“No. I don’t know them at all. I've only met them once. My dad had visitation with them, one weekend a fortnight, but my mom would never let them come to our home.”
“Maybe it would be a good idea to get to know them,” he suggested, shooting for nonchalance.
“No.” Aggie shook her head vehemently. “I have nothing in common with them except we share half our DNA. I have my dad and my brother, that’s enough family.”
“I'd love to meet them, your family.”
“Really? Already? We only met a couple of days ago, you really don’t need to meet them yet.”
“I want to.”
“I thought guys were supposed to be scared of meeting a girl’s father.” Aggie looked a little baffled by his sudden interest in her family.
“Maybe some guys, but not me. I really would love to meet them. How about tomorrow night we do dinner, me, you, and your dad,” he pushed.
“Tomorrow?”
“Why not? I'm serious about you, about us, why shouldn’t I meet your dad? I mean, I'm going to sooner or later, so why not sooner?”
“I guess,” she agreed uncertainly. “I’m just surprised you're so interested in meeting my father.”
Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to slow down, he hadn’t planned on admitting anything even remotely personal about himself, and yet somehow Aggie was compelling him to be honest with her even when his every instinct clambered to keep to the plan. And yet he didn’t. Instead, he opened up to her. “I lost my parents too.”
“Oh.” Aggie’s eyes filled with empathy and pain, and she squeezed her arms tightly around him and pressed her body against his. “I'm so sorry.”
“I was just a toddler, only two, I don’t remember them. They died in a car accident.”
“So did my mom,” Aggie whispered against his chest. “Who did you go to live with?”
“My younger brother Luke and I went into foster care.”
Observant, she read something in his voice and lifted her head. “What happened to you in foster care?”
“No one hurt me if that’s what you're thinking. The first family I lived with for three years, but then my foster father had a heart attack and died. My foster mother couldn’t cope with two little boys on her own, so we were sent back. The second family I lived with for six years, then they lost their son in a gang shooting. They couldn’t deal with us anymore, we were a reminder of what they lost so they, too, sent us back. After that I wouldn’t go to another family, I couldn’t cope with losing anyone else.” He spoke about his childhood as though it were someone else’s. As though he had no emotional connection to those events or the little boy who had lived through them.
“You poor thing.” Tears were rolling down Aggie’s cheeks as she hugged him again. Then she reached up to take his face in her hands and brought it down to meet hers and took his mouth softly and gently. The kiss expressed so much more than simple physical need and attraction.
It was that kiss that made him realize he had already ruined his own plans. He could no longer treat Aggie as a mere object in a bigger game. She was stirring something up inside him. Something he couldn’t put a name on yet, but something that wasn't going anywhere. In fact, the more time he spent with her the more it grew. He needed to get back to what he’d come here for. He needed to nip these feelings in the bud before they had a chance to develop any further. “It’s all right,” he soothed her. “I survived, and you survived. Our losses made us stronger. Hey,” he hooked a finger under her chin and tilted her head up, “who thought talking about families could be this depressing?”
She offered him a weak smile. “We can have dinner with my dad tomorrow, I'm sure he’ll be thrilled to meet you.” Then she sobered again. “I have to admit something to you.”
A slice of panic cut through him. Had she somehow figured out who he really was? “Oh, yeah?”
“I'm falling for you. Big time. But I promised Summer that this time I wouldn’t rush into anything. I have a bad habit of running into relationships with my eyes closed, I always end up getting hurt. I've been engaged twice before. The first time he was cheating on me, the second one he ended things after our rehearsal dinner. I don’t always make the best decisions when it comes to love, this time I don’t want to make any mistakes. I want us to keep getting to know each other, but I also want to be careful. I don’t think I can go through another failed engagement.”
Aggie’s words should have made him feel better. She obviously had no idea who he was and why he had inserted himself into her life. Instead, her words cut at him. He didn’t want her to be falling in love with him because that meant that he was going to break her heart. And almost definitely shatter what little pieces were left of his own heart. This had seemed like such a good idea just a couple of days ago, and now it was feeling like a complete and utter disaster.
It took every bit of self-control he possessed to stay here in her kitchen instead of running out the door and throwing in the towel with this whole thing. But he didn’t. What he did do was pull her into his arms and rest his cheek on the top of her head. “There’s no pressure from me, Aggie. I like you, I want to keep seeing you, wherever this goes, it goes. Now, pizza should be ready. Let’s go enjoy some dinner and see where the evening takes us.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Aggie snuggled against him and inhaled deeply. “Thanks, Nick, for everything. I'm so glad I met you.”
With her misplaced gratitude, this beautiful, trusting woman lodged herself a little deeper in his broken, damaged, cold heart.
* * * * *
11:32 P.M.
It had been such a magical evening that she hadn’t wanted it to end.