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“I don’t want to impose.”
“How can that be imposing? I love you.”
“Wow. I never even — expected.”
“I always loved you. Even when you didn’t take my calls.” Aiden pulled his phone from his side pocket. Smoky and dusty, it still worked. He swiped on his phone and showed me the call history. There was a page of Aiden’s unanswered or rejected calls to me at different times, on different days. “I just wanted to give you your space. I thought that was what you wanted.” He patted my arm.
“I want to be with you. I wasn’t good at showing it. Pregnancy has me all loopy.” I held on to Aiden’s bicep as if it were a grab handle to safety and love. Maybe in a way, it was. Aiden had lifted me out of that fire. He would lift me out of that library parking lot and out of the months of pregnancy-induced loneliness.
“Maybe you’re all loopy for me.” Aiden grinned. It was that beautiful, masculine, big-toothed grin. The same grin had fascinated me the first time he had shown up in front of me at the library. Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, or maybe it was love, but I didn’t want to stop staring at that grin.
Chapter Nine - Eleanor
“So, are you gonna take the rest of the day off?” I asked.
“I am if you are.” Aiden pointed at the UPS truck with his eyes. “I have to return the truck, though. Can I come back in about half an hour with my car and pick you up?”
“I don’t want you to leave me.”
I had been without Aiden for three months. But now, after he had taken me out of the fire, I couldn’t spend even half an hour without him.”
“There’s no passenger seat in the truck. Sorry.” Aiden bit his lower lip. “Wait, I know.” He took out his phone and walked a few steps away. A minute later, he came a few steps back and gave me a smiling thumbs-up. “My buddy from work will come over with my car and go back with the truck. So, I don’t have to be apart from you.”
He ran his hand slowly through my hair as if inspecting it, maybe inspecting the smoke and soot that must have still been in it.
His colleague brought his car back and took away the UPS truck. Aiden crouched down and put one arm under my legs, the other under my neck.
“No, no. That’s fine. I can walk.” I smiled — not because trying to carry me was humorous, but because it made me ecstatic that he cared for me so much.
I pushed myself up with my one non-burned hand, then walked to the front passenger seat of Aiden’s Camry. He got in on the other side, then leaned over to the right side to set my seat all the way back.
Leaning back, Aiden above me, I raised my head and went in for a kiss. His mouth was hungry and eager and horny. He smelled like smoke and sweat and pheromones. It was sexy, in a firefighter-fantasy kind of way. His tongue pushed into my mouth. His lips were scruffy, scratchy.
“I don’t have any reason to shave when you’re not around,” Aiden explained.
I closed my eyes, leaning back in that passenger seat. Then I embraced the father of my child, held him closer, and kissed him ferociously, sending my tongue up into his mouth to run over his teeth. I smelled Aiden’s neck and patted his sweaty, matted brown hair.
“Let’s get going.”
Aiden pulled his mouth away from me and buckled first my seat belt, then his own. He looked at me once again before starting the car and shifting into Drive. I looked back at Aiden. I gazed at his face, his quick eyes, his fingers turning the steering wheel as if it were a UPS truck wheel. At every sudden stop in traffic, Aiden extended his arm in front of me, to protect the baby and me.
He pulled into an underground parking garage. “This is where you live?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Wow. Underground parking and everything. Do you mind if I ask how you can afford this place?”
“Little-known fact. I make six figures as a UPS driver after bonuses and overtime. We’re Teamsters.”
“Wow. Not bad. I don’t think any librarians are making that much.” I smiled, thinking of my own salary, not even halfway to six figures.
“Yeah, but being a librarian is a lot more fun than driving a truck around. And librarian. That sounds so hot. Like a fantasy.” Aiden grinned mischievously as he pulled into a parking spot marked A. Green.
“A hot UPS driver isn’t a fantasy?” I reached over to his solid torso with my unburned right hand and gently squeezed his arms and pecs.
“We’ll see whether the fantasy lasts when you see how messy my condo is.” He pointed upward with his finger. “I wasn’t expecting anyone coming over today. I wasn’t expecting anyone coming over ever, actually. And now I have two dear, beloved guests coming over.” He patted my pregnant belly.
