Page 44 of Back in the Saddle

Then she hadn’t looked at him close enough.

“Me either. He’s nice, like all the other guys, but he’s more standoffish,” Harlow put in.

I noticed then that Raye seemed intent on inventorying the pocket of her server apron.

“What?” I asked her.

Her head came up with a fakeWho? Me?expression on her face.

“Oh my God,” Luna snapped at Raye. “You know something.”

Raye shook her head. “I don’t know anything.”

“Cap told you something,” Luna pushed. “Spill it, bitch.”

“Honestly,” Raye said heatedly. “I don’t know anything.” Her gaze wandered to me. “Except…”

She trailed off.

“What?” Harlow’s word was nearly a shriek.

“Eric does have bedroom eyes,” Raye stated.

“Puh,” Luna blew out. “I don’t know what your issue is. It’s not like Cap doesn’t know you’re all about him and there are other hotties out in the wild. He’s not gonna be ticked you think a man has bedroom eyes. To end, you don’t have to be weird about admitting you think Eric has bedroom eyes.”

“Um, it isn’t that he has bedroom eyes all the time. Just, uh…when he’s looking at Jess,” Raye said.

My head jerked and my lungs seized.

Slowly, Luna and Harlow turned to look at me.

“And just to say,” Raye continued. “Lucia told us what was going down, and I called Cap, just in case we needed backup. He was with Eric, and within seconds of Cap reporting to Eric what was happening, they were in the middle of something, but Eric said they were aborting and heading to SC.”

Oh my God, I thought.

“Oh my God,” Harlow breathed.

“I think he’s, um…into you,” Raye finished.

“Oh my God!” Harlow cried happily.

“He chucked me under the chin,” I reiterated.

“I can’t explain that,” Raye muttered.

“Okay, we gotta get back to work or Tito’s gonna be forced to do something Tito avoids like the plague, be a boss and tell us to get our asses back to work,” Luna began. “But, you know, Eric isn’t Hottie Squad. Eric is Hot Bunch. He’s OG. He’s got experience with bitches like us. So maybe he’s into Jess but isn’t all the way down with being into Jess, considering she’s an Avenging Angel, and he isn’t all fired up to deal with stalkers and car bombs. So he’s gonna take shit slow and see how it plays out.”

Harlow latched onto that instantly. “That makes sense.”

“I hope we don’t have any car bomb action happening,” Raye decreed.

“I’m not too thrilled about the stalker stuff,” Luna put in.

“It’s the grenades that scare me. Especially if it happens at the Oasis,” Harlow said. “I can’t wait to move in. I’ve been trolling Target and Home Goods for weeks. I’m going for a whole new aesthetic. And it’s gonna bepimp. I don’t want to get it all set up and then it explodes.”

These freaking women.

Loved them to their bones.

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