Page 32 of Control (Everyday Heroes 3.50)
“Running ragged, huh?”
“Pretty much. We’re looking for a few more guys.” He lifts his eyebrows and smirks. “You know, if you fall in love with it here and want to stick around.”
“I’m not falling in love, no worries there,” I say and wink but am shocked that my mind immediately veers to Desi.
Get a grip, Mayne. It was sex. One night.
A night I plan on having again and again.
“You never know,” he says and shakes his head. “I wasn’t falling in love either...and then it fucking hit me the minute I saw Emerson.”
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“Someday,” I say. “Not now.” I chuckle as I grab a box of Crispix off the shelf. “Right now I’m relegated to letting women beat me up in defense class and fixing broken sprinkler pipes for the hot neighbor.”
“Hot neighbors are never a bad thing. Where you living?”
“What? You know I’m fixing pipes but not where I live?”
“I’m sure the cashier could have told me if I’d asked,” he says with a laugh.
“I’m renting a house over on Vintage Road.”
“Great area. We have a close friend who lives there. Desi Whitman.”
I cough over the automatic laugh when he says that. “No shit,” I finally manage.
“Something tells me you’ve met.”
I nod slowly. “She’s in my self-defense class,” I admit, because if this is a small enough town that people are talking about what pipe I’m buying, they’ll sure as hell talk about who’s in the self-defense class.
“Really? She wouldn’t happen to be the hot neighbor too, would she?” he asks, but there’s something about my reaction that he catches. Leave it to a cop to notice everything.
“She’s hot all right.” I whistle low and appreciatively.
He laughs. “She and my wife are best friends. Have been since way before we met.”
“Small world.”
“It is indeed.” We stare at each other, two men who understand the silent warning the other one is giving after the unspoken acknowledgement, that yes, I have slept with her.
His warning is be careful.
Mine is it’s none of your business.
“It’s actually quite a good thing. I can breathe a bit easier knowing you’re next door after what happened.”
If he didn’t have my attention before, he sure as hell has it now.
I fight the need to know and the want for her to tell me herself. The need to know wins.
“What’s that?”
“She hasn’t told you?”
“Nah, but I know something’s up. She jumps at the slightest sound. She’s constantly on edge. Unsettled. The look is the same one any of us on the job have seen before. She tries to hide it, but it’s still there. Add to that, she’s in my class. Reluctantly.”
Grant angles his head to the side and stares at me, almost as if he’s asking if he can trust me when he damn well knows he can.
