Arranged around the space on the third floor of the old menthol cigarette factory were the men and women who’d opened their homes and hearts to Sabrina when she’d had nowhere else to go and no one else to turn to. Some were her roommates there at the shop. Others were coworkers who’d moved out of the old brick building to live with their significant others.
Speaking of the significant others…
Hannah Blue was a computer whiz working for the D.O.D. Grace Jackson and Julia O’Toole were both FBI agents employed at the local field office. And when you added the Black Knights, basically the real-life versions of Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible, Sabrina couldn’t help but sometimes feel she was living inside a spy novel.
James Patterson, eat your heart out.
The television was tuned to an episode of M.A.S.H.—Graham Coleburn’s choice, no doubt. But the volume was muted so that she couldn’t hear Hawkeye's words. Bowls of popcorn filled the hands of half the room’s occupants, and the scents of salt and butter overpowered the smells that usually permeated through the three floors of the shop: grease, molten metal, and automotive paint.
“I’m looking at you,” Eliza pointed to Graham while Fisher, her fiancé, dragged her down to join him on an adult-sized beanbag chair. “You don’t have an amorous outlet other than your hand, so I figure you’re the most likely culprit to engage in lotion molestation.”
“Please.” Graham gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head while his big body took up every square inch of the large, leather La-Z-Boy shoved into the corner. “Just ’cause I’m not datin’ anyone in particular, that don’t mean I gotta tug my own pug.”
“Speaking of pugs,” Frank “Boss” Knight said as he bent over the pool table at the room's far end. His wife, Becky, eyed his ass appreciatively. “Didn’t Sabrina catch Eliza doing something interesting to Fisher’s pug right before you all left for Cameroon?”
Sabrina winced when every head in the room swiveled in her direction. “Don’t.” She pointed a menacing finger toward Boss’s craggy face.
“Sorry.” He shrugged, but he didn’t look the least bit contrite. “It’s too good not to share.” He turned to Fisher and Eliza and announced, “She saw what the two of you were doing to the treadmill.”
“Not to the treadmill,” Sabrina was quick to clarify. “On the treadmill. We should hang a Do Not Disturb sign on the gym door, by the way.”
“Saw what? What did ya see?” Graham demanded, his green eyes shining with prurient delight. When Sabrina refused to answer, he turned to Boss. “What did she see?”
“Our sweet Sabrina was woefully short on the details,” Boss admitted with a sorrowful shake of his buzzcut head. “She just said I should wait to work out because Fisher and Eliza were in the gym using the treadmill together.”
“If the lady throws her legs over the handrails,” Fisher explained, “it puts her in the perfect position to receive?—”
“Fisher!” Eliza slapped a hand over his mouth.
“But…is the treadmill movin’? Like, are ya walkin’ while also…” Graham made a motion with his big hand.
“This is no longer a conversation,” Eliza groaned. “This is a hostage crisis.”
Graham’s tone was serious, but he was clearly biting the inside of his cheek. “I’m just tryin’ to make sure I have the correct mental picture. Was the treadmill on or not?”
“No,” Eliza hissed. “There was no motorized movement. We’re not weirdos.”
“That’s debatable.” Graham shrugged noncommittally.
Eliza’s invitation for the big former SEAL to shove it where the sun never shone was issued and ignored as Graham turned his attention to the doorway.
Hewitt Birch stood briefly on the threshold before sauntering into the room with Peanut, BKI’s onsite feline mascot, doing figure eights around his jean-clad legs.
“What about him?” Graham pointed an accusatory finger at Hew as Hew dropped onto the sofa beside Sabrina.
He brought the smell of the outdoors with him. Hot pavement and wind-lashed freshness clung to his T-shirt thanks to his motorcycle ride home from Red Delilah’s. Underneath all that, though, she could detect a hint of his cedar-and-sage aftershave.
She would always associate that smell with everything that was good and kind and right in the world.
The cushion sagged under his weight, so her shoulder slid into his. When he touched her, she wanted to curl into him like Peanut curled into a sun-warmed patch of floor because he was like the sun. Big. Steady. Warm. And with a gravitational pull that had drawn her to him from the beginning.
“What about me?” he asked around a mouthful of yogurt while lifting an eyebrow that matched the color of his short beard. His facial hair was two shades darker than the thick mop on his head.
“He’s flying solo these days.” Graham pointed at Hew but looked over at Eliza. “Shouldn’t ya give him the hand cream lecture too?”
Eliza glanced at Sabrina. But the look was so fleeting that Sabrina had no idea what it meant and thought maybe she’d imagined it.
There was no reason Eliza should look her way when discussing Hew’s amorous impulses. Everyone knew she and Hew were only friends.
