Page 30 of The Mistakes I've Made
“Basically,” I answered. “But I’m doing Dean and everyone else a favor, and once she’s out of here, he’ll see just how right I was.”
Aiden, who had been observing our conversation but had yet to participate, finally decided to chime in. “But he does have a point, doesn’t he? Your brother? Even if you run her out, which I’m all for—I didn’t move out of one big city to watch another spring up in its place—but say you do—drive her out, I mean—how do you know someone else won’t show up days later, ready to take her place? She’s just one of a thousand staff members. Hart International is huge. Their resources are vast, limitless even. They have lawyers to back up their lawyers. How can we compete?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “But it would give us a little time to figure it out. And isn’t time better than lying down in the middle of the street and giving up?”
A slow, meticulous grin spread across Aiden’s face. “I like your friend, Millie. He’s tenacious.”
Millie rolled her eyes. “He’s impetuous at best. And possibly crazy.”
I eyed the stove one more time. “I’m definitely crazy if I let you continue in the kitchen like this,” I said, hopping off the stool I’d been sitting on for far too long. “Let’s trade places.”
“What?” she exclaimed. “I was the one who invited you over for dinner. You can’t cook it!”
Aiden laughed. “Please cook, Taylor. It would be a nice break from the charcoal diet I’ve been consuming.”
Millie’s eyes jerked over to her husband. “You said you liked my cooking!”
“What else am I supposed to say? I can’t cook anymore! Unless you’d like to eat nothing but Lucky Charms and Cheerios for the rest of your life.”
Her face warmed, and I watched as she cozied herself into his embrace.
“I’d eat your Lucky Charms every day.”
His hand snaked around her rear. “That just might be the sexiest thing you’ve ever said to me, love.”
I turned away before I felt like a Peeping Tom. I heard Millie giggle, and it was one of those ridiculous, high-pitched squeaky laughs that women made when men were doing something highly inappropriate to them in public.
I knew because I’d perfected the move that caused that laugh by my junior year.
“Feeling kind of uncomfortable here!” I called out, my back still facing them.
“Sorry!” Millie blurted out, a couple of more squeals escaping her lips as she jogged back into the kitchen to join me. “Newlyweds, you know? Can’t help it.”
I shook my head, unable to fight returning the infectious grin plastered across her face. “I have a feeling you two will always be newlyweds. You’ll be like that old couple, The McKennons. Remember them from way back?”
“Who are the McKennons? I don’t know that name, and I thought I’d met everyone by now,” Aiden said.
I handed Millie a couple of vegetables to chop for a salad while I tried to recover the chicken she’d tried to char in the oven.
“The McKennons were the cute old couple—we used to make fun of when we were kids,” Millie explained.
“They’d walk hand in hand and kiss on every corner. After a million years together, they couldn’t seem to keep their hands off each other, and as kids, we naturally found it beyond disgusting,” I added.
“I wonder what happened to them,” Millie said wistfully, making nice, neat piles of carrots for the salad. “I only remember, as a college student, I’d come home and not see them around anymore. But being the busy, self-involved person I was, I never bothered to ask anyone.”
“The husband got cancer,” I explained. “And, about two weeks after he passed, she did, too.”
“Did she have cancer, too?” Aiden asked.
“No,” I replied. “My mom said she died of a broken heart.”
A sad sort of smile took over Millie’s features. “Your mom would know.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, thinking of my father for the first time in a while. “I guess she would.”
“I want to be like that dirty old couple when we grow old,” Millie said, returning to Aiden.
This time, instead of heat and passion, there was a quiet stillness between them. He pulled her onto his lap, both of them perched on the kitchen stool like a single unit.
