Rubi’s forehead rested on his shoulder. Her hot breath streamed through the cotton of his T-shirt. Her heart beat quickly against his chest. And Wes felt the impact of that figurative brick wall, his head wobbly and dazed.
“Lawson,” she said between breaths, “you rock my world.”
That tickled something inside him, and laughter rolled up his throat. Then he had to catch his breath again before he said, “You f**king…floor me.”
“Well…we’ve got that…going for us, right?”
He dropped his head back on the seat and lifted a hand to push the hair from her eyes. They were heavy-lidded, smoky, and sated. Her full mouth a little more swollen from his assault. Christ, he’d missed her so much, it hurt to look at her. He kissed her gently. “We’ve got a hell of a lot more than that going for us, baby.”
So relaxed after that blockbuster quickie, Rubi almost fell asleep on Wes’s shoulder. He was warm and quiet, his arm tight around her shoulders, his fingers sliding through her hair in a barely there caress that soothed her toward sleep.
Then the car slowed, turned, and gravel crunched under the tires.
She came awake quickly and with a fresh ball of unease in her gut. In the headlights, the house where she’d met Birdie and Claudia stood illuminated. But now it didn’t look at all tranquil. The quiet country home bustled with activity. Cars and trucks lined the drive. Golden light spilled from every window. People stood in the kitchen, sat in the family room, wandered the living room. Children streaked between the rooms, and their voices reached Rubi all the way out where Wes parked, a dozen yards or more from the house.
“Um…” She lifted her head from his shoulder as he turned off the engine. “Are they having a party…or something?”
Wes grinned, but it wasn’t as wide or bright as his carefree smile. “Not exactly.” He unwrapped his arm from around her shoulders. “My parents are back—they went to Kansas City today on business. Looks like Whitney is here, and, well, a few other relatives.”
“A few?”
“We’ve got a big family that seems to congregate whenever there’s a wedding, birth, death, holiday…or, in this case, surgery.”
A flutter in her stomach carried the knot toward her throat. “Ah.”
Her mind was busy darting between skipping out—she could think of a million excuses—and staying. For Wes. She knew meeting his family was important to him, and she already felt bad over the realization that she’d originally come for selfish motives.
Wes opened the door, slid out, and turned, reaching for her. He gripped her waist and pulled her into him, kissing her as he lowered her feet to the ground. His lips were gentle, the kiss slow and tender. “I can’t wait to get you…”—he kissed her again—“in a bed…”—and again—“for an entire night.”
Rubi’s nerves coiled. The idea sounded blissful in some ways, terrifying in others. And that streak of discomfort that kept popping up whenever she experienced a solid foundation of happiness annoyed the hell out of her. Even acknowledging the conditioned response for what it was didn’t do anything to make it less terrifying.
“Hey.”
Rubi turned her gaze from the house—where she hadn’t realized she’d focused—back to Wes.
“You don’t have to meet them tonight,” he said. “You’ve had a long day. Want me to find someplace to stay? We’ll go there.”
She couldn’t stand the disappointment in his eyes. “No. It’s fine. I just…”
I just don’t know how to socialize in normal situations. Put her in a bar, a club—even a sex club, and she knew how to control the situation. Put her in a group of studly men, like the Renegades, and she could pull their strings like a puppeteer. Put her in a business meeting, and she could hold her own with the brightest minds in the industry. At a photo shoot, she owned the cameras. On the runway, she possessed the crowd.
But put her in a room full of relatives, people who had a myriad of invisible connections with each other, who loved each other, felt obligation and fondness and duty to each other, and she was a sailboat in a storm.
“I’m just warning you,” she said, sliding her hands over his biceps, “I’m not good at this.”
“You do it with me and Lexi and Jax and the other guys all the time.” He threaded their fingers as they made their way up the stairs. “We’re like family. Just think of this as meeting extended family.”
Easier said than done. Especially for someone who didn’t understand the concept of family. But for Wes, she smiled and nodded.
Approaching the house, Rubi realized the scene inside was even more chaotic than she’d first suspected. There weren’t just people in the kitchen and living room, but milling deeper in the house as well. And there were more children, more than just Wes’s two nieces.
Anxiety sang over her nerves. For a reason she couldn’t begin to understand, she flashed back to her life as a kid and all the turmoil with her father. Their millions of fights. Her dozens of nannies—only a few of whom were ever good to Rubi.
At the door, Wes leaned forward and gripped the handle. But he paused, settled those beautiful gray eyes on Rubi. “I’ve got your back, okay? Just be yourself, baby. I know my family, and if I love you, they’ll love you.”
One of the kids inside squealed—the pitch so high, the sound so loud, Rubi winced. A houseful of laughter followed, but that didn’t settle Rubi’s nerves. Wes opened the door and pushed it wide, his other hand settled on her lower back, ushering her into the house.
Panic gripped Rubi. Stepping over the threshold felt a hell of a lot like stepping off an emotional cliff. And she had the most surreal sensation of time slowing as she stood there on the polished hardwood floors, just where she’d been earlier today.
The house slowly went eerily quiet as conversations stopped and all attention turned on them. Correction—on her. She swore every person in the room gave her a slow sweep with their eyes, from the very tip of Rubi’s head to the pointed heels of her pumps. She calculated most of the gazes filled with shock. Not exactly a surprise she didn’t fit in.
Most of the guests were dressed down in jeans, T-shirts, and boots, including the women. One older man wore overalls. Overalls. Rubi didn’t even know they made those anymore. The women kept their hair mostly one length, their faces mostly clean of makeup, their bodies bare of jewelry but a simple wedding band here and there.
If she hadn’t felt awkward over fitting in before, she sure as shit did now.
“Hey, Uncle John.” Wes’s voice seemed to kick-start time again, jolting Rubi out of her funk, and the room churned back into real-time speed again. Guests’ gazes, ones that had seemed frozen, strayed back to their conversations and sound filled the space. Rubi felt like she’d just come off some mind-altering drug.
He closed the door at her back, and, keeping one hand on her shoulder, he offered the other to his uncle standing near the door. “Great to see you.”
The older man, silver-haired and attractive with those familiar crystal blue eyes, grinned. Rubi wanted to like his family, she really did. And despite Birdie calling her Missy, Rubi had found the woman kind. But there was a familiar look in the man’s eyes as he surveyed Rubi that told her he wasn’t a guy she’d like.
“This is my girlfriend, Rubi.” Wes’s introduction was as casual and noncommittal as they came, but the label “girlfriend” made her restless, as if the simple thought of being assigned to one man gave her the urge to escape.
“Well, Wes,” John said, offering his hand to Rubi. “You always snag the beauties, don’t you?”
Rubi didn’t like the inappropriate dig at Wes which mentioned other women in front of his “girlfriend,” and she didn’t like the insinuation that she was no different from the other women in Wes’s life—but she smiled politely anyway.
“Where did you come from?” he asked with a derogatory note in his voice.
She pulled her hand back and smiled. The worst thing she could do was let him rattle her. “Some days it feels like Venus, but I live in Los Angeles. You?”
“Kansas City.”
“You look great,” Wes told him. “Took off a few pounds?” He gripped the man’s bicep beneath a crewneck sweater. “Beefing up?”
“That heart scare last year did the trick. But it’s tough for me to get to the gym.” The man’s gaze slid toward Rubi, his mouth curved in more of a smirk than a smile. “I mean, it’s not like I get to play games and set my own schedule at work like Wes does, right? Some of us have responsibilities.”
John laughed at his own joke with way too much satisfaction. Rubi’s temper flared and Wes tensed beside her. His hand tightened, signaling an intent to move on. But she wasn’t done here.
“Or priorities. I know Wes works some long-ass days, but he’s always at the gym at five a.m.” Rubi gave John a smile designed to make his circuits blow. “So what do you do?”
“Doctor,” John said, his tone carrying an edge of my-work-is-more-important-that’s-why-I-don’t-get-to-the-gym. “I have my own family practice.”
“Nice,” Rubi said, feigning impression, then wrinkled her nose. “I bet you have to be on call a lot.”
“No, not much.” He’d done just what Rubi had expected—contradicted himself in an effort to appear important. “One of the perks of having my own practice.”
“Right, right,” she said, her voice thick with appreciation, giving him one last stroke before she pulled out the knife. “Oh, but, now wait.” She tilted her head and pushed a casual lightness into her tone. “You have your own practice, but you don’t set your own schedule?” She chuckled at her upcoming joke, much the way John had laughed at his own. “Man, that secretary really has you by the balls, doesn’t she?”
John’s grin fell. Confused indignation filled his eyes. And Rubi reveled in popping the man’s inflated ego.
She turned to Wes. “You really do have it good. Work hard and play hard all at the same time, loving every minute of it. And all when it suits you. The killer money doesn’t hurt either.” She leaned into him, slid both hands around his arm and stared up at him like a starstruck groupie. “And you have me.”
He had an I-know-what-you’re-up-to quirk to his mouth. “No doubt. I wake up every morning thinking what a lucky bastard I am.”
Just because she was having so much fun, Rubi lifted to her toes and kissed him, eyes open—as were his—sharing a silent message of we’re in this together.
When she lowered, he pulled his arm from her grip and circled Rubi’s shoulders, tugging her toward the kitchen. “I’m going to introduce Rubi around, Uncle John.”
“Why don’t you let me do that?” Both Wes and Rubi turned toward the voice.
A middle-aged woman stood beside John. Hair a mix of blonde and gray, Rubi guessed she was in her late fifties. Her eyes were blue, and Rubi could see a lot of Wes’s handsome face in this equally handsome woman—the high cheekbones, the beautifully shaped mouth, her eyes.
“I’m Susie Lawson,” she said, her smile warm and genuine. “Wes’s mother.”
Great. She’d just sniped family in front of Wes’s mother. Just another episode in Rubi’s version of how not to win friends and influence people. But she had to admit, poking John’s ego had alleviated her immediate panic and placed her in a “safe”—or at least safer—emotional zone.
She held out her hand to Susie. “Rubi.”
“Aren’t you refreshing?” The woman’s smile deepened with the same mischievous sparkle Rubi had often seen in Wes’s gaze as it darted to meet her son’s. A silent communication passed between them, one Rubi couldn’t read. She led Rubi toward the kitchen. “Let’s see who else we can set straight tonight.”
Rubi bit her bottom lip, then glanced down at Wes’s petite mother. “I don’t know what Wes has said, but you should know I’m really not good with the whole family thing.”
Wes’s mother’s gaze was filled with flash and humor as she patted Rubi’s arm. “Oh, sweetheart, I think you may be more of a natural than you realize.”
Twenty-Three
Wes watched Rubi stroll away with his mother. He smiled as something shifted inside him. Something deep and warm and un-freaking-bearably sweet.
He’d just fallen in love with the woman. All over again.
“She’s certainly gorgeous.” His sister’s voice drew his gaze. “You won’t have to worry about forgetting that—or reminding anyone else.”
Wes refocused on Whitney with some crazy-ass fizzy brew messing with his stomach. “But the best thing is”—he took the beer Whitney held out to him and met her gaze with a smile of fresh confidence—“she’s even more beautiful on the inside.”
She didn’t hide a flash of suspicion. “Sure you’re not just blinded by love, bro? You’ve always been a closet romantic.”
“Don’t tell her that. Romance freaks her out.”
“How’d you convince her to come? I thought she said no way.”
“She did,” Wes said. “Then changed her mind and just showed up today while I was at the VA with Wyatt.” He glanced at Whit and shook his head. “What a cluster that almost turned out to be.”
He relayed the story about Melissa and the kiss.