So sexy he wasn’t real.
So appealing he sent my tummy quivering and my knees knocking right there.
My mama sent me a glance, as if she were worried the entire place was gonna go kaboom.
“Hi,” I whispered, the word trembling like my heart.
“Hey, sorry to interrupt. I was just looking for a glass of water.”
My mama jumped into action. “Oh, goodness, I’m so sorry. And here I pride myself on being a good host, and I didn’t even offer you anything to drink.” She grabbed a glass from the cupboard. “I have fresh-brewed iced tea if you’d prefer?”
“Water is fine, thank you, ma’am.”
Why did his being polite instead of bossy and demanding get me all hot and bothered, too?
This boy was a danger to my mind. To my sanity. Who was I kidding? He’d already stolen it. Left me reeling and unsure and wanting things that were going to leave me scarred and banged up more than I already was.
Why did we always go chasing after pain?
Ice clanked as she dropped it in the glass, my mama moving quick as she filled it the rest of the way with water from the dispenser on the fridge.
While Royce just stood there watching me.
Pinning me.
Owning me.
It was true.
This bad boy?
He had my heart.
And I knew he was going to leave it mangled.
She handed him the glass.
“Thank you,” he said, bringing it to his plush lips.
“Make yourself at home,” she said, glancing at me. She looked back at him. “I trust you got settled in the guest room?”
“I did. I appreciate you letting me stay.”
“Well, any friend of my daughter’s is a friend of mine.”
Something flashed through his expression, gone before I could make sense of it.
“Of course, all of her enemies are my enemies, too.” She said it as if she was trying to be funny, but we both heard the threat.
Apparently, my mama had gone badass.
God, I was going to have to see to it that she wasn’t hanging out with Melanie so much.
He looked directly at me. “If she were mine, I’d fight for her, too.”.NineteenRoyce“Holy crapballs. That dinner was delicious, Mabel.” Rhys mumbled it as he was shoveling fresh apple pie into his piehole.
No doubt, someone had gotten a good look at him and the phrase was coined.
Dude never shut up, which only made him more likable, which kind of annoyed me, too.
My entire being was riding on a razor-sharp edge.
Agitation burning a path through my body as I tried to sit there like a normal human being and not some squatter who was stealing space.
If I was being honest, this whole damn scene was a little hard to stomach.
Hanging out in this quaint home, sitting at an antique oblong dining table that was covered in a white embroidered tablecloth that had probably been in their family for generations, the dishes we were eating the most delicious meal I’d ever tasted surely hailing from the same time.
Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey were sitting to my right at the far end. Their youngest son, Lincoln, who was twenty-five and lived on a smaller house to the back of their property, sat between Mrs. Ramsey and Richard, who sat directly next to me.
Rhys and his mother sat to my left, and Emily rounded out the circle where she sat on the other side next to her father.
The entire dinner had been spent with the group chatting and visiting and catching up, and doing it because they actually fucking cared.
A family.
The real kind.
The right kind.
I glanced at Emily.
Screw the fucking apple pie.
She was the most delicious thing I’d tasted. This wanting more was getting excruciating.
Feeling the weight of my stare, she peeked across at me and gave me a tender, shy smile.
Girl fucking stole my breath. Ripped it right out of my lungs. I shifted in the turbulence. In this unending need.
Richard and Emily’s father cleared his throat. “So, Mr. Reilly, we’re glad to have you in our home. Rich here has been telling me about the opportunity you’ve brought about for the band. I always knew these two would make it, but it’s good to see someone coming along beside them who believes in them the way that me and their mama always have. Rare thing to find someone so committed to their job that they actually take the time to see it through right, the way you’re doing.”
Lenny Ramsey basically looked like the image of what I’d expect Richard to look like in thirty years.
Tall and strong, a lean body that had barely thickened with age, face wrinkled like a map from years of manual labor and squinting beneath the sun.
A man who was not to be fucked with but who you could come to with anything.
Loyal to the bone.
“Nice, Dad, nice. Here I am, working my tail off day after day for you, and the only people you believe in around here are these two jerks who took off and left us in their stardust.”