Then again, she had been in such a hurry after her appointment – it was the day she was meeting Aidan for lunch – that she’d snuck out of the waiting room the moment they had taken all the scans without exactly waiting for them to give her the okay to go.
“Yeah, that’s probably all it is,” Mary said, as if saying the words out loud in an otherwise empty Jeep would make them true.
It didn’t help that she had been in a negative state of mind to begin with. Ever since his abrupt and unexpected departure on Saturday morning, Aidan hadn’t called, texted, or stopped by. She hadn’t tried to contact him, either. She figured that since he was the one who had walked out, it was up to him to decide to come back.
She didn’t understand why he was so upset. Alright, she could see how that kind of information caught him by surprise. If he had told her that he’d been married before, it certainly would have given her an uncomfortable moment or two, too.
But would she have behaved as if he had purposely betrayed her? No. As surprising as such knowledge was, it mattered little now. Yes, she had been married, but that had been a long time ago. For more than five years Mary had been alone, though in truth, it felt like much longer. Cam’s disease and the brutal effects of the treatment had left him little more than a shell long before his actual death.
Maybe she should have told Aidan right up front. She hadn’t deliberately been hiding it from him, but she had to admit, it was awfully nice to spend time with someone who didn’t know. Everyone in Birch Falls still looked at her as the tragic young bride who had lost her husband, a husband who had been a much-loved member of their community. The sympathy, the pity, was still in their eyes every time they looked at her.
She hadn’t minded so much at first; it was almost comforting in a way. People knew what she had been through and tended to go out of their way to be kind. Mary expected that as time began the slow process of healing her wounds, it would heal theirs, too. But here it was, five years later, and they were still treating her like Cam’s tragic widow.
It had become so tiresome, in fact, that Mary had gone as far as to call the local realtor and get her house appraised a few years ago. When word got around that Mary was thinking of selling and moving away, her phone hadn’t stopped ringing for months. Well-intentioned locals – those who had loved Cam and had felt it was their duty to look after her after his death – took it as failure on their part and stepped up their efforts. Eventually Mary put her plans to relocate on the back burner just so she could get some peace.
Maybe, she thought, it was time to revisit those plans. Only this time, she was going to call a realtor from outside of Birch Falls.
As she passed over the bridge into Pine Ridge, she saw the sign for the turn-off to the exclusive Celtic Goddess resort and her thoughts went back to Aidan. Was Aidan there now? Was he, unlike her, able to concentrate enough to actually go to work and accomplish something?
The thought hurt. Because as much as she had loved Cam, what she had felt for him didn’t come close to the intensity of the feelings she’d developed for Aidan. Loving Cam had been comfortable, easy; like slipping into your favorite pair of well-worn jeans or a warm bath. Loving Aidan was like being caught in a raging flood or free-falling from ten-thousand feet.
Oh, God, she thought, as it hit her.
She really was in love with Aidan.
Chapter Twelve
“Enough,” Lexi said, planting herself in Aidan’s office and locking the door behind her. “What the hell is going on between you and your croie?”
Lexi knew he’d been doing his best to avoid her, citing a backlog of work since he’d been out of the country for several weeks trying to personally resolve issues with their Mediterranean suppliers, but she was not fooled. There were others who could have seen to it; men and women who were paid extremely well to negotiate such things.
She also knew that neither the negotiations nor a backlog would have kept him from visiting with her. They never had before. But Aidan hadn’t been down to the kitchens once since his return, and he’d done little more than exchange a few inane platitudes in their minimal brief encounters before scurrying off with yet another excuse.
Lexi was not going to let him get away with it any longer.
Aidan glanced up from his desk, looking as bad as Lexi had ever seen him. His skin was pale, his face drawn and worn, and it looked as though he hadn’t slept for days. No wonder he’d been avoiding her.
“Shouldn’t you be in the kitchens cooking something?” he said, his voice unusually cutting. It was enough to give her pause. Aidan had never spoken to her like that. Ever. Good thing she was no longer the introverted teen she’d once been or she might have taken it personally.
“Shouldn’t you get your head out of your ass and start talking to me?” Lexi crossed her arms over her chest and gave him her best death glare.
Aidan glared right back. Long minutes stretched between them before Aidan exhaled heavily.