Entangled (The Accidental Billionaires #2) - J. S. Scott Page 0,31

happened to Skye would stop. Or at least I hoped it would get easier.

“I’ll miss you being here,” Seth confided.

“It was never really my thing,” I said, letting him off the hook. “But it’s always been your dream. Don’t give it up.”

“No way in hell,” he agreed.

“Give the tree hugger a break,” I suggested. “It isn’t going to hurt you that much to give up the property.”

“For a bunch of birds?” he said roughly. “Hell, no. We can just arrange to get them moved.”

I grinned because I couldn’t help it. “I think Eli will agree that it should end up a sanctuary, since he’s marrying Jade.”

“We’ll see,” Seth said ominously. “I don’t think he became one of the richest guys in the world by having a bleeding heart.”

Really, it didn’t matter how my soon-to-be brother-in-law had gotten rich before. Eli Stone was crazy about Jade, and he’d back her in a heartbeat. If my little sister got wind of the fact that there were rare birds that needed to be saved, Seth would never hear the end of it.

“Good luck getting Eli to back you up,” I said, still smirking as I walked out the door.

I was pretty sure that Eli Stone would rather go broke than make my little sister unhappy.

It was the primary reason I liked the guy so much.

CHAPTER 11

SKYE

I was surprised to see Aiden come through the door of his house a little more than an hour after he’d left. “You’re back early.”

I was seated at the breakfast bar with a cup of coffee, looking over ideas for the café. I watched as Aiden moved to the coffeepot and made himself a cup, too.

It wasn’t difficult for me to see that his right hand was swollen, since I loved to watch those capable hands do almost any task.

I stood up and walked over to him. “What in the world happened to your hand?”

I took his hand in mine as I examined it.

“No big deal,” he grumbled. “It just connected with Seth’s face. Well worth the pain.”

I was suddenly alarmed, and I looked up into his ocean-blue eyes, searching for the truth. “Is that really what happened?”

I turned his hand over and over. It was pretty swollen, but he seemed to have a full range of movement. I finally gave his hand back to him after I was satisfied that most likely nothing was broken.

“He deserved it,” Aiden said hoarsely. “If he hadn’t decided to burn that letter, things would have been way different. Maybe I wouldn’t have had a lot of money, but you and Maya would have been cared for by people who gave a damn.”

“In all the years I’ve known Jade, I’ve never seen a single Sinclair lay a hand on another one,” I mused.

“Usually we don’t,” he said as he ran his injured hand through his hair, leaving it spiking in a couple of places. “This was a special circumstance.”

I felt sad that I’d caused a rift between him and Seth. “I’m sorry this happened. I know how close you are. And I think he was only trying to be helpful, even though he was misguided.”

“I’ll get over it someday,” he said. “But right now, I can’t forgive and forget. This shit is too raw. I hate what happened to you, Skye.”

I sighed. I couldn’t blame him for being confused and angry. He’d missed way too much of his daughter’s life. But it really touched me that he’d obviously been ticked off about what had happened to my life, too.

“It’s over, Aiden. We can’t go back and redo it. Maya is a healthy, normal child. Both of us made it out of our situation relatively unscathed.”

Yeah, there were a few issues. The fact that I couldn’t seem to show my emotions out in the open came to mind.

And Maya hadn’t been raised in the best environment, even though I’d tried my hardest to shield her from the truth.

But I was determined to move on from my past.

He shot me a turbulent look. “Did you really come out unscathed?” he asked huskily. “You protected Maya. But who in the hell protected you? He beat you up, Skye. And he beat you down. You barely show any emotion about any of that.”

“Because I never could,” I said truthfully. “Showing emotion was a weakness I couldn’t afford, Aiden. Please understand that it isn’t that I don’t hate the bastard I married and divorced, and that I’m not pretty damn happy his ass is going to sit