Dylan (Bachelors of the Ridge #1) (16 page)

The sharp points of her nails dug into my skin, and I pressed against her more fully. Everything faded, and it must have for her too, because all I could hear was the rushing blood in my ears and all I could feel was the softness of her lips—the wet slide of her tongue and the smooth skin of her waist where I’d pushed my hand under her shirt.

Drugged. I felt drugged.

Like everything was fuzzy and more clear than it had ever been, all at the same time. My thumb made tiny circles around her belly button; the flat, toned skin of her stomach like silk under my hand. She laughed into my mouth and I pulled back.

“Ticklish?”

“I guess. I never knew that I was.”

The statement could have sobered me, if I wasn’t fully immersed in how she felt wrapped around me. Nobody had ever tickled her before. And she was trusting
me
enough for all of this. The enormity of that made me feel like such an ass for being upset earlier. If she needed to go slow, be careful of who knew about us, then I could be man enough to respect that.

My hand smoothed up her stomach and felt along the edge of her bra before pushing up underneath it. Her smile faded, her cheeks pinked and her eyelids fluttered closed. Her flesh was so warm, the perfect size for my hands. Kat was so small, but the subtle curves pressed against my palm made me feel like I was about to snap, right there against the side of Garrett’s house.

Reality filtered in, the sounds of cars driving down the street and the brightness of sun made me pull my head back, slowly drop my hand back down to her waist. My head fell to the curve of her neck, and we just stood there, breathing.

“We should probably go back in,” I said, and she laughed softly at the grumpy tone in my voice.

“Yeah.” But instead of pushing me away, Kat cupped the sides of my face with her hands. “Hey. I know I freak out sometimes. But … don’t give up on me. Okay?”

I touched my forehead to hers, swallowing back the rush of emotion at the small sound of her voice when she said it. That’s all she’d ever been used to. People moving on, leaving her behind without a single backward glance.

“Never.”

Y
ou know
, this whole endeavor with Dylan must have been totally making me mature. Because we’d hung out twice in the last two weeks, and sort of erred on the friendly side of friends with benefits.

Okay. Fine. I had my period the second time, so there was not going to be any action happening. But we watched a couple more movies, given that he’d caved to my nagging and gotten a Netflix subscription at my request.

But despite how much I’d grown as a woman or whatever, I still needed to talk to him about this whole … family visit thing. So I invited him to my place, like I was getting him to my power base so I’d have more courage to bring it up with him. That made him sound like the villain, and I was the ailing hero who needed to draw strength from his weapons, but of course, Dylan was no villain. He just didn’t understand the terror I felt at the thought of being dropped into his Norman Rockwell painting of a family.

Because they
had
to be like that. They just couldn’t be anything but perfect, considering how well-adjusted he was.

I was wiping down the kitchen counters when the buzzer sounded. Leaning over, I pushed the button to let him in and then did the last section of the counter before he made it to my door. Since I hadn’t locked it, he walked right in, but gave me a nasty look as he did.

“Geez,” I mumbled. “Nice to see you too.”

“Why isn’t your door locked?” I straightened because he actually sounded
mad
at me. So naturally, when I started smiling, he scowled even more. “Why are you smiling? This isn’t funny, Kat.”

Then I started laughing and he tilted his head back in frustration. Because he wasn’t looking at me, he didn’t see me walk up to him. When my hands slid up his chest, he dropped his head, a softer look in his eyes. It only took him a moment to wrap his hands around my waist and exhale heavily.

“I don’t think it’s funny,” I said. “But I think your protective man temper tantrums are sort of adorable.”

“As long as they’re so adorable that you always lock your door when you come home, then fine. I’ll take it.” He dropped a kiss on the side of my neck and pulled back to look into my kitchen. “What, you’re not making me dinner?”

When I snickered, he smiled. We both knew that I did not love to cook, and so if I was making him dinner, it was highly likely that it would be mac and cheese or something. We made our way to my couch, since watching stuff together just kinda ended up as our thing.

Dylan was scrolling through my DVD collection, which was about fifty times bigger than his and rolled his eyes at my alphabetized Julia Roberts section. Since he seemed like he was in a good mood, I decided to test the waters.

“So, your mom and sister are going to be here like, next week, right?”

He hummed, flicking his eyes at me and then returning to the movies. “Yeah, they get in next Friday.”

“Is it okay if I ask you something that might sound a little … weird?”

His hands stilled and he turned to face me, a curious expression in his eyes. “Of course.”

Twisting my hands in the hem of my dress, I licked my lips before saying anything else. “I don’t have any experience interacting with normal functioning families, which you know. And I know you said that me hanging out with the guys is like a family, but Dylan, it’s not the same.” I paused, finally meeting his eyes and he nodded. “When you asked me if I could meet them? My entire body felt like you’d dropped me in ice. That’s how terrified I am of meeting them, of trying to pretend like I know anything about how to act around a family.”

His eyes fell closed and he pulled in a deep breath, and when he opened them, I saw a hint of the pity that he had never directed at me before. “I’m not going to pretend like I understand, because I don’t. But what I do know is that my mom and my sister are great people. They’re nice and funny and they’d love to meet you.”

“But why?” I pressed a hand to my chest. “Trust me, I’m not asking so you can give me false praise, but Dylan,
why
do you want me to meet them so badly?”

The way he looked at me, he was really thinking about how he wanted to answer me. Even though my skin was practically crawling with the need to hear why, I appreciated him being thoughtful about it.

“Let me ask a question first,” he said hesitantly, and I nodded. “If we’d never kissed, had never done any of the things that we’ve done in the last month or so, and I asked you to meet them, would you still feel the same way?”

“Yes.” Such an easy question. And the way Dylan smiled unraveled a little bit of the tension I’d been carrying around when I had prepared myself for the conversation.

“Okay. So what freaks you out? That they won’t like you?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Aren’t I supposed to be leading this conversation?”

With the sweep of his hand, he gave me the floor back.

“Families, especially good ones, are like …” I hesitated, searching for a good example. “They’re like celebrities to me. I’ve heard of them, seen pictures, maybe I’ve even met a few of them. But I wouldn’t have the slightest clue how to act around them or understand what their life is like. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” he said slowly. “Yeah, it does. You feel separated from them.”

“Exactly.” I sighed in relief. What a smart boy. “And while good families may not freak everyone out, they freak
me
out. And because they’re such a big deal? I’m really trying to figure out why you want to throw me in the mix. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

Dylan watched me for a few beats, processing what I’d just told him. And see? Obviously maturing because I couldn’t usually articulate my thoughts so tidily. He got up off the floor in front of my entertainment center and came to sit by me on the couch.

“So, I have a big family. I’m one of five kids, so it was pretty much always chaos growing up.” He paused and glanced over at me, like he was gauging my current level of crazy. Which was a legitimate concern for him, I guess. “There was such a big gap in our ages, I mean, the twins were like ten when Casey was born. Which meant that there was always something new starting. New sports teams and weekend activities, then high school and college, different jobs, and my parents wanted to know it all.” Then he smiled, and my heart ratcheted up a notch, imagining what that life must have been like. “They wanted to know what we liked and what we didn’t, who our friends were, and what was bothering us. So you can imagine that this move, even though I’m in my thirties, was a huge deal for them. Nobody in our family has ever moved this far away. Ever.”

“What a rebel you are,” I teased, leaning in and pushing my shoulder against his.

“Exactly. But even though they were all a little miffed that I was doing something so drastic, my parents want to know what my life is like here. They want to know what’s important to me.” With easy, comfortable movements, he grabbed my legs and positioned them in his lap, making sure that I was facing him. One hand smoothed up my left leg, and hello, good thing I’d shaved that morning. “Kat, even if I’d never touched you in any other way but as a friend, you are one of the most important people in my life since I’ve moved here. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have been happy here if I’d never gotten to know you— “

“Gee thanks,” I drawled, but felt my stomach flip nonetheless. Nobody ever spoke to me the way that Dylan did. He just … he just showed me what was in his head and in his heart. It started pushing my feelings into a category that I wasn’t positive I was ready for, but his candor made it almost impossible to stop.

At my sarcastic interruption, he grinned and leaned forward to lay a soft kiss on my mouth. “But I’m so much happier because I do. And that has nothing to do with our little arrangement. I’d want them to meet you because you’re a part of my life. It’s as simple as that.”

“Simple as that,” I repeated, marveling at his ability to make it sound so easy. I was important, and therefore, they’d care to know me. So freaking weird. But also, a little hot, that he was explaining it to me like that. That I was an important piece of his Colorado life, no matter what benefits I was offering up in his direction. So I nodded. I could do it. I’d probably freak the hell out when the time actually came, but I could do it. “Then I’d love to meet them.”

His answering smile was so wonderfully happy, so transparent in how my agreement affected him, that I couldn’t help but smile back. “That makes me very happy, Kat.”

“Mmm, maybe I should have made you mac and cheese after all. You’d have no idea what to do with how accommodating I’m being tonight.”

His hands gripped my waist, tickling my sides, and I pealed with laughter. “Oh, I could think of something.”

With a smile still on my face, he went in for a kiss. It was fast and sloppy, and I loved it. Like his emotions were running so rampant that he couldn’t maintain his usual perfect kissing technique. I moaned into his mouth when he bit at my bottom lip, fisting my hands in his shirt and pulling him with me as I lay back on the couch.

“You know,” I murmured between kisses, “I may not see you before they get here.”

“Why are you bringing them up now?” He licked up the side of my neck, grinning when I started fidgeting underneath him.

“I just mean, I’ll have to share you the next time I see you. I don’t usually have to do that.”

“No, I suppose you don’t.”

While I held his eye contact, I worked my hands around his back and smoothed up the expanse of hot skin and shifting muscle. “I should probably make sure we get our fill tonight.”

His head pulled back and he searched my face. “Yeah?”

I nodded, biting my bottom lip, which made his eyes darken imperceptibly. And when I shimmied my hands under my dress to pull my underwear off, he started shaking his head.

“What on earth am I going to do with you?”

“I can think of a few things,” I whispered into his mouth, then moved up to his ear, so I could tell him exactly what those few things were.

“
H
oney
, if you concentrate any harder on that, your brain will start bleeding.”

At the sound of Glinda’s voice, I pulled my hands off the keyboard and shook my fingers out. There was no way I could admit this, but she was right, of course. Updating patient files was not my strong suit, so when I’d thrown myself into it this morning, Glinda was naturally a little suspicious.

She couldn’t know, though, that in about four hours and seventeen minutes, I’d be driving over to Dylan’s house to—gulp —meet his mom and sister. Because I was
so
well-versed in how to have polite interactions with sane, balanced, loving families.

I’d only had one truly kind foster family. Or, they were kind in comparison to the rest of them. If I thought hard enough, I could probably even remember the exact day that I moved in with them. I’d just turned seven, and the foster home that I’d been leaving had let me have a second glass of milk at dinner for my birthday. A small one, but a refill nonetheless.

And when I showed up at the Teller’s house, they had tied a shiny pink Mylar balloon in the shape of a flower to the post of the bed that was to be mine. It wasn’t a happy birthday balloon, and it may not have even been purchased for me, but I remember lying in bed and staring up at it, thinking that it was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen.

Given that one probably-a-hand-me-down balloon was one of the best memories that I had from my childhood was precisely why thinking about Dylan’s family just about gave me hives.

“Honey?”

I looked over at Glinda, who was peering over the bright red rims of her glasses, concern etched into her lined face. “Yeah?”

“You okay?”

“Just tired,” I lied, with a small smile to soften it. Glinda was one of the hardest people to hold at arm’s length. Maybe because she was older and we worked with such a small number of people, it was harder to get lost in the shuffle like I had at the Divide. It was probably wrong to be so harsh about my own generation, but I identified with someone like Glinda, a baby boomer, much more than I did with other people my age, the millennials. I wasn’t on social media, because I genuinely didn’t think anyone would care to see what I thought or what I ate for dinner, or whether I could capture my ‘good side’ with eighty selfies a day. I didn’t feel the need to prove myself with wealth or career success.

I just wanted to be happy, live a simple, uncomplicated life that didn’t depend on someone else to provide me with that happiness. I wasn’t special, I didn’t stand out in a crowd and I had no intention of wowing people to the point that they never forgot me. That wasn’t insecurity, it was simple fact.

Well, maybe a little insecurity.

And I swear, on days like that one, where I felt like I was wearing my ill-at-ease feelings like a badge on my chest, it was as if Glinda could see all of them in a single blink of her blue eyes. That at the end of the day, I still wasn’t sure where I fit in.

She glanced down at her desk, the appointment book open in front of her computer. “Did Mr. Blue Eyes have an appointment with someone else last week?”

I kept my face trained at the screen in front of me. “Yup. Leonidas did hydrotherapy with Molly.”

Molly was the other vet tech who’d just started a few weeks ago. We hadn’t worked together much, but she seemed nice enough. She was also happily married, which shouldn’t have been important. But even I could admit that even though I had no desire for a serious relationship with Dylan, shoving him in front of a beautiful and unattached woman would have been trying.

Glinda hummed, and I felt her eyes burning a hole in my skin. She stayed that way for a couple more minutes before I swiveled the stool around so I faced her. “Can I help you?”

“You go out with that boy?”

Damn the fair skin I’d been born with, I felt my cheeks redden. “No.”

“Well somethin’s got a bee in your bonnet.”

When I rolled my eyes at her southern-ism, which she was prone to spouting as soon as someone had a personal problem, Glinda clucked her tongue at me.

“No bees, no bonnets,” I insisted and she raised one grayed eyebrow. I shook my head. “I’m just … just a little nervous.”

The way Glinda’s face lit up at my honest statement was enough to make me feel like a giant shit-heel.

“What for, sweetie?”

I rolled my lips in over my teeth and let the words roll around in my mouth before I let them out. “Before you freak out, he and I are
just friends
, Glinda.” I waited for her to nod before I continued. “His sister and mom are visiting this weekend, and he wants me to go over there to meet them.”

Glinda blinked. I raised my eyebrows.

“Tonight, Glinda. He wants me to meet them tonight.”

“Okaaaaay. That’s a bad thing?”

I threw my hands up and stood from the stool, pacing through the open area. “It’s … it’s a crazy thing! I don’t know how to meet families. You know, who asks to introduce me to their family? No one. No one asks me.”

“I introduced you to my daughter,” Glinda pointed out.

I scoffed. “That’s not the same.”

Then she looked annoyed and I gulped all over again. “Is it now?”

“Well,” I hedged, “kinda. You introduced your daughter because I happened to be here. You would have done that for anyone.”

Glinda’s face softened, just a touch, and the sadness in her eyes made me twitchy. “If I told you that you were about as happy as a dead pig in the sunshine, would you know what I meant?”

I tilted my head. “What do you think?”

“Would that pig feel the sun on him? Or if it were rainin’?

“No.”

“You are blind, sweetie. You don’t see what’s around you. And it’s not my place to lecture you on it, but being ignorant of what’s going on right in front of your pretty little face, whether by choice or not, is beneath you. You’re smarter than that.” Glinda stood, straightening the cup of pens on the counter. “I told my daughter to come in here so she could meet the people I work with. The people I like very much. And you’re one of those people. Whether you see it or not isn’t on me. So I don’t care whether you’re friends or lovers or whatever, but if he thinks you merit a meeting with his family? Then go, be yourself and be content knowing that he wants you there.”

Dylan had told me all of this. But as days passed, and the ticking clock of doom was constantly going off in my head, it was so easy to forget exactly what he’d said. I sank back down into the stool, my whole face and chest hot with embarrassment. Embarrassment and a healthy dose of humble pie. The frigid sweep of mortification didn’t help either, but it couldn’t really ever be easy to have someone tell you that you’re completely oblivious. And I wish it helped that she was admitting she cared for me, that in some small way, I was important in her life, but it didn’t.

Okay. It helped a
little
. Because when I looked back up at her, she immediately left her desk and swept me into a hug. The round softness of her body felt like she’d draped a warm cloak around me, and I hugged her back.

“Just be yourself,” Glinda said again. Then she sniffed. “And maybe shower before you go. You smell like wet dog.”

* * *

“
C
ome on
,” I whispered, tapping the bottom of my steering wheel. “Come on, Dylan. Pick up.”

The phone rang three more times in my ear, and just as I was about to hang up, I heard his out-of-breath voice. “Kat, hey.”

“Hi.”

He laughed. “What’s up? Are you still coming over?”

I mean, I was parked at a Walgreens two minutes from his house, calling to make sure he still wanted me there like the total freakazoid I was.

“Yeah.” I blew out a breath and caught my eye in the rearview mirror. “I’m on my way actually.”

“Oh. Great. What’s up?”

Behind the dark lenses of my sunglasses, I pinched my eyes shut and inhaled through my nose. “You’re
sure
you want me to come over? We’ve only seen each other like once in the last two weeks and I was surfing the crimson wave so it wasn’t like I could be, you know, friendly or anything. And if you were just inviting me to be nice, I can just stay home and it’ll be just fine.”

“Kat,” Dylan interjected with a firm voice and I smacked a palm against my forehead, “we already talked about this. Just take a deep breath.”

“If I breathe any more deeply than I have been, I’ll pass out.”

His answering deep chuckle made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, and little goosebumps pop up on my arm. “We don’t want that, do we?”

“Probably not.” I shifted in my seat when he didn’t respond right away. In the background, I could hear feminine laughter. It faded when the sound of a door clicking shut came through the phone.

“So you’re driving right now?”

“Not technically.” Silence. I imagined him giving me that look that made his forehead all crinkly and adorable and hot. “I pulled into a Walgreens so I could freak out without the threat of causing an accident.”

“Fair enough. What’s the freak-out?”

“You know,” I groaned. “I have social anxiety.”

“No, you don’t. You just hate meeting new people.”

“Bah. Who asked you?”

“Kat, just turn the keys and get your ass over here. There’s no fancy dinner or huge group of people. It’s just the three of us, and Garrett may stop over later.”

Relief swamped me. Garrett would make it less let’s-all-sit-and-rate-the-new-girl. So I set my jaw and nodded, fully aware that he couldn’t see me. “Okay. I’ll be there in three minutes.”

He started laughing again and when the sound made me want to kiss the snot out of him, a horrible, terrible thought crossed my mind.

“Dylan, you better
promise me
that you won’t look at me funny.”

“Well, I’d be happy to. But how will I know if I’m doing that?”

I looked heavenward. “If you look at me and think about the fact that our tongues have touched and you put your hand on my boobs and underneath my skirt a couple times, then you’re probably looking at me funny. None of that tonight.”

“Yes, ma’am. No tongues, no boobs.”

Well, when he said it like
that
. “I mean, just not around them. If they leave the room you can you look at me like that,” I amended. “Or the next time we see each other. Tongues and boobs are fully allowed. Oh my gosh, I’m hanging up so I stop talking.”

I tossed my phone into the passenger seat like it held every single ounce of my dorkdom, which really could not be contained into one small piece of plastic, but whatever. And by the time I swung my car down Dylan’s street, my nerves had only settled a tiny bit.

I knew Glinda was right—in my head I knew that she was right. But it was also in my head that these two women couldn’t possibly want to meet me if they thought I was just a girl that happened to be a friend. Didn’t well-meaning moms always want to marry off their single sons? Would I walk in the room and immediately be rated on my child-bearing hips? Which I did not have, for the record. In fact, a kid may get stuck down there on its way out.

I choked on a crazed laugh on my way up to the front door, imagining a tiny baby lodged in my hoohah because my hips were too narrow, when Dylan pulled the door open for me. He had a wide, sparkling white smile, the deep rivets of his dimple and the laugh lines around his eyes making me stomach go flippy.

Maybe I was the one who should have promised not to look at him funny. Like I didn’t know what his big, calloused hand felt like over the top of my bra or that he gave the most perfectly deep, wet kiss.

“Kat?”

“Yeah, yup, hi.”

His eyes warmed at my choppy greeting, and that actually
did
do lovely, settling things to my anxiety. Then it promptly went away when his sister walked up next to him. Because she was gorgeous. Tall and leggy with wavy, dark brown hair that was legitimately flowy and shit. Her eyes were the exact same color as Dylan’s, and while her face looked happy enough to see me, I could barely tear my gaze from her perfectly adorable baby bump that she was resting a hand on top of.

“Oh yay, you’re here,” she said, smacking Dylan in the stomach. “You gonna let her in or what?”

Dylan rolled his eyes and moved back, lifting his hand like he was going to place it on my back when I walked in, but it froze in midair and then dropped back to his side. “Casey, this is Kat. Kat, Casey.”

I went to hold my hand out when she made a tsking sound at me and leaned over to wrap me in a huge, tight hug that was very full of baby belly. Also, I quite literally meant leaned over as I was probably six inches shorter than her and she basically had to fold her body in half to hug me. Not awkward
at all
.

When I gave her back a few quick pats, Dylan winked at me.

“It’s so nice to meet you,” Casey gushed when she pulled back. She kept her hands on my upper arms and her eyes went from the tippy top of my head down to my feet. “And this dress is adorbs. Where’d you get it?”

I tugged at the royal blue hem and shrugged. “Target?” Ahh yes, my first words spoken in the presence of his gorgeous family. And that word was Target. Stab me now, honestly.