> “I knew stealing was wrong. Even then.”
“You don’t steal now, do you?”
“Of course not.”
“There’s no shame in doing what you have to do to survive. You didn’t hurt anyone.”
“I kept people from making a bigger profit.”
I let out a chuckle. “Yes, you did. I won’t tell you that you didn’t. But my guess is, since then, you’ve done everything you could to make it right.”
She laughed. “Actually, I did. Once I started making money, I went around to all the stores that I used to steal from and I discreetly left twenty-dollar bills lying around. I don’t know if the money got to the right person, but it made me feel a little better.”
I stared at her. I was an honest person. So were my brothers and sister. But Ruby Lee was unbelievable in her honesty. In her sense of ethics. In her sense of right and wrong. How could she have been born to a psychopath like Theodore Mathias?
“You’re pretty amazing, you know that?”
She looked at me, staring into my eyes with her own blue ones. “No one has ever called me amazing before.”
“So that’s another first, then. No one had given you anything before, and I gave you an upgrade to first class. No one had told you that you were amazing before, and I just did.” Without thinking, I leaned toward her and brushed my lips across hers. “Has anyone ever done that to you before?”
Chapter Seven
Ruby
My heart nearly stopped beating. Tiny prickles raced across my skin, and warmth crashed through me, culminating between my legs.
What would Ryan Steel think if I answered his question honestly? If I said no, no one had ever done that to me before, because I had never let it happen? What would he think of a thirty-two-year-old woman who had never been kissed? He’d run as far as he could in the opposite direction. Which, as attracted as I was to him, was probably the best thing for both of us. So I decided to be honest.
“As a matter of fact, no.”
He touched my cheek gently. Everything in me screamed at me to flinch, to go running, but something deeper told me to stay. Something deep within the core of me. Something I’d never felt before.
You’re safe here. Safe with Ryan Steel.
Should I trust this soulful voice that spoke to me without words?
“Your skin is so soft,” he said, lightly thumbing my cheek.
No reaction to the fact that I told him I’d never been kissed?
“You’re beautiful,” he said. “Very, very beautiful.”
Beautiful. Another first tonight. No one had ever told me I was beautiful.
No one I cared to remember, that was.
I closed my eyes and inhaled. If only I could bottle this feeling, save it for eternity, stay on this beach forever and remember the feeling of being kissed, of being told I was beautiful.
But this was real life, not fantasy. And this was Ryan Steel, someone completely out of my league.
How I wanted to believe him. How I wanted to sink into his arms and find an escape.
But I wasn’t beautiful.
Ryan was wrong. He was reacting to what his sister and the others had created. This wasn’t the real Ruby. This was a mirage.
I picked up Jade’s sandals and stood.