Christ.
I needed to get a grip.
Especially if I was going to be, for all intents and purposes, living with her for a while.
The last thing that needed to happen was getting involved with Shy.
If I were being perfectly honest with myself, it was the first thing I wanted to happen.
But it wasn't an option.
So I needed to get a hold of myself.
And maybe I could if she would stop looking at me like that.
Chapter Seven
Shy
"Ah, are you eye-banging our bodyguard?" Belle asked when McCoy went off into the bedroom, and closed the door.
We could hear his calm, even, deep tones as he spoke with, I imagined, Huck, as the two of us moved back toward the kitchen, each getting supplies out to cook like we'd done a thousand times before.
Eggs, pancakes, breakfast potatoes, and fruit.
"No," I told her, though I was totally lying, and we both knew it. "I think being together and safe for the time being calls for unfreezing some of those cinnamon rolls in the freezer too," I said in a ham-fisted attempt to change the subject.
"Don't try to change the subject," Belle said, but she was reaching way in the back to find the cinnamon rolls, hidden under bags of frozen berries I always claimed I would make healthy breakfast smoothies with, but ended up never having the time.
I guess now I had nothing but time.
I shouldn't have been surprised Lily fired me. She went through employees like water. It was a miracle I'd lasted as long as I had. The only reason I did was because her clientele—upper-class ladies with strict preferences—insisted on seeing me.
Maybe I should do a little internet sleuthing to figure out some email addresses, and send out a flier to my old clients at Lily's. No, I couldn't expect those wealthy ladies to come down to my neck of the woods, but I could travel. None of my supplies required me to be stationary. I could do home visits. Actually, they would probably love that.
"Shy," Belle said, snapping me out of my swirling thoughts.
"Sorry. I was thinking about, when this is over, offering a home service to my old clients at Lily's."
"You want to poach Lily's clients?"
"You make it sound so illegal. I didn't sign any paperwork about not competing." I'd made sure of it since I did plan to be a competitor in the future.
"Hm," Belle said, lips pursing. "You could probably make a lot more doing that too. It would be expected to charge more for the convenience."
"Exactly."
"We should add it to the business plan."
Belle had the head for business. She was the one always reading books on start-ups and marketing, the one who crunched the numbers to make sure we set reasonable goals.
Sure, she did pedicures, and she was good at it. But it wasn't like her life's goal to do feet forever. She hoped, eventually, to be able to handle the business end of things while I did nails and we hired extra staff to do simple art and pedicures.
We only talked about it in hushed tones, but we were both really hopeful that we could turn ShyBelle into a chain eventually.
"But back to the original subject," Belle said, running the sealed bag of cinnamon rolls that had fused together a bit under warm water, so she could break them apart. "Do you... do you have the hots for McCoy?"
"No. I mean, he is hot. Obviously. But I barely know the guy."
"You seemed pretty cozy when I got up."
"He was probably trying to hold me down so I didn't keep beating on him."
"Shy..."
"What?"
"It's okay to admit you might be into him."
"I don't even know him."
"Wasn't it you who declared you were going to marry Danny-The-Dickhead after going on three dates with him?"
"Well, in my defense, it wasn't Danny-The-Dickhead I went on the dates with. It was his representative, Danny-The-Doting-Doctor. How was I supposed to know that his 'doting' involved screwing all of his patients? I learned my lesson. That was, what, five years ago."
"And who have you dated since then?"
"Do you really want to go there?" I shot back because the two of us knew she liked her men in books more than real life. And, I realized as her gaze cut away, maybe she had good reason now to want to avoid men.
"Belle..."
"No. No, I don't want to talk about it," she said, giving me some direct eye contact, letting me know she wasn't going to budge. "I will. One day. I will talk about it. But right now, today, I don't want to."
"Okay. That's fine. We can just cook."
"And you can tell me more about this biker group."
"Club," I corrected. "They are called a club. And they all wear matching uniforms. It's cute."
So then I told her about the clubhouse, about the bikers themselves, about the animals that were around the house.
And, for a couple minutes, it was just us again. The bad shit fell away, and we could just have a conversation and laugh and not worry about what might happen next.
"Now I'm glad I'm practically moving in," McCoy declared a while later as Belle and I loaded up plates.
"Don't get too used to it," Belle said, putting an extra cinnamon roll on his plate. "We don't do fancy breakfasts often. And you will have to endure a lot of pasta for dinner."
"I've endured a lot of years of meat and potatoes. I won't object to some pasta," he told her.
It didn't escape me that McCoy used a softer tone with Belle, an almost concerned older brother type of tone that made me wonder if Belle had confided in him before I'd woken up. The idea made my stomach clench hard as my gaze flew to my sister.
Across the kitchen counter, a hand closed over mine, drawing my attention back to McCoy. "She's okay," he mouthed, giving my hand a squeeze.
"Probably shouldn't have done away with the dining room table," Belle declared as we all moved to the living room, balancing our plates on our laps. "Or at least gotten some TV dinner stands. It's always just the two of us," she added, looking at McCoy.
"Listen, before we got our new clubhouse, my brothers and I lived like college kids. We had a pong table in place of somewhere to eat."
"What happened to the old clubhouse?" I asked, watching as a strange look crossed McCoy's face. Almost like he didn't want to tell me.
"It blew up."
"It blew up?" I repeated, lips parting. "By accident?"
"Not so much."
"And you let me feel guilty for shooting you when there were people who tried to explode you?" I asked, brow raising.
"Now you see why no one made a big thing about the shooting," McCoy said with a shrug. "I hope you don't mind, but Ayanna is going to be dropping by in a few hours to bring some supplies. We can't risk the guys coming up to the door in case anyone is watching. They would know all of us."
"They wouldn't know Ayanna?"
"They'd have to be watching really closely. She's a friend of all of ours, but she isn't around as much as she used to be back when Huck's sister Gus still lived here. I asked her to tone down the outfit for today, so she doesn't stick out too much."