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“Rylee,” her father barked.
“You can go now,” she shooed Louis toward the steps. “Have fun, Daddy. As much as you can have with him.”
Louis’s upper lip curled.
“Erm, I’ll drive.” Her father started for the garage.
Louis shouldered his golf bag. Before he stepped off the porch, he offered a parting jab, “You’re better than this. You know it, I know it.Trickknows it, too. You know where to find me.”
She sure did, she thought as he walked away. Right up her father’s ass.
Fifteen
Trick had never seen Rylee so infuriated, which was saying something as his mere presence in Texas had pissed herwayoff at first. Outside of her parents’ house, he found her sitting on the white porch swing, pushing herself back and forth. Her hair lifted in the breeze created by the overhead fans. He’d thought at first that her cheeks were red because of the heat, but then he followed her gaze to the retreating car holding her ex-fiancé and her father.
Trick sat next to her on the swing. She didn’t take her eyes off the long driveway even though her father’s car was long gone. She seemed to notice Trick’s presence belatedly.
“All set?” she asked, her smile tired.
“Your mom said it’ll take a few minutes for the ink to dry. I’m no professional, but I think she did a great job. She’s a perfectionist so it had to be just right. She reminds me of you.”
Rylee turned her head. “You sound surprised.”
“I am, actually.” When Rylee had described how she’d been raised, he’d assumed the women in her family were robotic servants with the men their controllers. “Pleasantly.”
A beat of silence passed. They continued swinging, their feet pushing against the boards. Trick decided to take a wild stab at what was bothering her. “Louis said something stupid, I take it.”
She grunted. “Lots of stupid things. Including telling me that I was welcome to come back to him when I’m done being rebellious.”
“He sees your business as a rebellion?”
“And you.”
He had to laugh, which drew a genuine smile from her. That was good to see. “Men like him have no confidence. It’s an act. He’s trying to sound big while being small. He isn’t aware that you can see through him because he can’t admit to himself that you’re smarter than he is.”
She kissed Trick so fast he never saw it coming. Once her lips pressed against his, though, he responded. Cupping the back of her neck, he deepened the kiss, tilting his head to further drink her in. She tasted like sunshine and capability. Like a woman who would never trade her career for a paltry offering made by an insecure man-baby.
Trick admired Rylee all the way down to those uncomfortable shoes she wore. The more he thought about how much she didn’t like them, the more irked he became. As she discovered more about herself, he hoped that she would let go of anything and everything that didn’t serve her. Men and shoes in particular. He also hoped that he wasn’t part of what she cast off, even as he acknowledged that he didn’t want to explore that thought too deeply.
He tried to stop kissing her, honest to God, but the moment her tongue touched his, he forgot why. He set his equipment on the swing to free his other hand. Now he could cup both sides of her face.Perfect.
If she was using him as a way to release her pent-up emotions, he would gladly give her what she needed. She’d become a safe place for him as well, an uncommon occurrence in his world. When she’d brought up a one-night thing this morning, he’d been offended. Strange, considering he’d never before argued with a woman about keeping things light.
Rylee was different from any other woman he’d known. They naturally melded together. Spending time bouncing ideas off of each other was easy, and fun. He didn’t know how to define what was happening between them, but he knew what they were doing was theoppositeof a one-night stand.
Lips tingling, he surfaced from her mouth at the same moment he heard the delicate clearing of a throat behind them.
Rylee unwound his arms from her body and jerked away. He instinctively knew they hadn’t been interrupted by one of the house staff. When he turned his head to look over his shoulder, Rylee’s mother was standing in the doorway, a small flat box in her hands.
“Sorry to interrupt.” Her mother’s voice held a note of amusement disguised as a singsong lilt.
While Rylee wouldn’t have expected her to be clutching her pearls, she had expected Regina Meadows to offer censure for what she’d witnessed.
“I have your place cards ready. Trick agreed that I matched the handwriting of the originals quite closely.”
“You have talent, Regina,” he said with warm familiarity. What had those two talked about upstairs while Rylee had been listening to Louis be a butthead? She had expected her mom to be cordial to Trick, but she hadn’t anticipated them chatting.
Rylee had never brought home a boyfriend her parents didn’t know. Trick, as it turned out, was the first man in her life that had required an introduction.
