Second Chance Summer(19)

The air between them thickened. “So,” she said. “You were surprised to see me.”

“Yeah. I was surprised to see you.”

“No one told you I was coming?” she asked.

He met her gaze. “No, though it would’ve been nice to hear it from you.”

“We hadn’t communicated since …” She trailed off. Since Ashley’s death.

No, that wasn’t quite true. He’d tried to get ahold of her after the service. She’d picked up one of his calls, and neither of them had known what to say.

The awkwardness of that conversation had stuck with her enough to cut the ties entirely.

“You got in to Boulder,” he said, referring to the University of Colorado’s pursuit of her. “Onto their ski team. A huge big deal.”

“Yes,” she said, trying not to grimace at the memory of being accepted into the one and only school Ashley had desperately wanted to ski for. It was guilt that had kept her from going, plain and simple. “So?”

“So you didn’t go. Instead you became a cosmetologist.”

She paused and arched a brow, going for a misdirect. “You think I’m beneath being a … cosmetologist?”

“I’m just curious about the transition,” he said easily.

“I decided Boulder wasn’t for me.”

“Why?”

She wasn’t used to the questions. It’d been a long time since anyone had gotten close enough to want to know about her personal life at all. Yeah, there’d been her ex, Michael, but it’d been more about work with him, and they’d never really gotten into each other’s pasts at all. And now she wasn’t sure how to answer Aidan’s question. “I was never a great student, we both know that.”

“Did you think Ashley would be upset at you for going?” he asked.

She had no idea how he did it, how he always put his finger right on her thoughts. Her private thoughts. “Maybe at first.”

“Lily,” he said with devastating gentleness.

“She was the one who wanted to go to college, Aidan. She was meant for it, not me.”

“Bullshit.” He was leaning back against the doorjamb, feet crossed, hands in his pockets, a casual pose, but there was nothing casual about his expression.

He didn’t like where she was going with this.

“I’m not stating an opinion here,” she said. “I’m stating fact.”

“So Ashley was smart,” he said. “So what? So are you. Boulder wouldn’t have accepted you otherwise. Tell me you’ve since realized that, Lily.”

She shrugged. “It took awhile, but after cosmetology school, I started working full-time at the spa, as low on the totem pole as I could possibly get, of course. That frustrated me,” she allowed. “I did all the grunt work and then finally was given more to do but didn’t get any of the credit for it. So I went back to school at night and took some business classes. By the end I was practically running the spa myself.” Not that she’d gotten credit for that either …

“I hope like hell it hurt them when you left,” he said.

So did she …

“Did you like it there?” he asked. “San Diego?”

She’d thought so. Until she’d come back here. She hadn’t realized in all those years that she’d never really felt like she was home. “I missed the snow.”

He chuckled. “Can’t tell by the car you’re driving.”

“Yes, well, you always were a car snob.” She paused. “And I don’t plan to still be around by the time I need four-wheel drive.”

“You just got here,” he said. “In a hurry to leave already?”

“I’m only here until a permanent job comes through. I’m looking at this as a little break.”

“From the bad press you mean.”

She sighed. She shouldn’t be surprised he’d heard.

His smile faded. “You get a bum rap, Lily?”

She met his gaze, extremely tired of dancing around this subject. “Are you asking me if I ratted out one of my clients for money?”

He shook his head. “I know you wouldn’t rat out anyone.”

The words, unwavering, sucked the air from her lungs. “You don’t know me anymore,” she reminded him.

“I know enough.” This was said with steely certainty.

The blind faith in her actually made her throat burn. Her eyes, too, and for a moment she couldn’t speak, afraid she’d burst into pathetic tears. “But it was me,” she said softly. “My boss asked me to leak it in order to get the salon’s name in the press. But it backfired and so …” She shrugged.

“And so you took the fall for it.”

She nodded.

“So your boss was a real stand-up sort of person, then.”

She’d thought so, at first. Michael had run the salon, been her friend, her sometime lover, and sometimes her boyfriend. And not only hadn’t he stood at her back, he’d fired her and then blacklisted her as well. “It’s actually done a lot,” she said. “Where a celebrity calls ahead and wants their arrival or departure noted in the press. It keeps them in the public eye and relevant.”