“Hello, handsome.” She looked around the room and nodded at my tools strewn across the floor before eyeing the fresh pot of coffee that I brewed in her Keurig. “Somebody woke up with something on their mind.”
I moved to the table and picked up my steaming hot cup of coffee.
“Because of you, I have a lot of things on my mind.”
Ruby floated toward me and reached for my cup before taking a sip with her lips planted at the exact spot where I drank.
“Hmm, . . . good and hot with just the right amount of cream.”
“Are you talking about the coffee or me?” I grinned hard.
“Both.” She spoke the word quickly before lifting the cup to her wet lips again.
I reached for her waist and kissed her neck.
“Be thankful I can still focus. Somebody threw that ass back on me so good I’m lucky not to be in a sex coma.”
Ruby set her cup on the table and gave me a loose hug.
“Whoever that is needs to stop distracting my handyman.”
Something about the formal way Ruby said handyman made my ears perk up. Was she distancing herself from me?
As if she sensed a shift in my mood, she gave me a tight smile and dropped her head. She bit the corner of her lip and rested her hand on my arm.
“I had a great time with you, Amari, but let’s call it what it was, a one-night stand.” She gestured around us.
Never had a woman dismissed me so quickly and blatantly. That was exactly what Lise did to me over and over. Despite priding myself as a level-headed guy who was slow to jump to conclusions, I couldn’t push offense aside.
“Is that all I am to you? Your handyman?” I spoke the words in a low voice so I didn’t come across as distraught as I felt.
Despite that, my voice exuded a sharpness I didn’t recognize.
Ruby shook her head.
“No. That’s not what I meant.”
“What exactly did you mean?”
She turned her head toward the frosty kitchen window and sighed. “I need time. That’s all.”
I was crushed. It sounded as if she wanted to be done with me.
“I’ll finish up and see if I can give you space too.”
“Really? Is that how we’re going to end a beautiful time together? I thought we were on the same page. Why are you moving so fast?”
Because I’ve been waiting for a woman like you my whole life.
“Why are you moving so slowly?”
“Because . . . I don’t trust my judgment.”
When Ruby spoke those words, my hard heart cracked. No matter how put-together she appeared to be, Ruby hadn’t been treated consistently well by the man who vowed to cover her in sickness and in health until they died. It didn’t matter that I spoke flowery words. She was an action kind of woman who needed someone to show up for her every day, not just in the dark or when she offered her body to them. She needed someone to be her rock on hard days when she was most vulnerable too. Without that, I was no better than one of her sex toys.
I finally got it through my thick skull what Ruby meant. We may have made intense love, but I had to earn the prize that she was. She was more than an easy lay. She needed to be cherished and bask in that soft life I bragged to her about. I knew what I had to do, and I was determined to do right by Ruby Starks.
Chapter
