Billion Dollar Boyfriend (Celebrity Love)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

There's a verdict. I'm heading to the courthouse.

The message from Aiden had lit up Shelby's phone almost an hour and a half earlier, just after 1 a.m. in Los Angeles. Shelby had been drifting off to sleep and had pried her eyelids open to read the text after hearing her phone buzz. Now she was sitting up in bed, wide awake with her phone beside her and her laptop computer in front of her, waiting for news.

She refreshed the browser window on her laptop and held her breath while she waited for the page to reload. The news site she was reading had published a report of the jury reaching a verdict and photos of Aiden arriving at the courthouse as Tristan. Those were the last two updates, even though the breaking news banner emblazoned across the top of the page promised live coverage.

Shelby studied the photos of Aiden for at least the fifteenth time since she'd first seen them. She tried to read his face for what he felt, walking in to hear the jury's conclusion about a man who was accused of an unthinkable act that had changed Aiden's entire life and identity, but the aviator sunglasses he'd been wearing when he was photographed made it difficult to see his expression.

It was late Friday morning in London now, and she and Aiden had only been apart since Tuesday, but Shelby already missed him a lot. She wanted to reach through the screen and touch him, and she found herself wishing she had stayed with him for a few more days. Her fear of someone spotting them traveling together and recognizing Aiden as Tristan seemed silly in retrospect, especially since nothing had come of Seraphine's post. Even after her odd run-in with the woman who'd knocked her boarding pass out of her hand at Heathrow, and thinking she had seen the man from the Calais hotel in the terminal, her flight across the Atlantic had been uneventful.

Shelby flopped back against her pillows, imagining Aiden listening to the jury's verdict as it was read. Would it be what he hoped for? She counted to fifty in her head, then refreshed the laptop screen again.

This time there was a new update on the page. Guilty.

She tried to picture Aiden in the courtroom with the Thornbury family and all the onlookers. Would he and his relatives be relieved, feeling the weight of danger finally lift after almost twenty-six years? Or would it change anything for him at all after a lifetime of being Aiden Montgomery?

Shelby reached for her phone, intending to text him since she now knew about the verdict. A new message popped up on her screen before she could.

Guilty on all counts. I don't even know how to say what I feel.

Aiden's text was followed by a second one a few moments later.

I'm going to try to get a flight home early in the morning. I just want to see you.

Shelby felt tears of joy prick at her eyes, both for Aiden and his family and the end of a decades-long nightmare, and at his words.

I can't wait to see you, she wrote back. Let me know when your flight gets in, and I'll meet you at the airport.

* * *

Shelby watched a white van with tinted windows drive past where she sat in her car, outside a glass and stone private terminal at John Wayne airport in Santa Ana. It was one of only two other vehicles she'd seen traveling by this part of the airport since she had arrived and parked a few minutes ago.

Aiden had texted her that he'd landed just as she was entering the airport grounds. He'd been waiting for the customs and immigration officer to meet his flight, and then he would make his way out to her.

Shelby busied herself with changing radio stations to pass the time. She saw the white van make a U-turn and pass by her again before it stopped near the terminal building. The van probably belonged to the company that operated the private terminal, she guessed, or it could be someone there to pick up the flight crew, since the only passenger traveling on Aiden's flight was him.