Hard as Rock (The Rock Star's Seduction 3)

“Did you meet Mrs. MacCruder?” Ryan said, gesturing to the silver-haired lady. “This place wouldn’t survive without her.”

“Oh, well aren’t you sweet,” she smiled at Ryan.

“We met,” I nodded, waiting for her to make a comment about my pink t-shirt.

That wasn’t the clothing she mentioned, though.

“Hello again, dear,” she smiled, then looked me up and down from head to toe. “Oh, Ryan, you can’t let her traipse around in those fancy clothes, she’ll ruin them. You should take her into town and get her something she can get dirty.”

While her back was turned, Ryan grinned at me and silently mouthed

Nice fancy clothes

.

I had to stifle a laugh, then gave him a

Behave!

look.

“That’s a good idea,” he said. “We’ll go after breakfast.”

Mrs. MacCruder finished spooning the eggs onto a platter, and carried them to the table. “Alright, well, I’ll let you young people get on with your day. Dinner’s at seven if you want to join us.”

“We’ll be there. Thanks, Mrs. MacCruder,” Ryan said, bending over and giving her a kiss on the cheek.

“Careful now, my husband’ll get jealous,” she laughed, then waved to us as she walked out the back door.

“Ready to eat?” Ryan said as he sat down at the table. I followed suit. There were platters filled with bacon and eggs, another with toast, and a stick of butter and jars of different jellies.

“She seems nice,” I said neutrally as I took a piece of toast and buttered it. I was wondering if she’d made any comments to Ryan about my sleepwear.

Her line

But you might want to change into something else, or he’ll want to

kept echoing in my head.

It made me feel weird.

Not uncomfortable or wary, exactly.

Just… odd.

Especially since he’d seen me wearing that pink t-shirt yesterday morning in New York.

“She’s great,” Ryan said as he dished out eggs onto both his plate and mine. “Seriously, if I didn’t have her and her husband to run the place, it would be a wreck by the next time I got back.”

“What do they do?”

“Well, they take care of the horses. Exercise them every day, muck out the stalls, feed them… that’s a big job. Mr. MacCruder goes out and rides the ranch, makes sure there’s no problems. They keep up the main house, stuff like making sure the pipes don’t freeze and burst during the winter, and they take care of any repairs along the way. Mrs. MacCruder has her garden, and she gives me food from it whenever I’m here. Plus, I can basically call them on a moment’s notice and they’ll have the heat or air conditioning turned on for me, the refrigerator stocked, and the place ready to go.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It is. I never have to worry, I can just show up and the place is perfect.”

“Why do you keep horses?”

He shrugged. “My grandparents always had them when I was growing up. My sisters and I used to ride all the time when we came here. When my grandparents died a few years ago, I couldn’t bear to sell the horses… so I just decided to keep them.”

“That’s cool.”

“I’m very lucky.”

“You worked hard for it.”

He laughed. “Compared to the MacCruders, I’ve never worked hard a day in my life.”

“That’s not what I meant – I was talking about you work hard to pay for it.”

He smiled. “I know what you meant. I still got lucky, though. There’s a million guys my age in bands still working as barbacks or convenience store clerks, playing a show a week, hoping to get their big break… and for most of them, it’ll never come.”

His words made me think of him and Derek, starting out in Athens… and once I thought of Derek, I got all depressed and sad.

Ryan immediately realized the effect he’d had on me. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring… that up.”

I shook my head as I stared down at my food. “I’m okay.”

“Are you?”

I looked up at him. He was peering at me intently.

I forced a smile. “I’m fine.”

“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to… but you don’t have to pretend, okay? Not with me. I know what you’re going through. You don’t have to put on a brave face all the time.”