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“I did . . . I mean, what were we talking about?” My brain was going fuzzy.
He laughed low against my ear while brushing back my hair with his strong hand. “You’re like putty in my hands.”
I nodded, giving him permission to keep on molding me, but he only pressed a kiss to my bare shoulder “It will work out, I promise.”
He went to reach for his laptop, but I had other ideas. I straddled his lap. “Hey, I wasn’t done with you.”
His brown eyes widened, but his smile said come and kiss me. I leaned in to do just that until Bobby Jay busted through the door with Marlowe.
“Oh my hell, you guys are here again? You’ve turned into an old married couple already.”
I discreetly took my place back by Ryder’s side, blushing a little. Ryder grabbed his laptop, disgruntled. I’m not sure if it was from being interrupted or called out. “I’ve got deadlines, brother, in part thanks to you.”
“You can thank my record sales all the way to the bank.” He put his arm around Marlowe, who was looking lovely in a floral jumper. “We are only here so I can change my clothes.” He was still in his business attire. “Come with us to the bonfire.”
I looked hopefully at Ryder.
His face fell. “I have to get this piece done tonight so it can be tested tomorrow. I’m sorry.”
Bobby Jay rolled his eyes and grabbed Marlowe’s hand. “Come with me, darlin’, we’ll leave the boringtons to themselves.”
Ryder, I noticed, started to flip Bobby Jay a crude hand gesture until he thought the better of it in my presence. “He doesn’t understand the pressure I’m under. He’s not the one signing the paychecks.”
I reached up and rubbed his tense neck. “I wish there was something I could do for you.”
“You’re doing it by being here. But if you want to go with them, you should. I feel awful, us spending all our time together like this.”
“It’s only temporary . . . right?”
“Of course.” He went right back to work.
~*~
By the time Saturday rolled around, I was promised a date night I wouldn’t forget. And not at his place. All I knew was it involved him borrowing Bobby Jay’s truck, which excited me. Trucks and us equaled magic. Because of the night I was hoping for, I offered to make us a picnic dinner, which Ryder said would be perfect. All very promising.
Marlowe even volunteered to close the boutique for me so I could go home and get ready. Her thoughtfulness was appreciated, though I had to admit it was surprising. Bobby Jay was having quite the effect on her. She seemed more mature and less self-centered. I noticed another attempt to be thoughtful last night when she brought Bobby Jay a specialty beer he liked.
When I got home, I made all of Ryder’s favorites, from fried chicken and biscuits to strawberry salad and, of course, sweet tea. I was a hot mess when I was done in the kitchen, so I headed straight for the shower. I was pulling up my hair as to not get it wet when my phone rang. It was Ryder’s ring tone, so I answered it.
“Hi, sugar.”
“Hey, Chief.” A heavy breath accompanied his greeting.
“Everything all right? I was about to jump in the shower after fixing dinner. I hope you’re hungry.”
“Listen, darlin’, I hate to do this —”
With that one sentence, all my hopes disintegrated. “Let me guess, you have to work.”
“Shelby, it’s not like that. We started getting several complaints that our app is running slow and come to find out we are under a distributed denial of service attack. I don’t have time to go into what that means, but it’s serious and my team and I have to fix this before the app crashes.” His through-the-roof stress levels came through loud and clear. “I’ll make it up to you. I love you.” He hung up.
I sat on my bed, stared at my phone, and sighed. My first instinct was to be put out. My second was to be hurt. But then reason kicked in. This was an emergency and he had made every effort since we were together to spend every waking moment he could with me, despite it costing him sleep. But I would be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned. Now wasn’t the time to voice it. After this crisis, though, I would. In the meantime, I would show him how much I loved him. The man still needed to eat, and I hated to see all that food go to waste.
I called Bobby Jay, who was beside himself too—apparently, this distributed denial whatever was a big deal, and with social media the way it was, Bobby didn’t want complaints of service to start popping up all over for potential customers and partners to see. He decided he better head into the office to see what he could do to help as far as mitigating calls or messages that came through customer care. This way he would have real-time updates from Ryder. I asked to follow him over so he could let me in since their offices were technically closed on the weekends except for their support center.
