The Spanish Love Deception

My eyes somehow ended on an industrial-style console that perfectly complemented the vibe of the windows—and the rest of the place. The only items on its surface were a framed photo and what looked like a textbook.

Feeling curious about who was in that photo, I walked up to it and picked it up. A woman. A beautiful, blue-eyed woman with raven hair and a smile I was starting to need to breathe a little easier. My heart warmed.

I felt his arm come around my shoulders, and then a kiss was brushed against my hair.

Letting my body fall into him, I asked, “What was your mom’s name?”

“Dorothea.” I felt his voice rumbling in his chest, right against my back. “She used to complain about it constantly. She made everybody call her Thea.”

“Tell me more about her, about your family.”

He released a breath, and it hit my hair with a puff. “It was her grandmother’s name. ‘A pretentious old lady’s name,’ my mom would say. Her side of the family was very wealthy but always unfortunate when it came to their health. They called it a curse.” He paused, sounding a little lost in his memories. “When I was a kid, my mom was the only living member left, so I never met my grandparents. And when my mom passed away, the last one of the Abbots became me. So, I inherited everything. That’s how I can afford this place.”

“That makes sense,” I murmured. I considered myself lucky to work for a company like InTech. For having a good wage coming in every month. But this place belonged to a whole different kind of life. One where studio apartments could fit in bathrooms. “So, you don’t really need to work a nine-to-five job.”

“No, but I love what I do. Even if some might call me a workaholic cyborg.”

I snickered. “Oops, I deserved that.”

I didn’t think anyone at the office knew about this. Aaron had always been so … private. But the fact that he didn’t need to work and yet worked harder than the vast majority of us was commendable. It made me love him—

Whoa. I shook my head.

“I have always admired you, you know? As much as I’ve bugged you for being so pragmatic and hardheaded, I have always, always admired you.”

“I …” He trailed off, sounding at a loss for a moment. “Thank you, baby.”

My lips curled up as I put the frame back on top of the console. “Your mom was beautiful. I can see where you got your looks from.”

Aaron chuckled softly. “You think I’m beautiful?”

“Of course. You are more than just beautiful. Don’t sound so shocked. You know you are.”

“I do, but I never thought you were all that attracted to me. Not for the first few months at least.”

I snorted. If he only knew. Then, I thought about how he had phrased it. “What gave it away? What changed after that time that made you realize I was not made of steel, Mr. Oblivious?”

His hold on me grew a little tighter, and then he exhaled. “Remember that colloquium InTech hosted for high schoolers a few months after I started? We realized there weren’t enough chairs when the kids started filing in. I saw you sneaking out, and somehow, I knew where you were going.”

I remembered that day. Jerkface Gerald had miscounted the number of attendants. “Folding chairs.”

“Yes, you shot out of there to fetch the folding chairs we kept in storage.”

Aaron had appeared out of thin air that day, exactly how he always did. Then, he had given me shit about wanting to carry the chairs on my own, that it wasn’t my job to do that.

“So, what gave it away? Was it how I almost smacked you with a chair for being an overbearing jackass?”

“It was how you shivered when I came behind you to help you with one that had been stuck to a shelf. You know, right before you pulled again and went toppling down to the floor.”

Oh. Oh yeah. I remembered that precise moment exactly.

I had felt his body behind me. His arms came around me without touching me, and I stared—and shivered and flushed and gotten all worked up—at how they flexed under his dress shirt as he tried to disentangle that damn chair. It had been like a slap on the face, how hot and bothered that left me.

“That gave it away. I just knew that the red spreading through your neck and cheeks had nothing to do with you calling me a stubborn, heartless robot.”

“Did it …” I trailed off, unease growing in my stomach. “Did it ever bother you, everything I called you? Everything I said when we butted heads?”

My heart raced, as I feared his answer.