“Do you mind if I turn on the television so we can watch the baseball game?”
“Go ahead,” she said. “Baseball usually helps him fall asleep.”
Ryder gasped. “Say it ain’t so.”
“If I did, I’d be lying.”
He looked down at the baby, who was looking at him with wide blue eyes. “Well, you’re young yet,” he decided. “Your opinion will change when you’re strong enough to hold a bat.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon,” she told him. “He’s only just started holding his bottle.”
Chapter Ten
Lauryn wasn’t surprised to find that Zachary was asleep by the time she’d tucked Kylie into bed, read her a quick story and returned downstairs. She was surprised to find that Ryder had fallen asleep, too, with the baby securely tucked against his chest.
Rob had never sat and cuddled with his daughter like that. He’d held her, usually when Lauryn had thrust the baby into his arms and didn’t give him a choice, but he’d always claimed he felt awkward and afraid of hurting her. She didn’t know anyone who was stronger than Ryder or who had such an appealing softer side. The combination was incredibly enticing. The fact that he’d actually sat on the floor playing Barbies with her little girl made him almost irresistible.
The attraction she could deal with. As she’d told her sister, there likely wasn’t a woman between seventeen and seventy who didn’t find him attractive. But the more time she spent with him, the more she found herself drawn to his kindness and generosity and thinking of him not as a TV star but simply a man. A man who made her remember that she wasn’t just a mother but a woman, too.
But Lauryn was determined to resist his magnetism. Her life was already complicated enough without adding a new man to the mix. Not that she had any reason to believe that was even an option. Aside from some lighthearted banter and the occasional flirtatious smile, he’d given her no indication that the attraction she felt might be shared.
Ryder’s eyes opened when she lifted the baby’s weight off his chest.
“Obviously, the game wasn’t stimulating enough to keep even you awake,” she said lightly.
“The Braves are winning,” he told her.
“What’s the score?”
“Five-three, top of the sixth.”
“Six-three, bottom of the seventh,” she informed him. “One on and one out.”
“You know baseball?” Ryder sounded surprised.
“I dated a varsity third baseman in high school.”
“Did he get to third base with you?” he asked, with a teasing smile.
She just shook her head, not willing to discuss her romantic past with a man who made her wish she had a romantic present. “I’m going to take Zachary up to his crib now.”
The baby was in such a deep sleep he didn’t stir when she settled him in his bed and covered him with a light blanket. She lightly stroked a finger over his cheek and sent up a silent prayer of thanks for her good fortune. In his short life, he’d given her very little cause for concern—and endless joy.
She checked on Kylie again before she headed downstairs, happy to see that she was sound asleep, too, her favorite stuffed dog tucked under her arm.
“Thank you for babysitting,” she said to Ryder when she returned to the living room. “And for the pizza.”
“It was my pleasure.”
She smiled at the automatic response. “I’m sure you had more exciting plans for your Friday night, but I appreciate that you stayed.”
“Actually, I didn’t have any plans at all,” he told her, sounding a little surprised by the fact himself. “And I quite enjoyed hanging out with you and the kids.”
“I have to confess, as much as I love Kylie and Zachary, it’s nice to have some adult company every once in a while.”
“And it was nice for me to be able to pretend to be a kid again for a little while,” he said.
“I know that you’re Kylie’s new BFF,” she confided. “Even I don’t have the patience to play Barbies with her for as long as you did.”
He grinned. “We’re more than BFFs—she asked me to marry her.”
“Well, you gave her flowers, stopped it from raining in her castle and played with her,” Lauryn reminded him. “Of course, she’s head over heels in love with you.”
“Is that all it takes?” he wondered aloud.
“For a three-year-old,” she confirmed.
He leaned forward and settled his hands on her knees. Even through the denim, she felt the heat of his touch—a heat that quickly spread through her whole body. “What about the three-year-old’s mom?”
“Are you flirting with me?” she asked, not sure if she was more wary or hopeful.
One side of his mouth tipped up in a wry smile. “If you have to ask, obviously my skills are rusty.”
“It’s more likely that mine are,” she admitted, feeling more than a little out of her element.
“Then maybe we should work on changing that,” he suggested, as his hands skimmed her outer thighs.
It was a friendly caress, not overtly sexual in any way. But to a woman who hadn’t been touched by a man in a very long time, the casual slide of his palms over the soft denim was both erotic and enticing.
“Why?” she asked, the question barely more than a whisper.
His gaze held hers as his lips curved again. “Because flirting is only one of the many fun things that men and women can do together.”
“But why are you flirting with me?” she asked.
“Because you’re a beautiful and intriguing woman.”
And he was seducing her with nothing more than his eyes and his voice, and she wasn’t ready to be seduced.
“I’m a mess,” Lauryn told him, trying to ground herself back in reality again. “My life is a mess. Surely, in the past week, you’ve figured that out.”
“Yeah, but you’re a hot mess.”
She managed a smile. “Flatterer.”
He must have sensed the shift in her mood, because he lifted his hands away and reached for something on the sofa. “By the way—” he held up one of Kylie’s Barbies “—I found this stuck between the cushions.”
“That’s the wedding dress she was looking for.”
“But she’s still missing the veil.”
“You’re quite the expert on Barbie’s wardrobe,” she teased, grateful for the change of topic and the lessening of the tension between them. “I’m starting to believe that you really did play with your sister’s dolls when you were a kid.”
“I wouldn’t make something like that up,” he assured her.
“Well, I think it’s pretty cool that your parents let you play with Barbies and let Avery play baseball without trying to force gender stereotypes on you,” she noted.
“A consequence of absenteeism rather than open-mindedness,” he assured her. “My guess is that they both thought parenthood would be an interesting experiment—and then they lost interest in it.”
This time she reached out to him, touching a tentative hand to his arm. “I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t so bad,” he said. “Because when you’re a kid, you think all families are like your own.”
“Not everyone is cut out to be a parent,” she acknowledged, her ex-husband having proven that to her.
Then, because she regretted introducing the unhappy topic, she shifted their conversation in another direction. “I’ve been watching your show.”
His brows lifted. “Why?”
“I was curious.”
“You were checking my references,” he accused, but his tone was light, teasing.
“That might have been part of it, too,” she acknowledged.
“And what did you
think?”
“I think they really like the close-ups of you in tight T-shirts.”
His gaze shifted away, as if he was embarrassed by her observation. “According to Virginia Gennings—the producer—we have a strong female demographic.”
“I’m not surprised,” she told him.
“And women are more likely to push their husbands to make changes around the house, while most men are content with the status quo and resistant to change.”
“How did Virginia Gennings discover that you look good in a tool belt?”
“I built a solarium for a client in Winston-Salem. We were just finishing up the project when her sister came to town for a visit. Virginia was that sister.”
“It was that easy?”
He grinned. “I guess that would depend on who you ask. Virginia would say it wasn’t easy at all. She’d apparently pitched the idea to the studio and got the green light, but when she pitched it to me, I turned her down.”
“Why?” she asked, genuinely interested in his reasons.
“First, I’m not a fan of reality TV shows in general. Second, I’m a contractor, not an actor. Third, I started my own business because I like being my own boss, so I wasn’t keen to work for someone else again.”
“What changed your mind?” Lauryn asked.
“She wouldn’t take no for an answer,” he admitted. “She thought I was holding out for more money. She came back three times with more lucrative contracts before she realized that what I really wanted was some degree of control over my life.
“So I got the big paycheck, a one-year contract, the right to choose the projects and my crew, final approval of editing and the option to bail if I didn’t like what they were doing with the show.”
“And now the show’s in its sixth season?”
He nodded. “Because we film two seasons a year. Your reno will air at the end of season seven.”
She was excited about the renovation, but not so much to know that her friends and neighbors and hundreds of thousands of strangers would be able to watch it on TV.
“So tell me what you’ve been doing while we’ve been tearing apart your kitchen,” Ryder suggested.
“Mostly trying to find someone else to manage The Locker Room,” she admitted. “Soon to be ‘Sports Destination—where your quest for the right equipment ends.’ And, in smaller letters, ‘A Garrett Family Business.’”
He considered the slogan for a minute, then nodded. “It’s catchy.”
“But not too cheesy?” she asked hopefully.
“Not too cheesy,” he assured her. “But maybe you should consider ‘where your quest for the perfect equipment ends’—it sets a higher standard.”
“Oh, I like that. And Tristyn will be so irked that she didn’t think of it.”
He raised a brow.
“The new name and slogan were her ideas,” she said, answering the unspoken question. “Of course, PR is her specialty. She said it was going to be enough of a challenge to bring customers into the store without having to fight against their preconceptions about The Locker Room.”
“She’s right,” he agreed.
“I balked initially,” she admitted. “It almost seemed like cheating, using my family’s name, as if I was trying to capitalize on the goodwill that they’ve built up in this town over the past fifty years.”
“Isn’t it your name, too?”
“The one I was born with, anyway. And the one I shared with my sisters for a lot of years, which I guess makes it appropriate for our joint venture.”
“You’re lucky to have the support of your family.”
She knew it was true. And she knew that Ryder hadn’t been nearly as fortunate.
From what he’d told her about his sister, she could tell they were close. From what he’d revealed about his parents, she guessed they were not. And while she was undeniably curious, she was also determined to respect the boundaries of their professional relationship.
Even if those boundaries had already shifted more than a little bit.
* * *
After meeting with Adam early Saturday morning to hand off the keys to her new store manager and review the tasks that needed immediate attention, Lauryn happily left him in charge and headed over to her sister’s house.
Lauryn took two minutes to set up Zachary’s playpen and put the television on for Kylie before she joined her sister in the kitchen of the new home she shared with her husband.
“Coffee?” Jordyn offered. “I picked up some of that cinnamon one you like.”
“Okay,” she agreed. “But that’s not getting you off the hook for last night.”
Her sister dropped the pod into the brewer. “What did I do last night?”
“You were supposed to be watching Kylie and Zachary. Instead, you left them in the care of a virtual stranger.”
“Ryder’s not a stranger,” Jordyn denied.
“He was until ten days ago,” she pointed out.
“And in that short span of time, your children have come to adore him.”
“They adore everyone.”
Her sister nodded, conceding the point. “And when I couldn’t figure out why Zachary wouldn’t stop fussing, Ryder suggested that I give him a teething biscuit—which worked like a charm.”
“My mistake,” she said dryly. “Obviously, the man is a childcare expert.”
“And even if he’s not,” Jordyn said, “Kylie and Zachary appear relatively unscathed.”
She wrapped her hands around the mug her sister passed to her. “That’s hardly the point.”
“What is your point?”
“If you really had to leave, you should have called me.”
“I was going to,” Jordyn said. “But I knew you were in Raleigh, and then Ryder offered to hang around. By the way, how did things go with Adam?”
“Now you’re trying to sidetrack me,” Lauryn accused.
“No, I’m trying to find out if you persuaded the former assistant manager to come back.”
“He’s the manager now,” she said. “I handed over the keys this morning.”
“Well, that’s a huge step in the right direction,” her sister said.
“It will free up a lot of my time,” Lauryn agreed. “I felt so guilty for dumping the kids on Mom every time I turned around. Which, incidentally, is why I asked you to take care of them yesterday.”
“So...how did Ryder screw up?” Jordyn asked cautiously.
“What do you mean?” She lifted the mug to her lips.
“I assume you came in here all fired up because he’d done something wrong.”
“No, he didn’t do anything wrong,” she admitted.
“Then why are you scowling?”
“Because...” She faltered, aware that her explanation wasn’t going to sound rational or reasonable—and probably wasn’t rational or reasonable. “Because he was so good with both of them.”
“And that’s a problem...why?” Jordyn prompted.
She sighed. “I know it shouldn’t be, and you’re probably going to tell me I’m being ridiculous—”
“You’re being ridiculous,” her sister confirmed.
“—but he scares me.”
Jordyn’s teasing immediately gave way to concern. “What do you mean? What did he do?”
“I don’t mean that I’m afraid of him,” she hastened to clarify, wary of the warrior gleam in her sister’s eyes. “But I am afraid of the way he makes feel.”
Jordyn relaxed again. “How does he make you feel?”
Lauryn didn’t know if there was a simple answer to that question. For the past year and a half, as her efforts to save her crumbling marriage had ended with the acceptance of its demise, she’d gone through the motions. She�
��d focused on her daughter and preparations for the new baby, her emotions with respect to her husband mostly numb.
Ryder had awakened those long-dormant emotions, and she wasn’t entirely sure that was a good thing.
“Unsettled,” she finally responded.
“Hmm,” Jordyn mused.
“What does that mean?” she asked warily.
“I’m getting the impression that he didn’t rush off when you got home last night.”
She shook her head. “He’d already ordered pizza for dinner, then he stayed to eat with us. Then he played with Kylie while I got Zachary ready for bed, and he gave Zachary his bottle while Kylie had her bath.”
“Wow,” Jordyn said. “In one night, he acted more like a husband and father than your ex-husband ever did.”
She nodded. “And it scares me to realize that there’s a part of me that still wants that. And how crazy is it that I can actually envision this man—who I barely know—in that role?”
“I don’t think it’s crazy at all,” her sister told her. “You deserve to be happy, Laur. And if he makes you happy, then you should go for it.”
She shook her head. “My divorce was finalized three weeks ago. There’s no way I should be thinking about—”
“Your divorce is final,” Jordyn interjected. “It’s okay for you to move on.”
“I have moved on.”
“Prove it.”
“I have a new business partnership with my sisters and I’m having my kitchen renovated—isn’t that proof enough?”
“No,” Jordyn said bluntly. “You should do something to thank Ryder for babysitting last night.”
“I said thank you. Several times, in fact.”
The music emanating from the television in the other room warned that Kylie’s favorite program had ended. As if on cue, her daughter skipped into the kitchen—and directly to the cupboard beside the stove.
“What are you doing?” Lauryn asked her.
“Gwyff wantsa tweat,” she said, referring to Jordyn’s tailless, one-eyed cat. The creature was notoriously antisocial but highly food-motivated, which made him willing to tolerate anyone who fed him. He tolerated Kylie extremely well.
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