Page 86 of Heating Up (Nugget)
An hour and fifteen minutes later, Dana and the Arnolds sat in her office drawing up an offer. Aidan was right; she really was on a roll.
* * *
“You have anything to eat around here?” Sloane stuck her head in Aidan’s refrigerator.
He maneuvered her away and reached in for a package of bacon. “I’ll make you a BLT.”
“Really? Okay.”
“It’ll be generic compared to Brady’s. But beggars can’t be choosers.”
She dropped into one of the kitchen chairs and glanced around the room. “Dana’s a neat freak, isn’t she?”
“What makes you think I’m not the clean one?”
“Uh . . . like I’ve known you my whole life. You’re a slob. So what’s her deal? She’s kind of glommed on to you like a puppy.”
“We like each other. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. I think it’s great that you have someone to pass the time with until you figure out your shit. But don’t go breaking her heart. She’s not as resilient as Sue.”
He thought Dana was pretty resilient, but she definitely wasn’t Sue. “What shit am I supposed to be figuring out?”
“Why you let someone like Sue get away.”
“Maybe it was all part of the grand scheme.” He pulled a frying pan out of the cupboard, put it over a medium flame, and filled it with strips of bacon.
“So you could meet Dana?” She let out a snort of laughter.
“What’s funny about that, Sloane?”
“She’s so not your type. A: She’s got a stick up her ass. B: She’s lived here longer than I have and doesn’t have any friends. And C: She’s an introvert and you’re the life of the party. Now, Sue was your type. Fun, social, outgoing. We loved Sue.”
“So I’ve heard.” Aidan turned the bacon. “Do me a favor, stay out of my love life.”
Sloane held up her hands in surrender. “I was just trying to help and save a woman from getting hurt. Everyone can see she’s enthralled with you. After Griffin dumped her for—”
“That’s enough. You don’t know the first thing about it.”
“What are you saying?”
Aidan reached up for a cutting board to slice the tomato. “What I’m saying is, maybe I’m crazy about her.”
Sloane narrowed her eyes at him like he was delusional. “Not more crazy about her than you were about Sue.”
No,the rest of youwere crazy about Sue. “Leave it alone, Sloane. It’s my business; worry about your own love life. What’s going on with the wedding?”
“Brady still wants to do it in September. I think it’s crazy. There’s no way we can pull something like that off in two months, and I want a dream wedding with all the frills and flounces. I know it’s girlie, but it’s what I want.”
“Then wait,” he said, spreading mayo on a couple of slices of bread and filling them with bacon, lettuce, and tomato.
“Then we’d have to wait a full year. Any later than September it starts getting cold around here.”
Aidan lifted his shoulder. What did he know about weddings?
“Let’s talk about the case,” she said.
He cut her sandwich on a diagonal—the way she used to eat it as a kid—grabbed a bag of chips, a couple of sodas, and sat down to eat. “Not much to talk about until we hear back on the shirt from forensics. I’m betting that shirt was nowhere near a fire . . . that it was tossed in that Dumpster before the Bun Boy was lit up.”
