My pulse skyrocketed at the deep rumble of his words, and the words themselves.

Uh.

Yes, please.

Wait. What? Was he flirting with me. “What?”

Aidan’s grin grew. “Some mac and cheese. Would you like some? For lunch?”

Oh God. Open up the floor and let it swallow me whole! I blushed. “Uh, sure.”

“Why has your face gone red?” Sylvie asked as we began to walk toward the cafeteria.

I flushed even harder. Aidan chuckled. “My face hasn’t gone red.”

“Pink, then,” Sylvie amended.

“It’s hot in here.”

“It’s not that hot.”

“Kid,” I said, laughing through my pain. “I’m not pink, red, or any shade in between. I am perfectly normal.”

Sylvie’s eyebrows pinched together. “You dress up like a storybook character every week. I don’t know if that’s normal.”

Aidan burst out laughing and I scowled at him. That only made him laugh harder. “She’s got you there,” he said, his words gravelly with amusement.

I looked down at Sylvie, clearly delighted that she’d made her uncle laugh. I mock glowered at her. “You, Sylvie Lennox, are way too smart for your age.”

“Good,” Aidan replied for her. “She makes up for all the idiots who are way too dumb for their age.”

Unsure if that was a personal dig, I raised an eyebrow. “And am I one of those idiots?”

“No.” Aidan opened the door to the cafeteria and gestured for us to go in before him. Sylvie hurried through first, and as I moved to follow her, my eyes were drawn up to her uncle like iron to a magnetic field. “You’re something else entirely, Pixie.”

Our eyes locked and I stalled. “Pixie?”

“Aye. There’s something …” He shook his head and then dropped his free hand to my waist to nudge me forward.

I didn’t move. I tensed at his touch, afraid I’d either melt back into his arm or forward into his chest. It was astonishing to me that someone who was practically a stranger could affect me so much. “There’s something?”

“Nothing,” he replied gruffly, forcing me to move as he guided us both into the cafeteria after Sylvie. “You just remind me of a pixie in that daft outfit.”

I glanced down, realizing I’d forgotten to change out of my costume, and when I looked back up to follow Aidan and Sylvie to the food counter, I was aware of people regarding my outfit with curious looks.

“You know, we don’t have to eat hospital food,” Aidan said to Sylvie as I approached. “We could invite Nora to eat lunch with us anywhere.”

“I like the mac and cheese here,” Sylvie replied, eyeing it hungrily. I wondered where she packed it all away in that tiny body of hers. “So does Nora.”

I let her speak for me because I wasn’t sure I was ready to venture out into the real world with Aidan. In here we were in our weird little bubble; I felt protected by that bubble. If we stepped outside, all the differences between us would only be amplified. In here, we were just two people who cared for Sylvie and I could get past my insecurities around him.

Before he could beat me to it, I paid for our lunches.

“You didn’t have to do that,” he said as we followed Sylvie to an empty table.

“You paid last time.”

“I can afford to.”

At his blunt reply, I answered, irritated, “I can afford to buy you lunch, Aidan.”

He studied me in that intense way again, making me squirm as I took the seat across from him. “Independently wealthy?”

I glowered at his sarcasm. “Yes. I’m a princess from a far-off land, disguised as a nobody so I can live my life in freedom from the restraints of life as a monarch.”

Sylvie stared at me wide-eyed.

Aidan scoffed. “Do you ever stop telling stories?”

“That would be cool, though,” Sylvie said wistfully. “I wish I was a princess.”

“You are a princess,” Aidan said matter-of-factly, like it was stupid of anyone to think otherwise. Sylvie beamed from ear to ear and then dove into her macaroni.

He made her so happy.

Lit up her entire world.

His gaze flicked from her to me and he tensed. Whatever he saw in my expression seemed to catch him by the back of the neck and hold him frozen, unable to look away from me.

A current rippled in the air between us, and a shiver caressed the back of my neck, tickling down my spine, around my back, and across my breasts. I sucked in a breath, feeling my nipples harden.

So inappropriate!

I flushed, looking down at my plate, mortified.

Realizing there was not only silence from Aidan but from Sylvie, I chanced a look at her and found her glancing from me to her uncle, her little brow creased in confusion.

Aidan cleared his throat. “So, Nora, any chance you’re going to tell us anything real about yourself anytime soon?”

Glad to think of anything but my attraction to him, I pondered his question. “Um … I like macaroni and cheese.”

Sylvie huffed. “We already knew that.”

“I’m from the US.”

“And that!”

“Okay, okay.” I tapped my chin, pretending to think. “I know. I’m twenty-two.”

She shook her head at me. “And that, silly.”

“I know something about you,” Aidan suddenly said.

“And what’s that?”

“You don’t know when to stop pretending.”

His words were like a punch to the gut. “That’s not true,” I whispered.

Seeming confused by my reaction, Aidan leaned across the table. “I never meant anything by it, Pixie. I was only kidding.”

Mortified, I gave him a sharp nod, and studied my food. The silence around the table made me feel guilty. “I love Shakespeare.”

“Shakespeare?” Aidan said.

I looked up at him. “Shakespeare.”

“What’s Shakespeare?” Sylvie asked.

“Not a what, a he. He wrote plays,” Aidan supplied, his eyes not leaving mine. “A little too old for you, sweetheart. You’ll learn Shakespeare when you’re a teenager.”

“Why do I have to wait?”

“Because he deals with stuff that’s a little too grown up for you.”

She seemed to accept this and returned to her mac and cheese.

“So,” Aidan turned his attention back to me, “the comedies or the tragedies?”

“Both.”

“Favorite?”

I couldn’t understand why he appeared so genuinely interested in my answer but I did know it made me want to tell him. “Comedy: Twelfth Night. Tragedy: a toss-up between Hamlet, King Lear and Othello. I can’t choose.”

“So the tragedies are really your favorite, then,” he said.

Thinking about it, I guessed they were. I shrugged.

“Have you ever starred in a production?”

The question ripped open a longing, a dream, making me inwardly wince. I shook my head, looking down at my uneaten plate.

“Nora?”

“So, who else have you worked with?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

Aidan didn’t hide his irritation or the disappointment in his expression. “Nora—”

“He doesn’t like to talk about it,” Sylvie piped up.

I frowned at her. “You told me about Bowie.”

“But he didn’t really work with him.”

This kid. I grinned at her. “That’s true.” My eyes flicked to Aidan, studying me again like I was under a microscope. My smile fell.

And just like that, so did the uncomfortable silence.

It had been clear that Aidan was annoyed with me for avoiding his questions. I’d given him something of myself and then immediately shut down again. I wasn’t stupid—I could see how that was annoying. But I was almost afraid of what I would say if I kept talking. It had been hard for me to trust Jim enough to give him what he had of me, and I guess it wasn’t hard to deduce that my lack of trust in men came from the situation with my dad. I feared having my heart broken again. And somehow, instinctually, I just knew that giving Aidan even a little of me and having him reject it would hurt more than any other man’s rejection.