by Julie Kriss
He pressed his hands against my back and opened my mouth. I dug my fingers in his hair. I could feel his hard, gorgeous chest against me, his hot skin, his tight muscles. He tasted deep and heady, and he stroked his tongue into my mouth. I moaned and sucked on it. He walked me backward and I banged against the patio table. He groaned into my mouth and lifted me onto it like I weighed nothing. I wrapped my legs around his waist.
Ten weeks I had wanted this. Ten weeks. I wanted his hands on me every time I looked at them. I wanted his body against mine. I wanted his lithe, hard strength and his heat. I pulled my hands out of his soft hair and cradled his jaw as he kissed me, feeling the soft scruff of his nighttime stubble under my palms. His kiss had been practiced five years ago, pleasurable and wonderful. Now we were desperate, climbing each other like teenagers, our mouths locked, his teeth scraping my lip.
I could feel his hips between my thighs where I gripped him, the cloth of his track pants against my bare skin. So easy. I could just push them down—dear God. I made a soft moan in the back of my throat, pushing my hips against him.
He responded by running his hands up my back, bracing one on the back of my neck and the other on the back of my head. He broke the kiss and pressed his mouth against the side of my neck, going still. We stayed there for a long moment, locked together and panting, my arms around his neck and his powerful grip holding me tight. I could feel him breathe.
“We should stop,” I said weakly.
He didn’t respond for a long moment, just kept his arms around me. Then he lifted his lips from my skin.
“I’m going back to Westlake,” he said, his voice rough. “I’m going to fix cars in my brothers’ garage.”
I felt the breath sigh out of me. My chest hurt. He was leaving—of course he was leaving. There was nothing for him here. I leaned my cheek against him, feeling his pulse. His skin smelled like he’d just come out of the shower.
“I’ll get a house there,” he said. “I’m going as soon as I can. It’ll be a bigger house than this one. Plenty of rooms. Dylan will have to switch schools. It will upset him. He’ll hate it at first. But I’ll be closer to my brothers, his uncles. It will be good for him, and after a while he’ll love it.”
“What are you saying?” I said against his skin.
“I’m saying I’m not coming back,” Ryan said. “And I’m asking you to come with me.”
My breath stopped for a second. It was an insane idea, to follow him to Westlake. To live with him.
But it was an insane idea to leave him and Dylan, too.
What did I have here? My parents, who weren’t happy with me and rarely talked to me. Amanda, who was busy with her own family. A room in an apartment with roommates who didn’t care. A career that was just one random job after another, none of it meaning anything, none of it mattering. A life that was pieces, but none of those pieces fit together.
It wasn’t much of a life at all.
Life with Ryan was messy and risky. Raising Dylan right—he was just one kid, but it mattered. It was important. It was crazy, but it could be wonderful. Or it could really, really hurt. More than anything in my life had ever hurt before.
But I had my arms around Ryan, my legs around him, my hands on his warm, bare skin. Maybe he wouldn’t always be, but right now he was mine.
“That’s a crazy idea,” I said to him.
“I know,” he replied. “But I can’t think of anything else that makes sense. Can you?”
I was quiet.
He waited, and then he said, “Kate. Will you do it?”
I sighed.
“All right,” I said. “I’m in.”
Twelve
Kate
* * *
Six weeks later
* * *
“A Mustang,” Dylan said. “Or a Thunderbird. Or a Corvette.”
He was naming his favorite cars—the kind he wanted when he grew up. We were on the topic because it was Saturday morning and we were driving to Riggs Auto to see his uncles.
“What color?” I asked him.
“Red. Silver!” He looked out the window, frowning seriously over this question. “No, black. Like Batman.”
“Batman has a nice car,” I allowed.
“Batman has the best car,” Dylan said.
“Right, of course.” I feigned confusion. “What’s it called again? The Batcar, right?”
“The Batmobile!”
“No, no. It’s the Batvan. Or maybe the BatSUV.”
“Kate! It’s the Batmobile!”
I was happy to see him happy. The move from Detroit to Westlake—changing houses, changing schools—had been hard on Dylan. There had been some bad days, some tantrums, some acting out. But now that he was here and settled in, he was turning into the old Dylan again, sweet and funny and full of energy. He was turning eight in a few weeks, and to me he already looked taller and older than when I’d first met him just a few months ago.
And Westlake was good for him. It was much smaller than Detroit and less dangerous. He got along with the kids at his new school. Ryan had been in Little League here and was still a legend, which made Dylan a rock star on his team. But most of all he liked being near his uncles, Luke and Jace.
I had never met Ryan’s brothers before. Luke Riggs was the smoldering bad-boy type, dark and good-looking, the guy who would always have a cool car and drive authority figures crazy. Jace Riggs was big, scary, tattooed, and soulful. He was an ex-con who was quietly smart and liked to read.
They were both so different from Ryan, and yet they were obviously his brothers. They were rough, blunt, sometimes brutally funny. They hated just about anyone telling them what to do. They had grown up in the same hard childhood that Ryan had, and they had the scars to show for it. And like Ryan, they were pretty damn hot. I was allowed to think that, because both of them had girlfriends.
Luke’s girlfriend, Emily, was a gorgeous blonde who was a cop’s daughter. How that worked with a bad boy like Luke, I didn’t ask. And Jace’s girlfriend, Tara, was a lovely brunette who had started out as his post-prison counselor. They were both smart, competent women who didn’t put up with any shit—as, I imagined, you would have to be if you were dating a Riggs brother.
Dylan loved all of them—his uncles, their girlfriends. I hadn’t noticed how lonely Dylan was in Detroit until I saw him blossom in Westlake. He loved hanging out with his uncles at Riggs Auto, talking about cars all day. Emily and Tara watched movies with him, played video games with him, took him to Chuck E Cheese. I knew that Ryan and his brothers hadn’t gotten along well for most of their lives—there was a fourth brother, Dex, who still lived in Detroit and was usually referred to as “batshit crazy”—but he had let that slide to let Dylan get to know his family. And it seemed to be working.
Ryan hadn’t touched me since that night on the patio of the old house six weeks ago. He’d sold the house and bought one in Westlake, a few blocks from his childhood home on the wrong side of the tracks where Luke and Emily lived now. The house he bought had a full, private basement apartment with a separate entrance at the back—which became my apartment. I had dumped my old roommates and I lived there rent-free.
So Ryan and I were… roommates. I had my own bathroom and my own door, but every morning I walked upstairs into Ryan’s kitchen and helped get Dylan ready for school. I ran errands, then I picked Dylan up again and we did his after-school stuff. And when Ryan got home I went back down to my little apartment, where I spent the evening alone.
It was, by far, the weirdest setup I’d ever lived in. I was part of the family, but I wasn’t. I lived there, but Ryan wasn’t my husband and Dylan wasn’t my son. I liked my apartment—I had decorated it on the cheap and made it my own space—and I liked my independence, but there was no denying that in the evenings, when I could hear Ryan and Dylan upstairs watching a movie or laughing, I was lonely. I wanted to go upstairs and join them, eat popcorn and watch whatever they were watching, but that was too intimate. Too motherly. Too marrie
d.
And that kiss. Oh my God, that kiss.
Damn it, it was six weeks ago. I was mooning over him, or I soon would be. I was definitely heading into mooning territory. And mooning over Ryan Riggs was a bad idea. The only way I could think of to fix it was to find someone new and go on a date.
I’d think about that later.
I pulled into the parking lot of Riggs Auto and got out of the car, Dylan running ahead of me into the shop. It was ten o’clock on Saturday morning, the shop had just opened, and Luke and Jace had agreed to let Dylan hang out with them for a few hours today. He had brought his backpack so he could do homework or read in the shop’s office if he got bored, but Dylan never got bored when his uncles were fixing cars.
Ryan worked for Riggs Auto too, but he and his brothers had decided that instead of working at the main shop, they’d open a new location. The new shop—also called Riggs Auto, because the Riggs brothers weren’t big on names—was across town. It was, from what I understood, on the right side of the Westlake tracks. They’d put Ryan in charge of it, which sounded like a vote of confidence. Maybe after being the Bad Boy of Baseball, Ryan would square up, settle down, and do something respectable. Anything was possible, right?
Inside the shop, Jace was under the hood of a car and Luke was sitting near the front, on the phone. Tara was sitting on a bench near Jace, a coffee in her hand. There was a tray of coffees she’d obviously brought sitting at the front next to Luke, and I helped myself to one.
“Okay, here he is,” I said to Jace and Tara as Jace straightened and looked around the car at me. He was taller than his brothers, hard as iron compared to Ryan’s fluid grace, his hair and beard dark. I knew he’d done time for stealing cars, though he seemed very sweet for an ex-con to me.
“Thanks,” he said as Dylan came running toward him, backpack swinging. “We’ll take good care of him.”
“Just call me when you want me to come and get him,” I said.
“What are you doing, Uncle Jace?” Dylan asked.
“I’ll show you, man. Go put your backpack in the office.”
Dylan took off.
“No, no,” Luke said on the phone. “We don’t do that here. You have to go to Riggs Auto on Emerson Street. Yes, that Emerson Street. You know where that is?” He paused. “Yeah, no, you definitely have to go to the other Riggs Auto for that.” He hung up. “Why the fuck did we give them the same name?” he said. “Talk about fucking annoying. Hey, Kate.”
“What do you have to go to the other Riggs Auto for?” I asked him.
Luke glanced at Dylan, who had come back into the room, and then at me. “Uh, nothing.”
“Nice save, dude,” Jace said.
The phone rang again and Luke picked it up, bowing out of the conversation.
I looked at Tara, who sipped her coffee. “Don’t look at me,” she said.
I wished Emily was here. Emily was emotional and you could read everything on her face. Tara, on the other hand, was an experienced counselor, so all she did all day was sit and listen to outrageous crap with a poker face. But Emily worked Saturdays in the hair salon she co-ran with her sister, so she wasn’t here. She and Luke both worked six days a week.
I looked at Jace next. He was still watching me, guarded amusement in his gray eyes. He was wearing worn jeans and a plaid shirt. He shifted his wrench from one hand to the other.
“What do you have to get done at the other Riggs Auto?” I asked him.
“Nothing,” Jace said, trying to look innocent.
As if to catch him out, next to me Luke said into the phone, “No, we don’t do that here. You have to go to the other Riggs Auto. And it costs an extra twenty bucks, by the way. Cash.”
Luke hung up, and Jace said, “Twenty bucks cash? Maybe we should try it, Luke.”
“Hey,” Tara said to him. “I’m sitting right here. The answer is no.”
“Em would cut my balls off and hang them from her rear view mirror,” Luke said, “so no.”
I looked from one of them to the other. What the hell were they talking about? Ryan had told me that they opened a second location. That he was in charge of it. That he had a lot of customers so far.
It made sense, because apparently in Westlake Ryan was a sports celebrity. They all knew who the Bad Boy of Baseball was here. But even though he knew how to fix cars, he wasn’t known throughout town as a mechanic. And the location was brand new, in a part of town that had competition. Yet Ryan had a lot of customers.
I pushed down the bad feeling in my gut. It wasn’t my concern what Ryan did. He was my boss, and as long as he paid me it was none of my business. Dylan was my business.
Which reminded me, Luke had just said balls in front of a seven-year-old boy. However, the seven-year-old in question had his head under the hood next to his uncle Jace and didn’t seem to be bothered by it.
“Okay, well,” I said to the room, “I guess I’ll go. Call me a few hours when you’re ready for me to get Dylan.”
I turned to leave, and Tara slid off her seat and followed me. When we were outside, she closed the door behind her and sipped her coffee.
“Never mind the boys,” she said. “They don’t want to say it in front of Dylan. And they know you’ll be mad.”
“Say what in front of Dylan?” I held up my hand as Tara opened her mouth to answer. “No. You know what? Don’t say it. Why does everyone think I’ll be mad?”
She tilted her head a little, in that I’m listening as your counselor pose she did sometimes. “Well,” she said, “you and Ryan. You know.”
“No, I don’t know. There’s nothing to know.” I pushed my hair back from my face in the cool fall wind. “I’m just the nanny, Tara. That’s it.”
“Um,” she said, like a counselor again. “He brought you here with him and moved you in with him because you’re just the nanny.”
“That was to help Dylan adjust. And because…” It did sound kind of strange when you put it that way. “He trusts me. But there’s nothing going on.”
“That, I believe,” Tara said.
I threw my hands in the air. “Okay, fine.” Maybe I was overreacting, but I’d had weeks of unfulfilled sexual tension, plus a kiss I couldn’t get out of my mind from the most gorgeous man on the planet. So I wasn’t totally calm. “I give up on you. On all of you. I’m going to do some errands.”
“Drop by Riggs Auto Two,” Tara called after me, using the nickname the brothers had started calling it. “I think it’s best if you see for yourself and decide your reaction.”
“I’m not paying you for this session,” I called back to her as I got in my car.
“It’s free,” she called back as I slammed the door. When I drove off, she was smiling.
I had things to do. I needed groceries for myself, laundry detergent. I needed to pick up the pair of boots I had gotten repaired. I wanted to buy a new bra. I didn’t do any of those things. I drove across town to Riggs Auto Two.
I had been here once before, when Ryan wanted Dylan to see the place before it opened. It was definitely in a nicer part of town than Riggs Auto One: there was a newish mall ten minutes down the street, and a row of chain stores around the corner. Westlake wasn’t a particularly rich town, but it had its share of middle-class white-collar workers, and most of them seemed to live in this area. There was even an empty lot with a sign that said Future site of Whole Foods—a sure sign that the place was coming up in the world.
There were cars in the parking lot at Riggs Auto. Two of them had women standing next to them, chatting and seemingly waiting. They looked at me as I approached.
“What time are you?” one of them, a brunette with her hair cut in a fashionably short cut, asked.
“I’m sorry?” I said..
“I’m ten o’clock,” the woman said. “Oil change.”
“I’m ten thirty,” the other woman said. “Broken headlight.”
“If you’re eleven o’clock, you’ll have to wait,” the first woman said. Sh
e jerked her thumb at the shop. “Nine forty-five is still finishing up.”
“What a slut,” the second woman said. She had long dark blond hair nearly to her waist and looked like she was in her late thirties. “She’s had three tires changed this week. One by one.”
I felt something cold in the pit of my stomach.
“My husband asked me what the twenty bucks was for,” the first woman said. “I told him it was none of his business.”
Both women laughed.
There was a hum, and one of the bay doors opened mechanically, revealing a car inside. It pulled out and drove off, the woman inside putting her sunglasses on and ignoring us.
“Here he comes,” the ten thirty woman said. “This is the reason I showed up early.”
There was a metallic sound, and the second bay door started to rise. This one wasn’t mechanical. It was being pulled up by the person inside, revealing him bit by bit from the feet up.
Worn black boots. Beat-up jeans that fit like a second skin. Long, lean, muscled legs. A dark belt with a silver belt buckle.
Then his six pack. Those glorious abs, on full display. Bare.
The dark line of hair of his happy trail. Then his chest, the muscles of his pecs flexing as he pulled the door up. His nipples. His broad, perfect shoulders. His spectacular arms. And finally the flawless, clean-shaven, gorgeous, familiar face of Ryan Riggs.
He pulled the door all the way up, letting go of it above his head. The entire motion was a work of art, the kind of thing Michelangelo sculpted for decades to perfect. And there was Ryan, ready to fix cars. With no shirt on.
Suddenly I understood what the twenty bucks was for. Without the twenty, Ryan fixed your car with his shirt on. But with the twenty bucks, he fixed it bare.
He held his hands out from his sides in an I’m-here gesture.
“All right,” he said to the women in the parking lot. “Who’s next?”
Thirteen
Ryan