I knelt by Aiden's chair, searching for the magic words that would tell him everything I needed him to know. I didn't have time. Instead, I put my hands on either side of his face and kissed him. He leaned into me, taking everything I had to give. I put all my emotions, all the things I wanted to say and couldn't find the words or the time to tell him into my kiss, hoping he would understand.
“I love you,” I whispered as my lips left his. He tensed slightly under my fingertips, but I didn't stop my words. “I love you not because you're a billionaire, but because you're Aiden. I love who you are, not what you are.”
I didn't stop to see his reaction. I just turned and ran before he could answer and break my heart. I didn't stop running until I caught up to Kathryn. She was already in a taxi and on her phone. I was breathing hard as I hopped inside. The car door had barely shut when the cab driver hit the gas.
I looked back at the way I had just come. No one was there. I had this romantic notion in my head that he would be there. That he would follow me when I told him I loved him. I didn't want him to push me away, and I suddenly regretted saying the words that were best guaranteed to do so. I closed my eyes to keep the tears inside as I tried not to think of what his absence meant.
Chapter 19
I buckled my seat on the private jet and stared numbly out the window. I knew he wouldn't come, but I kept hoping Aiden would show up out on the runway to show me he cared. I kept staring down the long runway, searching for his face as he came to tell me he loved me too.
Kathryn finished her phone call and went straight into the next, only pausing to transition to the jet's phone instead of her cell. I knew I would have a few more minutes to myself before she would be ready to give me a list of things to do.
My lapt
op was already charging in a little docking station next to my seat. I opened it, found the jet's wifi. I had stayed on top of my work emails using the resort's internet connection, but I had specifically avoided using my computer for anything but work.
I pulled up a search page and paused, my fingers hovering over the keys.
All I had to do was type in Aiden's name and I would know everything about him. I would have pictures and newspaper articles and everything the cyber-stalker in me could want. I would know all the secrets he had told me the night before, but this time they would be printed in black and white.
I typed his name and hit enter before I could stop myself.
Search results filed in and the pit of my stomach dropped.
I had been expecting news articles on Travel, Inc., business reports, perhaps some charity work, and even some photographs from galas and events. Instead, almost every entry was for his latest flavor of the week model or actress.
Page after page of photos of him with various beauties. Stunning, long-legged girls that made me look like a chubby freak. Three girls getting out of his limo with their hair mussed . Twins sitting with him at his center court seats. Aiden front and center at a premier lingerie show. His smiling face looked up at me from the computer screen. They all hung off of his arms like decorative jewelry, but never the same girl twice.
I found an article about the secretary and clicked on the link, unsure of what I hoped to find.
...Aiden is a great guy,” Stephani Zaptos said in one of her rare interviews. “I just didn't fit into his world. It really worked out for the best and I'm appreciative of everything he's done for me.”
Inside sources theorize Stephani was paid off by Aiden Hayes' overprotective father, Gerald Hayes to keep her from gold-digging. As Hayes Sr. has several embarrassing and expensive sexual liaisons recently come to light, it would only make sense that he would try and protect his sons' from the same thing.
There is also speculation that Hayes Sr. may have blackballed the secretary in retaliation for Aiden and his brother edging their father out of the company. Sources close to the Hayes state that Gerald is not appreciative of his forced retirement by his sons.
Others simply suggest that Zaptos was simply just another one of Aiden's flavor of the week liaisons. All we here at Tabloid 34 know is that Aiden Hayes, billionaire playboy, is back on the market.
I stared at the pictures, barely recognizing the man in them. They all looked like the Aiden I had fallen in love with, but I couldn't believe them. I couldn't believe him. The more I looked at the pictures, the more I realized I had no idea who Aiden really was.
Three days was not enough to know someone, and certainly not enough to fall in love. The realization hit me hard enough to make me gasp.
Told you so, my brain told my heart. I didn't want to believe it, but the proof that I didn't actually know Aiden was staring me in the face. He was too perfect to have been real. He had played me.
“I could be a very different person than the one you think you know. How do you know that I'm not a terrible person?” Aiden's words echoed in my head.
He was right. I didn't know him. I didn't know him at all, yet I had just told him that I loved him.
No wonder he hadn't come after me.
Even as I looked at the pictures of him with other women, I wanted to excuse him. I wanted the man I met on the island to be the real one. We had been so happy. He had invited me to his brother's wedding. But, it had all been a lie.
I scrubbed my face with my hands. I couldn't believe I was such a gullible idiot. I didn't deserve to get into Harvard. I didn't deserve to get into a community college intro to law course. Aiden Hayes had duped me completely and in more ways than one.
I slammed my laptop shut, wanting to make the images disappear from my mind just as easily. I didn't know him. I needed to forget about him like he was going to forget about me. I didn't look like the supermodels in those pictures, and there was no logical explanation why he would ever chose me over one of them. He didn't love me. He never had.
I was a fling. A way to stay entertained during a business meeting.