Dylan (Bachelors of the Ridge #1) (10 page)

“
N
o
.” It was the only conceivable answer I could give him, while he stood there looking at me like a dirt-covered Adonis. His features smoothed out in relief, but just enough for me to notice. I swallowed the smile that threatened to spread across my face and glanced down at my abomination of a skirt.

“Good.”

He smiled when I pulled a long, magenta chunk of polyester hair from my clothes. “But, maybe not for the reason you think,” I added.

“Hang on.” He held up a hand. “Would you mind terribly if I go grab a shower before we continue this conversation?”

Gulp. Audible, embarrassing gulp.

I made some half-hearted attempt at nonchalance, waving my hand in agreement like, oh
sure
, I was so beyond used to men like him grabbing a shower while I stood fifteen feet and only one wall away. Dylan nodded and went to do just that. And I couldn’t blame him. He really was dirty.

Dirty. I sighed. And sweaty. And… and…

When Leonidas leaned his furry little body against my bare legs, I yelped. “Honey, you need to warn a girl when she’s wrapped up in
Playgirl
-level mental visions.” He panted, his mouth open in what looked like a grin. I smiled and scooped him up in my arms. “At least, I assume. I’ve never looked at a
Playgirl
. Do they still have that?”

In answer, he licked the bottom of my chin. It was too nice of a day to stay inside. And I was in too precarious of a mental state to be so close to Dylan. Soapy, wet, naked as the day he was born Dylan. I slammed the slider door behind me and walked across the small concrete patio into his backyard. Because his condo was on a corner, his backyard angled off in a triangular shape, a small line of evergreen trees serving as a barrier to the units behind his. He may need a fence eventually, but until Leonidas had his prosthetic, he couldn’t run terribly fast.

I set him in the lush grass, and he sniffed around for a bit before circling a few times, finally plopping into a circle with a heavy sigh. I sighed myself, lying down against the grass and staring up into the achingly blue sky. One hand stroked along Leonidas’s back, counting each ridge of his spine until it met the base of his tail.

I wouldn’t take back the kiss, would I?

My answer felt simple when I’d said it, but I also hadn’t really given much thought as to why he was asking it. Plus, the way he phrased the question was telling to me. He didn’t ask if I regretted it. He asked if I wanted to take it back.

Which meant Dylan was probably a moron. Because he should know that any woman, any unattached, heterosexual woman under the age of forty—and probably most of them
over
the age of forty—would never want to take back having his tongue in their mouth. Having their hands on the shifting muscles in his broad shoulders. Having their…

“Gah,” I scoffed, slapping a hand over my face and obscuring my view of the sky. Which was fine. Because it was the same color as Dylan’s eyes. With a groan, I rolled over toward Leonidas, who wriggled underneath the arm that I had over his back. His good paw batted at my face, and I started laughing. That made him even more excited, and before long, he was trying to crawl on top of me, his tongue furiously swiping at every part of my face that he could reach. I could barely catch my breath from laughing when I registered the sound of the slider pushing open.

With careful hands, I untangled myself from Leonidas and rolled over to face the patio. Dylan was wearing a plain light blue t-shirt and black gym shorts that hit his knees. His hair looked black from still being wet, standing up a little probably because he’d ran his hands through it.

My heart hiccupped. He was smiling at us, his arms folded across his chest and his shoulder braced on the side of the house.

“Having fun?”

I pushed myself up to sitting and nodded, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear. “It was too nice to sit inside.”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to explain yourself.”

The answering laugh I gave him didn’t sound all that funny, and he must have noticed because he lifted an eyebrow. I shrugged one shoulder, plucking a thick blade of grass from the ground and spinning it between my fingers. “Ingrained habit. Sorry.”

When Dylan didn’t answer right away, my stomach twisted in on itself, wishing I hadn’t said anything. But that was my first reaction to everything, too. Don’t say anything, don’t explain. It was completely unnatural for me to push that down, but I did. Probably because he didn’t ask. If he’d pressed me, shutting down would have been easy.

“You know why I don’t want to take back the kiss?”

“No. But,” he said slowly, waiting until I looked up at him before continuing, “I hope you’ll tell me.”

When Leonidas snuggled up against me, I let out a slow breath, taking comfort from the warm press of his body. “I’ve never been the kisser. Only the … kissee, if that’s the right word. That probably sounds ridiculous, considering my age. That I’ve never initiated the kissing. It’s always been a trust thing for me.”

Dylan stepped off the patio onto the yard, lowering himself to the grass. He was quiet while he stretched his long legs out and braced his hands behind him. We weren’t close enough that I could feel the heat of his skin, but I closed my eyes and imagined that I could.

“But,” I continued, my eyes still closed, “I trust you.”

He exhaled, a sound heavy with relief, and it made me look over at him for the first time since he’d sat down in the grass.

“And I haven’t trusted many people in my life.” He never looked away from me, barely even blinked while those vivid blue eyes snared me, making it hard for me to breathe while I tried to put my jumbled head into words. “Which is probably why I don’t feel embarrassed. Because if it was someone I didn’t trust,” I said carefully, not wanting to sound like I was looking for empty affirmations, “it would be kinda hard for me to be around them if they pushed me away.”

“I didn’t exactly
push
.” The right side of his mouth tipped up, and the dimple in that side of his cheek made a brief appearance. But only briefly, because he didn’t smile long enough.

“No, you didn’t,” I agreed, breaking our eye contact when it started feeling too thick and too intense. “But regardless, that’s why I don’t want to take it back. Because even though it didn’t really go anywhere, you still make me feel safe.”

He thought about that, nodding a little. “I sense a ‘
but
.’”

I scrunched my nose, laughing for a second. “Maybe. But … I think you’re right about being undecided. I don’t even know if I’d make a good girlfriend, because I’ve never tried. But I do know you well enough now that,” I swallowed, lasering my eyes onto another blade of grass before I snatched it from the ground, “I’d miss you if you weren’t around. And the most horrible feeling in the world is missing someone. I don’t want to feel that way about you, if I screwed it up.”

“Come on, it’s much more likely that I would do the screwing up,” he said easily. Dylan leaned over and nudged my shoulder with his. “Isn’t it usually the men who do?”

I smiled, rolling my eyes a little. “I guess.”

“Thank you. For telling me that. It makes sense to me.” He turned a bit so that he was facing me, instead of us sitting side by side. “And I have to be honest with you, Kat.”

Oh geez.
Here we go. It’s not you.
It’s me.
He was gearing up, I could tell. Did people say that stuff anymore? I smoothed my hands down my skirt, making sure the fur was all going in the same direction.

“Hearing you say that you trust me is probably one of the most humbling things anyone has ever said to me.”

My head jerked up. “What?”

Leonidas lifted his head at my loud exclamation, then shifted forward to start nibbling on Dylan’s heel. Dylan just shrugged, completely unperturbed by my outburst. “That surprises you?”

“Well,” I shifted in the grass, tucking my legs under me so I could face him more fully. “Yeah, I guess. It’s not like you could possibly know what a huge deal that is for me.”

He laughed then. “I couldn’t?”

“How
could
you?”

“Come on, Kat,” he said good-naturedly, like he hadn’t just set off a bomb in my freaking heart. “Anyone who paid the slightest bit of attention to you can see that you hold yourself back around people. And I’m paying attention. Besides, I have four siblings; they all have spouses. A million nephews. And I’ve worked in restaurants for ten years. You think I’m not even a little capable of reading people?”

“Well, sure. But that’s like, what kind of drink do I think they’ll order? Will they be a good tipper or not? Whether they’ll be an asshole when they drink too much and try to grab my ass.”

“
Nobody
better try to grab your ass at work.”

The dark violence in his voice, I was not even joking, made my chest flush and my core temperature bubble up so high that I wasn’t positive that my skin wasn’t shooting flames up into the sky. Okay. That was hot. I waved a hand in front of my face and gave him a look. “That doesn’t help.”

“What?” Now he sounded annoyed. “You think I’d let a customer grab any of our servers?”

“Of course not. But you should know what possessive statements do to unsuspecting women. You shouldn’t bandy those around lightly, mister.” Dylan blinked. I rolled my eyes. “Anyway. You’re psychic and can read people’s minds? Because I still think it’s nutso that you picked up on that about me.”

He kept blinking. “You’ll never stop surprising me, will you?”

“Pfft. I hope not.”

His face softened. “I’m really glad I met you, Kat Perry.”

I groaned. “You know my last name.”

“Personnel files.”

“Damn it,” I whispered.

Dylan clucked his tongue. “Language, young lady. Why don’t you like your last name?”

“Uhh, hello. Kathleen Perry. Kathleen is just horrible, so I shortened it to Kat. I look like a Katy Perry wannabe. But I’m
not
.”

He laughed, the deep sound filling me so full of warmth and contentment that I could easily get addicted to it. It made his smile spread across his face and the skin around his eyes crinkle up, which told me he laughed often. And his dimples.
Le sigh
. They carved deep grooves on either side of his mouth.

“I should just change it,” I said off-handedly, not expecting him to stop laughing so suddenly. “It’s not like it matters.”

“Your last name?” He said it so incredulously that I froze. Well. I had not intended to let that slip out. But I’d already gone this far. And all of a sudden, the thought of sharing something with him, with this man that had been so kind and so steady with me, didn’t make my mouth dry or my heart pound.

So I nodded slowly, not taking my eyes away from his. “I don’t have any family. I could change it to anything, and it wouldn’t affect anyone but me.”

His brows lowered while he regarded me. “No one in Nebraska?”

“Nope.” I shrugged, the word coming out a little less lightly than I’d intended it to. “Just a line of foster parents who probably don’t even remember me anymore.”

He was quiet for a few moments, probably digesting the giant nugget of information that I’d just handed him. “I find that hard to believe.”

I almost smiled at how visibly he was trying to keep himself steady, but something brewed behind his eyes, something that I couldn’t read. But the thing I didn’t see in the sky-blue color, so bright and framed by his enviably dark lashes, was pity.

“Not if you knew me back then, it wouldn’t be. In truth, I was one of the lucky ones. Being ignored and overlooked was a pretty good option in some of the places I stayed.”

His hands flexed and then tightened into fists. He clenched his jaw and looked away for a second before blinking back over to me. “How old were you when you went to your first foster home?”

It was the polite way of asking what the hell had happened to me. I would’ve smiled at his careful phrasing if he hadn’t looked so serious. With every second that passed, I felt stronger, more settled in telling him this. Dylan was my friend; he cared about me. He didn’t want strangers to grab my ass, and in the most simplistic way, that meant he was allowed to know this. He’d earned it, at least in my eyes.

“Young enough that I don’t really have long stretches of memories from my first home. Three or four, maybe? I’ve always struggled with retaining any memories of being really young.”

“And …” he rolled his neck, “…your parents?”

“Died,” I answered quietly, feeling the same dull thud of finality when I rolled the phrase around my head. “I don’t really remember them. Just that my mom had the same colors eyes as me, and my dad had a really loud laugh. Sometimes, I don’t know … never mind.”

The heat from the sun soaked through my skin, but in a pleasant way, like it was keeping us pinned there, unable to leave the little spot of honesty that I’d thrust us into.

“Sometimes, what?”

“I’ve never said it out loud.” Even that was whispered. I saw him nod out of the corner of my eye.

“You don’t have to tell me, Kat. It’s okay.”

“Sometimes I’m glad.” With a deep breath, I squared my shoulders. “Because I think it would have been harder, when I was growing up, if I had really good memories of them in my head. But maybe that’s stupid. I probably wouldn’t think that if I did remember them.”

Dylan hummed, regarding me for a few seconds. “It’s not stupid. I think anyone would feel that way.”

“I’ve got a folder,” I blurted out, a little stunned I was even admitting this to him. He had like, magical confession-inducing powers. “My file, I guess. From the state. And I’ve never opened it. I don’t even know if there’s anything in it from my parents.”

Dylan lifted his eyebrows, clearly trying to choose his words carefully. “Aren’t you curious?”

I shrugged. “I do a pretty good job of forgetting I even have it. When I moved into my apartment, I shoved it on the top shelf of my linen closet so I didn’t have to see it.”

“Out of sight, out of mind, huh?”

“Yeah?” I shrugged again, stretching my legs out and pointing my toes. “Maybe. Either way, looking in that folder doesn’t change what happened. They died in a car accident. Drunk driver. They didn’t have any family, so off I went to my first foster home.”