My pulse skitters. “Did you?”
“It was a little,” he says, then takes his time before he adds, “irresistible.”
He makes no move to leave. He stays a foot away, his fists clenched like he’s holding back, his eyes locked on me.
Maybe I’m reading something into nothing, but it sure feels like he’s saying I’m irresistible. In this moment, I almost feel that way. It’s the opposite of how I felt when I left the hotel the night Imet him. I felt rejected then. I feel craved now. For a few tantalizing seconds, I’m holding my breath, hoping he’s going to kiss me in an alley behind the nail salon in my hometown.
The sound of a door opening breaks the moment. Someone who works at the salon heads outside, then tosses a bag of trash into a can.
It’s enough to send us both back to the street where Chloe and Bridget are waiting, like they’ve just exited their new favorite theatrical production—the Interactive Wind-Up Ripley Show.
“Dude, that is my new favorite thing ever,” Chloe says to Banks.
“Glad to help,” Banks says, then the corner of his lips curves up. “It’s only one of my many hot bodyguard services, isn’t it, Ripley?” He turns to me, eyes glinting, the delight in them reappearing.
The joke’s on me. But considering how much I liked him carrying me for a whole block, maybe it’s on them too. Trouble is I’m also pretty sure I finally like having a hot bodyguard, and that’s a whole other problem.
One that weighs on me as we head to my car, but then I stop in my tracks after a few feet, remembering a return text that landed on my phone during the pedicure. “Chloe!” I shout.
She turns around.
“Sheriff Simmon said she’d love some lessons. Her new dog is a toy guarder.”
Chloe’s eyes pop. “You’re the best, and I won’t show anyone your 80s phase now.”
I roll my eyes, and we leave.
On the drive back to the farm as the sun dips lower in the afternoon sky, I’m stuck on something—how the man’s always a step ahead.
I’m replaying all the moments. Like when he picked me up in a flash, like it didn’t even faze him. But before then, he didn’t flinch either when I took him for the pedicure. He went along with it, even though he’d never had one. The day before, he anticipated I’d try to ride off on my bike, and he was ready first thing in the morning with a bike of his own.
He doesn’t break, and I’m dying to knowwhy. As he slows to a stop at the last light downtown, I turn to him, blurting out, “How are you so unflappable?”
He looks my way. “How are you so on top of everything?”
“You think I’m on top of everything?” I ask, a little surprised he’s turned my question around.
“I do. You take care of everyone and everything. Like when you talked to Ramona yesterday. Like how you take care of your sister. Like helping Chloe with the dog-lesson thing.”
“I guess it’s just…my job.”
“Same for me,” he says as the light changes and he taps the gas.
“But it’s part of who you are,” I say, curious, so damn curious to know more about him.
He shoots me a look. “Same for you, Ripley. It’s not just the job. It’s who you are.”
There he goes again, deflecting. I turn to the window, twirling a strand of hair.
But Banks sighs, then says, “When my mom left my dad, it was a whole fucking mess, Ripley.” I turn back, my attention only on him. “I had to be…steady.”
I wasn’t expecting that kind of admission from him. “For them?” I ask gently.
“Yeah. Things were hard for Mom. Real hard for a while. Someone had to step up,” he says, swallowing roughly.
My throat tightens with emotions. I feel deeply for the younger Banks, and I feel like I understand so much more of him. “Like, you looked out for her and your sister?”
He nods. “I did. Still do. Can’t help myself.”
