Page 15 of If You Could Only Imagine
It wasn’t 30 minutes later that I realized I was wrong.
So very, very wrong.
This was baaaaaaaaaad.
Chapter 8
Aiden~
My body bolted upright as the sound of a slamming door. I immediately noticed Denise wasn’t in bed, and for her sake, that had better been the bathroom door slamming shut and not the front door.
It had better not be the front door.
For her sake and my sanity, it had better. Not. Be. The. Front. Door.
But when my eyes scanned the bedroom, I saw the door to the attached bath standing wide open, and with it I could feel my temper take hold.
Growing up with a tyrant of a father had taught me how to practice restrained. My father flew off the handle a lot, and I vowed not to fall victim to unreasonable anger. Lord knows me and my brothers each had our own personal issues, but between my father’s tyrannical ways, Mason’s sociopathic personality, Gabe’s eerie insight and Mike’s violent tendencies, I did my best to be normal. I did my best to always appear rational and sane.
My problem was women. Except for my relationship with my brothers, and now my sister-in-law, usually the only times I felt extreme emotions it was because it involved a woman. Whether we were laughing, fighting or fucking, it didn’t matter. I needed women in my life like every living thing on the planet needed oxygen.
I’ve always found women to be the most majestic miracles to ever exist. Fanciful? Maybe. But that’s how I felt.
So, Denise sneaking out of my bed and creeping away in the early hours of the morning was making me feel a lot of things. Anger being primarily front and center.
From the second the front door to my condo shut behind us last night, there hadn’t been a second where I wasn’t touching her, kissing her or fucking her. Even when we were catching our breaths between rounds, I had found a way to still touch and kiss her. All night long one of my body parts was always in contact with one of hers.
And she’s going to sneak the fuck out of here like it was all a mistake; like this was all some horribly morning after regret. And the more I thought about it, the more those ugly thoughts threatened to choke me.
I knew Denise had concerns, and to be fair, they weren’t unwarranted. The age difference didn’t bother me, but women were funny about shit like that. There was such a negative about women aging and I just didn’t get it. Women were phenomenal at any age.
They were fuckingwomenfor Christ’s sake.
They could create life. They had the ability to feed and nurture that life. They could stand strong and fall apart at the same time, losing none of their grace. They could endure tragedies that would bring the strongest of men to their knees.
Traditional wedding vows included ‘to love and to cherish’, well the love part was easy. If you were getting married, the assumption is that you already love your bride. It’s the cherish part that matters in that sentence. How can you not cherish a walking, talking heavenly body?
My biggest problem now was the realization that where women were my weakness, Denise had become my kryptonite.
I don’t know what it was about her the first time I met her…I mean, yes, she’s stunning, but I’ve met many beautiful women and none of them ever affected me like Denise did when I touched her during that first handshake. She makes every other woman fade into the background and that’s never happened to me before.
Mason claims that the first time he laid eyes on Shane everything else around him had fallen away. He saw only her. She was the only thing that existed for miles. Six years later, Mase says she still the only thing he sees.
And now I know exactly what he’s talking about.
I got out of bed and took a long, hot shower, hoping some of the heat from the jet blasts would ease the tension in my shoulders, but I knew they wouldn’t. I was still pissed, and I wouldn’t stop being pissed until Denise’s ass was back here in my bed.
When I finally got out of the shower and got dressed, I opened my laptop and clicked around until I was in the Human Resources files for Buchanan Industries. I clicked around some more until I found everything I needed to know on Denise. Primarily her address.
Unethical? Sure. Unprofessional? Completely.
But ask me if I cared. Because. I. Did. Not. Care.
So, armed with her address, I grabbed my keys, jumped in my car and made the 20-minute drive to her apartment.
When I finally found myself standing next to her front door, dark thoughts started to plague me. I knew it was because I was pissed about her sneaking off, but I began to wonder if she lived with someone. Did she have a boyfriend? Or did she casually date?
I guess there was only one way to find out. I knocked on the door and waited.
