Nash Brothers Box Set - Carrie Aarons Page 0,292

smile I give Ryan is so wide, I think I’m about to start cackling.

This woman continues to surprise me, in the best ways possible. Smart as a whip, sexy as hell, a knockout in bed, and she knows how to run a poker table? Should I just get down on one knee now?

“The biggest mistake is underestimating one’s opponent on the table. If you don’t know what they’re capable of, how can you ever see them coming?” She winks at me, and I want to pin her hands above her head and torture her slowly with my mouth.

“So, who has to skinny dip in the lake now that Ms. Poker over here has shown her true ability?” Presley folds her arms across her chest, eyeing Keaton up like he’s her next meal.

He holds his hands up. “You know I only get undressed for you, babe.”

We all crack up, because it’s so unlike my big brother to say something like that.

She’s right, though. In the sense that, if you didn’t know what a person was capable of, you’d never see them coming until they hit you full force. Kind of like she had with me. I hadn’t bothered to know Ryan Shea, because I was too damned scared and selfish focusing on my own struggle.

But the minute I opened myself up to the idea of her, she slammed into me like a freight train. And now I couldn’t escape the way everything about her was slowly taking over my brain.

Nor did I want to.

26

Ryan

I’ve just stepped out of the shower when my phone rings.

Glancing at the clock on the nightstand, it reads 4:30 p.m., and I realize I only have an hour before Fletcher comes over with dinner after his shift.

He’s supposed to be bringing lemon pepper chicken wings and a few other specialties from Kip’s Diner, things I haven’t tried yet and he’s appalled I haven’t sampled. But at the rate I’m going, my hair will still be wet when he arrives.

Not that I ever make much of an effort with my daily appearance. A quick blow dry, a swipe of mascara, a spritz of perfume. I’m gifted with high cheekbones and pretty manageable natural hair, which I thank my lucky stars for.

I’m scared to look at the screen of my cell, because I know who’s calling. Yanis stopped contacting me months ago … and I’m surprised in this moment that I haven’t thought of him in that long, too. Maybe Presley was right when she said I felt differently about certain men. Or maybe it was because I had a new man on my mind … that was typically how I operated.

How could I tell if I really felt differently about Fletcher, or if I was just using this relationship with its shiny new sex presents as a distraction?

Shaking that unwanted thought from my brain, I pick it up to see my mom’s name flashing across the screen.

My sigh is audible in the small guest cottage, and I wish someone was here to swat the damn thing out of my grip. Her calls have been increasing, and this is the fourth one in the many months I’ve taken up residence in Fawn Hill. Four calls in a couple months might not sound like a lot, but after not hearing from someone in a year and a half, it was odd. And since this is my junkie mother we’re talking about, it is dangerously suspicious.

I didn’t want to hear her voice. I didn’t want my heart to weep for the mother she should have been, or for the childhood I could have had. I didn’t want to worry about her, because I shouldn’t have to. And I didn’t want to have to refuse, essentially sentencing her to mania, when she asked me for money to get high.

So, instead of taking the call, like I’ve done so many times before, I send it to voicemail.

And in a moment of spontaneous growth and courage, my finger hits the block button before I can think about stopping it. Time seems to stop for a nanosecond, and I hold my breath, expecting the sky to fall or something equally as disastrously grand.

But nothing does.

Life just keeps on going. I get a Facebook notification from a friend in Germany, somewhere down the block a neighbor is cutting their lawn. I know when I walk out of the cottage door, sunshine and humidity will greet me. I’ll go teach the kids in my summer course tomorrow,