Off Limits (Secrets Kept 1)

The doors tried to close again, but they couldn’t because Ryder was there, the man I wanted to make laugh just so I could hear how it sounded…only I knew—husky and lively, like he was made up of sunlight.

“Please tell me you have no idea why I’m freaking out right now,” he said, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure I’d ever been struck speechless in my life, but I was then. “How did this—”

“Do you mind getting in so I can ride up with you?” a woman in jogging clothes said from beside him.

“Yeah, sorry. I was just…” Ryder didn’t finish, stepping inside. My hand tightened around the railing, my stomach heavy as if I’d swallowed a rock.

She pressed her floor, and then Ryder announced his. It was quiet as we began to go up, the woman looking back and forth between us as if she could tell she’d interrupted something.

“Sorry,” she mumbled when she got out on her floor.

“I didn’t know,” Ryder said the moment we were alone together again.

“Of course you didn’t. How could you have? I didn’t know either. Jesus.” I rubbed a hand over my chest, trying to work out the tightness there.

“Doc…”

“Don’t…call me that.”

“We didn’t know,” he said when we reached his floor. “It’s no one’s fault. I don’t know how I didn’t put it together, but we didn’t know. What are we going to do?” He stood between the doors again.

“Nothing. What can we do? It’s not like I can fuck my sister’s husband.”

“Ex-husband,” he said, but that didn’t make it much better. It didn’t take into consideration that my family hated his and that his father’s company was my father’s biggest competitor.

“Does that really matter?” Yes, they’d divorced, but that didn’t change anything, not really.

“Ah, hell. I don’t know.” He dropped his head back and looked up. The elevator began to ding because the doors couldn’t close. “Do you want to come to my place, so we can talk?”

I shook my head, rubbed my chest again. I couldn’t because I wanted to, because I liked him, liked him in a different way than I ever had anyone else. I’d told my sister about him, and it was her ex, the only man she’d ever loved or ever been in a serious relationship with.

“We can’t do this,” I added.

“I’m not saying we should do anything other than talk.”

“You were married to my sister. You’ve…” He’d been with her. Had sex with her. Jealousy swept through me, hot and toxic. “Get out of the elevator, Ryder.”

He sighed and did as I said.

I was disappointed to see him go.

10

Ryder

Guilt ravaged my insides, refusing to leave any part of me whole.

I wanted Hutch.

Grant Hutchinson the Third.

Sure, I’d always thought him handsome, but now I wanted him. More than that even, I liked him. I’d wanted to get to know him better, to see where this could go, and the shitty part was, I wasn’t sure that had changed. What kind of person did that make me? Who wanted to be with their ex-wife’s brother after all the shit Mads had been through—on her own and because of me?

It didn’t matter if she was over me, if she said she wasn’t in love with me. Even if Hutch and I did want to give this a try, if we did want… Fuck, did I want to date him? There would be too many damn obstacles in our way. His parents already hated me, and mine wouldn’t understand.

No, he’d been right to tell me goodbye in the elevator, to say we couldn’t do this.

But goddamn, how I wanted to.

I was up most of the night, running over all the conversations we’d had, trying to figure out how I’d missed this.

Hutch worked at Atlanta General, but my doc had told me he was at the university hospital. Hutch hadn’t known I was a mechanic. He’d probably thought I worked with my father since coming home.

But something about him had felt so damn familiar from the start, like we slipped into a friendship the way one slid into a favorite pair of worn shoes—he’d fit; he’d been comfortable.

I’d had sex with his sister.

I’d married her.

That made things…difficult.

It was close to four in the morning. I was just beginning to fall asleep when my phone buzzed. Somehow, I knew it was him. My fingers fumbled it as I grabbed it from the nightstand, opening the app to see his name.

TheDoctorIsIn: I’m sorry for the way I behaved in the elevator. I was…shocked, to say the least.

GoodWithHisHands: You had good reason to be. I was too. No need to apologize.

TheDoctorIsIn: I hope I didn’t wake you.

GoodWithHisHands: No. I can’t sleep.

TheDoctorIsIn: Me neither.

I wasn’t sure what to say next, but then another message came through.

TheDoctorIsIn: I told her about you.

My heart dropped to my gut, a mixture of emotions blazing through my insides.