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And he’d been amused by the constant contretemps between her and his youngest son.
You two are like members of a tribe that have been at war for centuries and don’t even remember what started it anymore.
I like you, Mr. R, and everybody else. I just don’t like him.
He’d grinned then, and it had made her laugh. It’s good for him. Keeps him on his toes. He’s too pretty for his own good anyway.
She hadn’t fully understood what he’d meant, she’d only been eight at the time. But later, when hormones started stirring among her friends, she realized all too well what he’d been talking about.
She remembered his mother saying he was the one who got the most obvious parts of both his parents, her hair and his father’s spring-green eyes. And she’d had her own opinion on their constant sniping at each other. He’ll find enough things easy in life, looking like that. A few bumps in the road won’t hurt him.
“Here.”
She spun around, startled. She hadn’t heard him. But then, he was still barefoot. He had, however, put on a shirt and zipped his jeans. Thankfully. She took the paper he was holding out. It was from a company in Dallas, and the amount at the bottom did not, as he’d promised, have a comma. It was close enough, though, that she was going to grit her teeth when she paid it.
“You want to do this by app, or—”
“A check is fine.”
It had taken her an extra moment this morning to find the checkbook she rarely used anymore. She walked over to the coatrack where his mother had hung her jacket, pulled it out of the pocket and walked over to the kitchen counter. She wrote the check quickly, made a note in the space to remind her—as if she’d need it—and tore it off the pad. She thought about handing it to him, but a vision of him, muscled and shirtless, flashed through her mind and made her leave it on the counter. If he hadn’t been so obviously oblivious, she would have thought his appearance in that state had been intentional. And it was all too easy to imagine the reaction he would have gotten from practically any woman on the planet.
Except her.
She pulled on her jacket, then turned to face him. And said the words she’d rehearsed all the way over here. Two words shouldn’t have taken that much practice, but to be spoken to this one person, they did. She kept wanting to add more, but it all sounded like excuses to her, so she didn’t. And after a deep breath, she got them out.
“I’m sorry.”
He raised a brow at her. “No ‘It won’t ever happen again’?”
“I don’t make promises I might not be able to keep.”
To her surprise, one corner of his mouth twitched, as if he were trying not to smile. “Probably wise.”
And for some reason that little quirk of his mouth got stuck in her head all the way back home.
Chapter Six
Cody sat in his big gaming chair, tapping the paper check against his business desk. Trying to decide what to do about it. He leaned back, staring up at the ceiling.
Some people were boggled at the size of his space here. His bedroom off to the right was normal sized but seemed like a closet compared to this room, the room that would have been a big living room for anyone else. It was for him, too, if by living room you meant where you spent the most time.
Anyone who was allowed in here—he wasn’t as protective of the space as, say, Ry was about his studio, but he was cautious—was usually more boggled by his four-desk setup, one on each wall. To him it made perfect sense. He’d started with his gaming gear, on the wall opposite the door. Then when he’d started creating things, writing software and apps and building specialized systems for people, he’d needed a different kind of setup. When he started using the drones for more than just trying to accomplish that life goal he harbored, he’d needed a monitoring station; that was number three.
And then, when he’d finally gotten it through his head that he could be making a living, and more importantly contributing to the family upkeep, he’d needed what he called the business center, where he tracked all the necessary things. That was number four, which he hated because it was bookkeeping, not making or building anything, but also enjoyed because it did let him see the income stream, which felt good.
He kept staring at the check in his hand, wondering what had possessed him to ask for it instead of just doing an app payment. Maybe he’d just wanted to make her do it by hand. Pound home the lesson, as it were.
Geeze, he was talking like Mom. She was all about life lessons. Like the discussion they’d had when Sydney had first arrived, and he’d decided he hated everything about her. It had been Mom who had made him see it was the change coming that had colored his thinking. She had—
His phone notification went off. It was Sean’s ring, so he picked it up. The middle Highwater was a couple of years older, but they’d bonded in the tech club at Creekbend High School and had stayed close friends. And now they were business partners of a sort, working together on the specialized computer systems they built.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Two things,” Sean replied, sounding so cheerful Cody suspected his wife Elena must be close by. “Shane says to tell you the new camera system you put in is working great. And Marcos wants to make sure we’re on for game night. He—” Sean broke off for a moment as someone spoke to him. Cody could almost see his friend grinning when he went on. “You’d better come. Elena’s making enchiladas.”
“That,” Cody said, “I wouldn’t miss for anything.” Elena managed Valencia’s, which was the best Tex-Mex restaurant in town, and she was a big part of why.
After they’d hung up, he sat and pondered the huge changes in his friend’s life. Christmas the year before had been a turning point for him, as it had been this year for Chance. It was enough to get you believing in Christmas miracles. He grimaced to the empty room; maybe he should start making sure he was nowhere around that time of year. That ought to buy him a year or two. Although seeing Sean and Elena together…
