"Serenading me tonight? I like this idea." Shelby nudged her chin at the guitar case Aiden held in one of his hands.

"Better," Aiden said, walking inside of Shelby's apartment. He put the guitar case down on the floor.

Shelby drank in the sight of him while he closed the door. "What's better than being serenaded by a super hot songwriter who also insisted on cooking me dinner in my own home?" she asked.

"Giving a refresher guitar lesson to the incredibly beautiful woman who's letting me hang out with her tonight."

"You're making me work to be serenaded? I'm not sure I'd call that better." She tried to purse her lips, but she couldn't keep a straight face.

"Maybe not, but I can think of at least one other thing that's definitely better."

Aiden circled his arms around Shelby's waist and pulled her in close. His head dipped down to her collarbone, where he began to trail kisses along her shoulders, and then up her neck. Shelby closed her eyes, her body pressing into his as she tilted her head back, giving him access to her jawline. Every nerve ending she had came thrumming to life when his mouth finally brushed against hers. Her hands roamed up his back, looping around his neck just as she felt his tongue run along the inside of her bottom lip. Her mouth parted, and Aiden deepened the kiss, sending tingles of desire coursing through her.

Shelby swayed, lightheaded, when they finally broke apart. She held on to Aiden's forearms, steadying herself, and let her head rest against his chest.

"Hi." Aiden pressed his lips against the top of her head.

"That was quite the hello." The rapid thud of Aiden's heartbeat she heard with her ear against his chest was a sign that he agreed.

"Don't want you to forget me while I'm in London."

"As if that's going to happen. But since you mentioned it, we do have three weeks of lost hello kisses to make up for in advance, you know. And we have the place to ourselves." Shelby let go of his arms and took a step back, then reached for his hand. The guitar momentarily forgotten, she led him into the living room.

"Wasn't there something about making dinner tonight?" he teased.

"It's L.A. We have dinner late here." She sat down on the sofa and pulled him down beside her.

"True, and it is early." He leaned in to nuzzle her neck, then brought his mouth to the hollow of her throat.

Shelby's hands slid below the hem of Aiden's T-shirt and wandered up along the warm skin of his abs and chest. He chuckled softly, his mouth moving to the sensitive skin below her ear. A shiver ran up her spine when his teeth grazed her earlobe.

"Do you really have to go tomorrow?" she murmured, closing her eyes.

Shelby expected another chuckle in response, followed by a kiss. Instead, she felt Aiden's body tense up below her wandering hands. His mouth moved away from her ear.

"Did I say the wrong thing?" She opened her eyes to look at him.

Aiden didn't answer. He shifted so he was sitting straight up, leaving space between them.

"Changed your mind about a late dinner?" Shelby tried again.

He shook his head. "Sorry. I think a couple of things just hit me all at once. How long I'm going to be gone is one of them. How close we've been getting is another."

As his words registered with her, Shelby found it difficult to breathe. "Is that good or bad?" Her voice came out strained. "How close we've been getting, I mean."

"Good," he answered immediately. "There's just something—" He stopped. She waited for him to continue, but he didn't.

"Something?" she prompted.

"It was nothing. I don't even know where I was going with that." He wasn't meeting her eyes.

Shelby sat back against the sofa cushions to study him. His jaw was set, she noticed, and his lips were pressed together in a firm line. There was a small crease between his eyebrows, too, as if he was deep in thought or wrestling with a decision. Whatever was weighing on Aiden's mind, it sure wasn't nothing, and he wasn't saying anything to make her think this nothing-that-was-something wasn't about him and her. The question she was faced with was if she should press the issue and find out what he'd been about to say, or if she should let it go and let peace reign on the night before he was leaving town.

If it's bad, it's better to know now before he goes to London, and before I'm in this even more over my head. Her mind made up, Shelby took a breath and spoke.

"I think I've been getting to know you pretty well lately," she began, then paused, wracking her brain for what she could say that wouldn't come across as confrontational. She wasn't looking for an argument or an awkward conversation, but she also didn't want to spend the next three weeks wondering where she really stood with him and what he had been about to say. She tapped her finger against her chin, pondering, then shrugged. "I don't think you would have started to say 'there's just something' if there weren't other words that were supposed to follow that. You have me worried about what you were going to say."

That made him look at her. "Worried?" he asked. "About what?"

"Us," she replied. "That maybe you don't feel how I feel and you're looking for a way to say it before you go away."

His eyes widened. "Nothing has changed about how I feel, unless you count being even more crazy about you." He reached for her hand, taking it between both of his. "You know that, right?"

"So there's really nothing else?"

Aiden hesitated. Half a minute passed before he responded.

"Thinking about being in London and you being here made me realize how close we've been getting and how much closer I want to be with you."

Shelby felt a tremor in her hand, then realized it wasn't her hand trembling—it was Aiden's. He must have realized it at the same time, because he let go of her hand and raked his fingers through his hair. She let his words sink in as she watched him. Was he nervous about what he had said, or how she would respond?

"How much closer do you want to be with me?" Shelby's tone was gentle.

"As close as you're willing to let me be," he said. "I'm only seeing you, and I only want to see you. Is it fair of me to ask if you only want to see me, too, when I'm leaving for three weeks?"

"I feel the same way you do." She inched closer to him on the sofa, and looked straight into his eyes. "Nothing is going to change while you're gone. I'll still be here when you get back, and I'll still want to kiss you until the sun comes up and then some."

The smile that stretched across Aiden's face made Shelby want to grab him by the ears and do just that—kiss him until the sun came up.

"I'm going to miss you more than you know." He touched her arm, then cradled her face in his hand.

"Don't think about missing me yet," she told him. "We're still here in the same place tonight, and you did promise to make me dinner and serenade me. You can even kiss me again."

"Oh yeah?" Aiden's forehead crinkled. "I might have to take you up on that."

"That better be more than 'might' if you want me to call you my boyfriend," Shelby scolded him.

Aiden leaned forward, until his forehead was resting against hers. "Then I'd better get on that, since I definitely want you to call me your boyfriend."

He kissed her eyebrow first, and the tip of her nose next. When his lips moved down to meet hers, Shelby was waiting for him, ready to be lost in his kiss.