He couldn't help but smile and take another sip of coffee. He didn't want to move her last night for fear of waking her up, but she was worried about the same thing. It was kind of adorable, or whatever manly hockey player word there was for "adorable."
"Besides, I know you don't like when a woman is still at your place the morning after."
So much for adorable. He was trying not to think about those women. They weren't Lucy. They were nothing like her.
"That's not for all women," he said. "I wouldn't have minded waking up with you."
She turned and gave him a skeptical smile. "Really?" she asked incredulously. "You wouldn't have called Sydney over to bail your ass out if you woke up next to me?"
"No."
"But you would for other women?"
Ryan turned and gave her a serious look. "You're not other women."
He meant that. He didn't know why or what happened in the past two days to change that so dramatically in his mind, but he meant it. And he could tell it had an effect on Lucy by the way she was staring at him. She knew about the little charade Sydney would help him with. He would send some sort of "help" text to Sydney, his next door neighbor would use her spare key to walk into his apartment acting like his girlfriend, they would have a fight that would make it uncomfortable for the woman he had brought home to stay, and his problem would go away — literally.
But Lucy wasn't someone who would ever be on the receiving end of that performance. There were things about her that he still hadn't figured out, but she wasn't a problem he needed to have Sydney help him solve, at least not in that sense.
She was looking at him now was a mix of surprise, a little shock, and definitely some confusion. Whatever that look was reflected how he felt, which was to say that he had no idea how he felt. Maybe going home would be a good way to forget about this new strange thing with Lucy. He just wasn't going to let her see his own confusion. Better to look back out over the water, stare out at the lake, and try to find a way to get past that subject.
"Hey, would you like to go to dinner tonight?"
He closed his eyes and inhaled the smell of coffee from his cup.
"I can't."
"Oh." She sounded hurt but seemed to quickly recover. "Yeah, no, that's fine. It was no big deal anyway. There's just this barbecue place in town that I thought you would like."
"Gendry's?"
She smiled. "Yeah, Gendry's."
His shoulders slumped and he let his head fall back as he looked up at the sky. "They had the best ribs there the first night I got here. They threw so many wet wipes in that bag."
"The ribs are amazing," she said quietly. "But it's OK if you don't want to go."
He snapped up, his eyes finding hers. "No, I want to go with you. It would be awesome. But…" He let a long breath out. "I'm leaving this afternoon."
"I thought you had the cabin for a week."
"I paid for a week," he explained. "But I have to drive back down to Detroit later today and then I'm going home to Edmonton tomorrow."
"Any particular reason?"
Ugh.He was trying to avoid that. Every time he had talked about it before, it felt like he was bragging.
"It's OK," Lucy said. "You don't have to tell me."
He could tell by the tone of her voice that it wasn't OK. He could either keep his mouth shut and not embarrass himself, or he could tell Lucy so he wouldn't hurt her.
"It's just a charity thing."
Lucy took a sip of coffee, swallowing dramatically while keeping her eyes on him over the edge of her mug. "What kind of charity thing?"
"Every year, I help with a big roller hockey tournament at the rink near my house."
"And why is that a bad thing?" she asked skeptically.
