Page 15 of The Princess and the Fraud

“You can thank Margot Massey for that one. She did that to her secretary, did you know that? I got the idea from her.” Aaron moved over to the medium size, thumbing through the hangers without touching the cloth. “You know, I’m waiting for an apology from you as well. I was right, wasn’t I? Ihadcome with Annalise and Michael.”

Apologize. That was what Alderton-Du Ponte had drilled into me after years and years of etiquette training.You are always wrong. The guests are always right. Apologize.“We’ll call it even, then.”

“Yes, let’s call it even,Lovisa,” he murmured, delicately drawing my name out. “That’s a beautiful name. Unique. I’ve never heard it before.”

“You shouldn’t flirt with me.”

Pure amusement lit up his expression. “Oh, dear, that wasn’t flirting. If I’mreallyflirting with you, you’ll know it.” Aaron drew a black shirt off the rack and held it out so he could analyze it. “The night by the fire—thatwas flirting.”

The words, as off-the-cuff as they’d been for him, jarred me. “You remember.”

“You did seem familiar, and it wasn’t until that angry expression of yours came out after I knocked the tray.” A corner of his lips curved. “So those friends I told you to abandon were really Annalise and that other girl? What was her name—Caroline?” Hetskedunder his breath. “Didn’t see that coming.”

“Please don’t tell them what I said.” I’d resorted to pleading with him a lot quicker than I’d wanted to, but better to appeal to his good side before I had a chance to get on the bad. Because Aaronwasthe type to blab all my secrets to them, probably while not even blinking an eye. “It was just?—”

“I don’t even remember what you said, darling. Not about them, anyway.” He eyed my Alderton-Du Ponte polo with his fingers caught on a black button-down. “I see you didn’t take my advice. You didn’t jump.”

The quiet despair from that night washed back over me. It hadn’t been the first time the feeling had swamped me since, but it definitely wasn’t welcome in this moment. I’d shared my internal debate with someone who was supposed to be a stranger. Our paths were never supposed to cross again. “It was crap advice.”

“Saying to hell with everyone and starting over wascrap advice?” With a smooth movement, Aaron unbuttoned the shirt’s collar and drew it from the hanger, laying it over his arm as he replaced the hook. “You’re glad you didn’t jump, then, hmm? Life got better? Your friends stopped putting you on the backburner, your boyfriend got his act together, and you finally bought your mother’s dream house?”

Even after working here for five years, I still hadn’t mastered the art of telling the perfect lie, but I sure as heck wasn’t about to admit the truth. Life hadn’t gotten better. Things might’ve softened with Caroline and Annalise, but with Grant and the house? They hadn’t gotten better. They’d imploded.

“I suppose it’s par for the course for my track record, being wrong,” he murmured when I didn’t reply. He held the arm with the shirt draped over it still, but his other hand reached up and began plucking at the buttons on his collar. “You didn’t quit, did you?”

“We’ve established I still work here.”

“Nothere. Not Alderton-Du Ponte.” Aaron looked at me expectantly. “The cello.”

Strangely enough, my shoulders slumped a little, as if I’d held tension there that I hadn’t noticed.The cello. He hadn’t forgotten that, either. A part of me rebelled against the idea of letting my guard down even a fraction, but another part feltrelieved. “I’d already quit, if you remember. I said I hadn’t picked up the cello since my mother passed.”

“And I asked you to play again. To practice for me.” Aaron tilted his head forward. “And I’d rather hear you perform Elgar’s Concerto well, not chopping up a masterpiece.”

“I haven’t played.” It was the truth.

I waited for him to fire back a witty response—the loser seemed to have an endless supply of them—but he simply looked at me. For alongbeat. Long enough to make me squirm. “Then I suppose you’re proving me wrong again.”

“You don’t know me. I don’t know why you assume you did.”

“You’re right.” Disappointment dripped from his tone. “I thought you were a cellist, but you don’t even play the cello.”

My lips parted with the dig.If you play the cello, you’re a cellist, he’d said back in June, combating my self-consciousness. Now, Aaron dismissed it without even looking at me, not a trace of emotion in his expression. I sucked in a silent breath, fighting the urge to argue with him. I wasn’t sure why. He was right. I wasn’t a cellist.

Aaron arched an eyebrow. “Staying to watch?”

My eyes dropped to the stretch of chest he’d bared while we’d been speaking. The sides of his undone shirt only slipped apart a couple of inches, exposing skin that was firm and tanned, a glimpse of shadow hinting at muscles. Aaron wasn’t exactly muscular—narrow shoulders, average in height—but his stomach and chest were definitely toned. I hadn’t noticed him beginning to strip mid-conversation, but I noticed now, andholy.

I was struck, quite fiercely, by how long it’d been since I’d seen a man’s chest. Atonedman’s chest. This was no sixty-year-old businessman lounging by the pool displaying his sagging skin. This was… aman.

Staring at his bare chest, I felt like a pre-teen discovering her first TV crush.

“Youarestaying to watch, then?” Aaron repeated, sounding far smugger than he had a second ago. He grabbed one strip of his shirt and tugged it over his shoulder, exposing his collarbone and the pectoral Fiona had been stroking. I fully, wholly understood her in this moment. She would’ve swooned if she saw it uncovered.

But despite the burn that stung along the back of my neck, I forced my gaze to his. “Not much to see.”

And with that, I turned my back on the gorgeous chest before I could gawk at it in its full glory, and left the closet.

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