Page 8 of Barbed Wire and Burglary
He chuckled. “And our story is just getting started.”
She loved the sound of that. “Chapter one.” She wasgiddy with happiness, dreaming of the day she could ditch her cover story and reveal her true self to him.
He helped her remove her coat before shrugging out of his. They draped them over the back of the sofa.
A motor rumbled outside, making Bandit’s ears twitch. He sprinted across the room and leaped onto the windowsill to claw at the mini-blinds. It was clear he recognized the sound of Aaron’s vehicle.
Her brother was home sooner than she’d expected, though he was supposed to be on highway patrol until dinnertime. She hoped it didn’t mean he was sick or suffering a relapse from his injury.
“Stop that, you little varmint!” She left the circle of A.J.’s arms to dive after her cat. “We don’t own this house. We’ll have to replace everything you break.” Aaron would, at any rate. Even though she was the one who’d decided to adopt a stray cat, he probably wouldn’t let her pay for anything Bandit damaged. That was just how he was—a protective older brother from head to toe.
A.J. knew about the shooting that had left Aaron wounded and unconscious. Since parts of his story had made it into the news, it had been impossible to keep Aaron’s injury a secret from A.J.. As a result, A.J. was under the impression she was in Heart Lake to assist Aaron, not the other way around. To keep up appearances, she’d made a few comments to him about cleaning and cooking for Aaron while he was recovering.
She’d taken it a step further and dropped a basket of laundry on the sofa right before he’d arrived. Acting came as naturally to her as breathing, and no wonder. She’d literally had years of practice.
A.J. followed her to the window to help pry Bandit’s claws from the blinds. He placed the squirming cat againsthis shoulder once again, while she attempted to bend the ends of the white metal blinds back into place.
The front door opened before she was finished, and her brother stepped into the living room, scowling ferociously at them. “A.J.,” he ground out instead of extending a proper greeting.
When people first met her brother, they often fixated on how little they resembled each other. It was because they had been adopted. He was tall and broad-shouldered; she was petite. He had ash-blonde hair that brushed against the collar of his leather jacket. Her hair was much lighter, wavier, and longer.
A.J. nodded politely at Aaron instead of saying anything.
“You’re home early.” Aurora eyed the tired lines around her brother’s eyes, knowing he’d been foregoing sleep to watch and rewatch every second of the video footage Modello’s had supplied concerning their “almost” robberies. It was a gray area. Though Aaron was one of Diamondback’s owners, he technically wasn’t employed by them. However, they were so shorthanded these days at Diamondback that her deputy brother had fallen into the rhythm of serving as her unofficial partner of sorts. It wasn’t ideal, but she desperately needed the help since neither her uncle nor her brother was ready to hire new talent to fill the holes their parents had left behind.
Aaron grunted something she couldn’t understand and stomped to the fridge to yank out a bottle of water. He uncapped it and tipped it up, guzzling most of it down.
She rushed to fill the silence. “I did it,” she offered in her brightest voice. “I signed a contract with Modello’s today!” Her brother had helped create her cover story aboutdeveloping a signature scent for them to hide her real reason for coming and going from them.
She was putting in a lot of hours at the store, since the most recent burglary attempt had bypassed the owner’s fingerprint control locks on the display cases. Though the intruder’s actions had ultimately triggered an alarm in time to prevent anything from being stolen, Chanel Kingston was insisting on figuring out how it happened and why it hadn’t been caught on camera.
Aurora had less than a month to figure it out before Modello’s first shipment of gems arrived—an extensive line of engagement rings and wedding bands to complement the wedding gowns and tuxedos filling their sales racks.
“Nice going, sis!” Aaron rolled the shoulder that had been shot a month ago. The movement made him wince.
Sympathy twisted through her. “Want me to run grab some pain meds from the medicine cabinet?”
“Nah, I’m okay.” He shook his head and polished off the rest of his bottle of water. “Does this mean you’ll be heading back to Dallas soon to grab some supplies?”
The question surprised her, making her wonder if it was his way of attempting to separate her and A.J. for a few days.
“There’s no rush.” She shook her head, hating the way his lips tightened in response. “Getting you back to one hundred percent is still my top priority.”
“I’m already there,” he grumbled. “Close enough, anyway. I know how important this new contract is to you, so don’t feel obligated to stay in town and coddle me if you need to get back to your lab.”
She gaped at him, hearing the underlying warning in his words. Was it because one or both of them were indanger? Was that why he was home early from his shift at the Heart Lake Police Department?
“Honestly, Aaron,” she spoke slowly, feeling like she was picking her way through a minefield, “I brought enough supplies with me to get started on the project,” she lied. “Yes, I’ll have to travel back-and-forth some, but not this week.” Once in a while, she drove to Dallas to keep up appearances, but her trips there were becoming less and less frequent.
His expression grew thunderous, telling her she hadn’t said what he’d wanted to hear.
Too bad! I’m not a mind reader.
A.J. chose that moment to jump back into the conversation, waving two fingers in the air. “I can go with you if you’d like. Now that I’m in town, I don’t mind being on boyfriend duty.”
Aaron rounded on A.J. “Does that mean the rumors are true? You’re really selling your auto body shop?” When A.J. and Aurora had started dating, he’d owned and operated his own business in Phoenix, Arizona.
“Yes, it does.” A.J. looked pleased. “I already have an offer on it, too. A good one.”
