The Spanish Love Deception Elena Armas (free ebook reader for ipad .TXT) 📖

sense,” I murmured. I considered myself lucky to work for a company like InTech. For having a good wage coming in every month. But this place belonged to a whole different kind of life. One where studio apartments could fit in bathrooms. “So, you don’t really need to work a nine-to-five job.”

“No, but I love what I do. Even if some might call me a workaholic cyborg.”

I snickered. “Oops, I deserved that.”

I didn’t think anyone at the office knew about this. Aaron had always been so … private. But the fact that he didn’t need to work and yet worked harder than the vast majority of us was commendable. It made me love him—

Whoa. I shook my head.

“I have always admired you, you know? As much as I’ve bugged you for being so pragmatic and hardheaded, I have always, always admired you.”

“I …” He trailed off, sounding at a loss for a moment. “Thank you, baby.”

My lips curled up as I put the frame back on top of the console. “Your mom was beautiful. I can see where you got your looks from.”

Aaron chuckled softly. “You think I’m beautiful?”

“Of course. You are more than just beautiful. Don’t sound so shocked. You know you are.”

“I do, but I never thought you were all that attracted to me. Not for the first few months at least.”

I snorted. If he only knew. Then, I thought about how he had phrased it. “What gave it away? What changed after that time that made you realize I was not made of steel, Mr. Oblivious?”

His hold on me grew a little tighter, and then he exhaled. “Remember that colloquium InTech hosted for high schoolers a few months after I started? We realized there weren’t enough chairs when the kids started filing in. I saw you sneaking out, and somehow, I knew where you were going.”

I remembered that day. Jerkface Gerald had miscounted the number of attendants. “Folding chairs.”

“Yes, you shot out of there to fetch the folding chairs we kept in storage.”

Aaron had appeared out of thin air that day, exactly how he always did. Then, he had given me shit about wanting to carry the chairs on my own, that it wasn’t my job to do that.

“So, what gave it away? Was it how I almost smacked you with a chair for being an overbearing jackass?”

“It was how you shivered when I came behind you to help you with one that had been stuck to a shelf. You know, right before you pulled again and went toppling down to the floor.”

Oh. Oh yeah. I remembered that precise moment exactly.

I had felt his body behind me. His arms came around me without touching me, and I stared—and shivered and flushed and gotten all worked up—at how they flexed under his dress shirt as he tried to disentangle that damn chair. It had been like a slap on the face, how hot and bothered that left me.

“That gave it away. I just knew that the red spreading through your neck and cheeks had nothing to do with you calling me a stubborn, heartless robot.”

“Did it …” I trailed off, unease growing in my stomach. “Did it ever bother you, everything I called you? Everything I said when we butted heads?”

My heart raced, as I feared his answer.

“No,” he said simply. “At that point, I took anything you were willing to give me, Catalina.”

Something staggered in my chest.

“The story I told your sister about how we met? I was only speaking the truth.”

My eyelids fluttered shut, and I thanked the heavens I was currently leaning on Aaron, that he was holding me against his chest, because I would have tumbled to the floor otherwise.

“By the time I realized how much of an idiot I had been by pushing you away, you already hated me.”

I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. “I heard you talk to Jeff. Accidentally.” That knot wouldn’t go away, squeezing my throat tight. “You said you’d work with anybody else, anybody but me. And I felt as if you had just pushed me aside. Deemed worthless as a professional because you didn’t like me. Because I had crossed some line I hadn’t known existed. I … how could I look at you and not think about it after that? I blacklisted you.”

“And I deserved it.” Aaron turned me around delicately, flushing our chests together very slowly. He looked down at me. “I meant what I said. When you brought that welcome gift to my office, something tore inside of me. You … distracted me. You stole my focus, Lina. Like nothing I had ever experienced before. So, I panicked. I refused to let that happen. When Jeff suggested I work closely with you, I convinced him that it would be a bad idea. I convinced myself of that too.

“But then I got to know you.” Aaron looked down at me intently, something weighing behind his eyes, pushing me—pushing us—closer and closer to an emotion that took more and more room in my chest with every second I spent looking into his eyes. “I watched you work, laugh, be this bright and kind woman that you are. And the crack that had opened that first day widened. It only kept growing. Making me realize how much of a fool I had been. By the time I knew I didn’t want to push you away anymore, that I couldn’t do it, it was too late. So, I took whatever you had for me even if that was hatred, antagonism, your obvious dislike, anything if that gave me a few minutes with you every day. If that put me on your mind, even for a little while.”

“Aaron …” I trailed off, everything inside of my chest, my head, my memory stirring into a loud and raging thunderstorm. “All this time.”

“I know.”

I watched his jaw twitch, his features hardening impossibly.

“You let me antagonize you. All this time, you sat there and let me do that.” My voice