I leaned against the door and tried to hold back my excitement. We were getting to know one another. That meant Ineeded to hold myself together long enough to figure out if this was the real thing or not.
I’d given my love too quickly in the past, which was why I’d ended up with a broken engagement and a battered heart. It wasn’t fair to make Pyre pay for the mistakes other men in my past had made, but that didn’t mean it was smart for me to charge full force ahead after learning that you couldn’t always trust what people said.
The last thing I needed to do though was to go into a relationship, if that was what this was, comparing him to my ex, Patrick. Not every man was a scumbag like he proved to be. Not that I treated men like they were, but when it came to relationships, or men showing interest, I definitely became suspicious, or outright ignored them, depending on the situation. This was my chance to turn a new leaf. To go into something with Pyre, open and willing to give grace. It was the best thing for him, for me, and who knew what could come out of it? Maybe this was what I’d been waiting for all these years. And if it was, then I’d be stupid to sabotage it before it even began.
CHAPTER 14
Raeleen
“You’re glowing, dear.”
I looked up, startled as Margaret smiled at me. The whole table was watching me and I now knew what one of the cockroaches felt like when Penny eyed them before making them her snack. “Really?” I asked, trying to sound innocent.
The three women sitting around the table with me playing bridge gave each other conspiring looks.
“Told you she was hiding something,” Henrietta said with a sniff.
“It’s a man,” Norma concluded.
“Of course it is,” Margaret told her. “It’s always a man.”
I laughed and shook my head. “Don’t you three have anything better to do than sit around gossiping about my non-existent love life?”
“That’s what we’re saying,” Norma replied. “We don’t think it’s so non-existent anymore.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked, staring down at my cards. If I looked up they were going to see the truth in my eyes because my dinner with Pyre last night had gone as well as it could have.
We’d talked the whole time we’d eaten and the date had ended with another mind melting kiss at my front door. He hadn’t tried to take it any farther and I was beginning to realize he was courting me. He wasn’t acting like any of the men my friends had run into, where they thought buying them a meal meant they owed them something in exchange. Not that Kaisa or Maya had put up with that nonsense when it’d happened. They’d shut those men down so incredibly fast. And who wouldn’t?
Kaisa was right when she’d said there were too many good men in the world to put up with that bullshit. And Pyre was just out here proving it. He hadn’t tried to talk me out of what I’d told him before our date. In fact, we hadn’t talked about me wanting kids at all, but he had talked about his cousins’ kids and how much fun it was to spend holidays with them. Like he was signaling to me that he wanted kids, but not pandering to me.
“See? That right there,” Margaret said, pointing at me. “Only a man puts a twinkle like that in a woman’s eyes.”
“Exactly, but is it the ‘I’m smitten with this man’ twinkle, or the ‘I just had mind blowing sex’ twinkle?” Henrietta asked.
“It’s definitely the smitten twinkle, if it was sex she’d be glowing and too relaxed to argue…or play a good hand,” Norma replied. “Trust me, I know these things.”
Shaking my head, I laughed. Nothing was off limits with these three. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Lies,” Henrietta said. “This girl doesn’t think we know her tells even after playing poker with her.”
“Shhhh,” Norma hissed, looking around. “Don’t let the wardens hear you say the p-word.”
I laughed again. These women loved to gamble. They met up in secret once a month and put on a poker day. It was against the assisted living home’s rules to gamble. So naturally they moved the day, time, and location of the poker days. The last time it was in the little room beneath the stairs. It’d barely fit those of us who’d been invited to come and play. And Norma had taken me for a nice little chunk of change. That woman might have been a con artist in another life.
I wonder what would happen if I let them loose in the MC’s clubhouse?
“Oh relax,” Margaret told Norma. “The wardens aren’t even around.”
The fact that they called the people who worked here wardens cracked me up. Pretty much everything these women did cracked me up. I came here a couple of times a month to visit. That was how I knew Mrs. Templeton, though she rarely sat and played bridge with us. She preferred to read, so we’d sit together and I’d read the old bodice rippers to her. Near the end there, her vision was so bad that even glasses couldn’t help her with the small print. I hadn’t minded one bit and enjoyed the time we’d spent together.
“Now,” Henrietta said, pulling my attention back from thoughts of Mrs. Templeton, “spill it, girly.”
“Yeah,” Norma said, resting her chin on the heel of her hand as she stared at me. “Give us the goods. We haven’t had any love stories around here in far too long.”
Margaret rolled her eyes. “Then what do you call Harry mooning after you if not a love story?”
Norma waved her hand. “That’s pure lust, honey. He only wants a place to stick his-”
