At least not when Kip was watching.

“We need to hire more guys,” Kip said.

He was not wrong.

“Or girls,” he added. “Women are just as capable, if not more capable, than men at any and all things.”

He was not wrong about that either.

“If we hire women, you cannot fuck them,” I told him, sipping my coffee to distract me from not taking one last glimpse at her before the bakery was out of sight.

Kip huffed beside me.

“It’s a lawsuit,” I informed him.

“That’s what lawyers are for,” he muttered around the brownie. “Nora doesn’t work for us, she works for herself.”

“Since we don’t bake fucking cookies for a living and she doesn’t build fucking houses, I think that’s goddamn clear.” Fuck… Now I had the vision of Nora in a hardhat and nothing else in my head.

“So, you have no lawsuits to get tangled up in when you fuck her,” he rambled.

A car honked as I pulled the truck over to the side of the road so I could glare at my best friend without getting into a wreck.

“You are not gonna talk about me fuckin’ her ever again,” I growled, pointing my finger at him.

Now it was not something I was particularly proud of, but I could be a scary guy. Most of the time I was a scary guy. Kip knew that it was more than just a glower, too, because he’d been with me. He knew the look in my eye when I had left part of myself behind, when I was ready to hurt someone without regret or mercy.

Similarly, I knew that behind those easy smiles of his, Kip could kill a man in less than ten seconds without spilling a drop of blood. I knew that those easy smiles were just a fucking farce, that he was forcing them with everything he had because otherwise, he’d have to think about what he lost four years ago.

His teasing smile lingered despite the promise of violence I knew he saw in my eyes. Kip was fearless… He’d faced things regular people feared only because they were foreign, unknown. We both knew horrors most people couldn’t even dream of. Him more than me.

“So, you like her,” he deduced, tapping his chin. “I’ve never seen you go all psycho serial killer over a chick before.”

I gritted my teeth. “This subject is closed.”

He was right.

I was not a monk. Far from it. I dated. Fucked, more accurately. Women only stayed overnight if I was too tired to kick them out after sex. I did not cook breakfast, did not eat meals beyond dinner. It was only fucking. That much was clear. The second I got an inkling that a woman was getting attached or she got it in her head that she could ‘change’ me, it was over.

I wasn’t an asshole. Or at least I tried my best not to be an asshole. Made sure they always got off before I got off. But I was well aware I could not be described as warm, fuzzy, romantic or any of the other shit women wanted.