“Maybe you need to make sure you show him you like him,” Harlow suggested as she and Ainsley shared a look.
“I’m not saying I don’t want to get to know him. I’m just…” I shrugged. Confused. I was so confused. I was worried that I wanted this too badly and I’d end up a year down the road with a man who I saw with rose colored glasses and he wasn’t who I thought.
“Pyre’s a good guy,” Ainsley told me, as though she could hear my inner thoughts. “All I’m saying is once these guys decide you’re theirs, theydon’twalk away. They walk in, and install cameras.”
“Cameras?” Harlow asked.
Again Ainsley just waved a hand dismissively.
“He doesn’t consider me his,” I argued. “What if he never does?”
She bit the insides of her lips, looking like she was debating on telling me something.
“Spill it,” Harlow demanded.
“I don’t want to scare her off,” she said, waving a hand toward me.
“Well,Iwant to know. If it scares her, we’ll just tie her up and hand deliver her to Pyre with a pretty bow. He can deal with the fallout from there.”
I rolled my eyes at Harlow. “You wouldn’t do that.”
She gave me a flat stare. “Try me, Cupcake.”
Blinking, I stared at her in shock because I believed her now.
“Warrant told me that there was no way Pyre would’ve started dating you if he wasn’t seriously interested,” Ainsley said, cutting through our tangent.
“Why’s that?” Harlow asked.
“Most of those guys don’t get serious with women unless they’re planning to make them old ladies,” Ains explained. “They might keep a woman around for a while for sex, but that’s aboutit.” Seeing the look on my face, she hurried through the next part. “He said Pyre’s basically been celibate for years. When Pyre decides to get serious, he’sserious.”
“How would he know that?” I asked.
She snorted. “Those guys are worse than old women with gossiping. And they keep close tabs on each other. They’ve been worrying about Pyre for a while now, I guess, because he’s been so withdrawn and uninterested in women.”
“Like that’s a bad thing. At least he’s not a man-hoe like some of them,” Harlow argued.
“True,” Ainsley said. “But I guess it’s gone on long enough they weren’t sure what was going on. At least until they figured out it was all because he was interested in someone.” She gave me a sly look. “That was over a year ago.”
It was my turn to narrow my eyes. “You’re telling me that Pyre has liked me for the last year?” I let out a scoff. “I wasn’t even sure he didn’t hate me until last week.”
“Oh, he doesn’t hate you, sweetie,” Harlow replied. “We all could’ve told you that.”
I almost wished they had. But that would’ve required me talking to them about the sexy biker and I hadn’t admitted to anyone, until recently, that I had a thing for him. “But a year?” I asked, skeptical.
“Actually, Warrant is pretty sure he’s had a thing for you for longer than that,” Ainsley said with a grin. “And we’ll leave you to think about that while you work on that body over there.” She grabbed Harlow, who’d been about to grill her, and dragged her out of the room.
“Hey! Wait!” I called out, but they were gone before I could ask my own questions. “That was mean,” I muttered. Huffing out a breath, I stood up, pulled on gloves, and went over to the table where the corpse was laid out.
Owen was going to be back soon and he’d want a cause of death, so I needed to get to work. But Ainsley was right. I was going to stew over this as I worked.
Time flew,but it was about three hours later when Owen showed back up. I glanced up as he knocked and came in through the door. Motioning toward the table, I indicated for him to take a pair of gloves. “Just in time.”
His brows shot up as he put on the gloves. “You found something?”
“I did.”
“Good,” he said, relief heavy in his voice.
