Happy Mother's Day!

‘Not everything,’ he said. Again he heard a note of flirtation which was unintended. Okay, so maybe this time it was.

Maybe he wanted to know if she realised that he had taken a huge leap in inviting her out for coffee. The night before he’d confessed to her about Dinah, and he was all but sure she wasn’t oblivious to the effect she had on him.

Siena blinked back at him. His whole body warmed under her direct gaze before she grabbed the jar of sugar and twirled the cut glass distractedly around and around between her palms.

‘What can I getcha?’ the waitress—who looked as though she had probably worked there back in the day—asked when she arrived at their table.

‘Two cappuccinos and two breakfast specials?’ James asked.

‘Perfect,’ Siena said shortly, all her earlier ease dissipated. Something had definitely spooked her. She wasn’t the same free and easy girl from the day before. Now she looked as nervous as he felt.

The waitress gave them a smile and a wink, before tucking her notebook in the waist of her skirt and her pencil back behind her ear and sauntering off to the kitchen.

And then they were alone. Alone. On a date. Of sorts. James and a girl. A woman. A lovely woman. A woman who was obviously for some reason second-guessing being there with him.

As Siena looked about the room, her skittish glance landing on everything but him, he wondered what the hell he had been thinking when he’d woken up that morning.

But, since he had always been pathologically intent on making the best of things, he asked, ‘What did you call your brother earlier? Rigatoni?’

As intended, the sideways barb at her brother brought about a flash of a smile. She shoved the sugar back against the wall and started flicking through the pile of paper napkins.

‘My brother and cousin and I were all named after towns in Tuscany,’ she said, ‘where our parents were all born. Rick is Riccione. My cousin Ash is actually Asciano, and I am, well, Siena.’

He had to stop himself from reaching out and laying a hand over hers to stop her fidgeting, but her nerves were all of a sudden running so hot he had the feeling she might spontaneously combust if he tried.

‘It’s a beautiful name,’ he said, trying to get a reaction from her that wasn’t born of nervous tension. She was giving off so much energy that even his usually solid on the ground feet tapped beneath the table. ‘It suits you.’

Her mouth curled in what was meant to be a smile, but to him it seemed more of a sort of grimace, and he felt himself deflating.

He’d made a huge mistake.

He’d been reading into things she had said and done that simply mustn’t have been there. Maybe she was just a really good listener and it had been such a long time since he’d talked to anyone about his life, bar his blog. Just because he felt things, new things, deep down things, when he was with her, didn’t mean she felt the same way.

He’d gone way out of his comfort zone, relying on gut instinct rather than on what he had been told by experts would be best for him and Kane, and it seemed his instincts weren’t what they used to be.

He was fast thinking that science left a lot to be desired when Siena suddenly looked his way. Like a heat-seeking missile that had found its target, their gazes clashed, jolted, and told James a lot more about the situation than either of them were likely to admit aloud after such a short acquaintance.

He felt as though fireworks were going off in his stomach. And he knew then that he hadn’t in fact been thinking a whole lot when he’d woken up that morning. Not with his head, anyway.

Siena couldn’t look away. It was the train wreck thing again. James’s eyes were still masked by a layer of melancholy, but there was an almost grim determination behind them today. As if he had seen a way through the sadness and had latched on for all his might.

And, though she was deadly afraid that he mistakenly thought that she might be the way through, nobody had ever looked at her that way before.

She was the delinquent little sister, the aggressively ambitious worker or the exotic Aussie stranger in town for one night only. Reflected in his soulful eyes she saw herself as so much more.

No. Nope. Na-uh. Bad news.

She never should have used him as an escape route from Rick, after he had confided in her about Dinah and especially after reading what he had written in his blog the night before.

But she had been so caught up in his scent and the feel of her hand hooked into his strong arm and the promise of a trip on the Skyrail that she had blissfully forgotten that James was not a casual friendship guy.

He was a guy with roots and responsibility and a family, and she was a walking disaster. A destroyer of families. A deserter. Too much hard work. And someone who could not be trusted to take on the responsibility of someone else’s life.

She had to turn him away, gently but in such a way that he knew it was for the best. So she said the one thing she knew would do it.

‘Tell me more about Dinah.’

She waited for him to hang his head in sadness, but his deep grey eyes remained clear and locked on to hers.