Then it had hit me. Some people did. And too many people cared about all things involving Aiden Graves. He couldn’t cut his hair without someone posting about it. Someone in the world would find out we’d gotten married at some point. There would be no hiding it.
And that made me feel uneasy. I hadn’t even liked the attention I’d gotten from people when they found out I worked for him. Getting hitched to him would be an entirely different ballpark.
I had to swallow the saliva in my mouth to keep from gagging.
“We could keep it quiet for a while—” the big guy started to say. I gave him a look that he just returned with a blink. “—but someone will find out eventually. We can get married without making a big deal over it, and divorce the same way. What happens on the field is for my fans, everything else isn’t their business.” The way he stated that didn’t give me room to doubt him.
I would be living the rest of my life as Aiden Graves’s ex-wife.
The thought almost made me cross my eyes at how absurd it was. Then immediately afterward, I wanted to put my head between my knees and pant.
Instead of doing any of those things, I made myself process his words, and then nod. His idea made sense. Obviously, someone in the world would eventually find out, but Aiden was intensely private with the people he knew, and so much more with folks he didn’t. It wouldn’t look strange if we kept it a secret as long as possible.
The thought had just entered my head when I asked myself, what the hell had I gotten myself into?
“We wouldn’t be able to sign an agreement that says you get a house and your loan paid off, but I hope you trust me enough to know I wouldn’t back out on you.” Those dark eyes seemed to laser a message on my forehead. “I would trust you enough not to sign a prenup.”
No prenup? Uh….
“I won’t begin a relationship while the marriage is intact,” he continued out of the blue. “You can’t either.”
That had me raising my gaze. My relationship status wasn’t going to be changing any time soon. It hadn’t in years, and I didn’t foresee it doing so any time soon, but my conversation with Diana seemed to haunt me. Even as a fake wife with a paper marriage, I wouldn’t want to look like an idiot. “Are you sure you can promise that? Because you might meet—”
“No. I won’t. I’ve only loved three people in my entire life. I don’t plan on loving anyone else in the next five,” he cut me off. “I have other things to worry about. That’s why I’m asking you to do this, and not finding somebody else.” What he wasn’t saying in that moment was that he was in the prime of his career, but I’d heard him say those exact words countless times in the past.
I wanted to cry horseshit, but I kept it to myself. I also wanted to ask who the only three people he’d ever loved were, but I figured this wasn’t the time. Leslie had to be one of them, I imagined. “If you say so.”
From the way his throat bobbed, he wanted to make a comment, but instead he kept going. “I’ll help you pay off your loan over the next three years.”
And negotiations suddenly came to a screeching halt. For a moment.
Then I made myself think about it. Taking a few years to pay off the loan would look an awful lot less sneaky than if it was done in one or two big payments. If I made a few payments here and there, that would look a lot better too, wouldn’t it? Like if we waited a few months until after we signed the papers and everything? I had to think so.
“Okay.” I nodded. “That works for me.”
“My lease on this house is ending in March. We can rent another house afterward or sign another lease here. When my residency comes through, I’ll buy one that you can keep afterward. ”
Afterward was the second thing I paid attention to.
The main thing I didn’t miss was the beginning of his statement and the ‘we’ in the following sentence.
“I’d have to move in with you?” I asked slow, slow, slowly.
That big, handsome face went a bit squinty. “I’m not moving in with you.” I couldn’t even find it in me to be offended; I was too busy processing whether he’d made a joke or not. “You’re the one worried about making it believable. Someone is going to check our licenses.”
He had a point. Of course he had a point. But… but…
Breathe. Loans and a house. Loans and house.
“Okay. All right. That makes sense.” My stuff. What was I going to do with it? My apartment with all my things that I’d collected over the years….
I was going to have a panic attack at some point.
I’d known I wasn’t always going to live there—at least I’d better not. But that didn’t change anything. This house wasn’t mine and it didn’t feel like mine. It felt like Aiden’s place. Like the house I’d worked in for years. But I could move in if I needed to, especially if it was the difference between making this hoax of a marriage seem legitimate and not.
I had to. Had to.
“When do you want to do this?” I pretty much croaked.
He didn’t ask me. He just said, “Soon.”
I was going to have a panic attack. “Okay.” All right. Soon could be a month from now. Two months from now.
“Fine?” Aiden raised his eyebrows in what seemed like a challenge.
I nodded dumbly, finding myself becoming more and more in tune with the idea that we were really doing this. I was going to marry him to get his papers fixed. For money. For a lot of money. For financial security.
Aiden stared at me for a while, the bobbing of his throat the only sign that he was thinking. “You’ll do this, then?”
I would be an idiot if I didn’t, wouldn’t I?
That was a dumb question in itself. Of course I would be an idiot, a massive, gigantic idiot who owed a lot of money.
“Yes.” I gulped. “I will.”
For the first time in two years, The Wall of Winnipeg’s face took on an expression that was as close to joyous as I had ever seen. He looked… relieved. More than relieved. I’d swear on my life his eyes lit up. For that one split second, he resembled a completely different person. Then the man who wore a jockstrap on a regular basis did the unthinkable.
He reached forward and put a hand on top of mine, touching me for the first time. His fingers were long and warm, strong, his palm broad and the skin rough, thick. He squeezed. “You won’t regret this.”
Chapter Nine
I didn’t call Aiden and he didn’t call me.
I couldn’t blame the lack of communication on him not having my cell phone number; I’d given it to him before I left his house the day I’d agreed to do what we were doing.
A week passed, and when he hadn’t bothered getting into contact with me, I didn’t think much of it. The Three Hundreds were in the middle of preseason games according to the news. I knew how busy this time of the year was for him.
Plus, there was the small chance that maybe he had changed his mind. Maybe.
Well, I didn’t know why else he wouldn’t call, but I made myself not think about it more than I needed to, which I figured wasn’t much, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to stress about it.
The reality that there was a chance he had found some other way of getting his residency petition filed wasn’t as crippling as I would have imagined, considering there was over a hundred thousand dollars riding on our deal. I wouldn’t even say I was disappointed but…
Okay, maybe by the fifth day into the week I might have accepted that I was a little, tiny bit disappointed. Having my loans paid off would have been… well, the more I thought about having that amount of money resting on my shoulders, the more I realized just how repressing it was. It would be one thing if I owed that much money on a house, but in freaking school loans?