The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas (novels for students .TXT) 📕

back, as if he were readying himself for something. “I told you we would talk, and we didn’t. That’s on me. There is an explanation, but it doesn’t matter right now.” He let that sink in for a moment. And it did. It sank to the bottom of my stomach. “We can make it work. We’ll make it work if that’s what you want.” He paused, and a breath got stuck in my throat. “I’ll make it work.”

I stared into blue eyes that gleamed with resolution.

I wanted that. I wanted this to work. He had been right when he declared he was my best option. Because he had been. Even before all of this happened. But things had changed a few days ago.

He is being promoted. He’s becoming my boss. That is a deal-breaker. I learned my lesson with Daniel.

And now, it had all changed again.

Everyone back home will be expecting him. Now more than ever. It’s too late to back down.

Perhaps … if no one from work ever found out about our arrangement, there’d be no risk. No one had a reason to even imagine that we would go anywhere together, much less all the way to Spain for a wedding. No one had learned of the fundraiser.

My mind kept picturing the same scenario over and over again. Filling me with dread. Me, landing in Spain with no one by my side. Alone. Stuck in the past. Smiled at with pity. Glanced at with sadness. Whispered about.

My blood dipped to my feet, reminding me of earlier, when I had almost fainted.

“What’s option A?” I whispered, exhausted from trying to get to a conclusion on my own. “You said we have two options. What’s the first one?”

Aaron’s expression assembled into one that was all business. “Option A is, you fly home alone. As much as I advise against it, it remains an option.” Hearing that from someone who wasn’t me sent a shiver crawling down my arms. “I have no doubt that you will be fine. But that doesn’t mean it’s your easiest route to … whatever you want to accomplish.”

“I don’t want to accomplish anything.”

“That’s something neither of us believes. But it’s okay. Either way, you do have a second option. And unlike with option A, if you decide to go with option B, you won’t be on your own. You’d be bringing backup.” He placed his palm against his broad chest. “Me. You know better than most that a challenging project needs the right kind of backing and support to succeed. So, you take me, and I’ll do exactly that. You don’t have to face anyone alone. You are giving them exactly what you promised to them.”

Something lurched against my ribs. And I almost had to rub a hand against my chest to appease it.

“By bringing me as your plus-one and boyfriend, which is a part of this whole thing you very conveniently omitted telling me about, you tackle the problem at the source—showing up alone and single. As easy as that.”

Aaron Blackford had impeccably delivered his pitch. Straight to the damn point.

“Easy? You are crazy if you think this is going to be easy,” I murmured. “If you can barely put up with me most of the time, imagine an army of Linas in all sizes and shapes. For three days straight.”

“I’m prepared.”

The question was, was I? Was I really prepared to take the leap and potentially risk history repeating itself?

But then Aaron spoke again, “I’ve never been scared to work for something, Catalina. Even when all odds are against me.”

The way those words hit me was close to making me gasp for air. As if that statement had carried extra weight and taken a swing at me.

I’m being stupid.

No. I was decidedly crazy if what was about to leave my lips was any indication of the level of how much I had lost my wits. But hell, it wasn’t like I hadn’t agreed to this before.

“Okay,” I pushed out. “You have been warned—twice. Now, I guess you are really stuck with this. We are stuck with this, you and I.”

“I wasn’t the one calling it off, Catalina.” He was right; I could give him as much. And then he said, “You were already stuck with me.”

I averted my eyes, not wanting to expose how that made me feel. “Whatever you say, Blackford. I just hope we don’t screw this up.”

“We won’t,” he declared firmly. “Or are you forgetting that when I put my mind to something, I never fail?”

I blinked, a little terrified of that last declaration. Oh hell, it would take a certain level of confidence, perhaps even madness, to pull this off anyway.

Ignoring how I could almost feel the relief lifting some of the weight off my shoulders, I finally let my gaze roam outside the car.

“This is not my street.” I did not recognize the area where we were parked. “Where are we?”

“Picking up dinner,” he said, pointing out the window at a food truck covered in a colorful pattern that intertwined luchador masks with floral motifs. “This place has the best fish tacos in the city.”

My stomach grumbled at the thought of fish tacos. Any tacos would obtain that reaction, frankly. But fish tacos? They were my guilty pleasure.

“Fish tacos?”

His dark eyebrows knit together. And I was so hungry that I could have kissed that frown. “You like them,” he stated rather than asked.

I did. “I actually love them.”

Aaron nodded as if he wanted to tell me, See? “You might have gushed over them to Héctor a couple hundred times,” Aaron commented casually. To which I blinked. A couple million times rather than a hundred. “How many will you take? My usual order is three.”

His usual order?

“Three sounds good,” I confirmed rather absently while my mind wandered away, picturing Aaron coming here as a regular. Ordering his three tacos. Sauce dripping off his otherwise spotless fingers. Perhaps some out of the corner of his otherwise unamused mouth.

Stop it, Lina, I scolded myself.