‘Great house,’ Sam said easily, and Ruby envied him his composure. Her pulse was beating dangerously fast yet again. ‘I can see why you bought it.’
‘I know. We loved it as soon as we saw it.’ Miller smiled, looking between her and Sam. ‘You know, the place two houses along is up for sale.’
‘That so?’ Sam said.
‘Yep.’ Miller rinsed Redmond’s sipper cup under the tap and stowed it on a shelf. ‘Maybe you should look at buying it. Then, when you find a woman to settle down with, our kids can spend summers together, running back and forth between each other’s houses.’
‘You got it all planned out, Millsy,’ Sam said with an easy smile.
‘It’s the organiser in her,’ Ruby interjected. For some reason Miller’s words had conjured up a picture so sweet it made Ruby’s chest ache. ‘But Sam isn’t interested in relationships. Isn’t that right, Sam?’
Sam took a bottle of water from the fridge, unscrewed the cap and raised it to his lips, his eyes seeing more than she wanted him to see. ‘Depends how good the house is.’
Miller laughed.
Ruby didn’t.
‘And the type of relationship we’re talking about,’ he added softly.
Ruby’s heartbeat picked up at the way he was looking at her, the lid of the kettle she’d been unknowingly fiddling with clattering to the counter as it slipped out of her grasp. Snatching it up, she jammed it back into place. ‘The permanent type, of course.’
He shifted closer to her, subtly hemming her in against the hob. ‘Perhaps I just haven’t met the right woman yet.’
‘Really?’ She gave him a withering look. ‘You’re going to play that hand?’
‘What’s wrong, angel? You looking for love and happily-ever-after?’
‘No.’
She absolutely was not looking for that.
‘Ah, well, there goes my plan to ask you to marry me and put me out of my misery.’
Knowing that she only had herself to blame for this conversation, Ruby told herself not to bite. She did anyway. ‘Marry you?’ She nearly choked on the word. ‘I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on earth and civilisation relied on us to...to...’ She felt her face flush with heat.
‘Procreate?’
She heard the laughter in his voice and her lips clamped together. ‘Exactly!’
‘Oh, well. You can’t blame a man for trying. A word of advice, though...’ He nodded over her shoulder at the kettle. ‘You might want to put some water in that before you boil it. It works better that way.’
Exasperated at how easily he riled her, Ruby glared at his broad back, refusing to admire the width of his shoulders or the narrowness of his hips as he strolled out of the back door.
‘You going to explain all that or do I have to work for it?’ Miller said into the ensuing silence.
Ruby glanced over at her, appalled to realise that she’d forgotten her friend was even in the room with them. ‘What’s to explain?’ she hedged. ‘He likes to provoke me and, fool that I am, I fall for it every time.’
‘I was talking more about the wicked sexual tension between the two of you,’ Miller said, fanning her face. ‘It was a little hot in here for a while.’
Ruby let out a sigh. ‘You’re not going to let up on this, are you?’
‘Of course I will.’ Miller gave her a too-innocent look. ‘If you don’t want to tell me what’s going on between the two of you then I completely respect that.’
‘Fine. We slept together—or, rather, we had sex.’ She winced as Miller’s jaw hit the floor. ‘Yes, you heard me right. And it was against a wall. At the Herzog party.’
There it was, out in the open. No big deal. She was only glad Miller wouldn’t realise it had been her first time. If she knew that then it would totally be a big deal. She’d want to know, why Sam? Why then? And how did Ruby answer that without telling her best friend that no other man had ever affected her as Sam did?
‘The Herzog party? As in the Herzog party? The one anybody who is anybody tries to get an invitation to every year?’