Did he sound hesitant or was I imagining it? I thought about playing it off, but then again, all signs pointed at the fact that the big guy actually knew me. He would recognize if I were lying. “Duh,” I whispered. “It just got me thinking about how the next four-ish years are going to pass in no time, and how much I’ll probably miss you afterward.” I gave him a frown that was trying to be a smile. “It’s dumb. I’m so happy to see you, and I’m already getting upset thinking about not having you around.”
Why was I telling him these things? And why were my eyes tearing up all of a sudden? I blinked up at Aiden, uselessly wiping at them with the back of my hand and let out that horrible laugh when you’re crying but you want to think something is funny. “I’m so happy you’re here and I’m crying,” I cry-laughed bitterly, suddenly aware that all these people I didn’t know who were busy checking out Aiden, could probably see me getting upset.
When I raised my gaze to make sure Aiden thought I was being as crazy as I imagined I was being, I realized he wasn’t smiling. Not at all. The unimpressionable look on his face didn’t say that he thought I was being nuts, and he wasn’t going to tell me I was getting worked up for no reason. Instead, his Adam’s apple bobbed and he stared at me as if he was at a loss for words.
Which only made me feel awkward. Wiping at my eyes again, I sniffled and made myself smile at him, not earning even a fracture of one in return. I wasn’t going to worry about it. “Sorry. I don’t know why I got so worked up. My hormones must be all out of whack.” I swallowed and licked my lips, still all too aware that he was burning my face with his gaze. “I’m so happy you’re here. I really am. This was the best surprise ever. ”
His bearded cheek dimpled, and I knew he was biting down on the inside of it, his nostrils flaring in the process. A deep, deep, deep sigh slowly expelled from his lungs, and I swore, it was almost like his chest deflated. His entire body language changed in such small details I would have missed it if I didn’t know him as well as I did. But the fact was, I knew Aiden. I knew almost everything about him, and I saw the signs.
I just didn’t know what to do with them. The only thing I was aware of was that I wanted him to have an idea of how much it meant to me that he was here. With me.
In that moment, I knew this unrequited love I felt for Aiden was going to end up in heartbreak. The real problem was that my head didn’t seem to care about the consequences. I leaned forward, putting my hand on the solid bulk of the middle of his thigh, and kissed his bristly cheek, maybe not imagining the background noise of the women around me reacting to me touching and getting so close to him. “I really can’t believe you’re here.”
“You said that already,” he murmured as his eyes dropped from mine to somewhere slightly below.
“Too bad. I’m in shock.” I gave his leg a squeeze before straightening in my chair and grinning at him. “Yay,” I whispered.
His eyelids hooded low over those clear, dark orbs. “You’re going to give me diabetes.”
That had me bursting out laughing, lifting the stress off of me for a moment, earning me that tiny little curl on the corners of his mouth.
He reached up and touched a lock of the pale-pink color Diana had dyed my hair weeks ago. “I’m going to get a green tea. Do you want that sugar with a side of coffee crap you like?” he asked, already getting to his big feet.
“Yeah, but I don’t know if they’ll let you in with a drink or not.”
He gave me one of his looks. “They’ll let me in.” One hand going to my shoulder, he squeezed it and then picked up my table on one edge, moved it aside, and side-stepped through the gap he’d made. Then he put it back where it had been without moving any of my things over.
It definitely wasn’t my imagination that 90 percent of the women he walked by in line—and behind their tables—watched him and his tight, round butt make their way to the exit.
I was so screwed.
A hand moved in my peripheral vision. “You married that?” the lady next to me asked, even though her face was glued on that fabulous butt.
This huge knot formed in my chest as I watched Aiden’s broad back disappear into the crowd. I had to suppress what I was sure was going to be a sigh. “Yep.”
* * *
“I tried to get here earlier, but I couldn’t get a flight,” he explained a few hours later when we were lying on my bed in my hotel room with eight boxes of take-out scattered between us. Two dishes had some variety of tofu inside, three boxes were steamed rice, two were all sautéed veggies, and the eighth had sweet and sour chicken. The three apples, four bananas, two fruit cups, and large green tea he’d had at the convention hadn’t satisfied the big guy at all.
Dipping my chicken in extra sauce, I eyed him, still on a high from him surprising the hell out of me by showing up. It was unreal. The fact that I’d had person after person approaching my table, after he came back with drinks and snacks, hadn’t escaped me at all. To give him credit, Aiden had handled the attention as well as could be expected. He went as far as to say “thank you” and “nice to meet you” to the people who asked him for autographs once word got around he was there.
Sure, everyone who had dropped by came for him or used me as an excuse to approach the table, but by the end of the convention, all of my business cards had been taken and so had most of my bookmarks and pins. I’d been tagged in at least fifty pages online, more than one including some kind of picture of the big guy and me.
I wasn’t dumb; I would take what I could get, even if it was for the wrong reasons, and I’d capitalize on it. So what if everyone in the future knew our relationship hadn’t worked out and then wondered what had happened to cause us to split. So what if the first thing they assumed was that he cheated on me. That was what everyone usually guessed when couples broke up.
Telling myself I didn’t care what anyone thought, didn’t make it any easier to swallow.
I would know we hadn’t ‘split up’ for that reason. It would have to be enough.
“When did you start looking?” I asked him, shoving the thoughts of cheating and divorce aside again and focusing on him being here.
He hummed, his mouth full. “Yesterday.”
Ahh, hell. I knew I might have laid it on too thick when he’d driven me to the airport. It might have been me telling him, “Stick my hard drive in the microwave if I don’t come back,” that did him in.
“There weren’t any flights last night, and I had to wait to talk to Zac so he could watch Leo; otherwise, I would have gotten here sooner,” he added.
“I really didn’t mean to guilt-trip you into coming.”
He shrugged. “You would never ask me to come, and I wouldn’t have if I didn’t want to.”
While I knew that was the truth, I still felt just a tiny, little, baby bit bad. Just a little. “Yeah, I know, but still. I shouldn’t have cried so much about it or made you think—”
“—you were going to have things thrown at you.” He let out a low chuckle that was all playful and totally unexpected. Aiden reached over and set his palm on my knee, careful not to touch me with fingers that had sauce on them. “I went to bed worried.”
He was worried about me?
“Everyone seemed nice,” he ended.
Of course everyone had been nice to him. Okay, they’d been nice to me too, but it was different. Everyone had been checking him out, before and even some after they realized I caught them in the act. Hookers.
I wasn’t going to lie. This unfamiliar and territorial feeling took over every time I saw women take on expressions that made it seem as if they were two seconds away from jumping his bones while he’d sat there, completely oblivious to the world around him, with a book in those million-dollar hands. And I thought then, of course they checked him out. Here was this massive, incredibly attractive man in a romance novel convention… reading a damn book.
But that part of my brain hadn’t been fond of the ogling even though I logically couldn’t blame them. I wasn’t going to be surprised if pictures of him showed up on the internet tomorrow—if they hadn’t already been posted—with ridiculous memes or captions beneath them.