“Yeah, I do.” I make my way back down the driveway and go to take her hand.
“Asshole,” she says, snatching it away. But she’s smiling. Reluctant and unimpressed (or pretending) but smiling anyway. And that makes me strangely happy.
“Would you like to . . .”
“It’s a little too late to ask me if I’d like to come back for coffee.” This she says with a cocked hip and a pat to her stomach.
The sight ... that attitude. The suggestion in her words? It feels like a shot of stardust blown by an angel through my veins. “At least you know I can’t get you pregnant.” Too soon?
“At least, not again,” she concedes evenly.
At least not for a while,I think as she follows me up the driveway, and I bite my tongue to keep from saying,We’ll have such fun trying.
“I bet you’re one of those guys who loves his toys,” she says, spotting the Vanquish.
“Weird,” I murmur, studying it. I thought it was parked in the garage.
“It is a little weird. Unless you’re Batman.”
“You’re funny.” I input the security code at the front door. The locks disengage, and it clicks open.
“I see you got Batman’s front door too,” Ryan says as I press it wider and usher her inside. “Oh, my.” She turns a slow circle in the entrance hall, her soft-soled boots almost silent on the black-and-white tiled floor. She takes in the sweeping staircase, the antique table in the center of the hall with a silver urn that’s supposed to hold flowers, and the massive chandelier above it. “This is like something fromBridgerton.” Her voice sounds awe filled.
“Without the flowers,” I say. Ryan jerks around and stares at me as though I’ve grown another head. “I haven’t seen the show,” I add quickly. “Just the trailer and the advertising shit plastered all over the buses.”
“Which still leaves me kind of curious if you’ve read the books.”
I keep my expression bland to her questioning one. “Have you read them?”
“I’m impressed you even know what I’m talking about.”
“Behold.” I hold out my arms, the paper bakery bag dangling from my left wrist. “A modern man.” I give a theatrical bow. “Also, one who has sisters,” I say, straightening again. “There might be one or two of their romance books lying about,” I add knowing full well there are. Because Letty left them. Like unsubtle hints.
“That sounds like a line,” she says with a crook of her head. “A cover-up. Are you a closet romance fan, Matt?”
“Not closeted at all. Who doesn’t love love, Ryan?” I don’t wait for her to answer as I put down the pastries and help her from hercoat. And she lets me. I chuck it over the newel post, and she pops her bobble hat on top before fluffing her hair.
“What?” she asks, catching me watching her.
I’m pretty sure the appropriate response is notI want to gobble you up.
“Nothing.” I shove my hands into the pockets of my dark jeans, shoulders up around my ears. “Kitchen?” No grand tour. We should probably avoid rooms with soft surfaces—beds and stuff.
“Sure.” She nods, and I swipe up the bakery stuff. “Did you grow up in a house like this?” she asks as we make our way downstairs to the garden level, where the kitchen is. That’s the family kitchen, not the outdoor kitchen. Or the catering one. Or the kitchen in the empty housekeeper’s apartment.
“Nah. Growing up, home was a redbrick semi on the outskirts of Dublin. My dad sold insurance, and my ma worked in the office of the local school. What about you?”
“I didn’t grow up in a house like this.” So bland a delivery tells its own story as we enter the kitchen. A story that seems to have nothing to do with bricks and mortar. “My mom had ... issues. Alcohol and anger mainly,” she says, hopping up on a tall stool. “Like a good Beaujolais and hunk of Brie, they went real well together. She also had a lot of boyfriends,” she says, looking anywhere but at me. “I couldn’t wait to get out of the place.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmur as I set the bakery bag on the counter and pull out the box.
“Not your fault.”
I can still be sorry, whether she wants me to be or not. “Where’d you grow up?”
“In a pissant town in Bumfuck, North Carolina.”
I cant my head like an inquisitive terrier. “I did wonder about that hint in your accent.”
