I lowered the bottle to my lap and frowned. “What do you think I didn’t tell you?”

Those brown eyes swept over my face, and he squeezed my knees again before planting his feet flat. He started straightening, his face pausing while he was still eye level with me when he said way too evenly, “You could’ve told me your mom and sister are the ugly ones in the family.”

I didn’t even get a chance to throw my head back before I laughed, laughed like I hadn’t just been on the verge of crying and then on the edge of having a panic attack. I just laughed my butt off. Loud and dorky and big.

When I managed to open an eye to see what he was doing, and what that was, was him crouched all over again in front of me like he’d been, with his cheeks and neck colored.

He was blushing.

And that only made me blush.

Leaning forward, his words and his pink cheeks and his smile with a dent in it still fresh on my mind, I asked him, still practically whispering, “Are you drunk again?”

That dimple that was for sure a dimple went even deeper and his smile went full-powered on my heart, almost knocking the wind and every thought out of me when he snickered.

“Are you going to hug me or are you just going to stand there?” I asked him.

I had no idea right then that, for as long as my soul resided in my body and I could reminisce on the best parts of my life, I’d remember how Aaron Hall leaned forward and wrapped those long, tan arms around my back and pulled me into his chest. Me who was still on the bench. The way he hugged the hell out of me would be something that sickness and death could never take away. And in the time it took me to suck in a breath, I put my own arms around him. I’d hugged dozens of men before. Dozens and dozens, hundreds of times. And Aaron’s upper body was just as wide and solid in front of mine like the best of them.

But better. So much better. Because his hug was the greatest. He smelled like a hint of cologne with cedar in it. And I would remember it forever.

My friend had come. This man whose beauty had nothing to do with what was on the outside. I only tightened my arms around him and felt him do the same thing to me. He hugged me and kept on hugging me, one hand going to the back of my head and sliding its way back down again. Affection. That was exactly what he was giving me, and I drank every sip of it up.

When he pulled back after a few moments, those tan hands went to my shoulders and stayed there. His face couldn’t have been more than a foot away as he asked one more time with that expression that I couldn’t properly process, “You didn’t say. Are you hungry?”

I couldn’t help but do anything other than nod, taking in his features and filing them away for later. Who would have known?

Aaron smiled again as he reached out to take the handle of my suitcase from where it was propped against the wall. Who or when it had been moved, I had no idea, but later on, when I could think about it, I’d be happy no one had stolen it while I’d been having a mini-meltdown. “Let’s go. I was waiting to eat in case you were hungry too.”

I nodded and watched as he pulled my suitcase to his side, then tipped his head across the street toward the giant parking lot. Without another word, I followed just to the right of him, the suitcase on his left, finally taking him in fully. In a V-neck, olive green T-shirt that fit the width of his shoulders perfectly, brown cargo shorts that showed off tan, muscular calves, and running shoes, he looked so… normal.

But better.

Aaron must have sensed being eyeballed because he glanced over his shoulder and raised those sun-lightened eyebrows. “Do I have something on my face?”

I could feel my cheeks get red; that’s how bad it was getting caught. “No. It’s just… weird to see you in person.” I hesitated for a second and told him the truth, because I’d promised not to lie, and something in my gut said if he’d known when I was full of crap online, he could tell the same thing in person. “You’re just… not as hard on the eyes as I thought you were going to be.”

His mouth did that hesitating grin again that fluctuated between a grin and a controlled smile before he winked.

He winked. At me.

Then he said the most perfect words that could have come out of his mouth. “If it makes you feel better, we can talk about my….” He waved the hand closest to me behind his butt. A butt I’d have to totally catalogue later when it wasn’t so obvious.

I pressed my lips together and tried not to smile.

And I totally failed at it.

Chapter 16

Aaron was smiling at me.

This could-be runway model, with cheekbones that could cut glass if they wanted to, a jaw that was so defined it would give a sculptor a hard-on, and a mouth that must have given hundreds of women over the years countless raunchy dreams, was smiling at me from across the table. Me. And he wasn’t looking anywhere else.

The most important place this not-looking-anywhere-else part included was the waitress who had been playfully pouting and trying her absolute best to make eye contact with him when she’d come by to take our drink orders a few minutes go. She’d struck out. Then she’d struck out again when she’d brought them over and taken our food order. Her squeezing her boobs together with her upper arms hadn’t been enough to get him to look elsewhere, and she had girls even I had glanced at twice. But Aaron? He’d been constantly sneaking looks and smiles at me while we’d been in the car, and hadn’t stopped doing so since we’d been seated at the café he’d pulled over at.