Begin Again novel Chapter 67

An hour later, as Eden went through her evening routine with Aiden, she was still reeling from her hot encounters with his father.

"Ducky!" Her son screeched with excitement as he held up his bath toys and splashed water everywhere, and for a little while, Eden just watched him play, floored by the immense love she felt for him. 

His father might be an asshole half the time, but he knew how to please her for sure, and it's only a matter of time before she crawled back to him, begging to be pleased like he was so convinced she will.

Mortified at the direction her thoughts were taking, She mentally shook herself, "No!"

She couldn't and shouldn't allow this thing between her and Liam to burn out of control like Clara warned her it would. 

He's married, and he still hated her. However painful they were to accept, those two facts hadn't changed; no matter how intense his desire for her had grown over the past month.

It's true what they say, she thought as she scooped Aiden out of the tub and wrapped him in his bath towel. The longer you deny yourself something, the more you want it. 

She'd denied Liam her time, denied herself his attention, and now they were both like horny teenagers, ready to tear each other's clothes off the minute they're alone in a room.

"—Eden?" Brenda snapped her out of her daze, as she took Aiden from her to get him dressed. "I asked what you want to eat tonight. What should I make?" 

Emotionally exhausted from her encounters with Liam, all Eden wanted was to crawl into bed and compartmentalise and sort through her very messy feelings for the man. Food was the last thing on her mind. 

"I think I'll skip dinner tonight. And you're more than welcome to take the evening off." 

"Are you sure?" The nanny asked. 

"Hundred percent." Eden nodded. 

She didn't need to tell her twice or convince her. Forty-five minutes later, Brenda was all dressed up and ready for a night on the town with her boyfriend, a freight trucker who's on the road half the month. He was in town for the week, and the nanny was grateful for the time off. 

"Guess who's getting laid tonight?" Brenda squealed with excitement as she grabbed her handbag from the kitchen counter and dabbed on some lipstick. "This girl right here!"

"Lucky you!" Eden laughed, but as she and Aiden watched Brenda sail off into the sunset with her man, she couldn't help but sigh wistfully, thinking about her dismal sex life.

She picked up her son, and they went back inside the house and warmed up his food. It took half the evening to get him to finish the bowl of mashed potatoes and pumpkin. By the time he was done, they were both upset with each other. 

Angry as he was with her, Aiden couldn't pass up storytime. He ran to the bedroom to get his books, and they spent a few minutes on the living room floor reading and looking through the illustrations.

Bored with the books, at last, Aiden pushed them away and tinkered around in his toy box.

"No!" He shook his head, "Dad!"

Oh boy, Eden smiled, thinking she'd just made a big mistake teaching him the word. 'Dad' was now well on the way to being a firm favourite in his growing vocabulary.

Her smile faltered when she clicked on a photo of Liam, and the blond she was pretty sure was the same woman she saw him with at Crush, dated three years earlier.

They appeared to be at some fancy event because they were dressed in formal wear, the usual tux for him and a champagne A-Line gown for the blond. But it's the caption that smashed her heart to pieces—'Liam Anderson with rumoured fiancé, Laura Stone'.

"Well, well," Eden whispered, her heart exploding to smithereens in her chest the longer she stared at the photo taken exactly a year before she ran into Liam at Crush.

If what he said that night is true, and Laura was his fiancé then, rumoured or otherwise, she wasn't wrong about him at all, and she'd made the right decision when she chose to keep her distance; he's married at worst, or in a committed long term relationship at best.

Eden wanted to look away from the photograph, but Laura Stone was like a scene of a traffic collision. The horror that is her beauty— her clear sun-kissed skin, her luscious blonde locks and the large luminous green eyes—lured her in and no matter how hard Eden wanted to or tried to, she couldn't look away. 

But that wasn't even the worst of it all. 

The worst was the realisation that she's so ordinary, so banal, so basic compared to Laura. There was absolutely no reason why a man like Liam— with his status, wealth, and power—would even want her if he didn't have his weird dysfunction.