Page 77 of When the Walls Come Down
He chuckled. “So, Heath, what brings you to California?”
“Work,” he replied without ever lifting his gaze.
“You work for that body armor company now, don’t you? What was the name again? No, don’t tell me.” He snapped his fingers. “Rubicon, right?”
Heath’s head popped up and his eyes curiously cut to mine. “That’s right.”
Shane beamed. “Maggie talks about you guys a lot.”
“Does she now? She doesn’t talk about you at all.” He gave up on the menu and rested his arms on the table. “How long have you two been… seeing each other?”
I spoke out of the side of my mouth, very aware that my brother could hear me, and said, “It’s a trap. Don’t answer.”
Shane chuckled. “Well, we… met about three weeks ago. At Two Ships, actually. She was having a drink; I was having a beer.” My sweet, oblivious Shane teased a fingertip over my shoulder and smiled over at me with so much adoration it made me squirm.
God, I was going to miss him when Heath buried him in the backyard.
He leaned on the table, a nuclear scowl leveled on Shane. “And what about after that beer?”
“Nothing. I walked her home.” He swayed his head from side to side. “Or maybe she walked me home. I’m not sure. We didn’t realize we were neighbors until then.”
I got a brief moment of reprieve when the waitress stopped by to take our orders, but the second she walked away, the inquisition continued.
“What do you do for a living?”
Shane smiled. “Well, I spent the last four years working at Bay Brewing as a—”
“Four years?” Heath interrupted. “How the hell old are you?”
Uh-oh.
Mayday, Mayday.
Seeing as how Shane was only three years younger than my brother and nine years older than I was, this was not going to go over well with Heath.
“Twenty-six,” I announced.
Shane swung an incredulous expression my way. “Uhhh.”
I gave his thigh a squeeze, a silent shut-the-fuck-up. “He’s twenty-six. His family actually owns Bay Brewing, so he started there fresh out of college. He works in the creative department with me.” I strategically left out the part about him being the guy trying to get me fired—or how it was also the other way around too. If I was lying, I might as well go all out.
“Uh, huh,” Heath mumbled, steepling his fingers under his chin. That all-too-familiar vein in his forehead made a cameo as he turned the heat on Shane. “She’s my sister. She gets a free pass, but I’d highly suggest you don’t bullshit me here.”
Poor, dead Shane just laughed like my brother wasn’t about to turn into the Hulk. “I’m thirty-three.”
I braced for the table flip as Heath’s brows shot up. But much to my surprise, he just sat there, glaring. And probably considering which body part he was going to rip from Shane first.
I laughed awkwardly. “Did I mention that Shane drives a truck? Ford and everything.”
“It’s actually a Chevy,” Shane corrected.
I swear my eyes nearly bulged from my head. “Would you shut up?”
Hooking an arm around my shoulders, he dragged me in for a side hug. “Relax, Peach.”
Peach. Shit. Heath was going to have a field day with that one.
Wincing, I looked at my brother. He was no longer a cop, but he still had entirely too many connections in law enforcement. “Please don’t have him arrested.”
“No promises,” he rumbled. “So you two met at a bar, happen to be neighbors, and work together too?”
“Not exactly,” Shane replied with a puffed chest and shit-eating grin. “We used to work together. As of two days ago, I am the proud owner of Warren Consulting.”
My head snapped back as if I’d been slapped. “I’m sorry. What?”
He wrapped his hand around mine on his thigh and turned to face me. “That’s why I was in Chicago. Reggie has a place in the city, and he stayed behind after Maddox’s party to help me get things in order. I wanted to make sure everything went as planned before I told you. Honestly, I didn’t finalize everything until yesterday. Trust me when I say things fell into place much easier—and quicker—than I’d ever expected.”
When he finally finished talking, he stared at me, so damn proud of himself, as if he’d discovered the secret to world peace and was waiting for a grand reward.
I had none to give.
I did, however, have approximately forty thousand questions and at least half of those started with What the fuck.
And that was not a conversation I was having with my thirty-three-year-old Chevy-loving neighbor/boyfriend in front of my brother.
“Shane, can I talk to you outside for a minute?”
“No,” Heath clipped.
“Didn’t ask you,” I fired right back. “Sit there, be grumpy, enjoy your coffee, text Clare. I don’t care. We’ll be back in a minute. And I don’t want to hear a peep about it.”
He rolled his eyes in the least Heath way possible, but it was oh so reminiscent of when we had been younger.
