Taking the Leap (River Rain 3)

He didn’t shift.

She seemed frozen.

He took advantage.

“Tell me how you wanna watch that show. Two Friday? Two Saturday? Three Sunday?”

“That’ll work,” she breathed.

“My place, your place, my place.”

“Okay.”

“You know, you do have the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen.”

“Thanks,” she whispered.

“Dress fitting go okay?”

“You might find we do need the binder, because I’ll need to take a couple of weeks off to recover from surgery after selling a kidney.”

He did not let her go, but he straightened.

That was when she pressed in at his chest, not to push him away, reassuringly.

“Rix—” she began, her tone conciliatory, proving, in the time they’d already spent together, that they had definitely gotten to know one another.

“That’s fuckin’ bullshit.”

“It a wedding. It comes with the territory.”

“It’s still fuckin’ bullshit, and it pisses me off.”

“I have the money.”

“It doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t make it any less bullshit.”

She said nothing, but she was watching him closely.

“I don’t have a bad temper, babe, it’s just how much that shit is bullshit.”

“We’ve established it’s bullshit, because I don’t disagree. But there’s nothing we can do about it, I can afford it, so I need to start making eggrolls because I’m worried you might be a little hangry.”

“I’m not hangry.”

“All right, but these eggrolls are really good, so you’ll want to eat them.”

She was going to have to learn that being rational, calm and then moving to assuage any blood sugar issues he might have going on was not the way to handle Rix on the rare occasion he was ticked.

Those efforts had to be tactile.

But now was not the time to share that info.

“Can I help with dinner?” he asked.

Her lips twitched, the dimple flirted with her cheek but decided not to make an appearance, and then she said, “Yeah.”

He let her go.

She went to the fridge.

Rix looked to the binder.

Music, because obviously, that’s its own category.

“I can fry turkey meat, you pick music,” he said.

She turned to him, a jar of pickles in one hand, a packet of turkey in the other.

“Okay,” she agreed.

She threw the meat on the counter, setting the pickles beside it.

He moved to the kitchen. “Where’s your skillet?”

“Can you grab the mushrooms and onion out of the fridge? We need to sauté those first.”

“Gotcha,” he muttered and did that.

By the time he’d started cleaning mushrooms, Mumford and Sons was playing.

There it was.

They had something else in common, and he didn’t learn it from a binder.

And yeah.

He was getting his head straight about Alex.

And it was worrying as fuck.

Chapter 9

The Girls

Alex

“Late show-ers are annoying,” Katie complained, even though she was on the floor tussling with Murphy, the creamy Labrador whose dad was almost always late to pick him up from Gal’s doggie daycare center.

It was Wednesday night, and me and my girls had met up at Gal’s place before going out to grab dinner and a few drinks.

“Yeah, you look like you’re being tortured,” Gal stated, resting back on a carpeted slopey thing that the dogs raced over and climbed on, though it looked like two lounge chairs connected by a platform. And it doubled as that. Case in point, she was fully relaxed, her feet up on a stack of wooden boxes with big holes in them that the dogs took naps in.

I was balancing my behind on the exercise ball I’d rolled out of Gal’s office that Gal used as a desk chair.

“We have food to eat and drinks to drink,” Katie almost whined. “And none of that is here.”

“All the restaurants in Prescott don’t close in the next half an hour, Kate,” Gal pointed out. “We’ll be fine, and he’ll be here soon.”

Murphy play-growled as Katie tugged on the rope they were both pulling.

Katie play-growled back.

And Murphy liked that so much, he nearly let go so he could concentrate more on his tail wagging, but he recovered just in time and didn’t lose hold on the rope.

“It’s a ploy, you know. Dude’s into you,” Katie announced.

“Hardly,” Gal scoffed.

Katie successfully pulled the knotted rope from Murphy and tossed it far across the gym-like space.

Murphy, ears flapping, tongue lolling, went after it.

“You are so in denial,” Katie said, watching Murphy.

“He’s got two jobs. He’s a busy guy,” Gal replied.

“He picks up his dog fifteen minutes after you’re supposed to close so he can be sure to be alone when he chats with you for fifteen minutes after that,” Katie noted.

“He’s also a friendly guy,” Gal asserted.

Murphy had returned, the tug of war was back on, but Katie was looking at Gal. “You do know I work and bunk with five guys. I’m around them twenty-four-freaking-seven, except for these sweet-reprieve girls’ nights that don’t come often enough. I know how men’s minds work.”

“If he liked me, he’d ask me out,” Gal retorted. “Murphy’s been coming here two days a week for six months.”

“Girl, Dave is the dude version of Alex here.” Katie jerked her head at me. “I mean, he’s tall, lean, blond and gorgeous, rather than auburn and curvy and gorgeous, but he’s also shy as hell. You’re gonna have to make the first move.”