Why were they going into her bedroom?
She went inside without hesitation or so much as giving him a second glance. He stayed in the hallway, not quite sure what the right course of action was. When they were at her office, before he’d known about Knox, he’d pressed Violet about her attraction to him. He didn’t really need to ask. Aidan could tell by the flush of her cheeks and the way she nervously chewed at her bottom lip that she still wanted him. He just needed her to say it out loud so she would admit it to herself.
Violet had finally broken down and confessed that she still wanted him, but that conversation had gotten sidetracked not long after and they’d never returned to the topic. Was this her way of circling back to where they’d left off?
He didn’t know Violet well. At all, really. But he couldn’t believe for a second that the beautiful, rich perfectionist he’d come to know was leading him into her room to seduce him while their son napped across the hall. He’d like it if she did, of course, but he doubted it would happen.
“Aidan, you can come in,” she said from the far side of her bedroom. She was standing in front of a large oak dresser with a mirror. Between them was a queen-size bed with a plush floral comforter, an upholstered headboard and about a dozen different fancy pillows. Apparently rich people liked to spend their money on pillows.
He gripped the door frame and held his ground. He wasn’t entirely sure that he could refrain from touching her once he set foot into her bedroom. It was too personal somehow, like she was opening up to him. He could already smell her familiar and enticing scent as it lingered there. It called to him. Another touch, another taste, another aspect of his missing fantasy woman was all he’d craved these past lonely months.
“I don’t know if that’s a very good idea.”
Violet frowned at him, her gaze traveling to his bare chest again and staying there a moment too long. When her eyes met his, he could tell she’d been admiring his physique and thinking the kind of thoughts that could get them both into trouble. The blush had returned to her cheeks as she licked her dry lips. He understood how she felt. He’d been having enough of those thoughts about her since he’d arrived and she’d been fully dressed the whole time.
“I’m grabbing something out of my dresser. I’m not trying to seduce you, Aidan.”
He crossed his arms over his chest in a thoughtful posture. He wasn’t so certain of that. “Are you sure? You were just looking at me like I was a tall, cool glass of water you were dying to drink. And to be honest, I’m pretty thirsty myself.”
“I may have been looking, but that’s all I was doing.” She turned back to the dresser and pulled out something folded. “I can’t help but look when you’re half-naked like that. Here. It’s the largest, manliest shirt I own and I need you to put it on, please.”
Violet tossed the shirt to Aidan. He caught the wad of fabric and shook it out to investigate what she’d offered him. If this was the largest, manliest thing she had, he couldn’t imagine what the rest was like—lace and bows and glitter? For one thing, the shirt was too small. He had broad shoulders and a wide chest that demanded an XL top even when his waistline was on the narrow side. The top was a medium, and a woman’s medium at that. It was also a purply sort of color. Its only redeeming attribute was the black logo on the front for a local rock band that he’d heard play a time or two.
“This is too small.”
“Please put it on.”
“I’m going to tear it.”
“It doesn’t matter. I just need you to wear it until your shirt dries. It’s that or a pink silk robe. Your choice, but you’ve got to wear something.”
There was a pleading in her eyes that he couldn’t ignore. She was desperate not to want him. There were lots of reasons she could feel that way. Perhaps she didn’t want to complicate the issue with sharing custody of their son. Maybe she was in a relationship with someone else. Or she could be embarrassed that she had little self-control when it came to her attraction to a lowly barkeep. That was one reason to fight your feelings. Not a good one, but still a reason.
With a shrug, he attempted to pull the T-shirt over his head. It wasn’t the easiest thing he’d ever done, but after some tugging and grunting, he was able to pull it down to cover most of his stomach. “Okay, it’s on.”
She didn’t respond right away. He looked up at Violet and found the stunned expression on her face unexpected. Despite the fact that he was wearing a ridiculously small purple shirt that belonged on a woman, she looked at him as though she could eat him with a spoon. She was actually gripping the footboard of her bed with white-knuckled intensity.
“What?” he said, looking down at himself. It was easy to see the issue. The shirt was tight. Painted-on tight. Every twitch of his muscles, every line of his six-pack abs, was magnified by the clingy top she’d forced him to put on. Her plan had backfired spectacularly.
“Oh, dear. We should’ve gone with the robe.” She sighed, shaking her head. “Just take it off. It didn’t help.”
“The pants, too?” Aidan asked with a sly grin.
Violet swallowed hard before shaking her head. “Uh, no. Just the shirt.”
For now at least, he thought with a wry smile as he tugged the purple fabric over his shoulders.
* * *
“You’ve been quiet this week, Violet,” Harper noted over her traditional girls’ night glass of dry merlot.
“Is Knox teething yet?” Emma asked. “When Georgie started teething, she hardly slept a wink at night, so neither did I. I was a zombie for weeks and that was with a nanny helping during the day.”
“Is that what I have to look forward to?” Lucy asked with concern lining her brow.
“Times two,” Harper pointed out with a smug grin. She was the only single one in the group without a baby on the way, so she was well-rested, thin and living a fabulous life from all outward appearances. “So expect it to be exponentially worse than Emma and Violet have had it.”
“I appreciate you pointing that out, dear sister-in-law,” Lucy grumbled into her glass of Perrier and lemon instead of her usual sweet rosé. She was thirty-five weeks pregnant with Harper’s niece and nephew. She and Harper’s brother, Oliver, had gotten married a few months ago and had been anxiously awaiting the arrival of the twins.
“That’s what I’m here for,” Harper quipped. “So seriously, what’s going on with you, Vi?”
Violet had much preferred her friends continue with the banter so she didn’t have to answer Harper’s pointed question. Unfortunately, she could tell her friend wasn’t going to let it go. She knew that girls’ night would be the night she’d have to come clean to them. They could sniff out a secret like a bloodhound.
Knowing it was time to spill the truth to her best friends, she took a deep breath and began. “Knox is starting to teethe, but that isn’t it. Something else has happened.”
“Oh, really?” Emma said, leaning in curiously to hear the latest news. “Do tell.”
“Beau hasn’t started sniffing around again, has he?” Lucy asked in a worried tone.
It wasn’t the first time she’d heard that, and for good reason. Violet’s ex-boyfriend had tried to reconcile with her a few times in the six months since Knox was born. He’d actually been all too happy to continue their engagement and marry knowing Knox wasn’t his son. He insisted that he loved her and he didn’t care about Knox’s parentage. It had been Violet who’d demanded the paternity test, and Violet who had returned the ring and ended things when the results came back the way her gut had anticipated them to. Beau hadn’t been any happier about the breakup than her parents had been, but she knew she had to do it.
“No, thankfully I haven’t heard from Beau in several weeks. This is actually good news. I had a major breakthrough with my amnesia.”
“You remembered something?” Lucy asked with wide brown eyes.
/> Violet nodded. “Not everything,” she admitted. “But the most important parts, I think.”
“Knox’s father?” Emma asked with a breathy voice.
“Yes.”
Violet’s three best friends in the world whooped with excitement, drawing stares from others around the restaurant. They quickly started a rapid fire of questions, hardly leaving Violet time to answer.
“Just relax for a minute and I’ll tell you everything,” Violet said, holding up her hand to slow their words. She shook her head and steeled her own nerves with a large sip of her chardonnay. “Last Monday, a man came into the foundation.”
“Did he have red hair?” Lucy asked.
“Let her tell it,” Harper complained.
“I am letting her tell it,” Lucy snapped.
“Yes, he had red hair,” Violet interjected into their argument. “And blue eyes just like Knox, but even then I didn’t recognize him at first. He knew me, though. Apparently he thought I had run out on him the morning of my accident and he didn’t know how to find me.”
“When did you get your memories back?” Emma prompted.
“When he said his name. I didn’t have the slightest idea who he was and then all of a sudden, it was like a bucket of memories was dumped on my head. I remembered nearly every second of the two amazing days we spent together. And at that point, there was no doubt in my mind that Aidan was Knox’s father.”
“Ohmigosh,” Lucy gasped and clutched her huge belly. “This is so exciting I just might go into labor.”
“Please don’t!” Harper said with panicked eyes. “The twins need to stay in there as long as they can. If you go into labor on girls’ night, my brother will blame me. I don’t want to have to hear him complain.”
“That has to be a relief for you,” Emma said, ignoring the others and reaching out to clasp Violet’s hand. “Now you finally know who your baby’s father is. I only went a couple months when I first got pregnant before I tracked down Jonah. I can’t imagine how you’ve dealt with the uncertainty for all these months.”
“I didn’t really have a choice,” Violet said with a dismissive shrug. The last six months had been hard, no doubt, but there wasn’t much she could do about it when her brain wouldn’t unveil its secrets.
“What’s his name?” Harper asked. “I have a friend at FlynnSoft that can run a background check on him if you’d like me to ask.”
“No, that won’t be necessary, I don’t think. I know plenty about him already from his grant application. His name is Aidan Murphy.” It felt nice to finally know that answer when she was asked. Even when she remembered him she didn’t know his last name. They hadn’t exchanged much personal information, including last names, when they spent time together before. She didn’t know it until she looked over his paperwork.
“So did you tell him about Knox?” Lucy asked.
Violet nodded and reached out to grab some spinach dip from the bowl in the middle of the table. She was suddenly more interested in eating than talking but at this rate, the dip would be cold before she got any if she didn’t just dig in. “He figured it out before I got the chance when he saw the baby picture on my desk. That’s when I came clean...”
The girls pestered her for the next hour, asking her to go over every detail of her reunion with Aidan and his first visit with Knox. They gave her a break long enough for everyone to order dinner, but the questions continued as they ate their entrées and ordered another round of drinks.
“Wow,” Harper said as Violet wrapped up her tale. “Did you remember anything else about that week? The time with Aidan was just the last two days before your accident, right? You don’t remember what happened before that?”
“No, not yet.” That had bothered Violet, but she’d been too busy with the situation with Aidan to give it much thought. Something had sent her to Murphy’s Pub looking to drown her sorrows in liquor. She wished she knew what it was. At the same time, one major breakthrough at once was more than enough. It would come to her eventually, she hoped.
“You don’t seem very happy,” Emma noted. “I thought you would be more excited about all this. I mean, you didn’t even tell us about it and it’s been almost a week since it happened. What are you leaving out?”
Violet was hoping they wouldn’t pick up on that, but of course they would. “Maybe I’m just overwhelmed by the whole thing. It’s a lot to take in. Now I have to start the process of sharing Knox with his father when he’s been all mine since the day he was born.”
Harper shook her head. “That’s not it. There’s something else. Have you told your parents about Aidan yet?”
“Heavens no!” Violet exclaimed. “I want Aidan and I to work things out in terms of raising Knox and get it settled with our attorneys before we bring my parents into the situation. You know how they are. Besides, they’re in Dubai right now. Or Qatar. I forget which.”
“I get the feeling it wouldn’t matter if they were at the next table. What are you leaving out? What’s wrong with Aidan? Is he weird? Annoying? A Communist?”
“There’s nothing wrong with him,” Violet argued. “He’s just not what I was expecting. Not the kind of guy I would usually date.”
“The kind of guy you usually date is an asshole. So that’s a good thing, right?” Harper wasn’t holding back tonight.
“Beau wasn’t an asshole,” Violet argued. “We were good on paper. It just didn’t work as well in real life. Aidan is...”
“Poor?” Lucy interjected.
Violet turned to her friend and wished that she could say she was wrong because it sounded so snobby that way. Lucy had grown up with nothing, and until she inherited a fortune from her employer—Harper’s great-aunt—she probably had less than Aidan.
“Poor isn’t exactly how I’d phrase it,” she argued. “He owns his own business, but he’s in a different social circle than I usually date in. I know that sounds horrible, but you all know why I do that! My family is famous and any guy with a computer can Google my net worth without much trouble.”
“Poor billionaire Violet,” Harper said with a smile that undercut her sarcasm. “So what kind of business does he own?”
“A bar. An Irish pub to be exact.”
“That’s why you haven’t told your parents, and took your time telling us,” Harper said with an accusing tone. “You had an affair with some sexy bartender!”
Four
It had been a couple days since girls’ night, but their words still echoed in Violet’s head. That she was keeping secrets about Aidan. That she hadn’t told her parents or her friends because she was embarrassed about slumming with a bartender. That maybe, deep down, it was true.
No. It wasn’t true, and yet their words haunted her. She knew Aidan was more than just a bartender. Along with her hotter memories had come some of their pillow talk. She knew he was a smart, capable, caring man. One who would be a good father for Knox.
But that still didn’t mean she was going to tell her parents about him.
It wasn’t about Aidan, not really. It was her parents who were the problem. They jet-setted around the world, ignoring her most of the year. When she did see them, they were filled with criticisms and loaded down with gifts. The gifts soothed their conscience and also doubled as bribes. While she was still lying in the recovery room, her father had offered her a luxury yacht if she’d agree to marry Beau and tell the world he was Knox’s father.
She’d turned that offer down.
It was probably one of the first times in her life she’d put her foot down with her parents. They hadn’t quite known how to take her answer. So they’d given her a diamond watch as a push present, opened a trust fund for Knox and got back on a plane to somewhere else.
Her parents loved her. Violet knew that on a practical level. But they weren’t the hands-on, demonstrative parents she’d always wante
d. She wanted that for Knox and she felt like Aidan would provide the warm father figure he needed.
She just knew her parents wouldn’t see the good in Aidan. Only his “flaws,” the way they focused on hers. She’d already done enough to Aidan, albeit not deliberately. If she’d had her memories she would’ve told him about Knox the moment she realized she was pregnant. He didn’t deserve the kind of casual abuse her parents would heap on him—comparing him to Beau at every chance, criticizing his work, his family, his upbringing... No good would come from that. For now, it was easier to let them think her memories were still lost in some dark corner of her mind.
She had spoken with her attorney, however, and wanted to talk to Aidan about his recommendations going forward. Violet decided to stop into Murphy’s before it opened. He texted that he would leave the door unlocked so she could pop in whenever she could.
When she arrived outside the bar, she felt the intense sensation of déjà vu. This was the place where her life had changed forever, even if she hadn’t known it until recently. As she pushed open the heavy door to step inside, the familiar scents and sounds of the bar surrounded her. Behind the bar was Aidan, polishing glasses from the dishwasher and putting them away in their respective homes.
“Welcome to Murphy’s Pub.” He greeted her with a warm smile that made her belly clench.
That smile was probably what had lured her to him the night they met. He had almost a magnetic pull on her. She wanted to be close to him. Even now, although she wrestled with it, she felt the draw. Of course she wanted him as a father for her son. And she still wanted him for herself if her jacked-up pulse and aching breasts were any indication. But did they have long-term potential?
She wasn’t sure about that. They were from disparate worlds. Different cultures, different religions, different neighborhoods. He might never be comfortable rubbing elbows with the ultra-wealthy families the Niarchoses associated with. It had been easy to ignore those differences for a weekend when there was no promise of anything more, but for a lifetime? It would eventually be an issue.
One Unforgettable Weekend (Millionaires 0f Manhattan Book 6) Page 4