Thankfully, she hasn’t had much baking to do for the catering company this week—just a few dozen batches of cookies and muffins for business brunches in town—but I know she’s worried about Sunday, when she’ll have a five-tier cake to cover in iced cherry blossoms for a bridal shower. If her hands aren’t steady by then, her work is going to suffer.
If she was my wife in more than name, I’d check her into a hotel and insist she let me handle sleep training solo for a night. But she isn’t my wife, and Skeeter isn’t my daughter, and I feel helpless to do anything to protect Aria from the soul-mangling experience of trying to get her baby to sleep through the night.
I can’t spare her.
I can’t even comfort her with the freedom I’d like.
I can’t draw her into my arms and hold her, can’t promise her we’ll get through this together, and I certainly can’t carry her into our bedroom and give her some pleasure to make up for the pain.
I think about that final, off-limits option way more often than I should, considering she’s “just a friend.”
This entire experience has me frustrated—in more ways than one—and feeling lonelier than I have in a long time. Aria’s so close, but she might as well be a thousand miles away. She isn’t mine to help or comfort.
And yes, I knew that going into this arrangement, but I never imagined it would be this hard to keep my distance, emotionally or physically.
“Just need to get some damned sleep,” I mutter to myself, chalking my crazy thoughts up to sleep deprivation.
Which is apparently my new normal since Felicity shows no sign of adapting to the Mee-maw method.
By the time I collapse onto the couch in an exhausted heap on Thursday night, I’ve decided to abandon the fight. When Skeeter starts crying, I’ll sneak in and give her a bottle, rock her for an hour, tell her half a dozen stories, whatever it takes to get her back to sleep without another battle of wills. The baby has been napping away her weariness during the day, but Aria and I are going to be too beaten down to function if this goes on for much longer.
Despite my keen awareness of Aria sleeping down the hall and my conflicted feelings about my fake wife, I’m too tired to dwell on anything for too long tonight. Within seconds of my head hitting the pillow, unconsciousness sucks me under and I sleep.
Deeply.
Dreamlessly.
A sleep so hard that, when a gentle shake on my arm wakes me the next morning, for a moment I have no idea where I am.
It takes me a beat to remember why Aria is in my house, and another to guess why she’s beaming at me like we just won the lottery.
It’s the sun. The sun is shining in through the window behind her, transforming her hair into a halo of red fire. It’s morning, and I can’t recall hearing Felicity cry a single time during the night.
“She did it?” I ask, rubbing the sleep from my eyes with a fist.
“She did it!” Aria confirms in an excited whisper. “She slept through the night. I slept through the night. Oh my God, Nash, I slept through the night!” she finishes with a giddy squeal that makes me laugh. “I’m so excited I can’t stand it.”
She throws her arms around my neck, and I pull her into a celebratory bear hug, crushing her against my bare chest. She squeezes me back, her breath hot against my neck as she continues to laugh, a hysterical giggle that’s completely contagious.
Soon we’re both laughing so hard we slide off the couch, Aria first and me tumbling after, landing on top of her with a rush of breath.
“Shit, are you okay?” I ask, my elbows pushing into the carpet on either side of her face.
Damn, she’s pretty this morning, in just a red camisole top and a pair of red-and-white-striped sleep shorts.
Who knew casual PJs could be so sexy?
I’ve seen her in sleep clothes before, of course, but it was dark and we were both too miserable tending to a screaming baby for me to pay much attention to the fact that she doesn’t wear anything under these flimsy little shirts.
Now, I can’t stop paying attention. Attention to the way her small, perfectly shaped breasts tip up toward me, her nipples pulled into points that strain against the thin fabric.
The sight summons an old memory to the surface of my mind, a memory of Aria naked in the moonlight, of kissing up her ribs, letting my lips trail along the soft underside of her breasts before taking her nipple in my mouth. I can still remember the way she moaned and tangled her fingers in my hair, calling my name like a prayer.