I shrugged. “No reason. Just sometimes I have a lot on my mind.” I looked up from my folding and met his eyes before I had to look away again. Too intense.
“I wouldn’t be contributing at all to that insomnia, would I?” he asked.
I kept folding and shook my head. “Nope.”
He chuckled. “Did that sound convincing to you? Because it sure as hell didn’t sound convincing to me,” he said.
“You’re not the only thing I think about, Ryder. My brain has room for other things.” I finished wrapping up the clothes again and shoved them across the table in his direction.
“Oh, I know you have other things in your brain. I just like knowing I have at least a little bit of real estate there.” And then he had to smile in a way that made my stomach flip flop and wish I hadn’t made him any clothes at all.
“Yeah, well,” I said. I sounded like a moron. I needed better comebacks. He always seemed to have good ones like he practiced ahead of time.
“Okay,” Ryder said, picking up the pile of clothes and slinging the garment bags over his shoulder. “I think I’ve done enough damage for one day. I should get back to my part of the city. Thank you so much for this, Sloane. I’ll find some way to show you how much this means to me. Just give me some time. I’ll figure something out.” He didn’t mean it to sound dirty, but I definitely took it that way. I didn’t seem to be able to help it around him.
“Need any help?” I said before I could stop myself. “Getting back to your place, I mean. That’s a lot of stuff. I had to bring a suitcase with me.” He was already struggling to hold everything. The garment bags kept sliding off his shoulder.
“Nah, I think I can manage. But maybe you could help me get downstairs and into a car.”
“I can do that.”
He handed me the garment bags, and we walked back down to the front of the building. We weren’t going to get a cab waiting here, so I suggested going up the street where chances were better.
“What?” I asked. Ryder had been chuckling to himself.
“You. You’re so fucking talented, Sloane. It constantly blows my mind.”
Well, if that wasn’t a compliment, I didn’t know what was.
“Thanks. If you keep that up, my head is going to be so huge I’m going to need a cart to drag it around in.”
“Well, we can’t have that. Maybe I should follow up all my compliments with an insult. You know, even things out.”
I elbowed him in the ribs, and he nearly dropped all the packages I’d wrapped so carefully.
“Hey, don’t mess those up. I’ll hunt you down,” I said. “And the way to a girl’s heart isn’t by insulting her.”
“Who says I’m trying to get to your heart?”
Shit, I’d walked right into that one.
“You know what I mean,” I said, walking faster and fumbling with the garment bags. Bastards were determined to slide right off my shoulder and onto the ground. At least they were somewhat protected.
“Uh huh,” he said. I didn’t say anything else so we walked in silence until we got to an intersection where it was much busier. I raised my hand and dropped the bags.
“Shit,” I said, leaning down to get them. I was piling them back on my shoulder when my head collided with something hard.
“Shit!” We both said at the same time. I looked up and glared at Ryder. He’d bent down to help me but had only succeeded in conking my head and making me drop everything again.
“Okay, I guess that wasn’t very helpful,” he said, rubbing his forehead.
“Not exactly,” I said, doing the same thing. “Jesus, you have a hard skull.”
“Why, thank you,” he said, reaching out to help me up after I’d gotten everything off the ground. The cab I’d signaled was gone.
“I’ll do it this time,” he said, extricating one of his arms from the pile of stuff. Within seconds, a cab pulled up.
“Well, so, thank you for the clothes and for helping me carry them.” He stood with the cab door open as the cabbie put the packages in the trunk and then added the bags.