“I’ll explain it to them. I don’t think they’ll mind.”
Good.
A grin spread on his face. “Look at you, trying to put my family back together. Where were you back when we were falling apart?”
I made a face like I was really thinking about it. “Sitting around and waiting for you to find me.” I’d been working. Working and hanging out with Sloane and Marisol and Chloe. Having dinners with my parents. Earlier, I’d been wasting my time with King Douchebag. Other than that, what did I do with myself? Not much of consequence.
“No, you’re not the kind of girl who sits around and waits. I wish I would have found you sooner. But you might not have liked me very much. Ryder is a prince compared to how I was. Remember how I said I’m an ass**le on that first night? I was an ass**le ALL the time. It was . . . it was a bad time for me.” It was so hard to imagine him any different than he was now. But it would probably be hard for him to imagine me the same way.
Not that I had changed much over the years. Or at least I didn’t think so. I was more of a bitch than I used to be, that was for sure. My attitude had been honed over several years of dealing with BS. I also hoped I’d grown wiser, and I knew for a fact that I had better fashion sense. Most of that was due to Sloane, though.
“Now you’re making me feel bad that I don’t have a time machine to go back and be with you,” I said.
“If I could make it happen for you, I would.” I spent the rest of the walk back to our place thinking about time machines, which was a nice change from worrying and stressing.
Tate and April agreed to the charity event, and were over the moon that they didn’t have to buy tickets. I chatted a bit with April on the phone, and she started talking about dresses and so on and how they’d have to get someone to watch the girls.
“You have no idea how long it has been since I had adult time. The only downside is the not drinking. I’d kill for a glass of wine. Literally. Would kill.”
She really wanted some wine.
“Well, I can’t do anything about the wine, but I can help you with the night out part.”
She sighed.
“That’s as good as it’s going to get, I suppose. Still, it will be nice, even if I can’t have wine.” We talked some more about dresses and shoes and everything was all set. We had two and a half weeks until the event, but there was one thing standing in the way of my enjoyment of getting to go.
Friday. The Board meeting. Dad had said he wanted to warn me, but really all he’d done was set me into panic mode. I did a lot better than I would have before a few months ago, but I still wasn’t able to put it out of my mind completely. Sex was really the only time when my thoughts were consumed by something else. As a result, I couldn’t keep my hands off Lucah.
Ryder had turned a corner and could often be found borrowing one of our laptops to fill out job applications, and he was always off for interviews and so forth. Lucah and I both helped him with his résumé. As a result of having to leave off so much of his work experience because he’d gotten fired from so many jobs, we padded it a little with his other skills.
“Is saying ‘fuck’ a skill? Because I’m f**king good at that,” he said one afternoon as I was checking it, yet again. I was typing and he kept hovering over my shoulder and making comments. It was beyond irritating.
“Sorry, but no. You must have some skills from all the jobs you’ve had.” He thought about that for a moment before answering.
“I gave my friend a tattoo once. It came out pretty good.”
I turned my head to look at him to see if he was serious. “So you want to be a tattoo artist?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “No, I’m just pointing out that I could be a tattoo artist.” I stared at him for a minute.
“Never mind. Uh, I rigged up a buddy’s videogame system to play in his bathroom.”
Okay, that was somewhat impressive, so I changed the wording a little and added it to the list of skills. I also really wanted to see this bathroom videogame system.
“Genius.” He gave me a fist bump and I was reminded a bit of his brother. They were so much alike sometimes.
“What are we fist bumping?” Lucah said, coming over with three cups of coffee.
“Your woman making my résumé seem much less pathetic than it actually is. She’s not just a hot piece of ass.” Before Lucah could reprimand him, I reached over my shoulder and grabbed hold of Ryder’s ear and pinched it between my fingers.
“Jesus f**king Christ!” he said, wiggling to get away. Lucah just laughed.
“You asked for it.”
I finally let go and gave him a look that I hoped he understood.
“Rip my ear off, why don’t you?” he said, rubbing it.
“Next time I will. You keep your smart mouth to yourself.”
“Yes, Miss Clarke,” he said in a mocking tone.
“Watch it,” Lucah said, pointing at him.
“Fuck you,” Ryder said. And that was the end of that.
Sloane and Ryder still couldn’t take their eyes off each other, but they didn’t appear to be taking things any further than that. I almost asked Sloane about it a dozen times, but I kept my mouth shut. I’d tried meddling before and that had crashed and burned, so I was going to stay out of it as much as possible.
Lucah and I kept to our new ritual of sharing the things that bothered us before we went to sleep. They varied from me being irritated that he didn’t clean the sink after he shaved, to him being annoyed by one of the other software developers’ mouth breathing tendencies, to me being bugged by the Board of Directors. That was my key annoyance. Actually, it went beyond annoyance. I was pissed off about the whole thing, and had been for a while. It was going to take everything in me to keep my mouth shut at that meeting if Dad did what I had the feeling he was going to do.
The work days seemed endless, but finally Friday dawned. Cold, rainy and miserable, but at least it matched my mood.
“Are you nervous?” Lucah said as he did my hair in a power twist and I slipped on my favorite red heels.
“Does a bear shit in the woods?” He met my eyes in the mirror and laughed. “What? I heard Ryder say it the other day and I decided to add it to my verbal repertoire.”
Lucah just shook his head and added a few more pins until my hair was hurricane-proof.
“You’re going to be fine. No, better than fine. You’re going to be magnificent.” He rested his chin on my shoulder.