The Spanish Love Deception novel Chapter 23

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“Okay,” she said oddly softly. “So, you are still together?”

“Yes,” I lied again.

“And he’ll come to the wedding with you? To Spain?”

“Correct.”

A pause, making me realize my hands were sweating so much that the phone would have slipped if I hadn’t been gripping it as tightly as I was.

“He’s in New York too, you said?”

“Yep.”

She hummed and then added, “American?”

“Raised and born.”

“What’s his name again?”

My breath got stuck somewhere along my throat. Shit. I hadn’t given them a name, had I? I didn’t think I had, but …

My mind raced through my options very quickly. Desperately. I needed a name. What an easy, manageable thing. A name.

A simple name.

A name of a man who didn’t exist or I still had to find.

“Lina … are you there?” my mother chimed. She laughed, somehow sounding nervous. “Have you forgotten your boyfriend’s name?”

“Don’t be silly,” I told her, hearing my distress in my voice. “I …”

A shadow caught my eye, distracting me. My gaze shot to my office door, and exactly how he had wedged himself into my life one year and eight months ago—with horrifyingly bad timing—Aaron Blackford walked through the threshold and placed himself in the eye of the storm.

“Lina?” I thought I heard my mother say.

In two strides, he was in front of me, across my desk, letting a stack of papers drop on its surface.

What is he doing?

We didn’t visit each other’s offices. We never needed, wanted, or bothered to.

That icy-blue gaze of his fell on me. It was followed by a frown, as if he were wondering why I looked like a woman currently dealing with a life-threatening crisis. Which was exactly what I was doing. Getting caught in a lie was far worse than lying. After only a couple of seconds, his expression morphed into an appalled one. I could see the judgment in his eyes.

Out of every single person who could have walked into my office right now, it’d had to be him.