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Quaid nodded and went to the brownies.
“We’re talking about Auden and his crush on the baker.” Quincy took a bite of his cookie, looking smug and amused.
Shayne patted Auden’s thigh. “If it makes you feel better, I think she feels the same way. She asked about you today.”
Auden perked up. “She did?”
“She did,” Shayne confirmed before turning to me and brushing the glaze flakes off my chest. “How long are you working tonight?”
“Well,” I admitted, “I have no immediate plans to leave work anytime soon. The chief tasked me with hiring two new people. I guess I have to get a couple of interviews going.”
She nodded and patted my chest. “Okay, well then we can reconvene at your place.”
“Our place,” I corrected her.
“Is that a ring on her finger?” Atlas butted in.
“What?” Quincy stood up, almost pressing his face between my body and Shayne’s.
“It is!” Quaid chirped as he picked up Shayne’s hand and shook it in Atlas’s face. “Holy shit, Soleada! Miracles do happen!”
Then Shayne was pulled out of my arms and passed around to my brothers.
I might or might not have been slightly offended and annoyed that I’d lost her heat, though I didn’t show it.
“How about giving her back?” I said after Quincy held his arm around her shoulder.
Shayne snorted and pulled herself away. “I have to go get a few things at the grocery store. I’m making dinner tonight.”
It pleased me that she was doing better.
I could still see a hint of sadness in her eyes, deep and ever present, but I could see that she was trying, too.
“Let’s go,” I said as I caught another cookie. “Don’t eat my donuts, please. My crew’s gonna need it after all the shit we’ve had to deal with.”
“Are you calling me shit?” Shayne teased as we walked out, hand in hand.
I took a bite of the cookie in my hand, then offered it to her, before replying, “Never.”
She winked at me, and we stepped outside, through the side door that would lead her to where she’d parked. I could see my truck at the corner of the lot and started guiding us toward it.
When we were close, and the truck was at our backs, and the building at our fronts, I twisted us and reversed our positions.
“Tomorrow,” I said as I backed her up against the wall outside. “We’re going to go jump out of a plane.”
I was fuckin’ nervous as hell, but I was willing to do just about anything to put a smile on my girl’s face.
Her mouth dropped open. “You’ll go with me?”
“Where you go, I go, baby,” I teased.
A flash of movement had me looking to the right, but when I did, I saw nothing.
A sense of foreboding filled me, though.
“Love you, Quinn,” she said as she went up onto her tippy toes and licked the corner of my mouth.
My eyes went intense as she said, “Chocolate.”
