“Was it the car that ran you off the road last night?” I asked.
“Nope. That was a truck, actually.” He sighed. “I could be wrong, but private detective seems the way to go. But was he looking at you or me?”
I shivered. “I don’t know.”
“It wasn’t Jareth Davey,” Aiden said, pulling me abreast of him and tucking me safely against his warm and solid body.
“You don’t know that,” I said over the new lump in my throat. Davey had found me last month and left a note at my place. Right now, apparently he was no longer in California. Maybe it was time we finally had that showdown.
Aiden stared down the now empty roadway. There wasn’t anything else to say.
Chapter 16
Ialternated all day at work between stressing about the weird photographer in the car and wanting to dance a little jig that Aiden and I were back together. Or at least trying to be together. After a hectic morning of court hearings and then an hour of investigating a case through our computer system, I finally had time to call Tessa.
“Yo,” she answered, sounding sleepy.
“Yo. Did I wake you up?’
“No. Well, not really. I’m laying out on Donna’s back deck and might’ve fallen asleep, even though her douchey neighbor keeps peeking over the fence. What is up with that dude?”
I remembered Donna saying something about the old fart being a jerk. “Do you think I have a hero complex with Aiden?” I asked, leaning back in my chair.
Movement sounded as she obviously turned over on the lounger. “Yeah. Is that bad?”
I reached in my desk drawer for some lip balm. “I’m not sure. It might blind me to problems.”
“Do you feel blind to problems?” she asked.
I swiped the tube across my mouth and then tossed it back in my drawer. “I’m not sure. I fantasized about him for so long growing up, and now he’s here in person.”
“Hmmm. Well, pretend you didn’t know him before now. What would you think?”
“I’d think he’s sex on a stick with a side of overprotective badassness,” I said instantly.
Her chuckle eased something inside me. “You’re over-thinking this. Honestly. Are you picking out china?”
Well, we had been joking about that earlier, but not really. “No.”
“Then just enjoy the ride and see where it takes you,” she said softly. “He seems like a good guy, so long as he didn’t murder Danny. I don’t think he did, you don’t think he did, and you might as well either get him out of your system or see what you two could have.”
I relaxed and kicked my feet up on my messy desk. “You give the best advice.” My sister really was good with people and insights. She got that from our mom. “You’d make a great shrink.”
“Ha,” Tessa said. “That’d require years of school, and unlike you, I didn’t love school. At all.”
True on both counts. “Have they released your apartment yet?”
“No,” she said. “But I’m not ready to go back yet, anyway. I’m having fun at Donna’s with her wonderfully peaceful pool. You should come by for dinner tonight before my shift.”
Heat filtered into my face for no good reason. “Aiden is grilling dinner at my place.”
“Oh,” she teased, making the word sound like it had several syllables. “Aiden isgrilling.”
“Shut up,” I said, my face heating more.
“You shut up,” she naturally returned. “Do we need to have the sex talk again?”
Considering the last time my sisters had given me the sex talk, they’d convinced me that somehow too much sex would make my nose disappear and I’d have a hole in my face. I didn’t think so. I was eleven at the time. “You guys were kinda mean, you know.”
