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Ryder let McKenzie use the bathroom first, wandering around her childhood room to check out the boy band posters adorning her walls. He could just imagine her and Reva blasting the music and singing along at the top of their lungs.
Seeing how close they were, he wondered again why had she chosen to move so far away from her family?
With him, his parents were super successful single children of small families and, with Chrissy’s death, he was an only child. There were no big gatherings at holidays or chaotic shared bathrooms. Next to McKenzie’s family, his home life seemed quite dull.
He picked up a framed photo off her dresser. McKenzie held a volleyball and Reva was in a cheerleader outfit. They were hugged up like the best of friends, much as they’d been embracing on the dance floor.
When the connecting bathroom door opened, McKenzie had changed into shorts that were barely visible beneath an oversized T-shirt.
His breath caught at the sight of her shapely legs, brushed-out long hair and freshly washed face. She was beautiful.
Brilliant and beautiful.
Sexy as hell.
“Your turn,” she offered, unaware of the lust she was unleashing in his body while she hung her dress back onto a hanger in her closet. When she turned, realized he’d been looking at the photo of her and Reva, something flashed in her eyes that struck him as odd.
Then realization hit.
He felt such a fool. How had it taken him so long to figure out the truth?
Then again, he’d been blinded by his own attraction to McKenzie, blinded by her recent breakup with Paul.
Paul had been a rebound relationship.
Ryder set the photo frame back on the dresser. “I like to think I’m pretty astute, but I completely missed what was going on here.”
“Oh?” Her gaze lifted to his much as a doe’s caught in a headlight.
“I assumed it was something that had happened between you and your family that had you moving to Seattle, but then you all seemed so close that I’d decided I was wrong.”
“I never said anything happened to cause me to move to Seattle other than that I fell in love with the city,” she reminded him, placing her fists on her hips as she regarded him.
“But,” he continued as if she hadn’t said anything, “it was you and Reva who had a falling out.”
“You’re crazy,” she accused, but looked away as she busied herself straightening the clothes in her closet. “My cousin and I did not have a falling out.”
“I knew you were stressed about coming home, but I got that a wedding is a little more pressure to not be single. Now, it all makes sense. What happened between you and your cousin?”
“Nothing happened.”
He wanted her to tell him the truth, rather than him having to pry it from her.
Frustrated, he said, “Something happened. Otherwise I don’t think you’d have moved quite so far.”
McKenzie didn’t meet his eyes. “You’re drawing wrong conclusions, Ryder.”
“Am I?” His brow lifted, then he shook his head. “I don’t think so, but I’ll let you think you’re deceiving me the way you’re deceiving yourself if you really believe that.”
She rolled her eyes. “You barely know me, haven’t even been in this house twenty-four hours. So, don’t you go psychoanalyzing me, Ryder.”
“Then you and Jeremy were never a thing? Because my guess is he’s what came between you and your cousin.”
McKenzie burst out laughing. “Jeremy and I were never a thing. I knew him in school, of course, but he, and every other guy, was crazy about Reva. How could they not be? She’s wonderful.”
“Then who came between you?”
“No one,” she repeated. “I—I was involved with someone during my senior year of high school and into college, but Reva never dated him.”
