No Strings__ - By Janelle Denison Page 0,48
that both of his boys would follow in his footsteps.” Aiden absently swirled his wine in his glass. “At least my brother continued the proud family tradition, and while my father and brother still give me a hard time about being the black sheep of the family, it’s all in good humor.”
Her eyes glimmered with amusement, and she tipped her head curiously. “Does your brother at least enjoy being a police officer?”
“He did,” Aiden said, then seeing the questions in her gaze, he explained, “A few years ago Sam was shot on the job, and the injury made him reassess what he wanted to do. Now he’s a private investigator with his own business, so while he’s technically self-employed, he still has some involvement with law enforcement.”
She pushed her pasta and chicken around on her plate, then found a carrot and stabbed it with her fork to eat. “He seems like a nice guy.”
“Nice is being generous,” he said, though there was a rumble of affection in his voice for his brother. “Mostly, he’s a pain in the ass.”
“I suppose siblings can be a pain sometimes,” she said softly, and drained the rest of the wine from her glass.
He heard the wistful note in her voice, reminding him that she was an only child, with a mother who hadn’t been an ideal parent. “It’s your turn to tell me something I don’t already know about you,” he said, refilling her glass with more Pinot Grigio and topping off his own.
She leaned forward and whispered mischievously, “I love reading romance novels. The hotter and sexier they are, the better. It’s like mind candy after a long day at the office.”
Her sexy secret definitely intrigued him, because he would have pegged her for a straight literary fiction kind of girl. “So, you like books with hot sex and a happily-ever-afters?”
She shrugged and placed her fork on her plate, finished with her meal. “It’s nice to believe that it’s possible.”
“You don’t?”
A small smile touched her lips. “Well, considering my mother’s track record, and my own with Neil, I think I’m better off making my own happiness.”
Despite her past experience, he wanted to give her something to believe in. “My parents are still married after thirty-five years, so it’s definitely possible.”
“And you’re divorced.”
Her words were direct and to the point, leaving him little choice but to address her statement. “That doesn’t mean I don’t think I could be happy and settled with someone else who has the same goals and ideals that I do.”
She relaxed back in her chair, her eyes meeting his for a moment over the rim of her wineglass as she took a drink. “Was that the problem between you and your ex-wife?” she asked, digging a little deeper. “Incompatibility?”
Aiden had managed to avoid this particular conversation with Chloe numerous times, and he was tempted to evade the discussion now. His marriage and divorce wasn’t something he liked to talk about, with anyone, but she’d shared so much with him this past week, he felt compelled to do the same now. And maybe, by getting his own past out in the open it would help to serve as a reminder of why things with Chloe could never work out beyond this temporary affair.
“Paige and I actually had a lot in common,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant, even though he knew this conversation was going to dredge up emotions he’d rather not relive. “On the surface, we enjoyed the same things, and had the same interests. She was a defense attorney, so we both had careers in the corporate world that required drive and ambition to succeed. But I never had a clue just how cut-throat she really was.”
He rubbed a hand along his jaw, feeling a familiar tension twist through him. “Before we got married, we talked about having a family, and we both agreed we wanted kids after a year or so. But every time I brought up the subject of having a baby, she said she wasn’t ready because her career was really starting to take off. I understood and backed off, but when one year turned into two and she claimed she still wasn’t ready to have a baby, the issue became a huge source of contention between us.”
“I could imagine,” Chloe said softly, as if she truly sympathized with the situation. And him.
“The more we fought, the colder and more distant Paige became,” he went on, hating this next part but forcing himself to tell her