“Aw, c’mon now!” Ryan gives Connor’s shoulder a friendly shake, which doesn’t budge his big frame. “I’m just providin’ a little relief from all the unresolved sexual tension, my friends! Thought I was gonna choke on it on the ride over!” Turning practical, he props his hands on his hips. “You two really should get it over with and bone so we can focus on work.”
Connor’s face turns red. Instead of being embarrassed, I’m amused. “What was it you said to me at the hotel, Connor? Oh yes—great minds think alike. I guess you two graduated from the same charm school?”
Ryan nods. “Oh yeah. We’re a couple of real charmin’ motherfuckers. Ask anyone.” He spots a woman walking through the sliding glass doors to the lobby who’s checking out him and Connor over her shoulder. His grin returns in full force. “You see? Proof’s in the puddin’.” He turns his grin on me and waggles his eyebrows. “Or should I say panties.”
I roll my eyes. “It’s like you’re twelve.”
Connor says drily, “That’s giving him a lot of credit.”
“Okay. Now that we’ve established my babysitters are the world’s worst driver and a randy twelve-year-old, can I please go to my room and get some sleep?”
Ryan’s brows pull together. “Randy? Is that one of them poo-poo British words for handsome?”
Connor’s eyes briefly close. “Horny, brother. It means horny.”
Ryan acts affronted. “Hey, don’t get all uppity with me, boss, at least I’m not the world’s worst driver.” When he winks at me, I think he might be becoming one of my favorite people.
It’s a short list.
“C’mon, then.” Connor holds out an arm. “After you, Tabby.”
When we enter the lobby, Ryan says to Connor, “I’ll be down here if you need me.” He ambles over to a sofa and makes himself comfortable with his feet up on the glass coffee table. The concierge looks at him with pinched lips, disapproving of him using their furniture like it’s a frat house, but when Ryan notices his stare and raises his brows, the concierge sniffs and looks away.
I’m gifted with another of Ryan’s winks. Shaking his head, Connor steers me toward the elevators.
“You’re not coming anywhere near my room,” I say stiffly, “so don’t get any ideas.”
Connor stabs his finger to the elevator call button. A muscle in his jaw is jumping like crazy. He doesn’t say a word, just stands next to me in silence until the elevator arrives. We step inside.
“What floor?” he asks.
“Eight.”
He presses the button. The doors slide shut. As soon as the car starts to rise, Connor presses the Stop button, and the elevator comes to a jerking halt.
“What the—”
“I’m sorry.” He bites it out, moving in front of me. His body blocks the doors. I quickly back up, only to find myself up against the mirrored wall. To stop his advance, I brace my hand flat against his chest and lock my elbow.
“Don’t you dare,” I say through gritted teeth, staring him down.
He gazes back at me with fire in his eyes. Every inch of his body is filled with tension.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, his voice husky. “But you’re keeping so much to yourself and I have to find out secondhand about your uncle and that you lived with S?ren—you won’t just be honest with me. How was I supposed to react?”
“I have been honest with you,” I counter, hearing how tight the words sound because my throat is closing with emotion. “I might be a lot of shitty things, but I’m not a liar!”
Connor blinks. His dark brows draw together. “You’re not one single shitty thing.”
I whisper, “You don’t know me.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No you—”
“You live alone,” he interrupts. “You don’t trust anyone. Your only friend is a fifteen-year-old girl who reminds you of yourself, smart and odd and lonely. Before that, your only friend was a woman whose entire identity was made up…by you. Because she was like you too, completely alone in the world, mistreated and misunderstood, and by helping her, you did what no one had ever taken the time to do for you, namely—be on your team. You’re a team of one. And I suspect that’s because of S?ren, because you’ve never gotten past whatever it was between you. Because he somehow taught you that trust is worse than anything else.”
He pauses. “How am I doing so far?”
I swallow around the lump in my throat. The arm I have braced against his chest starts to tremble.
Connor’s voice softens, and so do his eyes. “When the exact opposite is true. Trust is better than anything else. Ryan, that goofball downstairs? I trust him with my life. I’d take a bullet for him. There’s nothing we wouldn’t do for each other. Nothing.”
He reaches out, gently brushes away a lock of hair from my cheek, cups my face in his hand. “I want that for us too.”