22. Give it your best shot
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
give it your best shot
LINNEA
Alright. We’re here, but two things are already not going according to plan.
Firstly, my clit is on fire because I can’t stop imagining Aiden’s hands on me after I made the stupid comment about Henry’s lack of skills. The sensation hit me hard in the car, and I tried my best not to squirm in my seat, hoping Aiden wouldn’t notice me being weird.
Secondly, this was meant to be a networking event…
I imagined strolling in, Venetia waving at us from some lawn game and introducing me to her friends, telling them how she’s recently hired me to do her Kingston summer house and that she simply loves working with me.
It was not supposed to be a boyfriend show-off party.
But that’s what this is.
We pose for PR photos in front of a flower wall at the entrance, under the plaque for Gisbon Lux.
Aiden’s arm is around my waist and one of my hands gently perched on his hard pectoral.
He’s in an off-white linen shirt and dark green chinos today, and he takes my breath away.
I love his regular black shirt, but this is unreal.
My vagina’s still tingling from the fantasy I had in the car, and I clench my thighs together while Aiden’s cool as a cucumber through all this.
“Did you use to model or something? How do you seem so chilled out?” I ask when we’re told to turn slightly towards each other.
“I did, actually. It’s how I fed myself through university until I got my inheritance.”
“Huh,” I say, turning back to the camera when the photographer signals he’s ready again.
“Also, it helps that I don’t give a fuck.”
I snicker at this, a genuine smile spreading across my face, and I tip my head back, finding Aiden’s face. He dips down at the same time. Oh, his mouth is right there. I could just stretch up a little…
“Kiss for the camera!” someone shouts, and I whip around to see the next group entering the party, watching our photoshoot unfold.
Aiden laughs, squeezing a reassuring arm around my waist.
I’m not about to break our rule (again!) and be a show pony for a group of people deep into their sparkling wine already, but, fucking hell, the memory of how his lips felt against mine, the way he groaned into our kiss—it’s visceral.
As we step down from the small podium, my mouth is tingling for his so badly, I pretend I’m itching and rub a hand over my lips.
We enter the vast garden, the sun illuminating the white marquees, in stark contrast to the deep green of the tall trees and well-kept grass.
There are seating groups with multi-coloured round pouffes, sun chairs, and settees.
Each group with its own Gisbon Lux pyramid on a table next to it.
“This looks like quite the party,” I say, spying the lawn games at the far end of the garden.
“Where do we start?” Aiden asks. “What’s your goal for this garden party? Networking with Venetia’s friends? Meet the sponsor?” He nods towards the banner above the largest tent.
I press my lips together although I really just want to grin at him. Instead, I shrug. “Get drunk on English pretend-Champagne and beat your arse in croquet?”
“Oh, really?” He lifts his eyebrows and flashes me a playful smile.
“I suppose I could do some networking while I’m here, but the croquet mallets are calling my name.”
“Let’s do it,” Aiden says. “I’ll skip the drunk part, but I can most definitely let you beat me in croquet.”
“I want to see you drunk one day.”
“No, it’s… Not the best,” he says, preoccupied with something on his watch strap.
“One day you do need to tell me about the hole in the wall your mother alluded to.”
I bump him lightly with my elbow, and he chuckles but it doesn’t have that bass to it that makes it sound genuine.
“I won’t press it. Lightly tipsy?” I ask.
“Can do.”
“But Aiden?”
“Yes?”
“You should play your best. I’m a fucking croquet ninja,” I say, relishing just being myself with Aiden.
I’d forgotten this side of me even existed.
Last year, at a similar kind of party, Henry and I sipped the one drink he’d allow and walked around, arm in arm, and talked to all the potential clients for his business plans (that he neglected to tell me included taking half my company).
I really don’t want to do it like that today, and I’m fucking thrilled Aiden is on board with my childish, potentially embarrassing plan.
“Score!” I shout, throwing my hands up and I hear Aiden laughing behind me at the exaggeration—I’m only through the first hoop. I turn to him, making a mock sad face as I gesture to his ball still sitting at the start line. He chuckles at my silly humour.
I’m close enough to Aiden’s ball that I could send it across the lawn, and it could help me through the next hoop. I glance at him through my eyelashes. He’s doing the lip thing I’ve come to adore. Biting back a smile, making that dimple pop.
“I’ll just knock it into place here, and then it’s your turn.”
“Thank you, benevolent croquet queen,” he says with a bow.
“Give it your best shot. Don’t hold back.”
“Yep.”
He swings his mallet far back, as if he’s playing golf, and I can see this is not going to go well.
“Aiden!” I shout, just as he swings and hits the ball so hard it flies across the entire croquet field to the opposite end, rolls down the slight decline and stops just by the pond.
When I turn back to him, I find him standing wide-eyed, his lower lip sucked in.
The sight of this large, sexy man with such a helpless look on his face breaks something in me and I bend over laughing.
I laugh so hard my abs hurts, and I can’t stand straight.
When Aiden reaches me, I’m wheezing, hands on knees.
“Alright, lady, it’s not that funny,” he says, but I can hear the smile in his voice.
I’m a lost cause. It won’t stop. It’s a laughing fit, and the harder I try to speak or stop laughing, the harder it grips me. The tears are coming now.
“Help,” I say, clutching Aiden’s hand, and he kneels in front of me. His face is split into his biggest grin.
“Come, help me find my ball.”
“Oh my God,” I breathe as I finally manage to stand tall. I wipe the tears from the corners of my eyes, letting out the last laughs that were stuck in my chest.
But I’m stopped cold.
Henry is at the top of the croquet field where Aiden stood just a minute ago.
And next to him is the young woman who was grinding in his lap on Halloween last year when I completely lost my cool.
When it hit me how they’d probably been fucking around like that for ages.
In rooms I’ve designed. On furniture I’d personally picked out or had custom made for Aiden’s club.
The expression on Henry’s face right now is a mix of contempt and utter disgust. I hope he sees the same in mine.
Aiden follows my gaze, and he doesn’t skip a beat.
“Fuck the ball, let’s go say hello to your lovely ex-husband, shall we?”
How is Aiden smiling, like this is nothing?
Last time I saw Aiden and Henry interact up close was one of my worst memories. My behaviour wasn’t exactly civil, and the humiliation of it still burns in my gut.
I poured a drink on Harriet’s back while she was on him, and while she ran crying to the ladies’ room, Henry pulled me off to the side by my arm.
He’d been angry at me plenty of times, but not like that. The pure hatred I saw in his eyes was new.
He was the one who cheated on me, yet he made it seem like it was my fault.
‘What gives you the right to behave like a maniac like that? You pushed me into her arms,’ he said. ‘You’re such a cold bitch. Do you know how fucking hard it’s been to love you all these years?’
It wasn’t the first time he’d said that to me, but I wanted to make sure it was the last.
‘Did you, though?’ I yelled at him. ‘Have you loved me, or have you just needed someone smaller than you to make you feel better? Now I see you for the weak man you are, and you can’t take it.’
‘Don’t you dare talk to me like that,’ he hissed at me, gripping me with such force, so much resentment, I couldn’t move. His fingers dug into my arm so hard it still hurts when I think about it.
That’s when Aiden showed up.
He tore Henry off me by his ear.
The sight of Aiden pulling greying Henry—a man eight years his senior and one of his suppliers—by the fucking ear, it was terrifying at the time, but cathartic in hindsight.
Henry screamed, and Aiden threw him into the staff hallway next to the bar.
I followed. I wanted Aiden to punch him in the throat, but Aiden is smarter than that.
He held him by the shirt, leaned close to his face, and he literally growled, telling Henry to get the fuck out of his club and stay out.
It was also the night Aiden’s view of me changed. How could it not? I was a fucking mess. Gasping, crying. Pathetic.
He looked at me differently, and I knew then, he’d lost his respect for me.
“You okay?” Aiden asks, the sun shining down on him. The smell of grass roots me back in the royal garden.
Aiden threads his fingers through mine and kisses my hand. Finally, I dare to lift my gaze to his, and now his expression is that of encouragement and something else I can’t put my finger on, but it makes me certain that … I can do anything.
“Leave it. Fuck that guy,” I say.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, let’s go find Venetia before I get tipsy.”
He looks at me, smoothing his hands down my arms the way he does sometimes, and I kind of like it. Then he leans in and kisses my forehead.
Is it for show?
Because I don’t mind this.
Closing my eyes, I breathe him in. His scent is intoxicating.
Lines blur in my mind. This feels so genuine.
Holding hands again (apparently something I like to do now), we make our way across the grass and away from the man I wasted so much time on, towards the people I need more time with. I hear Henry’s voice behind us, but I ignore it.