The Good Ones Read online

  He loved the feel of her curves pressed against him, as if her femininity tempered his masculinity, although when she dug her fingers into his hair and held him still while she took command of the kiss, he thought maybe it was the other way around. Maybe he was the one tempering her. She bit his lower lip gently between her teeth and he felt his knees buckle. Yep, he was definitely the only one exercising some restraint.

  He pulled away from her and sucked in some cool night air, hoping it would ease the raging bonfire of need inside of him. It didn’t. Not trusting himself to keep holding her, he eased away, letting her slide down his body, a wonderfully bad decision, until she was standing on her own. He reached around her and opened the passenger-side door to the truck.

  Maisy climbed in, and with one shoulder strap still unfastened, she looked like a walking invitation to debauchery. As she settled back into the seat, Ryder reached forward and fastened her overall strap, setting it to rights as if it would remind him to keep his hands to himself. He almost laughed, the idea was so preposterous.

  In fact, instead of walking away, he went back in. He kissed her just as he’d imagined doing over the past few weeks. Not the brief exchanges they’d shared before but the all-in, fully present, kissing her like the world was about to end sort of kiss. He kissed her lips, her cheek, the slender curve of her neck. He ran his lips along the scoop of her tank top, marveling that her skin was just as soft as he’d imagined.

  When she dug her fingers into his hair and pulled his head up so that she could kiss him on the lips, he complied. When she gently took his lower lip between her teeth and gave it a tender tug, he felt a shock wave of lust rocket right through him. He pulled back, knowing that he was seconds away from having those overalls unsnapped and her tank top shoved aside so he could fully investigate the curves that had taunted him every day for weeks.

  Instead, he locked his hands on her hips and stepped in between her legs so that he could feel her warmth against him. It was a delicious sort of torture. He wanted more, though. He wanted to hear her say what he had finally admitted to himself.

  “Say it,” he said.

  “Say what?” she asked. She straightened her glasses and peered at him with glazed eyes. A faint blush of pink colored her cheeks, and her lips, especially that delightful top one, were swollen from being kissed. He’d done that.

  “Admit that this was a date date,” he said.

  She licked her lips and he almost forgot what he was asking. The look she gave him was teasing and playful. “First, I need some clarification.”

  “Okay.” He wondered if he should be nervous.

  “Was this a date date for you?” she asked.

  “At first, no,” he said. “My plan was to take you out and convince you over a very expensive French dinner that the chemistry between us should just be ignored.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. Ryder wasn’t sure if she was surprised by his candor or the realization that she’d missed out on a fancy-shmancy dinner.

  “One problem, a big problem,” he said. “I. Can’t. Ignore. You.”

  For as long as he lived, Ryder would remember the smile that burst across her lips. Maisy beamed at him, positively beamed, and it made him feel like he was everything she’d ever been looking for in a man, which, of course, was ridiculous, but there it was.

  “Then, yes, this is a date date,” she said. And then she kissed him and Ryder forgot about not being dateable, and the fact that he was leaving soon, and that Maisy didn’t do long-distance relationships. None of it mattered because she was in his arms, obliterating everything but the feel of her mouth beneath his.

  “Hey, can a girl finagle some ice cream out of you on a first date or is that second-date protocol?” Maisy asked when they finally came up for air.

  At the moment, Ryder was sure she could talk him into pretty much anything. Turrets, ice cream, lassoing the moon. He almost said as much but good sense kicked in and he just nodded.

  “Sure,” he said. He stepped back, giving her room to buckle her seat belt. “I’m betting you want to hit Fat Daddy’s in the center of town.”

  “Is there any other ice cream place?” she asked.

  “Not that I’ve seen,” he said. He closed her door and walked around the front of the truck. He slid into the driver’s seat, started up the engine, and drove out of the dirt lot and headed back toward Fairdale. “Perry is addicted to their mint chocolate chip.”

  “You know, I took an online quiz once that tells you what your flavor choice says about you,” she said. “Mint chocolate chip people were feisty.”

  “Well, they got that one right,” he said. He glanced sideways at her. “Let me guess, your favorite flavor is . . .”

  “You’ll never guess,” she said.

  “Don’t be a doubter.” He shot her a reproving look. Then he tapped the steering wheel. “Not vanilla. People who like vanilla are subtle, persuasive types—you’re much more direct.”

  “Interesting take,” she said. “And you’re right, it’s not vanilla.”

  “Not chocolate,” he said.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Everyone likes chocolate. You’re not like everyone.”

  Her lips curved up a little and he knew she was pleased that he found her unique. That was certainly accurate. He’d never met anyone like her before. She was so bighearted for being such a petite thing. He wondered how caring so deeply for so many people didn’t leave her with nothing left for herself.

  “Rocky road,” he said. “That’s your ice cream.”

  She laughed. “What made you choose that one?”

  “Rocky road is for people who take the road less traveled,” he said. “It’s for treasure seekers and adventurers, forge-your-own-path types. You know, people who aren’t afraid to color outside the lines or travel without a map.”

  Her eyes were enormous. “That’s how you see me?”

  “Um, you’re having me build a turret for your bookstore,” he said. “Hell, yeah, that’s how I see you.”

  “That might be the most complimentary description of my character I’ve ever gotten,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “So, is it?” he asked.

  “Is what?”

  “Is rocky road your favorite?”

  “It is now,” she said. Then she laughed in a way that made his heart lift up in his chest as if she were the wave that lifted his boat out of low tide and took him with her to destinations unknown. It was alarming to realize that if things were different, if he didn’t have Perry to get through school and a job waiting for him, he’d follow Maisy anywhere or nowhere.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  THE ice cream was perfection. Maisy ordered the rocky road, because why wouldn’t she? After that description, she didn’t think she’d ever order another flavor ever again. She had never actually had a favorite flavor of ice cream because she liked to think of herself as an equal-opportunity eater of all frozen dairy goodness, but Ryder didn’t need to know that.

  She noted that Ryder ordered pistachio. She wondered what that said about him. She didn’t remember it in the quiz, but it was definitely an outlier in the flavor field, which had to mean something, right? He was independent? Not a joiner? A tumbleweed?

  Maisy took a huge bite of her cone to stop herself from saying anything out loud. This caused a solid case of brain freeze, which made her slap her palm onto her forehead with a wince.

  “You all right over there?” Ryder asked.

  “You’d think at twenty-nine with the amount of ice cream I’ve consumed—hundreds of gallons, I’m sure—I’d know how to eat it without giving myself a brain freeze.”

  “Put your tongue against the roof of your mouth for ten seconds,” he said. “Seriously, it’s the ice cream hitting the roof of your mouth that causes blood vessels to constrict and give you an ice cream heada
che.”

  Maisy did as she was told. Amazingly her headache eased much faster than it usually did.

  She looked at him in surprise and he shrugged. “Dad 101. Perry did that every time she had ice cream as a kid, which, because she loved it, was a lot. I had to read up on how to cure it or we had big drama. You can also drink something warm and that helps, too.”

  Maisy took another bite of her ice cream, more carefully this time. “You’re a good dad.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I could be better.”

  They sat side by side on a park bench on the Fairdale town green just outside the ice cream shop. Maisy said hi to just about everyone who passed. She introduced Ryder to a few people, but between living on Joaquin Solis’s horse farm, playing in the town soccer league, and working on the historic buildings at the university, he already knew a lot of them.

  When Hank Seagraves, the facilities manager from the university, stopped by and the two of them began to chat about the remodel and how it was going, Maisy felt like he was the resident and she was the visitor. It hit her then that Ryder could slip right into Fairdale and be woven into the fabric of town life as firmly as any of them. The thought made her giddy. She loved this. She loved sitting here with him, being a couple in town, doing couple things.

  She’d never really had that. Much as she hated to admit it, Savannah was right. She always picked the low-hanging fruit, the ones that were usually bruised or had worms. It wasn’t that she was lazy or lacking confidence, it was just that an English professor at a modest-sized university in a small city really didn’t meet that many eligible men. And, yes, maybe she had always liked the idea of a boyfriend more than the reality, mostly because she had never met a man who made her feel the way Ryder did.

  She wasn’t sure what had come over her at Adam’s Rib, but when Ryder looked at her and admitted he was leaving, she was hit with such a sense of panic that this fleeting moment in time was all she was going to get with him that suddenly the idea of friend-zoning him just seemed so stupid and wasteful. If this was all she got with Ryder, she was not going to let it slip through her fingers.

  Ryder was so above and beyond any other man she had ever dated—she glanced down and noted her overalls—she had panicked. Yep, that’s exactly what she had done. Straight-up panicked that she was going on a real date with a man who did not still live with his mom, who was employed, who didn’t have an addiction to video games, women, drugs, drinking, what have you, but who was leaving in a matter of weeks.

  She ate her ice cream in silence while she studied him talking to Hank. Ryder wasn’t classically good-looking in the stare at him with your mouth hanging open because you forgot how to close it while looking at this godlike man before you sort of way. Nope. That actually would have been a turnoff for Maisy. Perfection made her uncomfortable.

  Flaws were what interested her because the book lover inside of her knew that there was a story behind the calluses on Ryder’s palms just like there was a tale to be told about the scar just below his left eyebrow and the subtle bend in his nose. It was the imperfections that told the stories of a person’s life and that’s what interested her.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “Hank’s a good guy. It was nice seeing him again.”

  “No worries,” she said. She finished her ice cream and dropped the remaining soggy cone into a nearby trash can. Ryder did the same. As they walked back to the truck, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to take his hand. Ryder must have thought so, too, because they reached for each other at the same time.

  Maisy liked having her hand folded into his as they strolled. She didn’t feel like she had to make the evening special for him—it just was. She also didn’t feel as if she was putting him out by being herself—he accepted her. And she didn’t feel like he had an ulterior motive. Well, at least he didn’t have one that was any different from her own.

  She wanted to be with him. She realized that had pretty much been decided when he didn’t say a word about her outfit but just rolled with it, accepting her exactly as she was. Honestly, she’d have to be made of stone to resist him.

  “Ready to head back home?” he asked when they reached his truck.

  “Sure,” she said. “Or we could go for a drive.”

  “Sounds good.” He gave her a boost into the passenger seat and circled the truck. He climbed in beside her and asked, “Where to?”

  “Have you seen the old covered bridge on the outskirts of town?”

  “Once, but I didn’t get a very good look at it as Quino was driving and he barely slowed down,” he said. “If I had blinked, I’d have missed it altogether.”

  “Well, let’s go see it and make up for that,” she said.

  Ryder put the truck in gear and followed her directions through town. While they were driving, Maisy pointed out the historic sights of significance in Fairdale. She showed him the town cemetery where most of her relatives were buried, the town house where she and Savannah shared their first apartment, the preschool she’d attended, the old diner where her mom had been a waitress and her dad had sat there and eaten three whole pies while he tried to get the courage to ask her out.

  Ryder laughed at that one and then laughed even harder when Maisy admitted that her father had never eaten another bite of apple pie after that. When they arrived at the bridge, the dirt parking lot to the side was empty. Ryder shut off his headlights and Maisy rolled down her window so they could hear the roar of the water in the Smoky River as it rushed under the old covered bridge.

  “The bridge has been here since 1884,” Maisy said. She was feeling nervous and her professor voice came out of her mouth even though she was trying to sound hip, as opposed to professorial. “It was washed out in the flood of ’38 and then again in ’72 but the town always rebuilds it.”

  “Where does it lead?” Ryder asked.

  “Pardon?”

  “Where does it lead?”

  “To the other side.” She smiled.

  “I gathered that,” he said. “It being a bridge and all, but what I meant was, where does this road go?”

  “Nowhere,” Maisy said. “At least nowhere important. There are some farmers on the other side but they all use the metal bridge down the river as it’s wider and closer to town.”

  “So, why does the town keep rebuilding the bridge?” he asked. “Why not let it go?”

  Maisy gasped. “Fairdale would never do that. This bridge is the most romantic spot in town. Everyone comes here. Why, I’ll bet half the babies born in Fairdale were conceived around this bridge.”

  “And just how much time have you spent in cars parked around this bridge, young lady?” he asked.

  Maisy laughed. He was using his dad voice on her. “Why would you care?”

  “Because as galling as it is to admit, if you’ve been here with dingleberry, I’m going to have to find him and beat him up,” he said.

  “Are you jealous?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “I’ve never felt jealousy before, so it’s unfamiliar. Is jealousy when the thought of you making out with someone else makes me want to punch him in the face?”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s it.”

  “Then, yes, I’m jealous but only if it’s been within the last year,” he said. He looked at her expectantly.

  “At the risk of losing my reputation as a player,” she began, pausing to sigh, “then I have to be honest and say it’s been about five years. Dingleberry and I never . . . we didn’t . . . oh, this is embarrassing. In the year that we dated, it never went beyond a perfunctory kiss good night.”

  “Good,” he said. He shook his whole body like a dog shaking water off its fur. “Jealousy managed, then.”

  “Good, because I’d never want you to feel that because of me,” she said. “It’s a lousy emotion.”

  “Agreed. So, let me make
sure I understand. You knowingly took me to a notorious spot for parking?” he asked. Maisy nodded. The look he gave her was wicked and she shivered in the most delicious way. “Then I have a follow-up question. Maisy Kelly, did you bring me here so we could make out?”

  She thought about lying; she did. But she really was the worst liar ever, she could already feel her face getting hot, and besides, she had brought him here for precisely this reason. Why not admit it?

  “Yes, I did,” she said. She tipped up her chin and arched a brow at him. “So, what are you going to do about it?”

  “This.” He reached for her and pulled her close and then he kissed her.

  If the kisses between them had been hot before, this one was off the charts. Maisy met him halfway and dug her fingers into his thick dark hair so she could hold him still while she opened her mouth beneath his and kissed him with the same single-minded attention he was giving her. He put one hand on her waist and pulled her as close as the console in between them would allow. It wasn’t close enough as far as Maisy was concerned, which was very frustrating.

  His mouth left hers to trail down her neck. The sensation of his lips on her skin was everything she’d imagined and more. And she wanted more. So much more. She pushed the straps of her overalls off so that the bib sagged around her waist. She hoisted herself over the console and slid into his lap, so that she was straddling him. Ryder gave what sounded like a growl of approval, but Maisy was so caught up in feeling pure fevered desire that she really wasn’t paying attention.

  Instead her focus was on the pesky buttons of his shirt and the battle they were giving her fingers. She wanted to feel his skin and see if it was as warm as his hands, which had slid up under her tank top and were holding her sides so gently, barely stroking her with his thumbs, as if she were some wild creature he was trying to tame. She liked that. It made her feel bolder than she’d ever felt with a guy before.