Maybe it was time she started thinking about her dreams again. But was she ready to take that next step? To go back home to Atlanta?
Dread coiled within her belly just at the thought.
“Stop it.” She punched the bread dough with more force than it warranted before flipping it over and kneading it. She worked the dough for another minute, then transferred it to a bowl.
The bell above the bakery’s front entrance clanged.
“Dammit,” Nyla whispered. She’d been meaning to turn the sign to closed for the past twenty minutes.
“Solo un minuto,” she called. She draped a moistened linen cloth over the bowl of dough and set it on the ledge of the wood-fired stone oven so the heat could help the dough rise. Wiping her hands on the apron tied around her waist, she walked over to the old CD player boom box Guido Leoncini kept in the kitchen and turned the volume down on her favorite holiday album, A Motown Christmas. Then she walked over to the retail area of Leoncini’s.
“Posso aiutarlo?” she asked the gentleman who stood with his hands in his pockets, his eyes fixed on the few loaves that remained on the shelves that lined the bakery’s right wall.
He turned and Nyla gasped.
“Aiden?”
She tried to close her mouth, but her slacked jaw wouldn’t cooperate. It was as if the pathway between her brain and the rest of her body was blocked, because despite telling herself to move, or at least say something else, for God’s sake, all she could do was openly stare.
An apprehensive smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” she replied.
Hey? After three years, that’s all two highly intelligent people could come up with? The absurdity of it nearly drew a hysterical laugh from her, or maybe it was just anxiety over the fact that he was actually standing here in front of her.
“You’re here,” she said, shifting from one foot to the other. She folded her arms over her chest and then quickly dropped her hands to her sides. Her nerves were so jumbled she didn’t know what to do with herself. “What are you doing here?”
With that trace of nervousness still evident in his eyes, he lifted one shoulder in an easy shrug. “I asked a couple of people on the street where I could find a good loaf of bread. Everyone pointed me to this place.”
A sharp, shocked laugh shot out of Nyla’s mouth, and, just like that, the trepidation that had caused her muscles to tense upon seeing him began to ease.
“I see your sense of humor is as healthy as ever,” Nyla said.
“You always said it was my best asset.”
She nodded. It was. Though he rarely let others see it. It was when he’d gradually started to reveal that side of himself to her that Nyla realized he saw her differently, as someone he could trust enough to share the real Aiden with. Her downfall had come when she began to reciprocate those feelings.
“So?” He tilted his head to the side and rubbed his jaw. “Do I at least get a hug?”
She hesitated for the briefest second before she closed the short distance between them and wrapped her arms around the man who, in what seemed like a lifetime ago, nearly became her brother-in-law.
If only he had not started to become so much more...
Nyla quickly released him and took a step back. She struggled to maintain her composure under his direct gaze, her hand self-consciously brushing a wayward strand of hair off her forehead.
“So, really, what are you doing here? Didn’t you mention that you were going back home for the holidays?”
A knowing grin eased up the corner of his lips. “So you do check out my Facebook page more often than you’ve been letting on.”
She cursed the heat that instantly rushed to her cheeks.
“Occasionally,” she admitted. “How else am I supposed to keep up with your asinine Doctor Who commentary?”
His smile broadened and Nyla’s lungs suddenly had the hardest time functioning. That smile had come to mean so much to her in such a short amount of time. And she’d missed it. She’d missed it so much more than she’d allowed herself to admit.
“I considered going home,” he said. “But I decided it didn’t make much sense to fly all the way to Atlanta when I have to be back in Zurich just after New Year’s Day. I figured I’d take these few days off to see a bit more of the continent.” His shrug was casual, but his deep brown eyes held a hint of uncertainty. “Is it okay that I’m here?”
Nyla considered his inquiry for a moment. He’d contacted her on several occasions over the past few weeks, asking if she would be willing to meet with him. She’d given the idea lip service, even going so far as to suggest lunch at her favorite café in Milan, halfway between Zurich and San Gimignano. But she’d already had excuses waiting in the wings for if and when he ever brought it up again.
There were no excuses to buy her any more time. Aiden was here.
“Of course it’s okay that you came,” Nyla finally said.
But even as the words left her mouth, a prickle of unease traveled along her nerve endings.
Since fleeing Atlanta three years ago she had worked to maintain a certain distance from anything that reminded her of the single most painful part of her past. Other than Rae, who had visited once since Nyla moved to Europe, she had not been near anyone else who had witnessed the humiliation she’d suffered on what should have been the happiest day of her life, her wedding day.
Her stomach clutched with the pain that never failed to strike whenever she thought about that day.
Her wedding day should have been the happiest of her life, but it wasn’t, and unlike what many probably suspected, it had nothing to do with her groom deciding not to show up. It was because, for months before her wedding day ever arrived, she had been living a lie.
It had taken Nyla a long time to acknowledge the feelings she’d denied for so long, feelings she’d started to have toward Aiden months before she’d fled from Georgia. While she was still engaged to his brother.
But that was a long time ago. She had worked through those issues and had come to terms with the mistakes she’d made. She could handle seeing Aiden again.
Reaching for his hands, Nyla captured them both and gave them a gentle but firm squeeze. “It really is good to see you again,” she said.
And she meant it. The price she’d paid for falling in love with him had been steep—it had upended her entire life. But she could not deny that the feelings had been real.
“It’s good to see you, too, Nyla.”
The earnestness in his voice, the sincerity in his eyes, the way he tightened his hold on her hands—it confirmed the one thing she feared she would find if they ever came face-to-face again. After three long years, nothing had changed. They were both still caught up in this forbidden love that had caused so much pain for so many.
Nyla dragged in a steadying breath as she extracted her hands from his hold.
Despite the warmth the stone oven delivered to the entire bakery, she rubbed up and down her arms. She was a heartbeat away from bursting out of her skin with the bevy of conflicting emotions that suddenly overwhelmed her.
She pointed to the door. “I should lock up. We’re actually closed.”
Mentally cursing the self-consciousness that made her hyperaware of every single move she made, she walked over to the door and flipped the open sign to closed.
In an attempt to steal a few moments to catch her breath, she stared out the window at the people making