It's Always Been You Read Online Free PDF Page B

and edged forward. His eyes glinted cool fury.
    When she’d known Aidan, he had not often lost his temper, but when he had, he’d become intractable. And he’d looked exactly like this.
    Kate sighed. “Good evening then,” she murmured. “And . . . please do not mention me to anyone. I am not Katie Tremont anymore. I no longer know my family and I do not wish to. Please.”
    He nodded and she turned to unlock the door. Her fingers were clumsy. It took her a moment to even find the keyhole. Just as her hand slipped off the key, she felt Aidan’s large presence draw close to her back, felt his warm fingers slide over her gloved hand.
    “Here.” His voice rumbled just inches from her ear as he guided the key into the lock. Kate twisted it, quick with panic, and pushed the door open. She moved to escape him, but before she’d shifted more than a few inches, before she could get free of his heat, that voice touched her ear again, impossibly soft. “I am so glad I found you.”
    A shiver slid up her spine, icy, feather-light. She closed the door behind her, not daring to even glance in his direction.

Chapter 5
    The third glass of whisky went down more quickly than the second. Aidan didn’t notice the subtle taste of peat and oak. All his subtler senses had deserted him hours before.
    Katie was not only alive, but she was here. Here, in his reach. He didn’t know what to feel about it. The strong veil of anger that overshadowed his other raging emotions surprised him. He actually felt angry that she was alive, ridiculous as it was. Angry that he’d been tortured by grief when she had been alive and well in India.
    Perhaps the well rankled most. It seemed as though she’d settled in nicely to her life on a coffee plantation, married to some faceless man. Surely, if she’d wanted to, she could’ve avoided the marriage. She could’ve turned to Aidan. She’d claimed to love him. She’d given herself to him.
    He chastised himself for the anger even as he gave in to it and raised his hand for another drink. She’d only been a child. Well, not quite a child perhaps, but at most a very, very young woman. She hadn’t reached her majority, and her father had refused Aidan’s offer. They could not have married, not for three years, at least.
    A curse escaped his lips. These thoughts were meaningless, futile, and yet they seemed unstoppable.
    He pictured Katie as she had been—confident, mischievous, daring. She had dazzled him, had even been slightly overwhelming in her exuberance. The very first time he’d seen her he’d been enchanted, captured by the contrast of her demure white dress and the sharp glint of humor sparkling through her eyelashes. She hadn’t even been out yet, had only been allowed to attend dinner at her family’s ball before being forced to bed before the dancing. But she’d been confident enough to smile in his direction and exchange a few pleasantries over dessert. And when her mother had ushered her quickly out at the end of dinner, his fate had been sealed. What young man could resist forbidden fruit?
    But how different she was now. She seemed to have grown into stillness. She was beautiful though; still lovely in a quiet way.
    Beautiful and married . Did she love the man?
    The question stuck in his mind, a barbed thorn, irritating and painful. Did she take her husband to her with the same breathless excitement she had Aidan? It was maddening to think so, despite the dozens of lovers he himself had entertained in the past years.
    Aidan snorted at the comparison. His nights with women had little enough to do with love. Nothing, actually, to do with it. That was the point—to keep as far away from love as possible.
    The fourth glass of whisky succeeded where the others had failed and actually quenched his thirst. Aidan stared at the last drops of amber liquid, at the dim light wavering through the thick glass. What did he really feel, underneath the anger and jealousy? The emotion was