Chapter Twenty-Two #3
“We won’t know until we try.” Aiden took a drink of his wine. He looked so deliciously rumpled in his jacket, with his tie half-undone—more real somehow. Even as she watched, he let the distant mask drop and focused all of his attention on her.
It was like standing in the face of the sun.
Without anything holding him back, his green eyes spoke volumes. Every brutalized instinct she had clamored that this man wanted her—and wanted her for more than just orgasms.
That he saw her.
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t do more than sit there and stare at him dumbly while she tried to process the onslaught of information he passed on without saying a word.
In the end, Aiden took pity on her and looked away first. He nudged one of the plates to her side of the table. “Eat before it gets cold.”
She tried to swallow past her dry throat. “Sure.” Charlie took a hasty sip of wine that did nothing to calm the racing of her thoughts.
He waited for her to settle down a little before he spoke again. “What would you have done if you weren’t a cop?”
“I’m not a cop.” When he just watched her, she sighed and relented.
“Okay, fine. I don’t know. My dad’s a cop, my granddad was a cop.
My uncle was a cop before he was shot in the line of duty.
There wasn’t another path for me.” She’d never found that sad before.
She’d been so determined to do good in the world and eradicate evil that she’d just charged forward, full throttle, until she’d hit the brick wall that ended her career. It had made sense at the time.
Except she’d spent the last two years adrift and drowning, with no end in sight. Her entire identity had been tied up with being a cop’s daughter and then a cop herself and now…“I don’t know.”
“You’re great with Keira.”
“Keira just needs someone who’s not family and isn’t demanding anything of her.
” At his flinch, she softened her tone. “I’m sorry.
That’s not fair. Even when you aren’t asking her for something, she feels like you are.
There’s no help for it. I’m an outsider, so it’s easier for her to be around me, because we don’t have the history she does with everyone else in the house. ”
She didn’t tell Aiden that she suspected Keira to be harboring feelings for Dmitri. It wouldn’t help the situation or change his plans, and she couldn’t afford for him to be conflicted when it came down to the wire.
Ruthless.
Shut up.
“Family is endlessly complicated.” He took another drink and then leaned back to stare at the sky. The overcast night didn’t offer much of a view, but being outside the walls of the town house still provided a much-needed change of scenery.
“You can say that again.” Maybe things would have been different if her mother was still around, but with only Charlie and her dad…Yeah, complicated didn’t begin to cover it.
As if divining her thoughts, Aiden leaned forward. “How’s your father these days?”
“I wouldn’t know. He’s not too pleased with me.”
“He doesn’t like me much.”
She choked. “That’s the understatement of the year. He wouldn’t shed a tear to see your head on a pike.”
“Would you?”
She opened her mouth but closed it just as fast. Telling him that she’d be completely devastated if anything happened to him was exposing too much of her already-damaged heart.
Aiden might like her, but that wasn’t enough.
He was still the man he was. She was still the woman she was. They were too different.
If it weren’t for Dmitri Romanov ruining her life, she and Aiden would perpetually be on the opposite sides of the law.
We still should be, even if I’m not a cop anymore.
The thought made her uncomfortable, so she poked at her food.
“What are we doing, Aiden? I know I blurred the lines a bit when I threw myself at you—”
“Pretty sure I was right there with you.”
She kept going, because if she stopped, she might not have the courage to get it all out. “All the same, this has an expiration date. It’s always had an expiration date. The sex doesn’t change that.” Couldn’t change that.
He finally raised his head and looked at her. “What if we didn’t have an expiration date? What if we just…did this?”
She went still. “What?” Surely she’d had too much wine and was now hallucinating. “Did what?”
“Dated. We could postpone the wedding, of course.”
“Postpone the wedding,” she repeated through numb lips. “There isn’t going to be a wedding.”
“Not anytime soon.”
She set her wine carefully on the table, shocked when she didn’t spill any of it.
“Let’s pretend we were going to do this for real.
How do you imagine that would look? I’ve spent the last two weeks basically twiddling my thumbs.
I’m managing to hold it together, because there’s the endgame to think of.
But that doesn’t mean I can do this indefinitely. ”
“Why do you think I asked you what you’d do if you weren’t a cop?” He pinned her in place with those intense green eyes, as if he could see through all her protests to the fear of being hurt that lay beneath.
Or maybe those are my issues talking.
Aiden drummed his fingers on the table. “Of course I’d want you to have a career, and I value your happiness more than I care about using your skills to benefit the family.”
She took a hasty sip of wine and then set the glass down just as quickly. “This is a terrible idea.”
“Is it? I’ve noticed that the people in my family tend to fall hard and fast, and the feeling doesn’t dissipate over time.
I had chalked it up to recklessness and youth.
” He shrugged. “I was wrong. I like you, Charlie. A whole hell of a lot. I admire your strength. You’ve fought back against things that would have broken another person.
You’ve been here two weeks, and already the dynamic of my family has changed.
I can actually envision a future where my siblings and I are friends again, and that wasn’t something I would have thought possible without you there to push me. ”
She blinked. “I…This is a lot.”
“Tell me you don’t feel anything for me beyond lust and I’ll let it go.”