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Kenna nodded, not looking convinced by my response. It was pretty widely known that I wasn’t the bar type. I’d rather be home than out wasting money on alcohol, and since I didn’t have any desire to casually date anyone, I wasn’t looking for short-term hookups. If I was going to be in a relationship, I needed to know it was headed somewhere.
I wanted a wife; someone I could build a family with. I had no desire for unfulfilling one-night stands or even dating someone exclusively if I didn’t see a future with them. It wouldn’t be fair to Harper to have women coming in and out of her life. I knew what it felt like when someone disappeared from your life, and I would never put my daughter through that.
“Does Tay know you’re here?” Kenna asked.
No. But I’m sure she would now. In fact, I’d be surprised if Kenna hadn’t texted her cousin the moment I walked in.
“Why would Tay care if I was here?”
Kenna smiled. “She wouldn’t care. I just think she’d find it…amusing.”
She wasn’t wrong about that. Taylor found my ‘old man ways’ very entertaining. It had been a running joke since we met that I acted more like I was in my eighties than in my twenties. Even before I’d had Harper, I never liked the bar or club scene. I’d rather have a nice dinner or stay at home and watch a movie.
The bar was filling up with people trying to get Kenna’s attention. Before she helped them, she asked, “What can I get you?”
“Coke is fine.”
She chuckled as she grabbed a glass, filled it with ice, then used the soda gun to fill it up.
“You are a party animal,” she commented as she set it down.
“Thanks.” I lifted it up in silent cheer before setting it back down.
I was going to look for Hud when I turned around and saw Ruby standing in front of me. She looked even more beautiful than she had across the room. Her ocean-blue eyes stared up at me from beneath her dark, inky lashes. “Hey.”
“Hi, um…” She licked her lips, and my jeans grew a little tighter.
I was in my mid-thirties, but around Ruby, I was more like a hormonal teen. I prided myself on being a good, upstanding man, but the thoughts I had when Ruby was around were bad, and none of them included us standing.
“I’m leaving tomorrow, and I wanted to give you this.” She held out two twenty-dollar bills, and I noticed Stella Barnes heading in my direction.
Shit. The woman had been relentless. She’d been dropping off dinners at my house for the past few months that Grandad had been out of commission. She’d made it clear that her cleaning and cooking services were not all that was on the table. I’d done everything I could to make it clear I wasn’t interested, but the woman was not taking the hint.
“Tell you what, dance with me, and we’ll call it even.”
“Dance? You want to dance with me?”
I wanted to do a hell of a lot more than dance with her. “Yeah, let’s call it a lesson.”
“A lesson?” she parroted.
“Are you going to repeat everything I say?”
She stared at me with confusion swimming in her clear aqua gaze. “No, but I just…”
“Good.”
She hadn’t come right out and agreed, but Stella was just a few feet away. I grabbed her hand and tugged her onto the dance floor. Once we reached the center, I turned and placed my hands on her hips. She wrapped her arms around my neck, and we began to sway back and forth. As we moved, Ruby melted against me. My breaths grew shallower, and I found my hands running up and down her back. Her curves were dangerous.
I kept tryin’ to remind myself who she was. She was Remi’s little sister. She was the girl with pigtails who I’d helped teach how to ride a bike. She was the girl who’d climbed into my sleeping bag because she was scared of the dark when Remi, Wyatt, and I camped outside in a tent at the trailer park. She was the girl who used to get ice cream headaches because she could drink a Slurpee in two seconds flat, and I taught her to put her thumb on the roof of her mouth to stop it.
The keyword in all those sentences was ‘girl.’ The problem was that the evidence in my hands did not support that fact. The evidence in my hands and against my body told me that she wasn’t that girl anymore. She was a woman—all woman.
Her soft curves pressed against me as our bodies moved in time to the slow song. She lifted her head, and her baby blues looked up at me from beneath thick, inky lashes. I could practically hear the gears turning in her pretty head as if she were trying to solve a puzzle.
“What?” I asked.
“You clearly don’t need dance lessons. Is this just your way of not letting me pay you back?”
