Pushing His Luck - Rhyannon Byrd Page 0,21

I wasn’t. So…why? Was it… Was it just some kind of sick game to see if I would say yes?”

“What? Fuck no!” he burst out, his voice rough. Shoving one hand back through his hair, he shook his head in disbelief. “Christ, Rin, I can’t believe you would even think that. Didn’t you just say you didn’t think I was a shitty person?”

“It’s not like I wanted to believe that was the reason.”

“Well, it wasn’t,” he growled, cutting her a sharp look. “And I never stopped wanting to ask you out.”

“So then why the long wait?” she asked, sounding truly baffled by his admission.

“Why did it take me so long to grow some balls and finally do it?” he asked with a gruff-edged laugh, rubbing his free hand over his jaw again. “Let’s just say that after getting to know you, it took me some time to work up the nerve again.”

“I don’t understand.”

He gave another low, husky laugh. “To put it simply, you scared the ever-loving hell out of me.” And she still did. But he wasn’t going to let it hold him back anymore. Not when the alternative was going through life without her. Fuck that.

“You actually expect me to believe that you were afraid of me? That’s ridiculous!”

“It’s not,” he argued with a tight smile, shaking his head. “The first time I looked into your big brown eyes, I swear I felt the fucking ground shake.”

He glanced her way just in time to catch the frown settling on her beautiful mouth—but, hey, at least she wasn’t calling him out for his cheesy metaphor. “I’ll let the F-bombs slide for the moment, since Jase is sleeping, but you need to watch your language around him.”

“Right,” he grunted, feeling like a shit for forgetting. “Sorry about that.”

“And I still think you’re being ridiculous,” she scoffed, looking back out her window.

Resting his wrist over the top of the wheel, there was a wealth of determination in his tone as he said, “You might not get it now, but you will.”

“I doubt that,” she said flatly, still not looking at him. “Just because I understand that the thing with Jenna must have been difficult to deal with, it doesn’t mean that I forgive you, Paul. There was nothing stopping you from just picking up your phone and actually telling me that you no longer wanted to go out with me.”

“Wanted,” he snorted, thinking the word didn’t come anywhere close to describing how Karin Riley made him feel. “That was the problem right there, babe. I still wanted you so fucking bad I couldn’t see straight. Which is exactly how I feel right now. From the moment we first met, I’ve wanted you. But…”

“But what?” she pressed when he paused, obviously more interested in getting him to explain himself than in lecturing him about his language again.

He pulled in a deep breath, then slowly let it out. “But I saw you with Jase a few days after Natalie first introduced us at the restaurant, and knew you deserved more than something casual. And even though I wanted you so badly it was fucking killing me, I kept hearing every woman I’ve ever semi-seriously dated complaining about how I could never put them first. It…” He paused again, rubbing his jaw, knowing damn well that there was baggage from Dixon’s death tied up in all that shit he’d been feeling as well, then forced out the rest. “It made me worry that if we started something, and then I fucked it up… Christ, Rin, I—”

“But you did ask me out,” she cut in, staring at him across the dark interior of the truck.

He blew out a rough breath, sounding like he’d gargled with goddamn gravel as he said, “Because something happened that Friday that opened my eyes.”

She didn’t say anything, but he could feel her unspoken need for an explanation pulsing in the air between them, her curious gaze studying his profile as she waited for him to go on.

“There was this car accident down on Coronado,” he husked, changing lanes before he went on. “Not the kind of thing that Mike and I would normally get involved with, but we’d been interviewing a witness out on the island and stopped to help out when we drove by. There was an older couple there, and the wife was pretty banged up. The husband was worried as fuck, and I kept him company while the medics were working on her. He told me that