AIDEN
I tried to stand through the tuxedo fitting patiently, but I wasn’t the type of guy who had an easy time standing still.
I can do this for Jade.
My baby sister was getting married at the end of the summer.
Brooke had been first.
And now Jade was tying the knot with the man Seth and I had just partnered with to amass what we hoped would eventually be the biggest building-and-real-estate business in the world.
Truth be told, I liked Eli Stone and so did Seth. But I wasn’t crazy about being part of the wedding party.
Best man.
I’d gotten the supposed honor of standing up for Eli since most of his close friends were out of state. The majority of them were planning on attending, but couldn’t be around for all of the other festivities.
“Ouch!” I said grumpily as another errant pin stuck me in the ass.
“Sorry, Mr. Sinclair. Almost done,” the female who was altering the monkey suit said in a remorseful voice.
“Not a big deal,” I grumbled, feeling bad that I’d bit her head off.
But I wasn’t exactly in a serene mood.
My gaze was drawn to the other side of the room for about the hundredth time since I’d arrived at the tailor’s.
As usual, my eyes locked onto the hottest blonde I’d ever seen. Actually, I’d done far more to the woman’s body years ago than ogle it. I’d once been deep inside her virginal form, and my dick wasn’t ever going to let me forget it.
Skye Weston, Jade’s bridesmaid, had once been the only woman I wanted.
Now, she was the only female I wanted to forget.
“All done, sir,” the seamstress said. “If you can take it off carefully, I can get it altered.”
“Yeah. Got it,” I told her as I strode back into a dressing room, and then breathed a sigh of relief once I was back into a pair of jeans and a sweater.
I’d spent my entire adult life working as a longline commercial fisherman, sometimes working fourteen to eighteen hours a day for trips that could last over two months.
I wasn’t exactly into tuxedos and cocktail parties, even though I was, through some damn miracle I still didn’t completely accept, a billionaire.
Somehow I knew I’d probably always be a fisherman at heart. Maybe I’d clean up well, but I’d never quite be as casual in a tux as somebody like Eli Stone.
I exited the dressing room just in time to see Skye coming out of hers in a pair of jeans and a green sweater that I already knew matched her eyes.
Get over it, Sinclair.
My relationship with her happened a long time ago. It had been almost a decade. But for some reason, she was the only woman I wished had stayed.
Maybe I was still pissed that she left me while I was out on a long-haul trip. If I wanted to be reasonable, it wasn’t easy dating a guy like me. I had been at sea more than I was home, and I’d made shit for money. But the funds I’d taken in had helped raise my siblings, so I couldn’t ever regret doing it.
Just talk to her so you can both be civil for Jade’s wedding.
Not a single word had passed between me and Skye since she’d moved back to Citrus Beach from San Diego. Strangely, she’d appeared to be just as angry as I was, and had dissed me every time we ran into each other.
I stopped next to her instead of going for the door. “Hello, Skye,” I greeted her cautiously.
Her face looked tense as she stared at me. “Aiden,” she acknowledged.
“Look, I know that we have an unpleasant past, but can we just get along until Jade’s wedding is over?” I asked huskily. “Our relationship was over a long time ago, and we’ve both moved on.”
Christ! I’m such a liar.
Honestly, I really wanted to take her and shake her until she told me why the hell she’d married another guy, a man who had evidently put her and her daughter through hell. Shit! I would have been a better choice, even though I’d been poor. At least I wasn’t part of an organized-crime ring. And I’d cared about her.
She turned her head, her eyes darting away from mine. “I’m not over it, and you know why,” she said in a sharp tone I’d never heard her utter. “But I have no problem trying to be civil for Jade’s sake. Now I have to go. I have a daughter to pick up from school.”
“What in the hell did I do?” I asked in an angry voice. “You left me, remember?”
“Obviously you have a memory problem,” she answered as she put on her lightweight jacket. “I’ll see you at the wedding.”
I gaped at her as her shapely ass marched out the door.
“What the fuck?” I said under my breath.
She has no damn reason to hate me. I didn’t replace her with another woman. She dumped me while I was out to sea.
If there was one thing I knew, it was that Skye was a realist. And she wasn’t prone to drama. At least, she hadn’t been.
Something’s not right.
I strode to the door and exited just in time to see the back of her car as she drove away.
Why the fuck do I care?
Skye Weston was nothing to me anymore.
I put my hands in the pockets of my jeans, determined that I wasn’t going to give a shit about why she seemed to blame me for our breakup.
But as I headed for my vehicle, I knew damn well I was lying to myself.
Skye had haunted me for years, so I was going to figure out exactly what she was thinking. I just wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to do it.