Page 59 of Finally Mine
He stepped closer. “I don’t need someone cleaning my place out of pity.”
“AndIdon’t need someone acting like an asshole when I was simply doing something nice,” Gloria snapped back, eyes flashing.
For as long as he’d known her, Aldo had never seen a flash of temper from Gloria. It was impressive. And sexy.
She stomped around him, heading for the door, an impressive feat in flip-flops. He hadn’t been this close to her for months. Every sense was alive and reporting back to him in emergency messages. She smelled like cookies and lemon. Her voice, that hint of huskiness, hit him in the chest while his eyes drank her in. She had her short hair pinned up and back, leaving her face unframed. Everything about her was still so delicate. The bone structure, the graceful curve of her slim neck.
The hand that snaked out and closed around her wrist surprised them both. He stared down at his fingers wrapped around her soft skin, wondering what in the hell possessed him to grab her like that.
“I just want to be left alone,” he said quietly. Standing there, looking into the eyes of the woman he had some serious feelings for, Aldo realized exactly how Luke felt with Harper in his home.Conflicted.
Gloria tugged her hand free. “Welcome home, Aldo,” she snapped. Her tone indicating anything but welcome. “You’re welcome for watering your damn plants and baking you a damn pie and cleaning your damn house. Rest assured it won’t happen again.”
She opened his front door and glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, and you can pick up your own damn vacuum cleaner.”
The slam of the front door had Aldo hanging his head. Alone. It was what he wanted. What he needed. And the sooner everyone else got used to it, the better.
His mind was an ugly place these days, and it was better for everyone if he kept to himself.
He pulled out his phone and dialed.
“Why the hell did you tell Gloria I was moving back this weekend?” Aldo demanded.
“Why? Was she there when you got there? Did you talk to her? Did you apologize for being a big, stupid asshole?” his mother demanded.
“You set this up!” He was going to have to either murder her or pack her shit and send her to Boca. Whatever it took to get this woman out of his life.
“Well, someone has to have your best interests at heart! If you don’t snap out of this poor me funk, you’re going to stay there, and then no one will want to marry you, and I’ll never get a grandchild.”
Aldo swiped a hand through his hair. “Since when the hell do you want grandkids?” A family now was so far down his priority list it was almost laughable. He’d deployed with the intent of coming home and settling down. Now that he was home, the only thing he wanted was to be left the fuck alone.
“Since I thought you were finally settling down with a nice, smart girl that I don’t hate. She brings me cookies, Aldo! Cookies!”
Leave it to his mother to play matchmaker over baked goods. “Stop interfering with my life!” he shouted into the phone.
“Stop interfering with my cookies!” she shouted back.
“I want to be left alone, Ma,” Aldo enunciated slowly.
“Well, tough shit. Until you get right in the head, I’m going to make it my life’s mission to guide you in the right direction.”
“Stay out of it, Ma!”
“Make me, dumbass!”
34
“Ishould have said ‘I deserve better.’ No, wait. I should have demanded better.” Gloria’s bedroom ceiling was annoyingly impassive. She’d gone to bed early. But her thoughts were still roiling with all of the things she could have, should have, said to Aldo Moretta earlier.
The stupid, sexy, haunted jerk.
One look at him, all scruffy and gruff, and she’d wanted to run down the stairs and jump into his arms. Then he’d had to open his mouth and be New Aldo. New, angry, wounded Aldo. He didn’t want her anywhere near him. He’d made it abundantly clear on two occasions now.
Sheshouldjust let it go.
“But he owes me an apology,” she argued with the ceiling. And an explanation. Gloria wanted to hear the words explaining why he went from wanting to date her to wanting nothing to do with her. She wanted him to spell it out for her, and then she wanted her chance to tell him he was an ass.
She heard a knock on her front door and kicked the covers off.
