“Yeah.” Then he looked back at the water-skier getting back up. “Why?”
“I just want to know what I’m dealing with here,” I muttered.
He moved then. Sometimes I forgot how quickly he moved when he wanted. He leaned over, grasped my hip and shoulder, and lifted me right off the deck to sit on his lap, facing him.
My eyebrows shot up and heat shot down to my abdomen. Surprise kept me quiet.
“You’re dealing with me and I’m dealing with you,” he murmured, his gaze dropping to my mouth. “I like the fact that a fading relationship confuses you because you’d never have one of those. You’re all in, baby.”
Sometimes he called me ‘baby,’ and I know I should get irritated about that. I’m a strong, professional, badass of a woman. But I melted instead. I’ve never thought I was completely sane, so who cared? “Are you all in?” I whispered.
“I am.” He leaned in and kissed me, his lips firm but his movements gentle. Leaning back, he kept both arms around my waist, making me feel all secure and safe. “You and I are new, and we’re just starting whatever this is. This is also the first time I’ve settled down in one place since I left town at eighteen, so let’s not look for problems. Sasha is in my past.”
“She’s back,” I said, humor gliding through me along with desire from the feeling of his firm thighs beneath me.
He kissed my nose. “I noticed. It’s business, though.”
It was sweet that he thought so. Sometimes the smartest of men were morons when it came to women. I’d seen women flirt with my dad before, and the guy had had no clue. I mean, none. While I believed Aiden to be a bit more aware, if he thought Sasha wasn’t going to make a move on him, he was beyond clueless. It was my decision whether to trust him or not. Considering he’d saved my life when we had just been kids, I had always trusted him. Of course, that was before we’d started dating and I all but handed him my heart. “I did enjoy our three days of normalcy,” I mused.
He laughed. Man, he had a great laugh. Deep and rolling with just a hint of Ireland in it. He’d moved to the states to live with his grandparents in his teens, and sometimes that brogue came through. “Three days is a record for us.”
Wasn’t it, though? “I’m not the jealous type,” I said, mostly to myself. Yeah, Sasha was all curves and pretty eyes, but I was me, and I was fine with that. I’d never have curves like that, but I filled out a decently full B cup, my hips were a little curvy, and Aiden liked my eyes. They were a combo green/gray that looked plain to me, but he seemed to like them. Which was nice.
“You have nothing to be jealous about,” he said, which was also nice. “I’ll find out the details of this Op, and you and I will come up with a plan for us that works. If I have to go undercover with Sasha and the Lordes, it might get sticky, but if I’ve learned anything, it’s that you can handle sticky. Or blow it up.” He grinned.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t wrong. I smacked his shoulder. “You’re just relieved I’ll be busy getting the law firm up and started.”
“Yes, I am.”
The sound of a large truck lumbered from the front of the cabin.
Aiden looked over his shoulder. “Finally. My stuff from the storage unit in Los Angeles is here.”
“Furniture?” I asked hopefully.
He winced. “There might be a bar stool or two.”
Great. Knowing Aiden, there’d be guns, sporting equipment, and probably a Kevlar vest or two. “We need to go furniture shopping.” With our schedules? Yeah. We’d be sitting on the floor eating together in the coming autumn.
He stood and put us both on our feet. “Let’s unpack the van.”
I glanced at my watch. “You’re on your own, pal. I have a cousin to rescue.”
Aiden slung an arm around my shoulders. “I almost feel sorry for the guy.”
Fair enough.
Chapter 3
Iwore a light summer dress to Tratto’s Italian Restaurant overlooking Lilac Lake, which was much larger than my sweet Tamarack Lake, although only twenty minutes away. Tratto’s had been in business since the turn of the century, and it had the best restaurant lasagna west of the Rockies. My two sisters were already waiting on the deck with a bottle of Leonetti Cabernet breathing on the table.
“Somebody had a good month,” I said, taking my seat and reaching to pour a glass.
“Not me,” Tessa said, sipping delicately. Tessa looked like our mom and the Irish side of our family with her reddish-blonde hair and clear green eyes. She was the middle child, once the wildest one, and she’d always been good at sports. Right now, she was working as a waitress at Smiley’s Diner, which was just a few blocks away in Timber City.
Donna sat back. “I sold a lake house to a family from California for double the asking price. Real Estate is going nuts in Idaho right now.” Donna, the oldest of us three, looked like the Italian side of our family with her black hair and sparkling brown eyes. She was a realtor and had always been one of the smartest people in the room. Any room.
“Cool.” I took a sip of the robust wine and felt my bones melt into happiness. I didn’t look like either side of the family with my brown hair and greenish-gray eyes, and mailman jokes were a staple when people looked at the three of us. I was the youngest and wasn’t sure how I would’ve navigated life without my two sisters plowing a way for me—at least until I decided to attend law school. At that point, I was on my own and now felt like I could help them out once in a while. It was a good feeling.
