would be a study in different shades of red. So it led to the question. Did he realize what he was doing to her? Did he know that beneath his cold stares and detached words, he was wreaking havoc on her emotions?

Her nipples stiffened beneath her blouse, ultra-sensitive and yearning for something she had never experienced.

“Aidan?” She inched closer to him. Citrus and spice aftershave whispered in the air. She was too close.
Need to step back.
She couldn’t. An invisible force held her tethered on a string, pulling her to him. Before her mind could assimilate the action, Liya glided forward, softly planting a kiss on his shaven jaw.

The instant Liya raised her head, she realized her mistake. Her big mistake. The breath lodged in her throat. What a slut she must seem like. A minute earlier she was inveigling him to call if ever the need arose, and now? Now she had her lips on his skin. They weren’t even outside in the piercing cold, where she could lay the blame on hypothermia-induced madness. She wanted to sink through the floorboards and go even further down the rabbit hole than Alice.

“Dr. Keegan. I’m —”

Aidan’s eyes glared as he cut off her apology. “Don’t ever do that again.”

Her stomach knotted with embarrassment. Not even the warmth of the anorak could melt the coldness overtaking her. For the first time in twenty-three years, she had lost her mind and kissed a man who would sooner spend time with a rock than her. Liya had never done anything so brazen before, much less with someone in a position of authority and so much older than herself.

She nodded and forced herself to look him in the eyes. Cowering and feeling ashamed wasn’t the answer. Steadfast. Liya had to remain steadfast to her plans. Aidan meant too much to her. If she was going to bring any sort of joy to this man, she had to proceed in baby steps with him, because heaven knew the man was going to fight her every step of the way.

“It won’t happen again.” Even if she tried to explain that the kiss has been innocent, borne out of a desire to give comfort, Aidan wouldn’t understand. He was much too stubborn.

“Am I fired?” Liya asked, hiding the actual flicker of fear that this might be it for her. As much as she cared about Aidan, she still needed the job to take care of the bills her financial aid didn’t cover. Come summer, it was a different story and she would have a degree in hand, ready to begin work as an elementary school teacher.

He stepped into the office and looked back. “I’ll see you on Monday. Perhaps it’s best if we put this incident behind us. You’re a good worker. Let’s leave it at that. We’ll
both
forget this incident, yes?”

She exhaled with relief. That was one victory for the day. Sighing, Liya plodded outside into the night. Maybe she was looking at her situation with Aidan from the wrong angle. Maybe what she was starting to feel for him wasn’t romantic in the least. What if he was right and it was pity? She lowered her head dramatically so that her chin brushed against the top button of her coat.
And maybe Santa Claus was real
. She was doomed, for the holiday and possibly forever. For the first time in her life she was on the crest of experiencing love, and naturally it was with the wrong man. Or perhaps it was just the other way around.
She
would always be the wrong woman for him. Aidan wanted his old life back, and the woman he loved. The one Christmas gift Liya would never be able to give him.

****

“Did you and Liya get into it?”

Aidan propped his leg on the maplewood desk. He’d just arrived at the hospital minutes earlier and within mere seconds of settling into his office in the cardiology unit on one of the upper floors, the first words out of James Northrop’s mouth were about that insufferable girl. Or,
woman
, as she’d been keen to remind him, hours before. He despised the way his colleague worded the phrase.
You and Liya
. It made it seem as if they were an entity.

“Ms. Emerson is an efficient worker.”

James chuckled and adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses. “I know that. The girl is the only one who can get more than two words out of you these days. Did you notice that?”

He had. Not that he wanted to discuss any of it with James or anyone. He hated even thinking about it. And that was strange, since it was hard not to think of or notice everything about Liya. It was almost as if she purposely went out of her way to make herself noticeable. The tightly wound corkscrew curls with streaks of auburn highlights that made her dark smoky eyes radiate, when they should have appeared lackluster to someone with a fondness for grassy green eyes like Sarah’s.

From the beginning, Aidan had tried hard not to spend too much of his time analyzing and dissecting why he hadn’t fired Liya after numerous opportunities. Or for that matter, why he had even given her the damn job. When she opened her mouth to ask him what was wrong with his leg, he knew she wasn’t going to dodge or skirt around him like everyone else. Was that the reason for his reluctance to see her gone?

“No I haven’t,” he lied. Aidan snapped a folder closed and lowered his leg, dismissing the biting pain.

“That’s your problem, isn’t it? Your hand is damaged and I know that leg is shot to pieces from the accident too. As for your eyesight, there’s not a thing wrong with it.”

Aidan shuffled in his chair, knuckles tightening. The hell if James was hinting at what he assumed. “Have you been talking to Liya?”

James smirked. “How, when? That poor little girl is too busy trailing after you, making sure ‘Dr. Keegan’ is okay. You’re turning a blind eye on too many things. Too many people, Aidan. I know this might sound like a fucked-up thing to say, but life keeps going, man, and you’re in the thick of it. You’re here for a reason. I just don’t want you to wake up one day and realize you let too many things slip away.”

Slip away? The familiar pang of anger and envy worked its way through him. How easy it was for James to dole out advice. He had a wife and four children tucked in safe and warm at home, waiting for him. James had also just successfully performed his last surgery for the night. His life was intact and thriving.
Slip away
. He wished. Everything he had cherished and wanted to protect had been ripped from him, snatched away at the summit of his life.

“How many times did you sit beside your wife as she gave birth?” Aidan asked suddenly, wishing to drive the point home.

Shades of scarlet raced up James’s cheek. “Aidan, come on, let’s not—”

Underneath the desk, Aidan stretched his leg. The shooting pain doubled, then increased tenfold in the span of a few seconds. He didn’t doubt the effects were heightened by the turn of conversation. “Don’t ever mention ‘losing’ anything to me. None of you knows what that feels like. And please don’t bring up Ms. Emerson to me again. She is a child who knows even less about tragedy. The most tragic thing she’s ever dealt with is probably her hair not turning out the right shade of highlights.” He knew he was being unreasonably harsh, but someone like Liya threatened his sanity and all the promises he had made to himself and Sarah.

“She doesn’t deserve that,” James stated, toying with the stethoscope around his neck, “and I’m sure you already know it. I’m headed home, but I hope you don’t forget what I said. “You can start over, Aidan. Cut yourself some slack. No one expects you to be a saint about this.”

“A couple of us were wondering if you wouldn’t mind hosting a little holiday get-away at that cabin you keep locked up in Bear Ridge.”

Aidan lifted his brows. “A couple. That’s quite vague, isn’t it? How many? Also, why would you of all people be interested in spending Christmas isolated up in the mountains?”

James blinked in surprise for a second as if he was caught off guard. “Well, I—I’m not going. Never said I was. The others. Hendricks, Wilcox and a few more.” James coughed into his fist and averted his gaze.

He wasn’t surprised. Although he was partially to blame for distancing himself from the people he once considered friends, they too had altered their behavior when he was around. They were uncomfortable, and their laughter hushed as he entered the room. It was as if they were afraid whatever ill omen afflicted him would somehow scourge its way into their peaceful and contented lives.

“You’re a messenger now, Northrop? They’re adults. If they wish to secure the use of my property why couldn’t they come forward?”

“That’s not fair, Aidan. You shouldn’t come down so hard on them. You’re not the easiest guy to talk to these days. In fact, it would be better if you didn’t say anything to the others about it. Might get a bit uncomfortable, you know. So, is the place free or not?”

Unless wolves had taken up residence, yes
. He hadn’t driven up the mountain passage in years. The last time was to ready the cabin for their first Christmas, just the two of them. He’d bought the decorations, rolls of tinsel, lights and ornaments.

Decorations that hadn’t made it out of their packaging, also thanks to the drunk bastard who collided into them, driving southbound in the northbound lane. Everything happened in a flash. There just hadn’t been enough time to see it coming. The worst part was, the criminal had died on the spot, without ever seeing the faces of the people whose lives he had lacerated.