Maybe Poe was her best boyfriend, too.
She crossed the porch, stepped into the living room—and froze. Her sister sat on the couch next to a guy with short, sandy blond hair. A half-eaten box of pizza lay open on the coffee table and Jeopardy blared from the TV with the two of them trying to out-geek each other.
“Preston?” Shit. Why hadn’t she noticed his car?
He turned and grinned. “Hi. You’re home.”
“Yeah,” she said, drawing the word out. “This is my home, right?”
“Of course it is. I just stopped in to see how you’re doing.”
“I didn’t realize our relationship had upgraded to the stop-by-for-the-hell-of-it level. Where’s Lark?”
“She had…things…” He waved a dismissive hand. “I was bored and in the neighborhood, so I picked up a pizza and came on by. Is that a crime now, Detective?” he asked with the down-home, Virginia boy smile that used to make her melt. And, okay, it still did a little. Which pissed her off.
Why couldn’t she just get over this guy already?
“No,” she admitted on an exhale. “But it’s getting late and I still have things to do, so you’ll have to excuse me for not being Miss Social Butterfly. Shel, can I talk to you for a sec?”
“Sure,” Shelby said brightly, but didn’t move.
“In. The. Kitchen.”
“Oh. Okay.” She bounced up from the couch and followed.
As soon they set foot on the black and white tiles of the kitchen floor, Eva whirled on her sister. The fast movement scared Poe, who took flight and landed on top of Shelby’s pink-streaked blond ponytail. “Why the fuck did you let him in?”
Frowning, Shelby gathered the bird from her head and set him on his nearby perch. “Hey, he brought pizza and I was hungry. There’s no food in the house.”
“Oh, dammit, then go shopping! Or— No, that’s not even the issue right now.” She whirled away, paced a few steps out of utter frustration, then strode to the fridge and jerked it open. “Shelby, I swear, you don’t think.”
“What?” With her eyebrow ring, tattoos, wild dye-job, and the way she crossed her arms over her chest, she looked more like a rebellious teenager than Eva’s younger sister by only ten months. “I thought you were still friends with Preston.”
“In the way you and James are still friends.”
“Oh.” Her brow furrowed. “Wait, which James?”
“Cosplay James.”
“Riiight.” She winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you’d put Preston in the friends-but-not-really category.”
“Just…” Finding nothing edible in the fridge, Eva shoved the door shut. “Make him go away. I gotta go back to work.”
“Again?”
“For another hour or two. I’ll grab some groceries on the way home.”
“Okay,” Shelby said, heavy on the doubt. “So I should plan to go out for breakfast again?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“No, but it’s what you meant. ‘Another hour or two’ in Eva Speak means you’ll be sleeping at the office again. But,” she added before Eva could protest, “I’m okay with eating out. There’s this totally hot suit and tie guy that comes into the coffee shop every morning at eight-thirty on the dot. He’s been eying me like he wants to go all ice cream cone on me and lap me up. You know the look, right? The one that says, yum? Might be something there.”
Eva just barely managed to hold back her groan of frustration. “Don’t you think you should give dating a break after the last disaster?”
“Um, no.” Shelby’s face scrunched with genuine confusion. “Why?”
And that right there was the reason she’d never understand her sister.
“I have to go.” With a shake of her head, she decided to exit out the back because dealing with Preston and Cam again in the same night was not something she wanted to do. She made it around the house and was just opening the gate to the driveway when the front door opened and Preston jogged out to meet her.
“Eva, wait.”
She didn’t even pause as she unlocked her car. “I can’t. Work beckons.”
“Please. Just…” He vaulted over the gate and slid in between her and the car before she got the door open.
“What?” she snapped.
“I didn’t stop by on a whim,” he admitted.
No shit. “Then why?”
“I miss you.”
“What about Lark?”
“Things…haven’t been going well between us since we came home.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, heavy on the sarcasm.
“Don’t be like that. It’s not her fault. She’s a sweet girl, but she’s…not you.”
Her heart squeezed. “Preston, don’t. Let’s not go there.”
“I want a second chance.”
And he went there. She shoved him. “You cheated. You told me you didn’t want to get married then turned around and got engaged. How the hell am I ever supposed to trust you again?”