Chapter Five

AIDAN BLACKWOOD WALKED inside Redwood Cafe, intending to grab breakfast before heading down to the police station. He saw its temporary manager Elizabeth inside the counter, and he was about to call out a greeting when he realized who the younger woman was talking to.

Shit.

He wasn't really a fan of McDonald's, but at this point, even dreary mushy cereal would do than the possible danger that lay ahead. Stealth was the key, Aidan thought, and so he slowly and silently started his retreat, hoping to get out of harm's way before—-

Elizabeth caught sight of the police chief and grinned at the way the police chief was trying to escape unnoticed. "Good morning, Chief!"

Aidan froze.

Shit.

And what he feared would happen did happen as he saw the petite brunette on one of the counter seats swing to face him. Shit , he thought again even as he summoned a smile in greeting for his brother's employee.

Blake beamed back at her beloved's twin. "Chief Blackwood, hello!"

"Morning, Blake, Elizabeth."

The last one came with a glare that promised retribution, but this only had Elizabeth grinning. Men were just wussies when it came to heart-to-heart talks, and apparently even Hartland's princely police chief was no exception.

Blake started chatting as soon as Elizabeth was done taking the chief's orders, and Blake was still happily at it when she came back to serve Aidan's coffee and pancakes. The only difference was this time, the police chief's smile had turned stoic while Blake went on pestering him about the possibility of Thornton falling in love with her.

The girl had asked Elizabeth the same thing, too, actually, and while she always did enjoy talking to Blake, she did have work to do—-

" Finally ."

Large strong hands clasped Elizabeth's waist the moment she entered the kitchen, and she could only giggle as Arden spun her around to face him.

"Don't get me wrong," he grumbled. "Blake's nice and all, but she does tend to monopolize you."

Elizabeth burst out laughing, but the sound was quickly muffled by Arden's mouth covering hers.

"I have ten minutes to ravish you," he murmured against his fiancée's lips.

"B-b-but—-"

Arden didn't give her a chance to argue. He had been waiting all morning, and now that the chief had Blake occupied...

Oh God. Elizabeth's eyes involuntarily drifted shut as she felt Arden's fingers squeezing her breasts just the way she liked it. And when his fingers moved to her nipples... oh God. All other thoughts disappeared as she looped her arms around Arden's neck and gave in to his demands.

Ten minutes , didn't he say they had?

Arden's lips trailed down the side of her neck as she felt him reach under her skirt.

Oh God , it was going to be ten really fantastic minutes.

AIDAN'S EARS WERE STILL ringing with all of Blake's gushing and nagging when he walked inside his office and found it already occupied by a scowling carbon copy of him.

Thornton heard a groan behind him and turned in his seat to see his older twin standing by the doorway, a grimace on his face.

"Let me guess," Aidan said with a sigh. "You want to talk about Blake?"

Thornton's gaze narrowed. "She talked to you first?"

"She nearly talked my head off is what you meant, right?"

"What exactly did she say?" Thornton asked as Aidan slid into his seat behind the desk.

"How about you tell me first what you came here for?" his twin bargained.

Thornton snorted. "I think you already know."

"Just humor me—-"

"She knows I want her," Thornton said abruptly.

Aidan had a hard time keeping his face straight. "Ah, yes, she did tell me she had seen, er, hard evidence of that."

Thornton's answering wince was much more than Aidan could ever hope for, and he couldn't help grinning. "You want her that bad, Thorn?"

An incoherent growl, which the police chief simply took as another form of assent.

"Just wish she'd stop," Thornton forced himself to admit between clenched teeth.

"Stop what?"

"Trying her damnedest to seduce me."

Aidan gaped at his brother. "That's your problem? A nice, pretty girl is doing her best to get you into bed with her? Is that why you've come down to the police station for?" Aidan asked sarcastically. "You want to file a complaint against your shop assistant for having a crush on you?"

He saw his brother's jaw clamp shut at his quip, but that was it. Thornton only stared at him, and that was answer enough. Most people assumed his younger twin was a rather complex being to understand, but actually, it was the opposite. Being a man of few words, Thornton could be expected to always respond with a swift yes or no to any question. His two short but grueling years in service, on the other hand, made Thornton a man of honor, and one could reliably expect his brother to always speak the truth.

As such, Thornton refusing to answer a question only meant one thing.

"Why are you having such a hard time admitting to the fact that you want her?"

Thornton struggled to put his thoughts into words. "I'm having a hard time understanding why...she likes me so much. How she could like me so much...from the start. It doesn't...make sense."

And that was the crux of the matter , Aidan realized. Even when they were kids, Thornton had always been the type to rationalize things. Applying reason and logic had been his twin's way of processing their parents' indifference and, later on, their untimely death, and it had also been Thornton's coping mechanism when encountering the unspeakable atrocities of war.

Only Blake's instant attraction to him had defied logic , Aidan thought ruefully, thus his twin's instinctive resistance. A pity, really: if only Blake had played it just the slightest bit coy the way other women did, then she wouldn't have had any problems getting Thornton to admit his feelings.

But if she had been like other girls, she might not have captured Thornton's interest from the start. She might never have been hired in the first place even, and so there couldn't have been a chance for Aidan's twin to gradually become attracted to her.

"Aidan." Impatience faintly edged Thornton's tone. "I know you've figured things out."

"Not that easy," his twin answered with a grimace, "since this is you we're talking about."

"Just say it."

"Alright." Aidan leveled a look at his twin. "To start with - you do acknowledge that she likes you. Right?" He saw Thornton actually seem to seriously consider the question and almost groaned. "For fuck's sake, man."

Thornton scowled. "It just—-"

"Doesn't make sense, I know." Aidan was exasperated. "But for this to work, how about we set all reason aside for now and start with the premise that she does like you."

"She's young," Thornton muttered. "And she's never had a boyfriend. There's a possibility that she's misunderstanding—-"

" Thorn ," Aidan growled.

Thornton threw his hands up. Whatever. If Aidan believed acknowledging the girl's feelings for him as real was the only way to get the ball rolling, alright then.

Aidan could already see Hartland's collective population shaking its head at Thornton's sheer denseness. One only had to be in Blake's company for five minutes to know just how head over heels she was for his twin, and it wasn't just because she enjoyed wearing her heart on her sleeve. She also loved talking about it - a lot - to the point that people tended to make up excuses to leave the moment she mentioned Thornton's name.

It was exactly what happened earlier, actually. Their younger brother Ethan, along with his close friend Doctor Ronan Slater, had dropped by at the cafe, and the moment they heard Blake saying Thornton's name, the two men had practically tripped over each other in their haste, wanting to leave before Blake could see them.

"Fine, she likes me," Thornton was saying in a hard tone. "What next?"

"And you like her back, correct?"

"Not at first." Thornton's tone was discomfited. "But yeah, eventually."

"And that's what's bothering you, isn't it?" Aidan carefully pointed out. "That things didn't really start out the same time for the both of you?"

Thornton grunted.

"So if you were to do something about it, and your suspicions about her not really liking you turns out to be true, then you'd have made your life unnecessarily complicated." He only got another grunt in response, but Aidan was far from bothered. With his twin, answers that were anything less than straightforward automatically meant he was winning the argument.

"You're holding yourself back on the presumption that her interest in you is just a passing fancy, but what if I can prove to you that it wasn't?" Aidan challenged.

"If that only means you're simply going to ask her—-"

"Actually," Aidan cut his twin off, "I was going to ask you something."

Thornton frowned.

"Have you never wondered how countless women have thrown themselves at you," Aidan murmured, "but you were never bothered about taking what's on offer...regardless of how they truly felt about you?" He saw Thornton shift in his seat, a sign that he was finally getting somewhere with his brother, and Aidan didn't hesitate to press his advantage.

"I know most of the locals who don't know about your past think you've led a monk-like existence all this time. But we both know the truth. You were as much as a womanizer as most of us were—-"

Thornton raised a sardonic brow at his brother. " Were ?"

The police chief simply shrugged . "Still are then," he corrected himself, unconcerned. "Point is, you were like us. Women meant nothing to you. And yet Blake..." He let his voice trail off, and not even a second had passed when his twin reached the same conclusion.

"She was different from the start," Thornton said reluctantly.

"Exactly." Aidan leaned back against his seat. Thornton might not have been consciously aware of it at that time, but he had been interested in Blake from the start...the way Blake had fallen for him at first sight.

Thornton rubbed his jaw. "I never realized..."

"That's fine, man," Aidan dismissed. "What matters is what you plan to do now."

"Nothing, I guess. That's the best thing to do, don't you think?"

"That is—-" Aidan stilled. "Wait. What? You're going to do nothing?"

His brother stared at him. "What else should I do? If it's what you said, and things might also be a passing fancy for me for some reason, then time alone will tell, won't it?"

How the fuck had Thornton come to that conclusion?

But his brother was already getting up from his seat.

"Sorry I had to bother you about this," Thornton said gruffly. "But I get it now."

It was only when the door closed behind Thornton that Aidan finally snapped out of his shock. What the fuck? Like seriously - what the fuck? He had intended to get Thornton to give Blake a chance, so how the fuck had he ended up convincing his brother to stay away from her instead?