Page 76 of Resist

“You need to go out with your friends more. Get out. Be young while you can.”

I stare across the elegantly furnished table at my mother. The restaurant’s lights glint off the diamond rings adorning her fingers as the sounds of polished silver scrape against fine china.

“I do go out when I can. Some of us have to represent the men of this world when their wives are divorcing them.” I lift an eyebrow, referring to my mother’s conversation opener asking me to help her file for divorce.

She huffs and swats at the air. “I told you, you wouldn’t understand,” she says.

“I’ll never understand. I never have.”

“Don’t start, Ryker, dear. Don’t tell me I’m the reason you refuse to settle down and give me grandbabies.”

I cough out a laugh. “Grandbabies? Why? So you could tell your assistant what you want her to do with them, let her get dirty, and then step in to take a picture with the final product so you can show all your friends.”

Her smile tightens. “I’m not that bad.”

I lift an eyebrow. “You have an assistant solely to manage your social calendar.”

“Yes, I guess I am.”

“It’s just how you are.” I shrug.

“So any women on your radar? You were talking about that one for a while—what happened to her?”

“It was over before it began.” That’s all the explanation she needs to know when it comes to Roxanne.

“And now?” The smile on my lips is reflexive when Vaughn comes to mind, and the lift of one of my mom’s eyebrows says she noticed. “Is there something you’re not telling me, Ryk?”

“I don’t ever tell you a lot.”

“True . . .” She picks up her wineglass and takes a sip. “But I want to know more about whatever woman in particular brought that smile to your lips.”

“It’s no one you know.”

“But there is someone, right?”

“No one for you to start planning a lavish wedding over,” I say with a shake of my head, well aware she wants a wedding so she’s back on Page Six again. And an excuse to have some more nips, tucks, and fillers—not like she’s ever needed an excuse before.

“Marriage is the last thing on my mind, dear.” She rolls her eyes dramatically and then waves and smiles coyly at a man across the room, always one to be on the prowl. When she looks back to me, I just shake my head. “What?”

“You never learn, do you?”

“I’m a soon-to-be-single woman, and I refuse to waste away until I am a wrinkled prune.”

“You always paint such a picture with your words, Mother.”

“Now back to this woman,” she says.

“It’s nothing. We met. She is far from impressed with me . . . but I think I’m slowly winning her over.”

“Wait a minute. You mean she’s making you work for it?” She sighs as if she’s disappointed. “That’s by far the oldest feminine trick in the book—playing hard to get.”

“That’s not exactly the case with us.”

“Oh, so there is an us already.”

“It’s a pronoun.” I shake my head, already more than over this conversation. “And no, her playing hard to get is not a game.”

“Then what is it?”