“Stop talking,” Aiden muttered as two big arms swallowed my back whole. And then, he was hugging me. His biceps cradled my ribs as he pulled me into him, up to the tips of my toes. Our fronts seared together.
Tears clouded my eyes, but I closed them and gave Aiden one more squeeze before slowly sinking back to my heels. Gazing up at that handsome, severe face, I had to bite the insides of my lips to keep from grinning like a total lovesick idiot, which was exactly what I was.
In that moment, I don’t think I had ever loved anything half as much as I loved Aiden.
Sliding my hands from his neck over to his shoulders and finally down to those biceps I knew were perfectly sculpted from gawking at them so often, I patted him. Then I grabbed him and tried to shake him.
And then I started grinning all over again. So what if I looked like an airhead who was in love with a man she had married as part of a business relationship? I was, and I’d never been totally good at being anything other than me.
Of all the people I would ever want in my corner for moral support, here was the most unexpected one… and the biggest one. My friend. The keeper of my secrets. My moral support. My paperwork.
Plus, with reflexes like his, if anyone threw something at me, he could deflect it. Not that that would happen since hardly anyone even noticed I was there.
Thinking about having him in my corner didn’t help anything. It just made me want to cry, and now wasn’t the time. Hell, the next decade wasn’t the right time. I had to remember that even as my heart gave a little beat at the acknowledgment Aiden had shown up.
I slid my hands down his biceps to his elbows and finally to his wrists. “Are you going to stay for a little while?” I asked, trying not to build up too much hope. Maybe he had some kind of… something he’d come for besides me.
Turning his wrists, he slid his hands down until we were palm to palm. “I just flew four hours to get here. Who else would I be here for?”
I loved this man.
That was what I thought. What I said though was a completely different thing. “Okay, smart-ass. Let me grab a chair for you then,” I said, taking a step away before blinking at him. He really was standing there in the middle of a convention in his hoodie with a backpack on. He was here. Here.
With a squeak I hadn’t made since I was probably twelve, I threw my arms around Aiden’s arm and hugged him once more for a split second.
“Okay, I’ll be right back,” I said, loosening my hold and taking a step back to find him looking down at me with the strangest expression on his face.
“I’ll get one,” he muttered, tipping his head toward mine. A small smile creased the corners of that ultra-serious mouth. He dropped his chin. “Has anybody thrown anything at you?”
I crossed my eyes. “Not yet.”
Aiden blew out a breath and gave me that look that got on my nerves. “Told you.” He reached forward and tapped my elbow with his fingertips. “I’ll be right back.”
I wasn’t sure where he planned on getting a chair from, but if anyone got what he wanted, it was Aiden. He’d figure it out. With that thought, I crawled back under the table and took my seat again, suddenly feeling way more optimistic—and about eight hundred times happier—than I had minutes ago.
I’d barely plopped down and shuffled my seat forward when I realized that both of the authors on either side of me were staring. Literally staring. One of them even had her mouth open.
“Please tell me that’s not your brother,” the one whose mouth was actually closed, stammered out, her gaze zoomed in on the direction Aiden had disappeared to.
“That’s not my brother,” I said a little more smugly than what was necessary, my thumb rubbing over the top of my ring.
“Is that a model?” The one who was gaping practically panted. “Because he’s never hugged me like that before.” She hooked her thumb at the man sitting next to her, who was frowning while also facing where Aiden had gone.
I bit my cheek and tried to hold back my smile even as my soul rejoiced with Aiden! He’s here! “No.”
Both women just looked at me a blankly for so long I reached up to fiddle with the leg of my glasses, feeling a little awkward.
The male model finally leaned around the author he was sitting with. “That’s Aiden Graves, isn’t it?”
And, of course, someone was going to immediately recognize him. I’d seen an ad of him at the airport the night before.
“Who’s that?” the author on my left asked.
“The Wall of Winnipeg. The best defensive player in the NFO,” the guy answered, his gaze bouncing between the spot Aiden had gone and me, his expression more than a little curious. “Are you writing a book about him?” he asked, and I swear I almost rolled my eyes. The sign behind me with my name on it clearly said I did graphic design. Plus, we were at a romance convention. I didn’t know I wrote biographies.
“No,” the familiar, deep voice answered unexpectedly, right before he dropped a metal chair into place right next to me. “She’s mine.”
And he went for it.
My heart went for it too—over the cliff that is.
I thought—
Well it didn’t matter what I thought. Or why’d he’d gone with that instead of going with any other answer except the slightly painful truth. Painful because my insides clung onto the ‘M’ word even though it shouldn’t have. Somehow, with Aiden wielding it, it felt like a weapon of mass destruction intent on destroying my heart.
I should have known better. I knew how stupid it was to feel something for him other than friendship. I really did. This between us was business—he’d made that point abundantly clear before we’d signed paperwork. We both got something out of it. But friendship had blossomed between us—a genuine one that had tugged on my head and heart so much that it had turned into more. For me at least.
I loved Aiden, and hearing him claim me as his, bypassed every instinct in my body that had pushed me to succeed on my own. It didn’t make me feel like I was worth more, but it gave me a turbo boost regardless of how stupid it was for me to take his statement out of context. It was useless to hope. Useless to love him. Care about him, sure. I’d cared about him for years. Had a massive crush on him during that time too.
But this…
It made me want to hope, and that was the last fucking thing I needed.
Now, these people who I may or may not see again in my life would know for sure we were together. I knew how things like this worked. Each person would tell another person and most people in my industry, in the profession that I wanted to work with that included potential customers in this room, they would all know Aiden Graves and I had married, and in five years, they’d know what I lost. Everyone would know we’d gotten divorced if they even remembered.
Which they probably wouldn’t. Would they?
For the price of paying off my student loans, I was going to have to live with it. I’d have to, and that knowledge made my chest give this unnatural squeeze that made my entire body ache. How could I miss something I still had?
A big, sturdy elbow nudged me. “What’s the matter?” Aiden asked in a slightly quieter voice, uselessly trying to keep the conversation between the two of us. I wasn’t fooled. Everyone around us was probably trying to listen in.
I made myself blink my depressing, unnecessary thoughts away and turned my chair enough to face him, wiping my expression off. At least that’s what I hoped. “I was just… I’m fine. I can’t believe you’re here.”
“A happy surprise?” He watched me with those dark eyes before the side of his kneecap kissed the side of mine.