his cock inside her in a move that had her spreading her legs further apart for more.
“Yes,” Melanie whispered, pulling him down for a kiss as he continued to tease her, making her want more until she couldn’t take it anymore and-
“God, I love you,” Aidan whispered, sending her over the top as she opened her mouth to tell him that she loved him too only to have her words cut off with a harshly whispered, “Not yet, not until you’re sure,” as she had to wonder what was stopping her from saying it.
Chapter 39
“You’re not ready yet.”
“I’m more than ready,” Aidan assured his father as he closed the small black box that he’d been carrying with him for the past two months, waiting for the perfect moment to ask Melanie to marry him.
Tonight was the night and everything was going to be perfect.
“And the Bradford curse?” his father asked, throwing him a questioning look as he reached over and helped himself to Aidan’s fries.
“Doesn’t matter. She deserves better,” Aidan said because he wasn’t about to let two hundred years’ worth of bullshit ruin this.
He was going to do this right and that meant getting down on one knee and begging the woman that he couldn’t live without to marry him. He was done waiting. He’d been hoping that she realized just how much he loved her by now only to realize that he needed to show her. He’d fucked up every step of the way to this point and he refused to fuck this up, too.
“Bradfords don’t propose,” his father said, getting right to the point.
The men in his family didn’t believe in proposing because proposing meant that you were still thinking clearly and you weren’t out of your fucking mind in love. He loved Melanie. There was no doubt in his mind and as much as he would love to drag her in front of the nearest Justice of the peace and make her his, he couldn’t do that to her. She deserved it all, a proposal, her dream wedding that was going to cost him a fucking fortune, and a romantic honeymoon where he would show her just how much he loved her.
“This one does,” Aidan said, glancing down at his watch and realized that he needed to move his ass if he was going to get out of here early and have a chance to do this right.
“It won’t end well,” his father said, sighing heavily as he helped himself to the rest of Aidan’s fries.
“I can’t fuck this up too,” Aidan said, grabbing his stethoscope off his desk.
“Do you remember when you were little and I told you what happened when I made the mistake of asking your mother to marry me?”
“Yes,” Aidan said because it wasn’t something that he was likely to forget anytime soon.
While most families liked to tell scary stories around the fire, his family liked to share fucked up stories about all those times that a Bradford ignored the curse that had been haunting their family since his great-great-great-great-grandfather Robert made the mistake of pissing off his neighbor and all the fucked up things that happened when they did. He’d heard tales of what happened when Bradfords met the one, made the mistake of proposing, and all those terrifying tales of when they tried to take their wives on a honeymoon before their first anniversary.
When he was a child, those stories use to keep him up at night, having him deciding that he would never-
“I held back,” his father said, shrugging it off as he moved on to Aidan’s abandoned burger only to add, “Your mother didn’t think it was a good idea to tell you everything. She was afraid of scarring you kids for life or something,” at Aidan’s questioning look.
“How could it have been worse?” Aidan asked as a tingle of apprehension rode up his spine only to dismiss it because everything would be fine. He just needed to make sure that he was careful.
“You know that scar that your mother has across her right palm?”
“Yes,” Aidan said only to swallow hard when his father gave him a pointed look that had him wondering if this-
“I’m sorry, Dr. Bradford,” MaryAnne said, drawing his attention to his office door to find her holding up a patient file, “but you have a new patient waiting for you and she said that it was an emergency.”
“What’s going on?” Aidan asked, following her into the hallway where she handed him the patient file