“Oh right! I can’t believe I forgot that was this weekend.” Her lips twitched, and he knew she was internally celebrating her smooth cover-up of the fact that they’d never actually discussed the expo even though it was one of the company’s biggest promotional events of the year. “I’ve never been before. As a renter, I didn’t think I was allowed on the premises.”
“You’re with me now, hot stuff. I’ll get you in.”
That prompted another round of teasing commentary from the Murdoch crew, but Aiden didn’t care. Hadn’t he been wondering for the past few months what a real relationship would be like? This weird little trial run with Thea was turning out to be kind of fun. She knew the score and had zero expectations of him, so he could relax into this new role of boyfriend and try it on for size. Domesticity cosplay for the player.
“Okay, back to work. I’m walking this one out, and then I’ll be back to help troubleshoot the backsplash placement.”
He slung an arm around Thea’s shoulders and steered her out of the room. They passed Trip on their way out, hunched and scowling at the central command desk as he dealt with whoever was on the other end of the phone. Letting him fill in for their mom was definitely not a long-term solution. Trip gave Thea a jerky chin nod as they passed, his brows lowering when he noticed Aiden’s arm around her.
Great. Another thing for his brother to be pissy about later.
At the entrance, Thea stopped and slid on her coat.
He grabbed her hat from the pocket and plopped it onto her head, where it perched at a drunken angle. “Can’t have my lady getting cold.”
“You have to stop calling me ‘your lady.’” She adjusted the hat so it sat squarely over her brown hair. “It’s weird.”
“Okay,baby girl.”
He held open the door for her, but she stabbed a finger in his face.“Absolutely not.”
He just laughed and guided her out with a hand on the small of her back. She’d parked on the street directly in front of the shop, and the frigid wind blasted them as soon as they stepped outside. Rather than jog back to his office to grab his coat, he crammed his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders to protect his ears, planning on a quick goodbye. “Will you need help with your move? I’ve got my truck, and we can dig up some boxes from the warehouse.”
She leaned against the side of her car and wrapped her arms around her torso. “You’d do that?” She tipped her chin up as he stepped closer to block the wind.
“Of course.” He reached out and zipped her coat the last three inches so it nestled under her chin. He could survive the cold, but he hated the thought of the chill touching her skin. “Anything for my new fake girlfriend.”
Her eyes drifted over his shoulder. “We have an audience.”
The family business was located in Beaucoeur’s riverfront warehouse district in an old distillery that had gone out of business during Prohibition. About thirty years ago, his dad had bought it on the cheap and renovated the massive space for the company’s needs. Normally Aiden appreciated the floor-to-ceiling display windows that showcased a selection of the company’s bathroom and kitchen fixtures to everyone who drove by. Today though, it provided the perfect vantage point for half a dozen nosy men to stampede from the work area in back to spy on his and Thea’s goodbye.
He sighed, his breath a visible cloud swirling between them in the cold. “I swear to God, carpenters, plumbers, and painters are the source of eighty percent of the rumors in this town.” He reached for her hand again. “I’m gonna kiss you goodbye now, okay?”
Her eyes widened a tick but she nodded, so he bent his head and closed the distance between the two of them.
Before his lips touched hers, he offered a final warning. “Gotta be convincing.”
Her eyes sparked as she whispered back, “Better make it good.” Then she shocked the hell out of him by twining her fingers around his neck and pulling his face down to meet hers.
When their lips met, two things became apparent: their kiss at the hockey game hadn’t been a fluke, and his out-of-the-blue bathtub fantasy from earlier wasn’t so out of the blue after all. Because kissing Thea was incredible. He wasn’t trying to move past this stage or thinking ahead to how he wanted to touch her next. Instead, he just focused on the press and slide of her lips against his and on the clean scent of her skin and the intimacy of sharing breath with another person. The February cold receded, and his plans for a quick goodbye fled as her tongue met his and her fingers tugged at his hair. When she tilted her head to give him better access to the heat of her mouth, he groaned and shifted closer, pressing his leg between hers and pinning her to the side of her car. She shivered and rocked against him, andJesus fuck, were they dry-humping on the street in front of his place of business in the middle of the day?
He tore himself away but didn’t drop his hands where they cupped her face. Instead, he ran his thumbs over the crest of her cheeks, and a bolt of heat raced straight to his dick when her eyes fluttered shut and she turned to press a kiss into his palm. For a heady moment, he wanted to hustle her into the back seat of her car and pull off her clothes one by one to see if she went all warm and melty everywhere he kissed.
Then the sound of a hand banging on the display window brought him back to reality. For a moment he resented the audience that he knew had their noses pressed against the glass, but a split second later he said a silent prayer of thanks. Dealing with his hard-on wasn’t what Thea had signed up to do, and those idiots inside had given him a necessary reminder.
He took a step back, hoping the February air would do its job and cool his overheated body down.
But it didn’t help when Thea smiled up at him and said almost wistfully, “Hand-holding, pet names, goodbye kisses. We can survive a couple of months of this, right?”
He shifted to make room in his suddenly tight jeans. “Beats digging ditches.” By a lot. Kissing Thea beat digging ditches by alot.
She laughed a little nervously and fumbled her keys into the lock. “Okay, um. Thanks.”
“Thanks?” he said out loud to himself as she pulled away.
What the hell had he gotten himself into?
Ten
