Page 74 of Heat Exchange
“Don’t.” Lydia straightened and gave her sister a warm smile. “I’m happy for you. I really am, and you two need to be alone right now.”
“Can’t you stay with—” Ashley broke off, looking over her shoulder, and Lydia realized Ashley didn’t know the secret was out. Danny must not, either. Then, in a lower voice Ashley continued, “I’m sure you could find somebody else to stay with.”
“That’s not really...” Lydia let the words die away, not sure what to say. Playing house, even temporarily, with Aidan was a recipe for disaster as far as her emotions were concerned. “We’re not really heading in that direction and it’s probably best not to muddy the water.”
“I think you guys are a great couple.”
“That’s based on what, exactly? We haven’t been running around doing the couple thing where everybody can see us.”
Ashley shrugged. “No, but I’ve seen you together a couple of times at the bar, and I know you both well enough to know you’re probably great together.”
“Yeah, we are, I think.”
“So...what’s the problem?”
Lydia threw some more clothes in the bag, figuring they would be enough for a couple of days, and fell back on her standard excuse. “I don’t live here anymore, Ash. I just came here to help you out and now you won’t need me much longer.”
“You could live here again. Just don’t leave.”
It was that easy and also that hard, but she didn’t want to open that door with her sister. If Ashley knew Lydia was even considering staying in Boston, she’d never hear the end of it. “You’re missing the point, which is that I don’twantto live here anymore. The reasons I left are still valid reasons to leave again.”
“But now there’s Aidan.”
“He’s a firefighter.”
Ashley walked over and sat on the edge of the bed, trying to make Lydia look at her. “It wasn’t Todd’s job that destroyed your marriage. It was Todd.”
Lydia really wasn’t in the mood for an impromptu therapy session. “And then there’s Dad. Tell me it wasn’t hard being his daughter and I’ll tell you you’re full of shit. And Scotty. And everybody’s in everybody else’s business and the brotherhood and blah blah blah.”
“You see it as drowning you and I see it as buoying me and helping me float.”
Lydia gave her an arch look. “I seem to recall they were buoying you so much I had to come down here and fill in at Kincaid’s so you could have a minute of privacy to worry about yourself.”
“Touché.” Ashley stood and looked at the bag. “You really don’t have to go to Dad’s. You know he’s already in bed.”
“I still have my key. I’ll leave a note in his chair so when he gets up, he’ll know I’m there.”
“He’ll be cranky as hell if you wake him up.”
Lydia snorted. “He’s going to be so thankful to have Danny back in the family fold, he wouldn’t care if I showed up with a mariachi band.”
And she was right. Leaving the two lovebirds to get back to what they’d been doing before she interrupted them, Lydia drove to her dad’s house and parked behind his car. She’d leave her keys on the table in case he needed to move it, but owning a bar had trained the morning person out of him.
She thought she was quiet, but she was only halfway to her old bedroom—which had stayed a guest room—when her eyeballs were seared by a flashlight so bright, she wondered if he had it hooked to a car battery.
“Jesus, Dad, it’s me,” she said, trying to shield her eyes behind her hand. It clicked off and she blinked at the spots she’d probably be seeing for days.
“What the hell are you doing? What if I’d clocked you upside the head with a bat?”
“You think I’d just stand here and let you come at me with a bat? And I’m temporarily—very, very temporarily—going to stay in my old room.”
“You don’t call and ask? Maybe I turned it into a craft room.”
She snorted. “Yeah, you’re crafty, all right. And if you don’t want me staying here, that’s fine. An hour and a half from now, I can be back in my own bed in my own apartment and you can tend your own damn bar.”
“You always did have a fresh mouth.”
“Gee, I wonder where I got that from.”
