With a wave to Mr. Cooper, I headed out the door and down the stairs, Rip following behind me. We made it to the bottom before I realized I wasn’t ready to go, and I glanced over my shoulder to find him literally a foot away. “Give me one second to grab my purse, okay?”
Those blue-green eyes slid toward me. “You don’t need money.”
I opened my mouth, but he cut me off.
“You don’t need money. Let’s go,” he insisted.
I opened my mouth again, but he did the same thing, giving me that exasperated expression.
“You can pay me back some other way, all right?”
“I didn’t invite you so you could end up paying for someone else’s food.”
He stared at me.
“You’ve done enough. I don’t want to take advantage of you,” I told him for what felt like the hundredth time lately, knowing he would understand that.
Those eyes focused in on me, and I watched them go to my ears. I’d put on the first set I’d found in the ruin of my bedroom: fake gold teddy bears. “I’ll tell you if I feel like you’re taking advantage of me. But let’s go, I’m hungry. Those kolaches this morning went right through me.”
Oh, man. He wasn’t going to let this go. “Fine. But I’ll pay you back for my food at least.” I squinted an eye. “Somehow.”
He didn’t agree, but he did give me another side look before he shook his head. “Come on.”
I was going to lunch with Ripley.
I was going to tell myself that wasn’t excitement or crazy high anticipation going through me. Just two coworkers going out to eat in public. No big deal. It wasn’t even the first time we did it.
I led the way out the doors, noticing that no one even looked at Rip and me as we headed out. We had barely gone out the door when those long legs caught him up to me and we walked side by side toward his truck. He’d insisted on driving us to work that morning, even shoving my keys into his pocket so I wouldn’t get any ideas. I swear I didn’t know who this man was anymore. Neither one of us said anything as he beeped the locks and opened the passenger side door, and then went around to do the same on the driver side. He slid in while I buckled up. In no time, we were on the road.
To go out to eat together.
“What do you want to eat, boss?”
“Don’t call me that when we aren’t at work,” he said, his voice easy, not mean or anything like that. Just… him telling me not to call that.
For some reason.
I made a face. “Okay… what can I call you then when we aren’t at work?”
His grunt was his reply to that, but he didn’t look at me as he asked, “What do you think about barbecue?”
“I think I can eat a half pound of brisket,” I told him as I genuinely thought about what else I could call him instead that would be pesky but not too pesky.
His cheek twitched, and I’d take it as a smile. “You hear anything from your insurance?”
Ah. “Yeah, I talked to them earlier. They’re sending out an adjuster, and I have to send some paperwork to them, so I’m betting I’ll be fifty by the time I get a check.”
His fingers stretched out again on the steering wheel and his head ticked to the side.
“It’s fine. I’ll make it work. You fixed my door enough for me to be okay, and it isn’t like the people who came in are going to come back. They already took all the good stuff,” I tried to joke, but really, it sounded like anything but one.
Everything was fine. Things were just… stuff. They weren’t everything. I could live without them. I had survived with less before. But…
“Luna…”
“I’m okay. I know it’s stupid to be worried they’ll come back or the same thing will happen.”
“It ain’t stupid.”
It was and we both knew it.
“You don’t feel safe. Nothing stupid about that,” Rip tried to tell me in that voice I had no defense against. “Thought about getting an alarm?”
“I’ve thought about it,” I told him. “But the company that came by my house once was more than I could afford. They were asking for three hundred dollars down for the equipment. That’s the cost of the fancy tile I want for my kitchen backsplash.”
His fingers flexed on the steering wheel and he tapped them. “I know someone. Let me give him a call and see what he says.”
I couldn’t help but eye him. “You don’t have to do that, Rip.” Because he didn’t.
“I’ll get back to you after I talk to him.”
Of course he was going to ignore me.
Well, I couldn’t do anything about it if he was going to insist. He’d have to understand if I couldn’t afford it. The cops had said there had been a couple of breakins around the area.
So, it was supposed to be… normal. Getting your house broken into wasn’t unheard of. Even if I hadn’t heard a single thing from any of my neighbors over them hearing about breakins.
“Thanks for offering,” I told him. “You—”
That handsome face turned toward me, and he rolled his eyes, shaking his head. “Quit thanking me for everything.”
I made sure he watched me roll my eyes right back at him. “Okay, but thank you anyway.”
He shook his head again, turning back to face outside the windshield. “You don’t need to thank me.”
“You don’t need to do all the things you’ve done for me either but—”
“Stop,” he grunted.
I would have crossed my eyes if he’d been looking at me. “I appreciate it, okay? You’re being really nice, and you don’t have to. I just want you to know I’m grateful, so suck it up.”
We happened to come up to a stop sign when he glanced at me with those blue-green eyes and said, not softly but not roughly either, just… different, “I want to, all right?”
As quickly as I opened my mouth, I closed it.
He wanted to?
Lucas Ripley wanted to be nice to me?
My first thought was: why?
My second one was: who was I to tell him no? No, sir, please be a jerk and don’t care about me. I wasn’t that dumb.
*
I had just finished folding the clothes I pulled out of the dryer, when there was a knock at my front door.
I glanced at my phone and took in that I hadn’t missed any calls or texts. No one I knew was coming over; otherwise they would have messaged. I grabbed my biggest kitchen knife, because luckily those had survived the jerks, and headed toward the front door.
But when I got to the peephole, I took a step back afterward.
Then I took another step forward to look into it again. The person was still the same one, and the face on the other side hadn’t magically morphed either.
I couldn’t even think as I flipped the lock and pulled the door open, finding a duffel bag sitting on my porch and a tall man with wide shoulders and a wide chest standing there.
He didn’t even give me a chance to say a word. “You gonna let me in?”
Well. “No,” I told him with a grin even as I moved to the side to let him inside.
He didn’t even try to sneak by either; his entire side brushed my front as he did.
“You eat dinner already?” he asked as I was closing and locking the door.
“Yeah, did you?”
I mean, he’d dropped me off two hours ago. We had both worked late, and he’d offered to take me home whenever I was ready. He was the one who had come by my room right before seven asking if I was done for the day, and I had been. Or at least I’d been pretty close to it.
“Nah,” the man replied, dropping the duffel at the bottom of the stairs.
My eyes focused in on the bag, putting together what he was doing at my house at nine o’clock at night with that.
He was going to spend the night.
“Want me to order you something? I ordered pho, but I ate it all, I’m sorry,” I apologized, still looking at that navy blue bag that had some miles on it.
“No,” he replied, bending over to unzip it and pull out the same kind of container he’d brought me lunch in. But then he pulled out three more just like it too, stacking them up carefully in his hand as he straightened. “I brought food. I’ll put the rest in your fridge, all right?”
“Okay,” I basically croaked.
Those eyes caught mine for a second before he disappeared down the hall that led into the kitchen.
Just like Lenny did when she came over. Or when Mr. Cooper or Lydia came over. Or when my sisters were here.
Like it was normal.