Page 34 of Worth the Wait

CHAPTER 12

REZNOR

“You got broken pipes?”

I lift my head up and see Grant peering at me down the cereal aisle of the grocery store. “My pipes are doing just fine, Malone.” I laugh. “And what the hell are you talking about?”

“You’re in a fishbowl now, Rez. Someone told the cashier at 7-Eleven that she saw the cute new guy with the tattoos and muscles at Ace Hardware buying some PVC. The cashier was at the coffee shop, and I overheard her tell it to someone else...so I drew some conclusions.”

“Fucking great. Let’s hope I don’t go to buy some condoms. That’ll really get the gossips going.”

Note to self: Buy more condoms. My current stash isn’t going to last if I’m living next door to Desi.

Then again, she needs to say yes.

“If you buy condoms, you’ll have women lining up at your door asking for directions…”

“You mean the take off your clothes, get on all fours type of directions?” I ask with a chuckle.

“Something like that.”

“How’s work?”

“Same ol’. You know how it goes—feast or famine. Right now, it’s feast.”

“Running ragged, huh?”

“Pretty much. We’re looking for a few more guys.” He lifts his eyebrows and smirks. “You know, if you fall in love with it here and want to stick around.”

“I’m not falling in love, no worries there,” I say and wink but am shocked that my mind immediately veers to Desi.

Get a grip, Mayne. It was sex. One night.

A night I plan on having again and again.

“You never know,” he says and shakes his head. “I wasn’t falling in love either...and then it fucking hit me the minute I saw Emerson.”

“Someday,” I say. “Not now.” I chuckle as I grab a box of Crispix off the shelf. “Right now I’m relegated to letting women beat me up in defense class and fixing broken sprinkler pipes for the hot neighbor.”

“Hot neighbors are never a bad thing. Where you living?”

“What? You know I’m fixing pipes but not where I live?”

“I’m sure the cashier could have told me if I’d asked,” he says with a laugh.

“I’m renting a house over on Vintage Road.”

“Great area. We have a close friend who lives there. Desi Whitman.”

I cough over the automatic laugh when he says that. “No shit,” I finally manage.

“Something tells me you’ve met.”

I nod slowly. “She’s in my self-defense class,” I admit, because if this is a small enough town that people are talking about what pipe I’m buying, they’ll sure as hell talk about who’s in the self-defense class.

“Really? She wouldn’t happen to be the hot neighbor too, would she?” he asks, but there’s something about my reaction that he catches. Leave it to a cop to notice everything.

“She’s hot all right.” I whistle low and appreciatively.