Best of My Love (Fool's Gold, #20)(9)

He could understand being annoyed or pissed or even furious. But there was no excuse to take out any of that on someone else. He’d grown up with four brothers, so he’d been in plenty of fights as a kid. But there were rules and one of them was you stick to your own size and gender. And after about age fifteen, you give it up. Aidan believed his own father was an *, but even he’d never hit a woman.

“Aidan?”

He looked at Shelby. “What?”

“You’re not listening to me.”

“Sorry. It’s your dad. Where is he now?”

“In prison. He’s serving consecutive sentences. Even with good behavior, he won’t be out for about fifty years.”

“I want to go find him and punish him.”

She reached across the table and lightly touched his hand. “Thank you. I appreciate the thought, but it’s not necessary.”

“I need to hurt him.”

“It won’t change him.”

Probably not, but that wasn’t what had him telling himself to let it go. Beating up her father wouldn’t help Shelby. That was the real point of it.

“I wish I’d known you then,” he told her. “I would have helped.”

Her breath caught and she cleared her throat. “Thank you for saying that. I believe you. Which is part of the reason I wanted to talk to you. About my problem. And yours.”

“That you pick the wrong guy because you’re not willing to trust a man not to physically hurt you and that I pick the wrong woman because I don’t want to get stuck?”

She nodded.

He tried to remember the last time he’d had a conversation this honest and couldn’t. Shelby had laid it all on the line. He figured he had to do the same.

“I’m not looking for home and hearth,” he admitted. “I just want to stop being a jackass.”

She laughed. “A worthy goal.” Her humor faded. “I thought I was doing better. I thought I was healed. Then I went out with a guy I knew was a total flake. He swore he was seeing only me, but he wasn’t. It was then I realized I wasn’t as far along as I thought.”

She pointed to the cupcakes between them. “Everything else is great. I went to culinary school and discovered I’m more of a dessert-pastry chef. I moved here and bought into the business. I have friends, I’m going to be an aunt in a couple of months. It’s all good.”

“Except for Mr. Right.”

She nodded.

He was no longer as concerned about what she wanted from him. Shelby had been through a lot and if he could help, he wanted to. If she was looking for the perfect guy, by now she knew he wasn’t even close. Anything else was doable.

“Where do I fit in?”

“I need to learn that I can trust a man who isn’t my brother,” she told him. “I was hoping we could be friends. Real friends who do things together. I thought if we could do that, we could get over what’s holding us back. You obviously need to start seeing women as something other than short-term sexual partners. I thought we could work on this together. Hang out. Get to know each other. Develop a relationship based on trust and respect.” She wrinkled her nose. “Without the complication of the whole boy-girl thing.”

Honest to God, Aidan didn’t know what to say. Friends? Her points were valid and he could see how her plan might work, but damn.

“Would there be a time limit?” he asked.

“Sure. I don’t know. How long until we’re both better? Six months?”

So until June.

“Just friends.” Because he wasn’t sure he’d ever been friends with a woman before. Not since maybe high school. “Nothing else.”

“Nothing,” she said firmly. “We’ll do stuff and talk and you’ll see that women are more than a booty call and I won’t be scared anymore. In six months we’ll both be better people and we’ll go back to our regular lives.”

He wanted to protest the booty-call comment but knew he’d earned it. Friends. Just friends. Was it possible? Did he want to bother?

The thing was, if he didn’t, wouldn’t he stay exactly where he was? And he knew he didn’t want that.

“Maybe,” he said slowly.

She brightened. “So you’ll think about it?”

There were a lot of ways to answer the question, but he figured they both deserved the truth. “Shelby, I’m pretty sure I won’t be thinking about anything else.”





CHAPTER THREE

AMBER DUTTON CLOSED her eyes and made a low moaning sound at the back of her throat. “You’re killing me.”

Shelby did her best not to preen. Impressing her customers was one thing, but impressing Amber was harder. Amber had owned Ambrosia Bakery for over ten years. She knew the business inside and out and she’d tasted more than her share of chocolate mousse.

Amber broke off a piece of the dark chocolate shell that held the mousse and put it in her mouth. She let it melt on her tongue before swallowing. “Amazing. You made these, too?”

Shelby nodded. “It’s not that difficult. I’ve been working on the recipe for a while. I thought we could try adding more upscale desserts to the inventory. Maybe start on certain days to see if there’s any interest. With the city’s online connection, we could send out an email to men, suggesting the high-end desserts as a special surprise to take home to the women in their lives.”