Page 46 of Secondhand Smoke

“If Ghost finds out…” Tango started.

“What? You gonna tattle on me?”

His best friend gave him a level look. “Never.” Another covert check. “I’m just thinking it would be a good idea to deal with the guy before all of this blows up.”

“Yeah, and how do you suggest I do that?”

Tango sighed, which meant he had no answers on that front.

“Hey, Kev?” a female voice called from beyond the doors, and the sound of it moved through Aidan like electricity.

Tango was the one closest to the door, the one in sight, and therefore the one she’d called to. He stood, and shaded his eyes against the sun with one hand. “Hey, Sam,” he called back, and all the while, Aidan’s pulse was skyrocketing.

He straightened, and over Tango’s shoulder could see Sam peering into the garage bay, arms folded across her middle in uncertainty. She wore jeans and a cream sweater, her hair down, wavy and snarled from the breeze.

Beautiful.

“Is Aidan working today?” she asked.

Before Tango could answer, Aidan ditched his tools and stepped up to the door, hastily wiping his hands on the front of his embroidered garage shirt. “I am,” he said, and noticed the way Sam pulled back, lips tightening, like she’d been hoping maybe he wasn’t around.

But that didn’t make sense, because she was asking after him.

Unless she was only asking so she could avoid him.

When in the hell had he ever analyzed anything social to this degree? The woman was going to kill him with all this self-doubt.

She fixed him with a look hard to describe. “Do you have a second?”

“For you, I’ve got all the seconds,” he said, giving her his widest, most charming grin.

She didn’t smile back, merely turned and walked back through the parking lot, wanting them to have some privacy.

Tango gave him a sympathetic shrug as he started to follow.

Mercy called to him: “Don’t think I don’t see you striking out over there, man candy.”

“Bite my ass,” he called back, and went after Sam, heart thumping hard against his ribs.

He hadn’t ever noticed her walk before, when they tracked side-by-side up and down the hall at the school. But now, behind her, he took note of the efficient strides, the way she didn’t waste effort with popping her hips and swaying her torso. She walked like she was going someplace, like a woman who had more important things to worry about than sex appeal. She didn’t flirt, she’d told him not that long ago, and no, she didn’t. It wasn’t part of her DNA, he supposed.

Part of him wanted to catch up to her, put a hand under her elbow, link them physically. But he kept pace behind her, realizing where she was headed: the elevated garden in the no-man’s land of the parking lot. The oasis of small gnarled fruit trees and babbling manmade waterfall. The nursery crew had put in the yellow autumn flowers – pansies? – already and the apple trees were going red and gold in the tops, the apples shiny and tight-skinned.

Sam reached the low stone wall that ringed the garden’s foundation and sat on it, legs crossed, arms still folded. Nothing about her posture invited Aidan to join her so he stayed on his feet, pulling up in front of her, trying to look casual. Like all his skin wasn’t prickling with nerves.

“I came to get my oil changed,” she said.

“Good, you need to keep up with that.”

“And I thought while I waited…I would…” She took a deep breath and looked at him, the brightness of the sun making her eyes hard to see clearly. “Okay, let’s just get it over with. I know we’ll still see each other, me spending time with Ava and all, and I don’t want things to be strained. So let’s just agree to put what happened–”

“What happened?”

She appeared startled by the question. Her cheeks pinked. “Well, when you lost your head and said something to me you didn’t mean–”

“I meant it.”

“Aidan, you kissed me.”

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