“But Jesus, the way everyone’s going on about it, I might as well marry her.”

Aidan’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “Whoa. The M word? Out of your mouth?”

“It’s just a word.”

Aidan was still eyeing him like a bug on a slide. “Why are you harping on this?”

“Because you are.”

“I said okay about twenty minutes ago, dude. It’s all you.”

Zach opened the pizza box, pulled out the biggest piece and stuffed a bite in his mouth. “Jenny brought me pizza a while back. Hers was better.”

“That’s because hers came with a hot bod. You boinking her, too?”

“No.”

“Then can I boink her?”

Zach sighed. “Why are you here again?”

“To yell at you. But not for the women. I only wish I had half your woman problems.”

“Hey, you’ve had your problems.”

“Name one.”

“Okay, how about you doing Blake’s soap-star-diva sister and not telling him about it.”

Aidan winced. “Hey, she wasn’t a soap-star diva at the time. And besides, I was really young and really stupid back then.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re unusually testy. You’re either PMSing, or those new rumors are definitely true.”

“Which are what exactly?”

“That you and Brooke nearly did it up against the refrigerator. Which, by the way, if it’s true? Nice.”

“Do you ever think of anything besides sex?”

“Alas, rarely.” Aidan grabbed his own huge piece of pizza.

“Fine. But I don’t want to talk about Brooke.”

Aidan shot him an amused look. That rankled. “Okay.”

“I don’t.”

“Fine. Let’s talk about a little thing called arson. You told Tommy you thought Phyllis’s house fire was deliberately set.”

“Yes.”

“Are you crazy?”

“It was arson.”

“Okay, but Tommy is the best investigator this town has ever had and you know it, which means he’s on it.”

Zach opened his mouth to speak, but Aidan stopped him. “And you also know he has the biggest mouth this town has ever seen. Everyone is talking about you.”

“So what?”

“So what? You love this fucking job, that’s what. You work your ass off. You’re one of the best in the whole damn city, and there’s a lieutenant position coming up that you’re going to take yourself right out of the running for because you won’t leave this alone.”

“I can’t leave it alone.”

Aidan sighed. “You’re that damn sure?”

Zach pointed to the material he’d been working on.

Twisting one of the kitchen chairs around, Aidan straddled it, steepling his hands over the back and setting his chin on them as he studied the board on the table. After a long moment, he let out a breath. “Mysterious points of origin. Metal trash cans. And now, maybe a blowtorch.” He shook his head. “So what now?”