Rush Me (New York Leopards 1)

“I would not!”

He raised his brows in disbelief. “If you saw a guy in a flannel shirt riding a tractor and smoking tobacco, you wouldn’t snicker to yourself?”

Maybe. A little bit. I tried to joke, “But I would know it was wrong.”

Apparently that had been the wrong thing to say, since Ryan snorted. “Yeah, there’s no way you’re meeting my family.”

I snapped my lips shut.

Ryan didn’t seem to notice anything was wrong, and kept chatting about meeting my brother and San Leandro as we cut through fields of children playing games. Eventually, though, when he pointed out a couple of kids dressed up as superheroes and I failed to laugh, he stopped. “You’re not still thinking about that meeting my family thing, are you?”

“Sort of.”

He leaned his head back in frustration. “Look, I’ve never brought anyone home, okay? It’s not something I do.”

“You just met my brother. And his girlfriend.” I paused. “Do you actually want to come to the reunion?”

“’Course I do. I told you that.”

“Fine. Then you can come, if I get to meet your family.”

He drew up short. “That’s like some weird form of blackmail.”

“No, it’s not,” I said, insulted. “It’s normal couple stuff.”

“Normal couple stuff.”

“Yeah. Don’t you think?”

“I don’t think you’d know normal couple stuff if it bit you in the ass.”

I leveled my gaze at him. “You meet my family, I meet yours. That’s how it works.”

“Maybe.” He studied the distance with disproportionate interest. “How ’bout I think about it?”

“Do you think they wouldn’t like me?”

He stopped and cupped my face in his hands. In his face, I read confusion and seriousness and worry. I didn’t say anything, just let him look, until he finally brushed a kiss across my lips and stepped away. “My mother would have loved you. Fine. We’ll go see your family, and then you’ll meet mine.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Thanksgiving at my house was roughly akin to feeding time at a zoo.

There were my dad’s parents, two retired teachers who craved great-grandchildren like great-grandchildren craved presents. Since David and Sophie had gone to her aunt’s for the holiday, I was the only one around to pester. My maternal grandmother also attended, and spent the majority of time driving my mother crazy. We also hosted an assortment of aunts, uncles, cousins, and significant others, along with too much pie and too much alcohol. Halfway into his third beer, Uncle Mike always started telling the story of that time he went fishing and there was that storm and that shark and by this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if a mermaid or two showed up as well.

We started eating around one and didn’t leave the table until four. Ryan’s absence was probably for the best since the interrogation was immediate and thorough. “Why isn’t he here?” Grandma Maisel asked.

“He’s working.” Funny, no one had ever pressed me this hard about my work. How nice to see my family’s priorities.

“What he’s do?” My grandmother’s voice was nasal and distrustful. When she squinted, a hundred additional wrinkles billowed out from her temples. “Who works on a holiday?”

“He plays football for the New York Leopards.” This caused half my relatives to spit up their drink, and the other half to almost glaze over from boredom. My family. A cohesive whole.

Dad gaped at me, as he so often did, like when I told him that I had finished the last of the milk or that, yes, I had borrowed his boots, but here they were back safe and sound, so no worries. Lots of things shocked Dad.

This, however, shocked him more than most things.

Mom, of course, just shook her head. I still wasn’t sure she believed football counted as a viable career option.