Page 49 of The Rules of Their Red-Hot Reunion

‘I’m really sorry about last night, Aisha.’ God, did she hear the sincerity in his voice? He hoped so.

‘Apologising means nothing if you don’t change your actions, Pasco.’

He winced at her freezer-cold tone and instantly knew he’d need a miracle because he’d screwed up. Big time.

Five minutes...why hadn’t he taken five damn minutes to call her? What the hell was wrong with him?

Aisha walked past his legs to open the fridge, but his arm shot out and he pulled her to stand between his legs, resting his forehead on her flat stomach. God, she smelled good, her scent cutting through the smell of smoke in his nose.

‘Pasco’s burned down last night,’ he bluntly told her. ‘The fire started just after five, we got it under control around eight, eight-thirty.’

When she stepped back, he noticed her eyes were wide with shock. ‘Pasco’s burnt down?’

He rubbed a hand over his eyes. ‘You really didn’t know? I thought you would’ve heard by now—news travels fast in this valley.’

‘I’ve only been here for two months. I’m not plugged into the gossip line,’ Aisha explained, her eyes reflecting sympathy and shock. ‘I’m so sorry. When? How?’

Pasco filled her in on the details and by the time he was finished, his coffee was cold. Needing the caffeine hit, he put his cup under the spout of the coffee machine and blasted it with steam. ‘Between you and me, I think it was Jason.’

Aisha’s eyebrows flew up. ‘Jason? The guy you recently let go?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You think he set fire to your place because you fired him?’

‘And because I laid criminal charges against him for theft,’ Pasco told her, his voice hard. ‘He’s a hothead, I can easily see him getting drunk and doing something stupid like this. And the fire, so they think, started in the office area. It burned hottest there.

‘Didn’t you hear me tell you about the fire when I called you last night?’ Pasco asked, gripping the bridge of his nose.

She shook her head. ‘No, I heard the noise in the background but not much else. You called from someone else’s phone.’

‘I used my brother’s,’ he replied, wincing when he remembered the many text messages and missed call alerts that came through when his phone was recharged. ‘I tried to call you later, but your phone was off.’

‘I switched it off when I left the restaurant,’ Aisha said, her tone flat.

Of course she had, and he didn’t blame her. He looked at her and shook his head. Despite her hurt, despite him treating her like an afterthought, sympathy brimmed in her eyes. He was starting to think—know andbelieve—he wasn’t good enough for her, that he could never make her happy.

The thing was, he was like his dad...selfish, hyper-focused, ruthlessly determined. Okay, he made good monetary decisions instead of bad, combined the determination he inherited from his father with extreme hard work, but at their essence, they were the same. Selfish, relentless, rigid. And both he and his dad had the ability to fall in love with a woman far too good for them. Pasco felt his stomach turn into a lead ball, nausea climbing up his throat. He couldn’t help noticing his muscles seemed to be losing strength, that his hands were trembling.

Aisha needed to be his priority, for him to put her first, but as last night proved, when the chips were down, he was too much like his father and unable to put her first. He couldn’t keep hurting her—it was unacceptable. He rubbed the back of his head, not sure what to say, to do. He couldn’t walk away, but neither could he stay. He wanted to bury himself inside her, lose himself in the taste of her mouth and the softness and fragrance of her skin, but he’d lost the right to touch her.

He stood in no man’s land, unable to step forward, and he couldn’t go back. He dropped his head, conscious of the burning sensation in his throat, his wetter than normal eyes.

Aisha placed her cup on the dining table and gripped the back of a chair with white-knuckled fingers. He had to look at her, noticing her brown eyes looked darker than usual. Her face was a couple of shades paler, and her mouth was flat with unhappiness.

She lifted her eyes to meet his and slowly shook her head. He braced himself.

‘When we first met, I told myself, told you, that we needed some rules, some guidelines to deal with each other. I told myself not to get involved with you, not to let the past colour the future. I didn’t listen.’

To be fair, he’d had the same thoughts, but neither did he listen to his inner voice.

‘I can’t do this, Pasco.’

Her words were what he’d been expecting since first realising that he’d stood her up last night. She wasn’t his young wife any more. She was a vibrant, smart woman who knew her own mind and he knew he’d pushed her too far, tested her limits, run out of chances. And he refused to hide behind the fire, use it as an excuse...he’d messed up. Badly. And he’d probably, because he was his father’s son, do it again.

Unacceptable.

He was done with hurting her. And if that meant walking away, then that was what he would do.

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