He said he was waiting for her to be ready, but was that really true? Or was he, on some level, biding his time, waiting to see the results of the biopsies before taking that last, final step?
Oh, he was pampering her, taking care of her, saying and doing all the right things. He even took her to meet his sister. And he had shown her the ring. But none of that was as irreversible as a proposal, was it? Maybe he would find out something else about her and just stop coming by again. It had been so easy for him to do so once. What guarantee was there that he wouldn’t do so again?
And, if she hadn’t been in the hospital when he’d finally called, would she even be thinking about this? Or would Aidan be spending his nights elsewhere?
The thought was too painful to contemplate for more than a brief moment or two. No matter what, Mary knew she was in love with him. It was one of the things that was making this so hard. If she didn’t want him so much, didn’t want the fairy tale ending so badly, she wouldn’t be feeling so conflicted.
When she was with him, it was impossible to doubt anything he said. One look from those golden eyes, one masterful stroke from those long, skilled fingers and she was lost. She wasn’t complaining; she’d never felt as good as she did when she was in Aidan’s arms. But it tended to wreak havoc on her normally logical, reasonable thought processes. Here, at least, in the peaceful quiet of her little sanctuary, she could try to be objective.
“Time’s up, Mare.” Andrew stuck his head through the inner greenhouse door. “Time to go.”
“In a little bit,” Mary called absently. Perhaps it was cowardly of her to attempt to hide behind the trio of enormous weeping ficus trees she’d been trimming, but she was not an overly proud woman. She thought she’d gotten away with it, too, until she felt the brush of familiar fingers at her elbow.
“Nice try, baby,” Aidan murmured in her ear, making her nipples instantly harden. “I knew I couldn’t trust you.”
“You can trust me,” she sniffed indignantly, wishing it sounded a bit more mature and a smidge less petulant. “I just lost track of time.”
He chuckled, his hands tracing along the sides of her waist, hesitating along the swells of her breasts before beginning their descent. “You know, you’re sexy when you’re in your element like this,” he crooned, moving closer behind her.
His fingers played about the waistband on her pants, skimming along her skin. While the apron covered her fully from the front, only thin strings tied at the back. Before she could fully realize what he was doing, her pants were down around her ankles and those wicked fingers were probing her slick folds.
She inhaled sharply, and before she’d let the breath back out, he was sliding into her.
“Aidan!” she hissed, grabbing on to the bases of two of the ficuses, “we are in a greenhouse. Made of glass.”
“Mmmm,” he said, leaning over to kiss her neck. “Good thing the windows are foggy then.”
He slid in and out of her as if they had all the time and privacy in the world, long, lush strokes that filled her deeply. When he felt her tensing around him, he wrapped his hand around her mouth and pumped hard and fast, throwing her over the edge. The rush of wet heat deep inside her told her he’d followed right after her.
Aidan gracefully pulled up her pants and did up his own before turning her around and kissing her passionately. “Who knew that plants could be so arousing? I think we should have a whole room filled with nothing but plants and pillows and a Liberator chair or two. What do you say?”
He pushed from behind, his larger, harder body like a sexy bulldozer until she was out of the greenhouse and back in the shop. Mary was speechless. Aidan grinned at her as if he hadn’t just made love to her in the middle of the afternoon in her own greenhouse where anyone might have walked in and seen them.
Although she had to admit, it had been exciting.
“Come on, baby, a deal’s a deal. Half days this week.” Aidan had deftly managed to remove her apron and was holding out her coat for her to slip her arms into while Andrew and Becky watched. Andrew looked amused. Becky looked star-struck.
Aidan gently pushed her out the door. “Don’t you have anything better to do, like run a multi-million dollar resort or something?”” she griped, but there was no bite to her words. It was hard to come across as genuinely annoyed when all she really felt like doing was purring.
He gave her a crooked smile. “Better? No, Mary, there is nothing more important to me than taking care of you. Besides,” he added with a wink as he pulled away from the curb. “that is exactly where we’re going.”
“I’m not dressed to go to the Celtic Goddess!” she panicked, looking at the dirt still under her fingernails.