Ryan (The Mallick Brothers #2)

by Jessica Gadziala

  Without really letting myself think it through, I shrugged out of my jacket, walked to my wine cubby above my sink, grabbed a nice bottle of red, a corkscrew, and two glasses in case she didn't have any, then made my way across the hall, tapping on her door in the quietest way possible so it didn't freak her out.

  There was a long, long pause followed by some scrambling, the cat shrieking, and footsteps that stopped right in front of the door. The peephole darkened as she, I imagined, looked out, then I heard the slide of the locks and the door opened tentatively.

  And there was Dusty... in fucking reindeer-printed pajamas. The pants had tiny little reindeer all over it and the long sleeve tee had one giant reindeer with a red nose front and center.

  "Nice pjs," I said, smiling because I couldn't fucking help it.

  "I, ah, thanks. What are you doing here?" she blurted, almost in the same breath, the words tripping over each other.

  "You're welcome and thank you," I said, giving her what I hoped was an encouraging smile. "And I need a glass of wine and I don't want to drink alone," I offered, lying through my teeth seeing as I had plenty to drink earlier and it felt good to be clear-headed and sober again, but wanting any excuse to maybe get inside.

  "Oh," was her only response at first, her eyes going to my hand.

  "Do you drink wine?" I asked, wondering if I should have brought over cookies that Anita left instead. What if she was on medication or some shit like that?

  "If it's good," she offered with what I could only call a saucy smile as she took a tentative step back. It wouldn't let me completely in the room, but it was a step in the right direction.

  "They wouldn't charge me seventy a bottle if it was swill," I added, holding up the bottle.

  She nodded a little tightly at that and went to move again, before completely blocking me again. "Wait. I, um, I need to put Rocky away."

  "Why?"

  "He doesn't like men."

  "Well, I don't like cats so we're even," I said, stepping inward before she found an excuse to keep me out.

  "I guess that's fair," she said, letting me step all the way in before closing the door behind me, locking it, then pushing her back against it, watching me anxiously as I looked around her apartment.

  It was all white and sage green, not my style, but it was well put together and welcoming. I guess if it was all dark, it would feel all the more like the prison it was to her.

  "Nice place," I offered, moving over into her kitchen space that was an exact replica of mine and putting the glasses down. I made quick work of the cork and set the bottle to breathe before looking at her again, finding her a few feet inside the door, but still half the apartment away. "I really like the painting," I told her truthfully.

  She gave me a smile then, relieved. "I saw that other one you had delivered and I saw this one and thought it was a similar style."

  "Aspen."

  "Sorry?"

  "The painting I have. That's what it's called."

  She nodded at that. "Moody blue," she said, moving to stand at the other side of the island. "That's the one I got you."

  I nodded at that, looking over to the small Christmas tree in the corner of her apartment, covered in carefully chosen gold and white ornaments. "How was your Christmas?"

  "Quiet. Peaceful. The usual. Yours?"

  "Wild. Loud. The usual," I offered, leaving out that a huge topic of conversation had been her. "So, have any cookies to go with this?" I asked and she beamed as she moved into the kitchen, squeezing past me without hesitation to get them out of a plastic container she had on her counter.

  "Oatmeal, chocolate chip, chocolate chunk, peanut butter, coconut, and chruscikis."

  "What the hell is a chrusciki?" I asked and she put down the container and reached inside for a little bowtie thing covered in powdered sugar.

  "Polish cookies. Deep fried and horrible for you, but the best things ever."

  "You had me at horrible for me," I said, deciding against reaching into the container for my own and reaching out to take the one from her hand, my fingers brushing hers in the process. I watched her face, seeing the way her lips parted infinitesimally at the contact before I put the cookie in my mouth.

  "Good?" she asked when I started nodding.

  "Fuck yeah. I need to give my housekeeper this recipe. Or my mother. Whoever will make them for me more often."

  "Anytime I make them I will drop some off outside your door," she suggested, cheeks a little pink and it was right then that I realized she hadn't had her uncle drop off the gift to me like I had just assumed. She had done it herself. She had willingly stepped outside of her apartment. Just to give me a Christmas present.

  That sounded a fuckuva lot like progress to me.

  "You know, you're free to wait until you know I'm home to drop shit off."

  "I don't want to, ah, interrupt anything."

  "Like my busy night on the couch answering work emails?" I asked with a smirk.

  "No, I meant if maybe you had... company."

  Women.

  She didn't want to interrupt if I had company of the female variety.

  And I swear to fuck I was seconds away from claiming that would never happen just so her pretty little face would come to my door. But fact of the matter was, no matter her little strides, I couldn't see her all of a sudden being just a fully functioning person ready for a relationship anytime soon. While I might have been patient and wasn't ruled by my goddamn sex drive, I didn't see anything happening with us that way.

  But I could hope for a friendship at least.

  So I couldn't make promises about never dating. Because while my brothers were right and I was in a dry spell, I knew that eventually, I would find a woman in my travels and take her to bed again.

  "Door is always open, honey," I said instead, knowing that it was the best I could give her.

  "Okay," she said, giving me a false smile and motioning out to her living room. "Do you want to sit down? A Christmas Story is on. You know... on a loop for the rest of the night because you can never get too much of A Christmas Story."

  "Sure," I said, grabbing the glasses and the bottles and moving over to her living area where there was only one place to sit.

  And it was a small couch.

  And she was going to be plastered to me on it.

  Oh, yeah, stepping across the hall had been the best idea I'd had in a long fucking time.

  SIX

  Dusty

  So... he was in my apartment.

  No reason to completely lose my cool.

  Except he was in my apartment in his perfect gray suit and red tie and nice watch and perfectly mussed hair and scruffy face and gorgeous eyes and his sweet smile and his fancy bottle of wine.

  That seemed like a pretty legit reason to freak, didn't it?

  Since the night of the alarm, I had been up and down. One day, bordering on depressed, the next somewhat hopeful. It was an unusual pattern for me that my therapist had picked up on easily and poked and prodded me about until she finally got answers about it.

  And I gave her it all.

  From the fact that I kinda watched Ryan to him saying hi one day to him forcibly carrying me and Rocky to safety and patching my hand and all that was in between, every tiny detail that kept me up at night and ran across my mind all day as well.

  She had paused for a long moment after, watching me across the video chat with dark eyes I couldn't read.

  Then she had told me that it was really only appropriate to get him a thank you gift.

  At the time, I thought she was just reminding me of basic social norms. It wasn't until after the package arrived and I was sitting on my floor wrapping it that I realized her motives had been ulterior.

  She wanted me to drop it off.

  She knew that I would never ask my uncle to do it because then he would ask why and he would read way too much into it, get that hopeful look in his eyes that I knew I would only dash when I didn't magically get better an
d become a social butterfly who had a steady boyfriend and a life again.

  She knew I would have to do it myself.

  I had to give it to her, it was a good move.

  And, after talking myself into it all morning, then listening for him to leave, it was a successful one.

  Because I darted across the hall, placed the present, then flew back into my apartment to deal with the panic attack in private.

  But it never came.

  I slammed my door and locked it and pressed back against it and... nothing. My heart was pounding from the mad dash, not panic.

  Which was something I mulled over for hours until my uncle showed up and we had dinner and opened presents and then he offered me a goodbye before heading off to go visit a few of his bachelor buddies.

  The absolute last thing I expected that evening was a knock at my door.

  I had been in my room getting ready for bed when it came, making my heart shoot up into my throat as I froze. No one knocked on my door. Except Bry and Bry wasn't supposed to come over until the day before New Years Eve. My hand went to my throat as I padded barefoot across my apartment and looked out the peep to find Ryan standing there, looking a little tired, but happy and stupidly perfect.

  I hadn't had anyone but Bry and Carl and my Uncle Danny in my apartment in, well, a long, long time. It was weird to stand there, wondering what he thought of the place as he looked around. But he was perfectly as ease, making himself at home, uncorking the wine, and demanding cookies.

  His ease put me a little more at ease myself.

  Which was the only possible explanation as to why I had invited him to watch a movie with me on my itty bitty Barbie couch. It was plenty big for me even when I stretched out on it. But Ryan was a big guy and, well, he took up more than his fair half.

  That meant when he sat down, his body was literally touching mine from shoulder to knee, me having my legs criss-crossed and still fitting fully on my own side. His body heat radiated through his layers of clothing, a comforting kind of warmth that I found myself enjoying way too much.

  He sat forward, pouring the wine, then sat back and half turned to me to offer me my glass. I reached for it, finding our hands brushed yet again and, well, once was an accident, several times was by design. He was purposely touching me.

  That, well, yeah, that was... nice?

  It felt nice. That was really all that mattered, wasn't it?

  He sat back and raised his glass to me. "What are we drinking to?" I asked. "Your Herculean strength, perhaps?"

  He snorted at that. "Please. You weigh about as much as your cat."

  "Then, ah, to new friendships?" I asked a little hopefully, praying it didn't come off as desperate, though a part of me was most definitely desperate.

  He watched me a long moment, his light eyes unreadable. "No. No, I don't think we should drink to that either."

  "Well, I'm out then. You pick."

  His lips tipped up slightly, not quite a smile, but something hinting at it. "Here's to progress," he offered, the words a little heavy and I wanted badly to read into it, but I forced myself to accept it at face value, clink my glass to his, and take a sip.

  Having never had seventy dollar wine before, personally considering a thirty dollar bottle pretty good stuff, I hadn't known why there were such things as wine snobs. But his wine? Yeah, it was amazing.

  "Oh my God," I half-groaned as I sat back against the couch.

  "Sufficient price of admission?" he asked, watching me.

  "With this, I wouldn't even be mad if your motive was to come in here and rob me."

  "The only thing I'm stealing is more of those Polish cookies of yours," he said and I realized I had left them in the kitchen.

  "Oh, right," I said, moving to bolt off the couch only to find his large palm pressing down on my thigh right above my knee, firm and unyielding, keeping me in place.

  "Relax. I'll grab them," he said, pressing upward and moving across my apartment to do just that. He placed them down on the table then reached up to remove his suit jacket, leaving him in a very well tailored dark gray dress shirt with matte buttons.

  "What do you do?" I found myself blurting out.

  One of his brows rose slightly. "I own a couple businesses," he offered but, if I wasn't mistaken, there was a bit of a guardedness to his tone.

  "Huh, maybe I order from you," I said with a smile, motioning toward where I had a few shipping boxes piled under my mail table.

  "Not likely," he said, sitting back down and, I kid you not, putting his hand right back down on my thigh again like it was the most casual thing in the world. Like we sat that way all the time. "I own a jewelry store, an office building, a contracting business, part of a bar and, recently, the women's shelter."

  "You own the women's shelter?" I asked immediately, it being the most interesting of the bunch.

  "Just recently," he said with a shrug. "They were having financial issues in the beginning stages and because my brothers' women and my mom are all involved in it in various ways, we decided we needed to step in. I just happened to be in a better position to take it on than my brothers."

  He struck me as the type to be good with money. We lived in a nice apartment building and while I knew he had made major adjustments to his apartment when he first moved in, it wasn't one of the most expensive in the area. He wore nice suits and watches, but he wasn't constantly having purchases delivered or bringing home bags of stuff.

  He seemed married to his work.

  Men like that usually had money to throw around on seventy dollar bottles of wine.

  Even before the agoraphobia, on a teacher's salary, all that stuff was a pipe dream.

  Besides, I was raised frugally. I wasn't materialistic.

  "That is very... philanthropic of you."

  "They do good things there," he said, shrugging it off.

  They did more than good things. They changed lives. Owning it, having his family involved in it, he must have known that. When I read in the paper that they were building it, my first thought had been- it's about time. Growing up, moving around the way we always did, I had seen more than my fair share of battered women. And Navesink Bank had the added awfulness of men like Lex Keith and his God-awful track record with women to deal with.

  Navesink Bank needed the women's shelter.

  And Ryan, my sexy as all hell, sweet as could be neighbor made it possible for it to stay in business.

  That said something about him.

  "What?" he asked, head ducked to the side a little and I realized I had been staring at him.

  Caught, I just went ahead and gave him the truth. "You're a pretty phenomenal person, Ryan Mallick," I said, giving him a small smile.

  "Don't put me on a pedestal, honey. I'll knock the damn thing over in a fucking minute."

  Again, there was that guardedness to his tone and face when he spoke, making me wonder what it was about him that made him feel that way about himself. I had come to the conclusion in his car that he was more than he appeared, more than a mere businessman if the scars were anything to go by, but what? What was he? What did he do?

  They weren't exactly things I could ask him either.

  As if to temper the comment, his hand squeezed my thigh again, reminding me that it was still there, drawing my gaze down, curious how it wasn't what was at the forefront of all my thoughts, human touch being such a foreign concept to me for so long.

  "Want me to move it?" he asked, interpreting my inspection for discomfort.

  "No," I said way too fast judging by the way his smile went bemused.

  "Good," he said, shifting his attention to the TV.

  So then we watched a movie and drank wine and he ate every last one of my chruscikis. And it was just about the most normal of nights, like we did it all the time, like I wasn't some shut-in freak who everyone else but her uncle had given up on because she was too 'difficult'.

  It was like we were old friends.

  And with good
wine swirling around in my head, making my rushing thoughts head in a nicer direction than they usually did, I started to think maybe it could be a regular thing. Maybe we could be actual friends. Maybe we could be more...

  "Dusty..." Ryan's voice called, a low, smooth rumble.

  My head jerked in his direction a second after I realized I had been staring at the rolling credits on the TV. His wine glass was gone and I wasn't sure when he discarded it. But his hand reached for my empty one and placed it on my coffee table beside his.

  "Yeah?" I asked when his eyes went to mine again, looking a little more heavy-lidded than they had a moment ago, though I for some reason wrongly attributed that to the wine and his long day with his family.

  Because, in my small little world, attraction was never a factor.

  "Say no," he said oddly, turning on the cushion so he was facing me which forced my leg to go up over his slightly.

  "Say no to what?" I asked, my voice a choked sound.

  "To me."

  I was a master at no.

  I had needed to say it so many times as the anxiety slowly but surely claimed my life that it stopped even being hard to do.

  But no to him?

  I wasn't sure I could say that.

  Even though I had no idea what he even wanted me to say no to.

  I had a gut feeling, though, that I was about to find out.

  "I, um, I can't," I admitted, saying it mostly to his chest because his gaze was proving too intense to hold for so long.

  "Thank fuck," he said, low, barely audible.

  The next thing I knew, his fingers whispered down my jaw and snagged my chin, gently forcing it upward.

  It was right about then that I finally understood his intention.

  It might have been a hell of a long time, but I'd been kissed enough in my life to know that look when I saw it.

  He was going to kiss me.

  Also, who the ever loving hell would ever say no to that?

  Even me, Dusty Rose Sunshine goddamn McRae, freak-extraordinaire couldn't do such a thing.

  His eyes watched mine for a long second looking for, I guessed, second thoughts. And I should have had them. I barely knew the man. I never let anyone touch me anymore. But somehow, none of that mattered to me.