Shit. I could not think about her that way. She’d been vulnerable last night. She still was. I had her reputation in my hands, and I’d make sure to do right by her. She was too young, too innocent. I would not take advantage.
She peeled the top bun back. “Is this sausage from the farm?”
“Yeah, it’s deer meat Teller and I got last year mixed with pork.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever had deer meat.” She did a little wiggle, and I had to look away.
Gawking at her would be taking advantage.
I propped my elbows on my knees. “You eat and I’ll tell you what I was thinking.”
“Okay,” she said around a mouthful.
“I don’t want to lie to my family, but I know you don’t want them to know.” Ordinarily, I’d never mislead my mom andsiblings, but when it came to my personal life, I wasn’t the most transparent. This would make them talk. It’d make everyone talk.
The skin under my collar itched. It was for Ruby. It was to save face for Ruby, and we might get an event booked with the wedding. I’d deal with the rest as it came.
“No.” She set her sandwich on the plate. “That’s not fair to you. Your siblings and your mom won’t hold what happened against me, and I’d be asking them to lie.” She sighed. “I made a mess.”
“You didn’t.” She had, but I absolutely understood why. If my tormentor in high school came back to taunt me, my first instinct would be to protect myself too. “They don’t need to know. We’ll date. We can say we’ve kept it to ourselves until we knew we were serious about each other.”
“Will your brothers believe it? Lane and Cruz?”
I swallowed hard. Did she mean that they wouldn’t believe a girl like her would go for someone like me?
“You’re with them all the time, aren’t you?” she asked.
If she meant I was working all the time, then yes. “I have a fair amount of free time.” I had a lot of off time that my family wasn’t a part of. My interests weren’t always theirs and that had been part of my issue growing up.
“Between the distillery and the ranch, you work a lot though.”
I waited for defensiveness to rise, but her tone lacked the judgment I usually heard. “Have you been watching me, Ruby?” I liked the idea too much.
“No!” She covered her mouth, her gaze horrified. “I sounded like a total stalker, didn’t I?”
“No, you didn’t.” I chuckled, but pleasure rippled through me, along with shock. I could not flirt with this girl. I was not a guy who flirted. Long ago, I’d vowed to only be myself, and sinceno woman had been interested in that, then I wasn’t interested in dating.
A guy could only put himself through so much suffering. “We’ll tell everyone we started talking when you picked up shifts in the tasting room. Then we started talking on the phone after hours.”
She nodded. “Because I wanted to hear your voice.”
I pressed my fingertips together. She liked my voice? No, that was part of the ruse. “I don’t think they’ll ask, but sure. We can say we’ve been on a few dates but not in Bourbon Canyon.”
“Right. Because it’s too small a town.”
“Wednesdays.”
“Wednesdays what?”
“That’s when we went out. I’m usually out of town Wednesday nights.”
Doubt filled her expression. “That’s the other shift I work.”
Shit, it was. “After you get back to Bozeman, I meet you somewhere.”
“Yeah. That works out really well and doesn’t have to involve elaborate stories.”
The next part was the hardest. I’d turned all the possibilities over in my head, but there was no getting around it. “Which means we’ll have to do the very real things people do when they date.”
