She almost didn’t recognize Aiden when she saw him sitting at the tiny table at the back of the family-owned café. The place was bustling when she walked in, so she had just assumed that he hadn’t been able to find a spot, despite the fact that she had recognized his motorcycle sitting outside the coffee shop.
Then, there he was, sitting at the table in a plain white t-shirt that hugged his broad chest and a pair of well-fitted jeans that showed off his narrow hips and the curve of his ass. Melanie had almost stopped mid-step, her mouth gaping slightly as she felt that familiar hunger start in the pit of her stomach. As angry as she was at him, she couldn’t deny the fact that she still very much wanted the man she saw before her. It had become something more than lust now and she was certain that he must have felt it, too, if the way his eyes lit up the second he spotted her across the café was any indication.
It was as if everybody around them disappeared. The only two that existed in the entire universe were Melanie Brunswick and Aiden Carmichael, ex-lovers and business partners. One despised the other, but she…she didn’t despise him at all. The air between them was electrified, but somehow nobody noticed.
“Can I get you something, miss?” a feminine voice said behind her and Melanie blinked, turning to see a teenage girl standing there, blue eyes studying her curiously as she held a menu in her manicured hands and wore a green apron around her waist.
“Oh, um, no thank you,” she said. “I’m just meeting an…associate.” She motioned to Aiden, who had since stood up, his back as straight as a rod as he offered the women a charming grin. The teenage girl turned bright-red and smiled.
“You’re a friend of Mr. Carmichael’s?” she asked, breathily. “You’re so lucky. He is just so…handsome.”
“Yes, well…as I said, we’re just associates. Not friends.”
“Still,” the girl said, waving to Aiden with a flirty smile and batting her eyelashes at him. “Lucky.” With that, she walked away, swinging her thin hips as she went.
Melanie watched her, shaking her head. Girls like that in high school used to make fun of her. They would tell her that she could never get a man like Aiden Carmichael—tall, handsome, lean, broad-shouldered—because men like that weren’t interested in girls like her.
This one is, said a voice in her head. This one thinks that you’re gorgeous and he’s thought that since you first met. He’s proven all those bitchy girls wrong.
But at what price?
Melanie steeled herself as she made her way to the table, sauntering and grinning to herself when she noticed Aiden’s eyes glued to the curves of her wide hips. She offered him a polite smile as she sat down across from him and he offered one back as he sat and pushed a large blue mug toward her. A latte.
He must have noticed the widening of her eyes, because Aiden chuckled. “I figured you might need a little caffeine to get through this,” he joked, and then his face and voice turned sincere. “How’ve you been?”
“Fine,” Melanie replied, shortly, though she couldn’t help the pleasurable flutter in her chest at the sound of concern in his voice. “As it seems, I can take care of myself pretty well.”
“I always knew that you could.”
“Well, not always.”
“Melanie…” Aiden sighed. “Just because I was trying to help you out, doesn’t mean that I don’t know you can take care of yourself. I just…I wanted to make sure that you didn’t ruin your entire life with one little mistake. Especially since, in this business, there are scores of people ready to take advantage of your inexperience at the drop of a hat.”
“I would have been fine,” Melanie huffed. “I learned from the best.”
“Your father was a good businessman,” Aiden agreed, “but he was far from the best in the business. He made plenty of mistakes in the beginning, as well. Mistakes that set him back years until he learned the tricks of the trade and started applying them and teaching them to me. Actually, if he hadn’t stepped in and taken me under his wing, I might be working at a place like this.” He motioned around the café and Melanie couldn’t help but chuckle at the thought of the broad-shouldered Aiden Carmichael squeezed into a green apron, making foam flowers on the top of lattes, like the one cupped between her hands.
“That’s hard to imagine,” she murmured and he laughed right along with her.
“I know,” he said. “I made plenty of mistakes like the ones he made, because I got a little too big for my britches. I thought that I was an investment genius; invincible and disaster-proof, but I was wrong. Very wrong. He bailed me out more than once, your father. He was a good man, as I’ve said, but even he had his failings.”
“You’ve told me about the streamlining already,” Melanie pointed out.
“But that’s just a part of it,” Aiden said. “Your father had many practices that made him money. Practices that he taught me and I put into use when I was first starting out.” He frowned, looking away, ashamed. “Practices that cost hundreds of thousands of people their jobs and livelihoods.”
“Like that family from the newspaper clipping,” Melanie said. Aiden nodded.
“Exactly like them,” he admitted. “But some worse off. It took me a long time before I realized what I was doing was wrong and by then it was too late to undo most of the harm. Still, I tried. I started funding non-profits and giving half of my own cut to charities that helped homeless families affected by the economy. I even paid off a lot of bills from the workers that had been laid off from my companies. I’m doing everything I can to pay for the damages that I’ve caused and I’m nowhere close to clearing my own conscious. I don’t want you to ever go through something like this, Mel; not if I can help it.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me all this from the beginning, though?” Melanie asked. “Why keep so many secrets? Why tell me so many lies?”
“Because I was scared,” he admitted. “I’ve been in love with you for so long and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I’ve never felt this way for anybody. I was terrified of admitting it to myself, least of all admitting it to you. Keeping secrets was the only way I knew how to cope. It was the only way I could imagine you’d still be in my life. I didn’t want to imagine my life without you, not after we’d gotten so close. That being said, I’m truly sorry about lying to you, Melanie. It will never happen again.”
“No,” she agreed. “It won’t.” She moved to stand up, but Aiden reached for her hand, causing her to freeze on the spot.
“Please,” he said. “Wait. I have one more thing I need to show you.”
Melanie sat back in her seat and lifted one eyebrow, waiting. Their hands were still connected in the middle of the table, but she made no move to release her digits from the warmth of his embrace. Neither did he.
With his free hand, Aiden reached into his jacket and pulled out an envelope, handing it over to her without a word. Her name was written in his sloped handwriting, popping off the manila background with grace. Melanie undid the clasp on the top and reached inside, pulling out a thin folder with a silver check paper-clipped to it. Her eyes widened when she saw the many digits typed on the check’s face. It was far more than the other document had shown, by several million. She looked up at Aiden, who just smiled and stood up.
“Read,” he urged. “I’ll be right over there, talking with a few old friends, when you’re ready.” He offered her one more loving smile before retreating from the table, making his way over to the espresso bar, where the teenage waitress from before was preparing several complicated drinks. She nearly dropped everything when she saw him, and Melanie found herself stifling a laugh as the girl’s face turned bright-red and she began talking at a speed faster than light.
She shook her head as she turned to the documents in the folder that Aiden had given her. Upon closer inspection, she found them to be printouts of emails; emails, which had been sent between some of the investors and companies, which she had spent all of her last year of college building up relationships with and pitching to. From the looks of it, they had been planning on cutting her out of the investment altogether, but still leaving her on the hook for its failure. The more Melanie read, the more her jaw dropped and her eyes filled with angry tears at the thought of several old white-haired men and women planning to take advantage of her like this. There were several emails, where they just laughed at her “green-horned naiveté” and suggested that she was the least likely of her father’s three children to find success in investing if this was how she went about it.
Melanie found herself wanting to rip up the emails and toss them in the trash, but then she noticed something…odd. On each and every one of the emails, a very familiar e-mail address had been Cc’d.
Aiden.
She looked up to see the man in question now talking to a round, middle-aged woman with rosy cheeks and graying blond hair. She patted his cheeks with her chubby hands as he chuckled and practically became bashful. Melanie bit her lip as she went back to reading the documents. After she’d read through all of the emails, she found bank statements that showed transactions between the trust account her father had left for her, under Aiden’s care, and a few of the investors that she had meant to work with. From what she could tell, Aiden had used the money from her account to buy everybody else out, which would mean that she—Melanie Brunswick—was actually the sole owner of all the companies that she’d once thought she was cheated out of.
Her heart nearly beat out of her chest at the revelation and Melanie stood without even thinking about it, dropping the files back onto the table as she turned and made her way across the café, to where Aiden stood, still talking to the two women, and laughing with them.
When Melanie was just a few feet from where he stood, Aiden turned as if sensing her approaching presence and his eyes widened at the sight of her. She must have looked angry or upset because he immediately began to apologize, tripping over his words as she got closer, but never once did he cower away from her. He was willing to take anything she threw at him.
Although, what happened may not have been exactly what he was expecting.
Without preamble, Melanie reached up and cupped his jaw in her soft hands, pulling his face down to meet hers, attacking his lips with her teeth and tongue and the soft flesh of her own lips, her hands keeping her firmly against him as she tried to convey all that she felt for him without any words at all; only actions. Aiden growled into her mouth and his own hands gripped her waist, pulling her body closer to his.
It felt as if it had been years since she last tasted his lips and she didn’t want another day to go by without feeling their softness against her own. They had already wasted so much time; there was no need to waste anymore.
When Aiden finally pulled away, he was smiling more broadly than she had ever seen before. “So,” he said, pressing his forehead against hers, “I take it you’re not angry anymore.”
“I will be,” she husked in return, “if you don’t take me home right now.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” he laughed, before pressing his lips back to hers in another long kiss.