Page 16 of Rising Heat

That earns me a look sharp enough to cut through steel. I grin, which does not help. And suddenly I’m fifteen again, explaining why launching myself off the Russo garage roof on a snowboard to see if I could defy the laws of gravity was a sound decision.

“What happened?” he asks.

I exhale. He isn’t asking about the paperwork.

“I showed her the place.”

I shrug.

“And?”

“She liked it.”

“That is not what I’m asking.”

I glance up. And there it is—something even tighter than concern or irritation. Because Mack knows me too well. Always has.

Thirty years of shared bedrooms, shared hockey teams, shared trucks, shared mistakes. Bought a brownstone together. Tore half of it apart together. Spent eight months covered in drywall dust because neither of us trusted anybody else to get it right.

We built this place the same way we did everything else—side by side.

The women had been the same way, more or less.

It started years ago, almost by accident. A woman at a bar had taken one look at us—me halfway through some smart-ass story, Mack already three drinks in and done pretending he found me entertaining—and laughed into her drink.

“What, you two come in a package?”

I’d grinned.

“Depends. You interested?”

Mack had looked at her for exactly three seconds, then looked at me.

“You’re going to talk the whole time, aren’t you?”

“Probably.”

He’d sighed like a man accepting a minor inconvenience. Then followed us upstairs.

We grabbed breakfast, made fun of each other over coffee, and went right back to being us. After that it just…happened again. And again. Then often enough that it stopped being surprising.

The rules showed up the same way most of ours did—we didn’t say them out loud, but somehow we both knew them anyway. The women we shared were separate from anyone either of us might actually date. That line had never been difficult because neither of us had ever met anyone who made it difficult.

A look across a room. A shared grin. A quiet check-in afterward.

All of it easy.

It worked because we worked. No matter what, we always ended up back here. In this kitchen. On that couch. In this house. Which was exactly why Mack was looking at me like I’d just brought a lit match into the living room.

I set the spoon down.

“She’s…” I shrug, like this is no big deal. “Interesting.”

Mack’s stare sharpens, and I wish I’d chosen any other word.

I don’t usually notice interesting.

I notice hot, funny, available. Darcy had been all three. That should have been the extent of it.