Billion Dollar Boyfriend (Celebrity Love)

Chapter Six

By the time applause thundered through the Magic Castle's Palace of Mystery, concluding the final show of the night, Shelby was convinced Aiden was a man of his word. It had so far been one of the most memorable evenings of her life, and she didn't want it to end.

Everything she'd seen tonight had left her in a state of wonder. An hour before the show they had just watched, she had volunteered to be part of an act in the castle's Close-Up Gallery. The act had involved the performer making coins vanish and reappear in ways that should have been impossible. True magic was the only thing Shelby could think of to explain all she had experienced during the last few hours, and that included how her night with Aiden had progressed since dinner. As intense as her attraction to him was, he also managed to put her at ease. Now, sitting side by side in the theatre, it was as though they had known each other for much longer than the hours they'd spent together here and at Raine's house.

"Shall we?" Aiden asked.

He got to his feet and extended his hand to her. She reached for it, letting him help her up. The feel of her hand in Aiden's had grown familiar throughout the night, and it already seemed natural to her. They kept their fingers laced together as they headed toward the exit and then out to a corridor.

"I love that this exists," Shelby marveled. "And I love that I don't know how they do all the tricks and illusions. I don't want to know—I want to believe in the truly spectacular."

"That's what I like about here, too," Aiden agreed. "It's a perfect escape from the real world."

The crowd of people who'd been roaming the castle all evening had thinned out, Shelby noticed. Most of the people who had exited the theatre with them appeared to be leaving for the night, but Aiden slowed his steps, his gaze darting toward a doorway that led somewhere Shelby hadn't yet seen.

"There's one more thing I want to show you." He stopped walking and pointed at where he had been looking. "It's over there, in that room."

He started walking again, leading Shelby to the room. She heard piano music as they approached and paused to listen, trying to place the song.

"Is there a pianist here?" she asked.

"Irma," Aiden told her. "I left the best part of the tour for last."

She gave him a curious look. "How do you know it's Irma without seeing who's playing?"

"Irma plays every night," he explained. "Want to put in a request?"

They rounded the doorway into the room where the music was coming from. There, Shelby saw a baby grand piano that was roped off from the rest of the room. The seat in front of the piano was empty, yet the music she'd heard from the corridor continued to play.

"It sounds beautiful, Irma," Aiden called out.

Shelby whipped her head around to find who he was talking to, but the room was empty of anyone but them.

"Was someone just in here?" she asked.

"Meet Invisible Irma." He gestured to the empty chair in front of the piano.

"Invisible Irma?" she repeated.

"Irma is one of the castle's ghosts." Aiden opened a leaflet he'd snagged from a table after dinner that listed the show times and performers, along with some stories about the castle. He tapped his finger on one of the pages.

Shelby scanned the text on the page. The paragraphs printed there told the story of Invisible Irma, who had allegedly died in 1932. Everything she read backed up what Aiden had just claimed—that Irma was a castle ghost who played the piano every night.