Page 61 of Building What's Meant to Be

Chapter Fourteen

AIDEN

If my life were a dry fuse leading to a powder keg, Bubba’s claim that the Kraven Corporation has something to do with this case lights the end. Dire possibilities crackle and burn in my mind. If this is true, I’m not sure I stand a chance.

When they catch wind that I’m the agent on the case, it’s game over for me.

Better to enjoy late spring doing community service with a beautiful woman than to dwell on what’s suddenly a more dire situation than I could’ve fathomed. While I can, I’ll make my last-ditch efforts to save Butterbury.

When I saw Tinsley standing on the worksite at the end of the day looking delightfully dirty and disheveled, I couldn’t help myself. Life is too short. Mine perhaps more so now.

Her lips drew me close, but I don’t want to move too fast, to make her think this is anything but the real deal. I’ve never felt so overwhelmed, so drawn, so consumed by a woman.

My mind is like a switchback trail and returns to the Kraven brothers. We go way back. In addition to the fuse with the powder keg, there is also a timer attached to explosives. I’m not their favorite person and they’re not the kinds of people to play nice or fair. Me neither. I won’t go down without a fight, but it’snot one I’m confident that I can win. After all, it’s two against one.

I wait for Tinsley while she changes out of her work clothes. She and Bubba stand in the doorway. She wears a friendly smile at something he says.

At first, her uncertainty and discomfort at coming here were beyond obvious. Bubba is big and harry, but he’s a good guy. Much more so than Puma and the other people she kept company with in Los Angeles. There’s no denying he looks like a Sasquatch, but he’d offer a place at his table to anyone, even Puma.

Well, probably.

Tinsley moves slower than usual when she approaches the bike.

“Long day?” I ask.

“Bubba asked me if my dogs are tired.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said they’re dead.”

I stare at her, aghast.

The corners of her lips drop. “We lost the cocker spaniels during my senior year at boarding school. I didn’t get to say goodbye. My mother has standard poodles now. Porter and Paris. They hate me.”

I take Tinsley’s hand. It’s small and soft, warm and sends a thrill racing through me. “I’m sorry.”

“That my parents or the dogs hate me?” Tinsley asks without humor.

“Both. I’m sure that’s not true. Your parents can’t hate you.”

“I haven’t given them a reason to like me.”

“That’s not entirely your job.”

“Yeah, but I could’ve been less of a spoiled brat.”

“Were you a spoiled brat?” I ask with a semi-air of disbelief because the Tinsley I’ve been with the last couple of daysisn’t much like the high-maintenance, manipulative girl Taylor warned me about or the person I assumed she’d be based on the situation with Puma.

“I was the worst. But I can do better, and I’d like to start with some pie.”

The corner of my lip lifts with a smile. “You want pie? I know just where to go.”

She gazes at her feet. “Yep, my dogs are tired. Dead tired.”

“I take it that Bubba told you what that expression means.”

She gets on the back of the motorcycle. “Sure did.”

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