“Fine,” I said, wrapping my fingers around his as well as I could, considering the size difference. “No need to get your panties in a bunch, Blackford.”

He sighed. But then he pulled me up, doing something with our hands. Something that somehow changed the positions of our palms, which were now against each other.

A flutter took flight in the middle of my chest. And as we exited the office, I realized it’d soon no longer be Jeff’s, our boss. This would become Aaron’s office.

Soon enough.

Which should have been reason enough to immediately drop his hand and run in the opposite direction. It should have been enough to stop myself from welcoming the warmth of his palm or letting him take me home.

It should have. But ironically, I hadn’t seemed to be listening to a whole lot of should haves lately. So, what was a couple more?

“Hello?” A distant male voice stirred me back to life.

Un poquito más, I silently begged as I fought to fall back into oblivion. Un ratito más.

“I’m Aaron.”

Aaron?

Eyes shut and every thought sticky and heavy, I halfheartedly tried to make sense of what was happening. Why was Aaron’s voice sounding right beside me? I wanted to go back to sleep.

I vaguely recognized the characteristic dull vibration of an engine. Am I in a car? A bus? But we weren’t moving.

A dream. Yeah, that made sense. Right?

Confused and overexerted, I buried deeper into the warmth of my bed and decided I didn’t care if I dreamed of Aaron. It wouldn’t be the first time anyway.

“Yes, that Aaron.” The male voice was no longer distant. “Yes, I’m afraid so,” he continued. Every word bringing me more and more awake. “She’s asleep right now.”

I felt a featherlike caress on the back of my hand. And my skin flared back to life. Feeling way too real for this being a dream.

“No, everything is fine.” Aaron’s baritone texture reverberated through my ears, and I found a weird comfort in recognizing it. “Okay, I will tell Catalina to call you back.” A pause. Followed by a chuckle. “No, I’m not one of those. I love meat. Roasted lamb in particular.”

Meat. Yeah. That was something I also loved. We should eat meat together, Aaron and I. My mind wandered away for an instant, thinking of juicy and crispy lamb and Aaron too.

“Okay. Thank you, and likewise, Isabel. Bye.”

Wait. Wait.

Isabel?

Isabel as in my sister, Isabel?

More confusion tugged at my still-foggy mind. I felt one of my eyes flutter open. I wasn’t in my bed. I was in a car, which was immaculate. Obsessively so.

Aaron’s car.

I was in Aaron’s car. Not a dream.

And … Isabel. She had called me earlier today, hadn’t she? And texted me. And I had ignored all of it.

All at once, the events of the last hours snowballed down my mind, overwhelming my half-functional brain.

No. My eyes blinked fully open, and my body sprang up.

“I’m awake,” I announced.

As I whirled my head from one side to the other, my gaze stumbled upon the owner of the car I had been napping in. He passed both his hands through his hair, looking as humanly tired as one could.

His head turned in my direction. “Welcome back,” he said, looking at me strangely. “Again.”

My heart squeezed. Why exactly, I didn’t have the slightest idea.

“Hi,” I managed with my scattered brain.

“Your sister called,” Aaron told me, making my whole body tense. “Five times in a row,” he added.

I opened my mouth, but my tongue didn’t work through the words. Any words.

“It’s okay. Something about a weird text you sent her,” he explained and offered back my phone.

I clasped it, grazing Aaron’s fingers very briefly.

Feeling Aaron’s gaze on me, I checked on the text. God, it was intelligible. Alarmingly so.

Aaron continued, “Then, she went on about the seating or the tables, I think? Maybe something about the napkins too.”

I looked over at him, catching one of his hands shooting to his hair again. The muscles on his arm flexed, and my still-sleepy eyes seemed to be absorbed by that motion and that motion alone.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have picked up,” Aaron said, bringing my gaze to his face once more.

“It’s okay,” I admitted, shocking myself. “If she called me at three or four in the morning, Spain time, that meant she was genuinely worried. She would have probably sent the New York City Fire Department to my place if you had not answered.”

Something odd shone in his eyes. “I’m glad to hear that because your phone rang and rang. And you …” He shook his head lightly. “You sleep like the dead, Catalina.”

He wasn’t wrong.

Not even the arrival of the apocalypse—even if the very same Four Horsemen were galloping in my direction, shouting my name—could shake me awake when I was deeply asleep. Which was ironic really because Isabel talking to Aaron on the phone was my idea of a world-ending event.

My eyes widened with a realization.

Aaron had talked to my sister. He had mentioned meat. Roasted lamb. Which was on the menu for the wedding.

The connotations of that twirled in my weary head.

“Are you okay?” Aaron asked as I silently panicked.

“Yes,” I lied, forcing a smile. “Super-duper okay.”

Aaron’s brow arched. Maybe that had been a giveaway to how not super-duper okay I was.

“I told her you were fine, just asleep. But I think you should call her back tomorrow.” He pointed at my phone. “Judging by the five-minute monologue in Spanish before I could even tell her it wasn’t you on the line, I’d say she’ll feel better when you do.” Aaron’s lips twitched in what was the beginning of a smile.

“Yeah,” I murmured, a little too absorbed by his mouth when I should have been trying to manage a crisis. “Okay.”

That smirk stretched into a lopsided smile.

Ah, man. Why did it look so good on him? He didn’t smile nearly enough.

Which was not important.

What mattered was that Aaron had talked to my sister, and she never minced her words. Ever.

“So, Aaron,” I started, the words rushing out, “when you talked to my sister, you told her your name. Right?”

He cocked a brow. “Yes, that’s what people do when they introduce themselves.”

“Okay.” I nodded my head very slowly. “And how did you say that exactly? As in, Hey, I’m Aaron.” I dropped my voice, imitating his. “Or like, I’m just Aaron. I’m no one. Hello.”

He tilted his head. “I’m not sure I understand the question, but I’m going to go on a whim and go with option one. Although my voice sounds nothing like that.”

I exhaled through my nose, bringing the pads of my fingers to my temples. “Oh, Aaron. This is not good. I’m …” I blinked, feeling myself pale. “Oh God.”

Aaron frowned. “Catalina”—his blue eyes assessed me, concerned—“maybe I should take you to a hospital, get you checked out. You must have hit your head when you fell.”

He angled his body away, placing one hand on the steering wheel and lifting the other one to the ignition.

“Wait, wait.” I stopped him right before he started the car. “It’s not that. I’m okay. Seriously.”

He cut me a glance.

“I’m fine.”

He looked like he didn’t believe me.

“I promise.”

His hands dropped, falling on his lap.

“But I need something from you.” I watched him nod. Whoa, okay. That was easy. “I need you to tell me exactly what you told Isabel.”

“We talked about this. About a minute ago.” He brought one of his hands to the back of his neck.

“Just do it for me. Humor me.” I gave him a weak smile. “I need to know what you said.”

The man looked at me as if I were asking him to take his clothes off and perform a choreographed dance in the middle of Times Square.