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I might owe my buddy an apology. Aaron had no plans of dropping to one knee and proposing to Juliette anytime soon. At the same time, he couldn’t ignore that his feelings for her were deeper and more intense than he’d ever felt.
“Meeting your family tomorrow.” He offered up the first excuse that came to mind. And in some ways, it wasn’t a complete lie. He wasn’t thinking about it now, but tomorrow before her cousins arrived, he would be. According to Juliette, Trent and Curt played the role of the protective older brother. He knew the role well. He’d played it often enough.
“Don’t worry too much about them. Addie and Taylor will make sure they behave. And I’ll be there to protect you.” Lowering her head, she kissed him before she returned her hand to the center of his chest. “Would anyone notice if you spent the night here?”
With four eleven-year-old girls in the living room, his sister was upstairs, not sitting on the sofa waiting to make sure he came home. So as long he didn’t walk through the door tomorrow at noon wearing the same clothes he’d left the house in tonight, he should be able to avoid drawing Candace’s attention to the fact he’d spent the night. And Tiegan hadn’t even seen him leave. She’d been too preoccupied with her friends, so for all she knew, he was already upstairs avoiding the madness that had taken over his living room.
“I doubt it.”
She smiled, and an emotion he couldn’t label expanded in his chest.
Yep, he might have been mistaken about the correlation between time and relationships.
“Stay here tonight. We can set an alarm so you can get home before everyone there wakes up.”
He didn’t need to hear her invitation a second time. “I left my phone downstairs.” He kicked back the blankets. He couldn’t set the device if he didn’t have it. “I’ll be right back.”
Thanks to the moonlight coming through the windows and the light spilling into the room from the hallway, they hadn’t bothered to shut the door when they came in the bedroom, so she could follow Aaron’s movements as he stood. Other than run, she didn’t know what type of exercise he did, but he clearly did something besides sit at his desk and stare at a computer screen. At the same time, it was apparent he didn’t spend hours lifting weights every day.
She knew people, like Holly, who found men with bulging muscles and popping veins attractive. Not her. She’d always been drawn to men who, well, who were built like Aaron. He had phenomenal muscle definition, especially in his arms. Some women drooled over a sexy butt, and others went crazy for a chiseled six-pack. While she enjoyed seeing both, her eyes always went first to a man’s arms. And Aaron’s were perfect.
Once he left the room, she flipped on her back and let her mind wander. In March, she’d come to Avon to get away from the media attention and find a quiet place to make some decisions. At the time, if Holly or anyone else had suggested she should move here and open a business, she would’ve said not in this lifetime. Yet, it was exactly where she found herself. And she wouldn’t have it any other way. Everything about her decision felt right. Almost as if karma had sent Daniel and the media drama associated with him into her life, so she’d take a break from the city and reassess her life. Someday perhaps she’d have to send Daniel and his wife a thank-you note. If not for them, she might be in Manhattan right now, getting ready to go to another club or party and spend time with people she didn’t care about.
Thanks to her disastrous relationship, though, she’d soon be doing something she loved aga
in while spending her time with a man she liked. No, that wasn’t quite right. She liked Aaron’s sister and his mom. What she felt for Aaron was so much stronger.
I care about him. She couldn’t put her finger on exactly why, but that sentiment didn’t fit the bill either. Sophomore year of college, she’d been “in love.” Back then, she’d thought she loved Paul. She had her doubts though because when he’d asked her to marry him, she’d told him she wasn’t ready. He’d broken up with her then and there. If she’d truly loved him, the way her brother loved his wife, wouldn’t she have given him a different answer even though she hadn’t felt ready to get married? She had no idea, but she knew her feelings for Aaron differed greatly from what she remembered experiencing with Paul.
Was it possible she loved Aaron? They hadn’t been together long. But in the end, did it matter how long she’d known him?
Aaron entered the room, and Juliette pushed the question to a back burner. You needed to work some things out when you were alone. Whether she loved Aaron already was most certainly one of them.
“I thought you might want one too.” He held out one of the two bottles of water he’d brought back.
Until she spotted the water, she hadn’t been thirsty. “Thanks.”
Getting back into bed, he used the headboard as a backrest and opened his bottle. “You looked deep in thought when I walked in. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I was thinking about you.”
It’s not a lie. Juliette couldn’t tell him she loved him, since she didn’t know for sure. Not to mention, some guys acted weird when they heard the L-word. “Except for Addie, none of my family knows I’m seeing someone. Well, maybe Trent does. I didn’t tell Addie not to tell him.”
So what if it wasn’t what she’d been thinking about when he walked in? She had thought about it early today when she talked to Mom.
He frowned, and she wondered if maybe she should have told him her mind had been on the dance studio instead.
“Huh, I’m not sure how I should interpret that, especially since you don’t seem to care that everyone in town knows we’re together. And I know you’ve talked to at least your mom several times over the past few weeks.”
She had no problem telling him the truth on this one. “To say it pleased my mom when I told her I decided to leave modeling and open a dance studio would be an understatement. She’s been after me for years to do something else. Mom would’ve preferred I either come work at the Helping Hands Foundation or take a position at Sherbrooke Enterprises, but she knows how much I love dance. And starting any type of business is better than standing in front of a camera, in her opinion.”
“Okay, but what does that have to do with us?”
Her mom didn’t know the particulars of Juliette’s past relationships, but she knew they never lasted long. “I didn’t want her to think I’d decided to stay here because of you.”
“You were thinking about opening the studio before we got involved.”
“You and I know that; no one else does.”
