Once he’d ended the call, Aidan set the phone down and cradled his head in his hands. He had twenty minutes to try to sort out his feelings so he could verbalize them to Scotty.
One thing didn’t need to be sorted, though, because it was very clear in his mind. He was in love with Lydia Kincaid and he didn’t have a lot of time to figure out what to do about that.
* * *
AFTERSHOVINGTHElast of her toiletries into her bag, Lydia zipped it up and looped the strap over her shoulder.
She was out of excuses to be here. She’d even cleaned the room and washed the sheets, remaking the bed so it would be ready for Ashley’s next guest. There was literally no reason she shouldn’t get in her car and start driving north right now.
No reason at all, except for the fact she didn’t want to go.
Standing in the hallway, she stopped, wondering if she was going to hate herself for the rest of her life if she forced herself to leave Boston today. If she left Aidan. She regretted the distance between them already and she hadn’t even left the city yet.
She heard a knock on the door and then the low murmur of Ashley’s voice, followed by a man’s voice. It was heartbreakingly familiar and Lydia headed for the stairs.
“Lydia!” Ashley almost ran into her on the staircase. “I thought you were still packing. Aidan’s here. I’ll be in my room doing stuff for a few minutes. Until you’re done, I guess.”
Done with what, though? Saying goodbye? Lydia wasn’t sure she could do that. It was one thing to walk away from him when she’d been riding high on temper. But now, when missing him was a constant, painful companion, she wasn’t sure she could find the strength.
She nodded at her sister, but she couldn’t respond because she was totally focused on the man standing in the living room. Aidan looked like hell, which was about how she felt. “Hey.”
“You have your bag packed.”
“I’m leaving in a few minutes,” she said, surprised she could get the words out without having a total breakdown.
“I don’t want you to go.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t want you to leave me, Lydia, because I’m in love with you.”
Her breath caught in her chest and she found herself incapable of making words. He loved her, and he wanted to be with her. All she had to do was accept that love and he could be hers. “I don’t want to leave you, either. I’ve been trying to force myself to go but it’s obviously not working because I’m still here.”
He clenched his jaw for a few seconds and then relaxed. “If you stay with me, I’ll hand in my papers tomorrow.”
She blinked, sure she’d heard him wrong. “What do you mean?”
“If you can’t bring yourself to be a firefighter’s wife again, then I’ll be something else. Anything else. I don’t care.”
“You can’t do that. You can’t just quit being who you are, Aidan.”
He took a deep breath, as if thinking about what she’d said. “Being a firefighter isn’t who I am. It’s what I do. And yes, Icando something else. And I will, because the thing I want to be more than anything else is your husband. That’s who I am inside. A man who loves you more than anything else. Everything else is just how I earn a paycheck or my zip code.”
She was having a hard time believing what she was hearing, but hope was beating like a drum in her chest. “What will you do, if you’re not a firefighter?”
“If we’re lucky, we’ll win the lottery, buy a private island in the Caribbean and do nothing but have sex on the beach every day.” When she cocked an eyebrow at him, he grinned. “Hey, it could happen. In the meantime, I’m looking into installing fire suppression systems and a few other jobs in the industry. Saving people from fires by preventing the fires in the first place still counts. And if you really want to get away from here and go back to New Hampshire, I’ll be right there with you. Maybe we can buy some cows.”
Even as his joke made her chuckle, tears made his face blur in front of her and she tried to blink them away. “You love being a firefighter.”
Aidan cupped her face in his hands and looked her in the eye. “I love you more.”
It felt as if some knot deep inside of her loosened and she could breathe again. “I love you, too.”
“You are the most important thing in the whole world to me. I choose you, Lydia. It will never matter what the choice is. It won’t matter who or what or why, I willalwayschoose you.”
Tears shimmered in her eyes, and she put her hands up to grasp his wrists. “I believe you.”
“Good. Because it’s the truth.”
“But don’t hand in your papers,” she said in a soft voice.
He looked confused, and he dropped his hands from her face to hold both of her hands. “But you said you love me, too. I want us to have a lifetogether, Lydia.”
