That changed everything. “Oh, Mr. Graves. Right. One moment please. The lighting issue pushed his meeting late.”
The lighting issue. Aiden and I looked at each other.
I couldn’t freaking help it, especially now that we were out of the elevator of terror, I snickered and let the uncontrollable smile take over.
Those underused corners of his mouth tipped up just a little—just a freaking little—but it was what it was. He’d smiled. He’d fucking smiled at me. Again. And it was just as magnificent as it had been the first time.
When we took a seat to wait, he turned that big body to the side and pinned me in place. “What’s that look on your face for?”
I reached up and touched the sides of my mouth and cheeks, finding that, yeah, I was mooning. Not smiling. I was mooning.
He’d smiled at me. Was there any other way in the world to react?
“No reason.”
His lids dropped low. “You look like you’re on drugs.”
That wiped my not-smile off my face. “I like your smile. That’s all.”
The big guy shot me a sour look. “You make me feel like a Grinch.”
“I don’t mean to. It’s a nice smile. You should do it more often.”
The grumpy expression on his face didn’t assure me of anything. Eventually, when I sat up straight, he draped his arm over the back of my chair. Waiting until the woman at the desk was on the phone, I whispered, “What exactly are we doing here?”
“He wants to go over some information with me,” he explained.
Couldn’t the lawyer just have e-mailed it to us, I wondered, but kept my question to myself. “So I can’t wait here?”
“No.”
I fidgeted and lowered my voice even more. “The lawyer thinks this is real, doesn’t he?”
“It’s fraud otherwise.”
Damn. I slunk in my seat, the bare heat of his forearm grazing the top of my neck. That damn word sent fear coursing through my spine. I didn’t want to go to prison.
As if he was reading my mind, Aiden whispered, “Nothing is going to happen. No one’s going to believe this isn’t real.”
I didn’t know where he got his confidence from, but I needed to find some.
Luckily it didn’t take too long for the door leading from the waiting room to the office to open. A couple came out, too busy speaking in a language that sounded like German to pay attention to us.
It was show time apparently.
The second after we stood up, the receptionist waved us forward. I slipped my hand into Aiden’s and gave it a faint squeeze.
He squeezed mine right back.
Chapter Twenty
“Zac! Are you almost ready?” I yelled down the hall as I shoved my heel into my running shoe.
“I’m putting on my shoes, Mrs. Graves!”
Idiot. “I’ll wait for you downstairs.” I told him as I slipped my other one on.
“Okay,” he yelled back just as I hit the stairs. Down them and into the kitchen, I found Aiden sitting in the breakfast nook with a big glass of something brown and funky looking in front of him that I’d bet a kidney had some kind of bean and vegetable in it.
Heading to the refrigerator to get a sip of water before the start of our jog, I asked over my shoulder, “Big guy, do you want anything from the fridge while I’m up?”
“No thanks.”
It was Monday afternoon after the Three Hundreds played an away game the day before. The poor guy had gotten home from Maryland at four o’clock in the morning, and he’d had to drag himself out of bed at nine to meet up with the team’s trainers, then sat through one meeting after another. His body language expressed just how exhausted he was. How could he not be?
I filled half my glass with water and chugged it down. Across the room, Aiden finally took his attention away from the current puzzle he was finishing, and asked, “Where are you two going?”
“For a run.”
“Why is he going with you?” he plainly asked, a crease forming between his eyebrows. His long fingers seemed to swallow the puzzle piece in his hand.
“I talked him into doing the marathon with me.” Was this really the first time he’d seen us leaving?
Something about what I said must have intrigued him because his head jerked back and what looked like the beginning of a laugh took over his mouth. “He’s going to run a marathon?”
Well that sounded insulting even to my ears. The fact that Zac walked into the kitchen the moment Aiden began his question, didn’t help the situation any. He scrunched up his nose as he cast his ex-teammate a long look. “Yeah.”
“You have the worst cardio I’ve ever seen,” Mr. No Social Skills claimed, not at all embarrassed that he’d been overheard.
I couldn’t disagree with him there. Considering Zac was an elite athlete, the first few times we’d gone running together was like going with a clone of myself during those initial two months after I’d decided I wanted to start training. I hadn’t even been able to get two miles done without severe knee pain and panting, and I’d thought that was pretty good.
Zac, on the other hand, made it seem like I was leading him across the Mojave Desert barefoot and without water.
“I do not,” he argued. “Why are you nodding, Van?”
I stopped what I was doing. “You do—oww! You didn’t have to pinch me.” I glared at who I thought was my friend, suddenly standing right next to me. “You do have terrible endurance. Your breathing has been worse than mine.”
“I can do a marathon if I want to.” Zac’s cheeks turned slightly pink as I tried to back away from him to avoid getting pinched again.
“Of course you can. Your breathing just blows right now.” I slapped him on the back, dodging out of his reach a second later. “Let’s get this over with,” I said, making sure I was at least five feet away from him at all times. “Let me pee first though, Forrest Gump.”
Zac laughed, half-assed lunging at me one more time.
I jumped back. I casually noticed Aiden out of my peripheral vision looking at me. Specifically my legs. My tights were all dirty and I’d had to dig out a pair of shorts from my drawer that I hadn’t worn in years. They were too tight and too short, and I’d had to put on a baggy T-shirt so the elastic band digging into my stomach and hips wouldn’t be noticeable. I’d lost almost fifteen pounds since I’d started running, but I still didn’t have anything close to a six-pack.
So I was a little surprised when those thick eyebrows knit together, his gaze focusing. “What happened to your leg, Van?”
I’d worn skirts and dresses around him on a few occasions when I worked for him. I had always figured he just hadn’t cared to find out where I’d gotten the scarring that went from above my knee to below it. Hell, I’d been wearing cut-offs when we’d gotten stuck in the elevator together and sat in his lap afterward. His hand had been on my knee. How hadn’t he noticed?
Now I realized he hadn’t even looked at it.
I didn’t care that it wasn’t pretty, and I’d never tried to hide it. It was my badge of honor. My daily reminder of all the physical pain I’d gone through, of all the anger I’d had to get under control, and what I’d done with it. I’d finished school. I got back on my feet. I’d accomplished my goal of growing my business and venturing out on my own. No one else had done it for me but me. I’d saved. I’d worked. I’d persevered. Me. No one else.