“And you kept it all this time?” Her finger followed along with the words on the lined paper as she read it.
“Pretty crazy, huh?”
Anya’s eyes were bright with excitement. “How’d you know you were going to meet him?”
“I didn’t,” I answered simply.
When she finished reading, she carefully folded the paper and set it back inside the black metal box.
I knew her well enough now to know she was processing, so I gently twirled my ring while I waited for her to speak.
He’d given it to me a month earlier, tied onto a ribbon, around the stem of a giant bouquet of daisies.
It was the same day I moved in with him and Anya, after five months of trying very hard to pretend we weren’t basically living together.
Anya looked at her metal box again and up at me.
“I’m glad you didn’t send it to him.”
My eyebrows rose. “Yeah?”
“I think maybe he would’ve remembered when he met you at the gym. And he needed you to be someone new.”
A smile spread over my face at how carefully she chose her words.
“I think you might be right,” I said quietly.
She scooted forward on the bed and gave me a tight hug. I kissed the side of her head.
“Love you, Iz.”
“Love you too,” I whispered.
When she hopped off the bed, box clutched to her chest, she looked at mine again. “Are you going to tell Dad about the letter?”
“What letter?” he asked from the doorway.
She looked at me, eyes wide. “Sorry.”
I laughed. “It’s okay.”
Anya scampered off to her room, the pounding of her feet on the stairs had Aiden shaking his head.
As he shut the bedroom door and approached the bed, I studied the way he looked in his button-down shirt and black dress pants.
“I like this look,” I told him.
“Yeah?”
He carefully moved aside the metal box and pushed me back onto the bed. My hands tugged his shirt out of his waistband as he gave me a mind-spinning kiss. Aiden always greeted me like this when we were alone—like he hadn’t seen me in weeks—and I would never, ever get sick of it.
His kisses moved down my neck as I moved under him, unhooking his belt.
“What letter is she talking about?” he asked, tugging the strap of my bra down and placing a sucking kiss over my heart.
“Umm, nothing?”
He lifted his head, spearing me with a look.
“It’s silly,” I told him. “But I wanted her to see what kind of stuff I kept in the lockbox from my nan.”
Aiden rolled to the side, snatching the box with one big hand and tugging it closer to us. “Show me.”
With a burning hot face, I pulled the letter out and handed it to him.
His grin was so pleased, so fricken entertained as he got to the part about the purple dress that he started chuckling.
I covered my face. “Now you know why I literally tripped over nothing when I met you.”
He pulled my hands down and took my mouth again. “I love that you kept it,” he murmured. “Just goes to show you’ve always had great taste.”
I smacked his chest. “Of course you make this about you.”
Aiden settled between my legs as we kissed, his hand smoothing up and down my back, settling on my bottom. Even though we could take it further—Anya knew not to open the door when it was closed—I loved that he seemed just as content to kiss me on our big bed in the middle of the day.
He rolled us, tugging my shirt up so he could reach more of my skin. When I settled onto my back, arching my neck, the crinkle of paper had me freezing.
“What?” he asked.
My hand fumbled on the bed until I found the edge of the envelope. “Something else to show you,” I whispered.
His brows lowered as he took it. My hands smoothed up his arms as he pulled it open, and my heart raced as he saw the edge of what was inside.
“Isabel,” he breathed. His eyes snapped to mine. “Seriously?”
I nodded, eyes watering at the awe I saw in his face. Aiden brushed a knuckle under his eye as he carefully tugged the sonogram picture out of the envelope.
He stared at it, then at me.
“We’re having a baby?” he whispered.
My chin quivered. I couldn’t even nod in affirmation because I’d split wide open into happy, messy tears.
“I know …” I paused when my voice cracked, “I know it’s sooner than we planned, and I wanted to be sure before I told you.”
He wrapped me up in his arms so tight I could hardly breathe. “We’re having a baby,” he repeated, voice uneven.
I clung to him, tears streaming down the side of my face, disappearing into my hairline. His mouth was on mine in the next moment, and when he broke away, his eyes were red-rimmed and so full of happiness.
“Does this mean I get to marry you sooner?”
I laughed. “I’d marry you tomorrow, Aiden Hennessy.”
Resting his forehead against mine, he breathed a shaky exhale. “Of course we’d do this sooner than we planned.”
I kissed him again. “It works for us, I think.”
Aiden cupped the side of my face, stared down at me with so much adoration, I almost started with the messy weeping again.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.