Yeah, my throat and tongue thought they were the Sahara. My eyes on the other hand wanted to be the Amazon. I didn’t even realize I needed to sniffle until I did it. As much as I’d been telling myself over the last two days that I’d imagined being a wee bit in love with him, my heart held on to the truth. I was. I hated it, but I was. I recognized it, sensing that stir in my chest. I was falling, if not more than a little, in love with Aiden. My husband of convenience.
And it was terrible. I had no right. No business to do so. This was an agreement between two people who barely spoke to each other. How could I do this for the next five years? What the hell was I going to do with it?
I had no idea.
“You believe me, don’t you?” he asked, tearing me out of my thoughts.
I made myself focus on the face that was as familiar to me as the rest of my loved ones’ were; that tight mouth, the hard lines of his cheekbones, the thick slashes of his eyebrows. Control and discipline in flesh and bone.
I nodded, forcing myself to give him my best easygoing, total-liar smile. “I do. Of course I do.” I touched his forearm. “Thank you again for standing up for me.”
He grumbled, “Stop it.”
I smiled a little more genuinely. “I have this cream for bruises, let me go grab it.”
Aiden jerked his head back like I was about to try to shove a hot dog in his mouth. “You know I don’t care about bruises.”
“Too bad. I do. He can be black and purple tomorrow—and I freaking hope he is—but I’d rather you didn’t.” I winced at the small crack in his lip. “What did he have to do? Take a running start to reach your face?”
Aiden burst out laughing, not even grimacing as his cut split wide.
“Seriously, Aiden.” I reached up to touch his bruised jaw gently with my fingertips. “Did he sucker punch you?”
The big guy shook his head.
“He actually managed to get a fair shot in?” I wasn’t going to lie. I was a little disappointed. Aiden getting punched was almost like finding out Santa Claus wasn’t real. He’d gotten into a handful fights in his career before—I’d seen footage of it online when I shared it on his fan page because people were vicious and loved that kind of thing—and while he wasn’t this hotheaded asshole who liked to get into it for no reason, each time it happened, he beat the shit out of whoever tried to start something with him.
It was impressive. What could I say?
Then he gave me that dumb look that drove me nuts and I frowned. “No. I made sure he hit me first, and I let him do it twice before I hit him back,” he explained.
This sneaky son of a bitch. I didn’t think I’d ever been so attracted to him before, and that included all the times I’d seen him in compression shorts. “So he’d get blamed for it?”
One corner of his mouth pulled back in a smug half-smile.
“Are you going to get into big trouble?”
He raised a big shoulder. “They might just dock my game check. They won’t sit me out. We’re too deep into the season.”
That had me choking. “A game check?” That was thousands. Hundreds of thousands. A stupid amount of money. Everyone in the world could look up his annual salary online. All that money was split up into seventeen total payments deposited throughout the regular season. All that money. I had to bend over and slap my hands against my knees, already on the verge of gagging. “I’m going to throw up.”
The sigh he let out went in one of my ears and out the other. “Stop. You’re not going to throw up. Let me shower, and then I’ll put that cream on,” he said, patting me on the back lightly.
He was wrong. I was going to throw up. How the hell had he just upped and thrown away that much money? And for what? All because Christian was an idiot who thought common rules of society didn’t apply to him?
I knew Aiden. I knew he had the self-control of a saint. He thought his decisions through. He didn’t even enjoy beating someone up, or something like that. He had thought enough about what he was going to do, to know that he wanted Christian to get the first punch in. I wasn’t going to think he hadn’t taken the repercussions of getting into a fight into consideration.
And he’d done it for me.
What a fucking idiot. He could have just given me the money and that would have been enough to make me forgot about that weasel trying to shove his tongue down my throat while attempting to grab my butt over a year ago.
But as much as I thought of how dumb it was to lose a game check, this burst of something special and warm filled my heart before quickly being replaced by guilt.
I ran upstairs, grabbed the stinky bruise salve that worked like a miracle, and headed back down, knowing what I needed to do to help ease the responsibility I felt for what happened. I grabbed a few things out of the freezer and the pantry and turned on the oven to make a quick meal for my off-white knight in shining armor.
When he came down the stairs a little later, the quinoa had just finished cooking and I’d turned off the stove.
“Smells good,” he commented, going around to grab a glass from the cabinet and filling it up with water. “What are you making?”
“Chana masala,” I told him, knowing he’d be well aware of what it was.
I wasn’t surprised when he made a hungry noise as he leaned a hip against the counter and watched as I lined one of the big mixing bowls I used to always put his meals in with bagged spinach. I peeped at him out of the corner of my eye and took in the coloring along the solid lines of his face.
It pissed me off.
“What’s that face for?” the man I’d once assumed didn’t know much about me asked as I measured two cups of the grain and dumped it into the bowl.
Shrugging a shoulder, I put three cups of the chickpea mixture over everything. “Your face is making me mad.”
He snickered and I groaned, realizing just how that came out. “I didn’t mean it like that. You have a fine face. Very good-looking.” Shut up, stupid. Just shut the hell up. “It’s your bruises. I feel bad. I should have done something about it when it happened instead of making you deal with it.”
Passing the giant bowl over, he held it between us, catching my eyes. His face was pensive and as open as it got, but what I realized was there wasn’t a trace of residual anger left on him. He really wasn’t bothered by what happened, not at all. “Don’t worry about it. I did what I wanted to do.”
He always did what he wanted to do. What was new? “Yeah, but it happened a long time ago.”
“And that makes me feel even more responsible, Van.”
I frowned. “For what?”
“For everything. For not noticing. For not caring. For not making you feel like you could tell me things.” His voice was hoarse and just a little ragged.
My heart hurt.
I really hurt in that split second following his admission.
Realistically, it wasn’t like I hadn’t known that we hadn’t been BFFs when I worked for him. I’d known, damn it. I’d known. But to hear him say it….
It felt like an ultra-fresh burn to a delicately skinned place. That place being right between my breasts. The most important place of all.
It took every single ounce of emotional maturity I had in me not to… well, I wasn’t sure how I could have reacted. But I did realize, the more I suppressed the hurt, that I couldn’t—shouldn’t—hold him being honest against him. It wasn’t news. He hadn’t cared about me, and he’d taken me for granted. At least he realized it now, right?
Yeah, telling myself that wasn’t helping much. My eyes really wanted to get teary, and I wasn’t going to let them. It wasn’t his fault.
I made sure to meet his eyes. “It’s all right. You did something now.” I took a step back. “Enjoy your food. I started putting up the tree this morning, but I stopped to return some e-mails. I’m going to go ahead and finish it.”
Those chocolate-colored eyes roamed my face for a second and I knew, though he didn’t say anything, that I’d been caught.