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“Ohhhh, a charcuterie board. Fancy.”
“Wiseass,” she said, her hand swatting his. But she went to the kitchen and grabbed everything she’d put together already and pulled it out to bring to the living room.
“That looks too good to eat,” he said.
“I know. I had fun doing it. Others would say I was OCD.”
“Everything is lined up perfectly,” he said, reaching for a piece of meat and cheese.
“I’ve got beer if you want one now.”
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll be here for a bit.”
He made no mention of spending the night. He didn’t come in with any clothes and she had given no indication she was ready for him to do that.
Her body might be saying one thing, but her brain was saying to hold off.
She was still trying to wrap her mind around the fact that her aunt—or uncle—had picked Sawyer out for her and here she’d been thinking it was just something that happened in her life that she could do on her own.
* * *
Sawyer acceptedthe beer that was handed to him. He’d pace himself for the night, as he had no thoughts of staying.
Faith seemed to want to take it slow and he could understand that.
But the more he thought of it, the more he realized that she could be holding back due to her family.
That was why he wasn’t pushing.
If his family thought they knew him so well, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to prove them right or wrong.
Until he could wrap his head around spiting himself or not, he was going to follow her lead.
“A bunch of my coworkers were talking about going out tonight and having to get reservations weeks in advance. I just can’t do that. I know they will be waiting a long time too.”
“That is normally what seems to happen,” he said. “Not to mention all the men in blue working tonight and patrols for DWIs,” he said. He’d worked his fair share of holidays doing exactly that. If that was the worst he had to do all night, he was happy.
“How boring was that for you?” she asked. “Something tells me you like to do more than drive around looking for things to be wrong.”
It was funny how she got that about him. “Yeah, I do. I like solving puzzles and that is how I look at my job. Sometimes I’ve got to go over the evidence with a fine tooth comb and do it multiple times. I can’t tell you how many times something is overlooked.”
He would never say missed. They were trained on what to look for and there was a reason they took so much into evidence. Because you never knew what was going to be important and what wasn’t.
“I understand that more than anyone,” she said. “But in my job, I’m told what to look for. Very rarely are we testing for things on our own, but it can happen if doctors are stumped. They will confer with the pathologist. Or me if he isn’t around. Sometimes I find characteristics of one thing they won’t know and it will lead to a path of something else.”
“Like solving a puzzle too,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Most don’t get that or understand it. They think it’s boring, but I find it fascinating.”
“You know what else I find fascinating?” he asked.
He was leaning toward her, their mouths getting close and then connecting. “No,” she said. “What?”
“That I haven’t done anything with a woman on New Year’s Eve in years and here I am with someone that I can’t wait to get to know more and we have a third wheel watching us.”
She turned her head to look at Fred.
“I told him to behave. Not sure we will get that wish though.”
