Ask Me If I Care (SWAT Generation 2.0 #4) - Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,2

life treating you, Hayes?” Dad asked the man at my back.

“Well,” Hayes replied. “Though, it’d be better if I wasn’t being forced to attend this.”

A shiver ran down the length of my spine.

His words sounded like everything I never knew that I needed.

Dark, sultry nights in a bed with the most unimaginable pleasure. A cooling breeze in the middle of a Texas summer. Dark velvet and chocolate.

Jesus, I was getting poetic over a man’s voice!

But holy shit, there was something very sexy about it.

I’d never heard a rasp quite like that before.

And the sexy drawl he had to it made me want to crawl into him and dissect the Southern accent.

I wanted to blurt out ‘where are you from?’ But barely refrained from making a fool of myself.

Instead, I smoothed my tongue over the front of my teeth and started walking, praying that I wouldn’t fall flat on my face in front of the sexiest man I’d ever seen.

That hope blew up and died the moment that I smiled at the man holding the door.

Ryan.

Son of a bitch.

My momentary inattention to the uneven ground had me nearly tripping and smacking my head on the concrete steps that led into the building that was hosting the event.

My father’s arm caught me before I could so much as fall a foot, and the man behind me, who had enormous hands, helped steady me.

“T-thank you,” I stuttered, looking at the man.

His eyes weren’t on me, though. They were on Ryan.

And he was glaring.

“Ryan,” Hayes said darkly. “You’re in the way of the door.”

Ryan smiled his charming smile, the one that he only pulled out when he was annoyed and felt like smiling would get him somewhere.

“Sorry, I’m waiting for my date.” He grinned.

“Well, wait outside of the fucking doorway,” Hayes muttered. “We can’t get through.”

I would’ve laughed had I not sensed the tension that was boiling at the surface.

If I laughed, I wasn’t sure if it would bring Hayes’ irritation my way or not. And there was no way that I wanted that man’s irritation.

Now, his desire? Yeah, I’d take that.

But he looked downright scary when he glared at Ryan.

Ryan, who was beginning to look uncomfortable.

“Ryan,” Dad said. “Good to see you.”

My dad could lie with the best of them.

My dad wasn’t pleased to see Ryan.

And neither was I.

I wanted to ask him why he’d bothered calling to see if I was free tonight when he obviously had plans and a date.

But I chose to keep my mouth shut.

Honestly, that was the best way to keep my cool when it came to Ryan McMillan.

Ryan finally moved out of the doorway just as I heard a click-clack of heels, and I crossed through the door and looked over my shoulder to see Ryan’s date make her way up to him.

“You know him?”

The growled question was directed at me, and I shivered.

“Yes,” I paused. “Unfortunately.”

“Ryan and my girl used to date before Ryan decided to pursue his baseball career. He broke up with her the day that he got drafted,” Dad told him.

Hayes grunted. “Well, you dodged a bullet with that one. My stepbrother is a douche.”

My mouth fell open.

“You’re that Hayes?” I gasped, coming to a complete stop in the middle of the opulent foyer. “He said you were a POW.”

Prisoner of War. Missing and never to be found again.

Hayes’ face completely shut down.

There wasn’t an ounce of nice guy there. Only a blank mask belonging to a man who very clearly did not, under any terms, want to talk about anything that had to do with being a prisoner of war.

So noted.

“Annnnd, that’s my cue to take you and run,” Dad said. “Let’s go.”

I looked at Hayes once over my shoulder to see him staring at his feet, lost in thought, and knew that I’d put my foot in my mouth.

When we were in the banquet hall, Dad pulled me to the corner and looked at me as if I was nuts.

“You need to learn to use that thing between your brain and your mouth. It’s called a fucking filter,” he growled.

I threw my hands up in the air.

“I didn’t know it was something we didn’t discuss!” I argued. “How was