Once Upon a New Year's Eve by Kait Nolan

Author:Kait Nolan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Kait Nolan
Published: 2017-01-24T09:32:11+00:00

~*~

“I’m sorry.” What else could he say but that? In his own rush for self-preservation, he’d hurt her.

Color rode high in Gemma’s cheeks and she refused to look at him. He had to fix this.

“I wish you’d stayed.” Aaron laid a hand over hers, felt her fingers jump.

Her eyes cut to their linked hands before looking away again. “Why?”

“So I could’ve at least explained.”

“You didn’t owe me an explanation. It was obvious enough.”

He’d thought it was, but if she’d spent all these years blaming herself, maybe she hadn’t actually noticed. “It wasn’t you. At least not for the reasons you think.” If she bared her embarrassment, he could bare his.

“What? Did you have a girlfriend you’d neglected to mention?” she scoffed.

“No. Do you have any idea how hard I had to work to remember who you were?”

Now she did look at him, brow furrowed. “Who I was?”

“Your family invited me out to your cabin. You were Rick’s little sister. I was not supposed to notice you beyond that. But you were smart and funny and had these legs that should’ve been illegal.”

He’d wanted that direct gaze again, and he had it. “You noticed my legs?”

“Hard not to. I’ve got eyes in my head, don’t I?”

“They’re just legs. You stand on them.”

“Trust me when I tell you, they’re not just legs. Which is neither here nor there, because I shouldn’t have noticed them, shouldn’t have thought about them or you.”

“Why?”

“Because no matter how mature you were, you were fifteen. I was twenty. Way too old for you. If Rick had known what went through my head when I looked at you, he’d have been duty-bound to kick my ass. And he’d have been absolutely right to do it.”

Gemma stared at him, as if she couldn’t quite process what he’d said. “You…actually liked me?”

Like. Such a pale, innocent sort of word. It felt less damning than the alternatives.

“Yes, I liked you.”

“Then why…”

“That game of Twister got us in close quarters, exactly as you intended.” He’d ended up pinned beneath her. “You started to kiss me and I had a…very…human response.”

“Running away was a human response?”

“Gemma,” he said, exasperated, “you’re a smart woman. I find you incredibly attractive. My very human response to that was why I essentially ran away.” And if she didn’t stop looking at him like that, he was going to have another. Shifting in his chair, Aaron took a swig of his beer to wet his dry mouth.

He saw the moment she caught on. Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. “Oh.” A faint flush of color bloomed across her cheeks.

“It was completely and totally inappropriate, and I was embarrassed. So I jumped ship. It was never about you doing anything wrong.”

“Well,” she said after a pause, “that’s…illuminating.”

God. He actually felt the embarrassment crawling up his neck and twitched his shoulders as if he could shrug it off. “When I found out you were gone, I thought you left because you were…freaked out or thought I was trying something.

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