Winning her Brother's Best Friend (Tea for Two, #2)

by Noelle Adams

  “Good. Good. Thanks.” He wasn’t looking at her now. He was staring at the floor.

  And Ginny’s throat ached as she started to trudge up the stairs.

  Well, that answered any questions that might have been lingering in her mind about her unfinished relationship with Ryan.

  She still wanted him. More than ever.

  But he didn’t want her anymore.

  Four

  A few days later, Ginny was still thinking about kissing Ryan when she woke up in the morning.

  She hadn’t been able to sleep well, so she stayed in bed later than usual. She was getting up at just before nine thirty, and her head felt so fuzzy that she went into the kitchen for coffee before she took a shower.

  As soon as she had enough sips to think clearly, she checked in with Carol to make sure everything was fine with Tea for Two. They had a fairly reliable staff so they didn’t need to be at the shop during all working hours, but Carol always went in early to bake, and Ginny felt guilty if she didn’t at least check in every morning to make sure her friend didn’t need any help. Ginny usually stayed in the shop later than Carol, so the responsibilities tended to balance out.

  Carol texted back after a minute to let her know things were fine and business was really good this morning.

  Relieved, Ginny went back to her coffee, telling herself to pull up her email and start tackling it. She handled most of the business end of things for Tea for Two, so there were always a lot of emails waiting that needed attention.

  Instead of getting to work, she found herself scrolling through old photos she’d saved on her tablet. Most of them were from vacations she’d taken or else of her friends. Ryan was in a lot of them, and she lingered each time she saw his face on her screen.

  Kissing him on Sunday had been better than... anything. But he didn’t want it, and so she needed to get over it.

  She ended up at the oldest picture she kept on her tablet—one Emma had taken of her and Ryan in college, when they were a couple. Ryan had his arm around her, and she was smiling up at him like she thought he was put on the earth just for her.

  The naked feeling on her face in that photo made her chest ache.

  She’d loved him so much back then.

  She’d been an absolute fool to ever let him go.

  “You’re up at last,” a voice came from the side door that led outside the house.

  Ginny looked up to see Nan coming into the kitchen with a mug and her Bible. She’d obviously been in the garden. She sat there nearly every sunny morning. “Yeah.” Ginny rubbed her face and smoothed down her hair, but they were futile attempts to pull herself together. Her hair was a tangled mess from tossing and turning most of the night, and her head still felt a little fuzzy. “I didn’t sleep well last night, and then I ended up getting up late.”

  Nan fixed herself another cup of tea and came over to sit down at the kitchen table beside Ginny.

  Glancing down, Ginny was relieved to see that her tablet had darkened, so the revealing picture of her with Ryan was no longer displayed.

  “Why didn’t you sleep?” Nan asked. “Are you worried about anything?”

  “Not really. I don’t know.”

  “Everything’s all right with your tea shop, right? I thought it was going well.”

  “It is. As well as can be expected this early. Business has gone down in the past few months, but it’s always inflated when you first open. We’re solid for the first year. Both Carol and I are happy about it.”

  “So then what are you worried about?” Nan’s voice was gentle, but Ginny knew not to let that deceive her. No one could be as persistent as Nan when there was something she wanted to know. “Your brother still seems to be doing well. There’s nothing about him that—”

  “No, no!” Ginny interrupted. “Noah’s great. Incredibly great. I can hardly believe he’s been so stable and happy lately. I never really thought he could...” She trailed off, feeling like the admission was a kind of betrayal.

  “I know, dear,” Nan said softly, reaching over to pat Ginny’s hand. “I feel the same way. With the way he lived for so many years, it was easy to think there was no hope for him. But there’s always hope for people.”

  Ginny nodded. “It’s like a miracle, really.”

  “It is a miracle. If the human heart couldn’t be transformed, then we’d all be in pretty desperate circumstances, wouldn’t we? But his heart has changed. Everyone’s heart can change. Even yours.”

  Ginny’s eyes darted up, and she gave up her attempt at evasion. Nan obviously already knew what was troubling her. With a sigh, she said, “I don’t know about that. I mean, my feelings have changed, but I don’t if I can really change.”

  “Why can’t you? If you want a serious relationship, then you commit to it. Just because it’s always scared you in the past doesn’t mean it will always be impossible for you.”

  “But what if I try it and then later on I get scared again and cut and run like I did before?” In the silence that followed her question, she suddenly heard the words she’d just said. With a broken laugh, she added, “Shit, I sound just like Noah, don’t I?”

  Nan laughed too. “I’ll ignore your language and just say that you do sound like Noah and it’s not at all surprising. Your father abandoned both of you at a very impressionable age. Naturally you’d both have concerns about commitments. But look at your brother—he’s committed now to Emma, to his friends, to his family, to a new life—and he’s never been happier. Don’t you want the same for yourself?”

  “But for him, everything changed. For me, the only thing that would change would be I...”

  “Would have a man who would stand beside you for the rest of your life.”

  For no good reason Ginny’s eyes burned at the quiet words.

  Nan added, “Virginia, if you didn’t want that, then I wouldn’t say a word about it to you. You don’t have to have it if it’s something you don’t want. But you do want it. I can see that you do. And you’re stopping yourself from even considering the possibility because you’re afraid that someone you love will walk out on you the way your father did. Didn’t you learn anything from watching Noah?”

  Ginny nodded, barely able to speak. “I did. I did. I think that’s why... why I’ve been thinking about it more lately. Because I saw what happened with him.”

  “So keep thinking about it, and who knows what miracles will occur?”

  Ginny sniffed and looked back down at her tablet. Without thinking, she turned on the screen again and gazed down at the picture of her and Ryan.

  Nan saw the picture too and reached over to touch her arm. “I think the first step is admitting that it’s what you want.”

  “It is.” Ginny met her grandmother’s eyes. “Of course it is. But it doesn’t even matter because he doesn’t want it too.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He told me.”

  Nan shook her head and tsked her tongue. “Now, Ginny, you know he was hurt back then and said things he didn’t—”

  “No, I mean he told me on Sunday. He said he didn’t want to go down that road again. After we... we...”

  “You what?”

  Ridiculously, Ginny felt her cheeks burning. “We kissed.”

  “Then there you go. If he kissed you, then it’s obviously on his mind too. He’s just trying to protect himself. But he still has feelings for you too—if he kissed you.”

  “Uh, Nan, I hate to break it to you, but people kiss all the time without feelings. I can’t tell you how many guys I’ve kissed who I didn’t care—”

  Nan raised her hands to cover her ears and broke in, “Now, Virginia, you know I don’t want to hear about things like that.”

  Ginny couldn’t help but laugh. “Okay. I won’t tell you.”

  “But what are you doing kissing men you don’t care about? Why would you waste a kiss on someone you didn’t love?”

  Nan came from a different time, and her sensibilities reflec
ted that. But Ginny was strangely struck by the question anyway.

  When Ginny didn’t say anything, Nan went on. “But my point is still valid. Whatever you and Ryan do with other people, you’re friends with each other. You’d never risk that to kiss casually or without real feelings. His heart hasn’t changed as much as you think it has.”

  Ginny didn’t argue. If she had, she would have had to get into things like lust and attraction and how it could lead you to foolish, spontaneous actions—actions that weren’t necessarily founded on deeper feelings.

  She didn’t want to talk about lust with Nan, but she was convinced that was what had prompted Ryan to kiss her on Sunday.

  If he’d still had genuine feelings for her, he wouldn’t have shut them down the way he had, leaving absolutely no room for a future between them.

  And if Ryan didn’t want a future, then Ginny definitely couldn’t kiss him again.

  FOR THE REST OF THE week, Ginny continued to avoid Ryan as best she could. When he dropped by Tea for Two, she found work to do in the back, and otherwise she didn’t make a point of hanging out where he would be.

  She didn’t think anyone had noticed since it wasn’t like they’d ever made a point of seeing each other. And it was easier for her to process everything she was working through if she didn’t have to see Ryan and his broad shoulders and deep eyes and lazy grin all the time.

  But on Saturday evening, she had no choice. They were still in the middle of this contest, and she couldn’t pull out of it now.

  She wanted to. Desperately. But if she did, Ryan would want to know why.

  And she couldn’t possibly tell him the truth.

  They went back to Beauty Like the Night since there had been more eligible people there than at the bar they’d gone to the week before. None of their other friends wanted to come, so it was just the two of them again this week.

  Ginny exerted a great effort to focus on the task at hand, and she thought she was doing pretty well. About an hour and a half in, she had seven phone numbers and was working on the eighth.

  The guy she was talking to was cute in a nerdy way with thick, curly hair, hipster glasses, and a sweater-vest. He seemed surprised that she was paying attention to him and also very pleased.

  “So you have a lot of friends here?” the guy—whose name was Alan—asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just saw you talking with a lot of different people, so I assumed you knew half the people here.”

  “Oh.” Ginny almost smiled. It was such a sweet and innocent interpretation of her ruthless rounds of flirting with any eligible male in sight. “Yeah, I know some. Not everyone.”

  “I came with a friend of mine, but he ditched me pretty quickly. I’m not any good at meeting people.”

  “I think you’re doing just fine.” She actually liked this guy—he seemed nice and authentic and not full of ego. When she patted his arm, it was a real gesture and not because she was working an angle. “Not everyone has to be outgoing.”

  “That’s good because I’m definitely not.”

  She asked him about his job—he was an electrical engineer with Tech—and she was sincerely interested in the conversation when there was suddenly a presence behind her.

  She knew who it was without even turning around.

  “How’s everything going?” Ryan asked with his typical slow grin, stepping over so he was right at her side, practically looming over her and Alan.

  She slanted him an annoyed look. “It’s all going fine. I’m just talking with Alan.”

  “Hi, Alan,” Ryan said, sticking his hand out for the other man to shake. “I’m Ryan. Nice to meet you. Ginny and I go way back.”

  Alan shook his hand and then looked in confusion between Ginny and Ryan. “It’s nice to meet you too. I think I see my friend. I better get going. It was nice talking to you, Ginny.”

  Ginny stared as Alan made a hasty retreat, and then she narrowed her eyes to glare at Ryan. “You big asshole, what do you think you’re doing?”

  Ryan looked amused but not as relaxed as normal. Something under the surface seemed to be bristling, and she didn’t understand why. Surely he wouldn’t have been jealous. She’d been coming on to men in his presence for three weeks now. “I was just introducing myself. What are you all uptight about?”

  “You weren’t introducing yourself. You were scaring him off, and you did it on purpose.”

  “I didn’t do anything.” He was looking unnervingly sexy tonight with slightly mussed hair and a five-o’clock shadow. His shirt was black, and he looked unusually intense, almost dangerous.

  “You did too. You were cheating. It’s got to be against the rules to interfere with each other as we’re collecting phone numbers. I would have gotten Alan’s for sure if you hadn’t interrupted.”

  “There are no rules like that.”

  “There aren’t?” Ginny was strangely breathless, and she couldn’t look away from Ryan’s eyes, his lips. She desperately wanted him to kiss her again. She had to keep backing away slightly so she wasn’t so close to him, but every time she did, he leaned toward her even more.

  “No. There aren’t any rules.” His voice was low and as thick and slow as honey.

  The only thing that kept her from grabbing him in a kiss was the memory of how he’d jerked away from her on Sunday.

  She couldn’t go through that again.

  With a ragged breath, she took a step back and looked away from him. “All right then. We have another hour on the clock, so go away and let me work.”

  “You got it.”

  Despite his words, Ryan didn’t go away, so Ginny had to walk away herself.

  But she was determined to win this round. If Ryan believed there were no rules, then she could work with that.

  RYAN WATCHED GINNY walk away from him and told himself to stop acting like an idiot.

  He’d been jealous—plain and simple.

  He’d seen Ginny talking to that guy as if she really liked him. She hadn’t been flirting. She hadn’t just been trying to win the contest. She’d been having a real conversation, as if she’d wanted to get to know him.

  And Ryan hadn’t liked it.

  He’d gone over there on purpose to interfere with her conversation, exactly as she’d known he had. But she’d thought he’d been cheating. He hadn’t intended to cheat.

  He’d just wanted her to remember he was alive. That they were closer than she could ever be with another man—any other man.

  Pitiful.

  It was absolutely pitiful, and he needed to do better.

  He was supposed to be getting over her at last, letting her go.

  And this wasn’t how it was going to happen.

  He forced himself to turn away and took a few breaths, trying to clear his mind of the vision of Ginny’s big vulnerable eyes and clever smile. And her perfect body.

  He looked around for a woman sitting alone, anyone who might possibly distract him. He saw a brunette eyeing him with interest and strode over purposefully. He went through the steps of introduction automatically. He could come on to a woman in his sleep. His heart wasn’t in it though.

  He was still thinking about Ginny, wishing it was her he was talking to.

  Vaguely he wondered if there was some sort of miracle drug that could leech out the memory of the love of your life—make you finally stop wanting her.

  If it existed, he’d swallow it down in an instant.

  Even knowing he’d get hurt again, he couldn’t stop wanting Ginny.

  About five minutes into the conversation with the brunette, he was about to ask for her phone number. Before he could open his mouth, he saw that her eyes had moved behind his face to something over his shoulder.

  He turned to look by instinct and was astonished to see Ginny approaching quickly with a look of outraged anger on her face.

  What the hell?

  “Bastard,” she exclaimed, loud enough for everyone surrounding them to hear. All
heads in this corner of the club turned toward the scene she was creating. “So this is where you are!”

  Ryan blinked, astonished and bewildered and self-conscious with so many people staring at him.

  “I’m sitting at home waiting for you, and you’re here—hitting on other women?” Ginny’s voice was growing louder. At least half the club had stopped talking now and was watching in interest. “We’re supposed to be engaged, you fucking cheater!”

  Finally he realized what she was doing. He’d told her there were no rules to their contest, and she was just following through.

  If he could keep her from getting one guy’s number, she was going to keep him from getting any of these women’s numbers.

  No woman in this room was going to take him seriously after this.

  “The wedding is off! Have fun with your miserable cheating self!” Ginny’s performance was almost perfect. She looked and sounded exactly like a woman done wrong. Ryan was convinced only he could see the glimmer of amused victory in her eyes.

  He still had absolutely no idea what to say, so he just sat there like an idiot.

  Ginny still had the half-drunk Cosmo in her hand she’d been carrying around all evening. But now she threw out her hand in his direction, and the liquid came flying out.

  Right in his face.

  “I never want to see you again!” With that one last line, Ginny stomped out.

  The entire club was watching her, and once she departed, all eyes turned back to Ryan.

  Some people looked curious and amused, but more of them looked disapproving.

  They all thought he was a cheating asshole.

  For a moment the knowledge rankled.

  Ryan wasn’t perfect. He’d made a whole lot of mistakes. But he always made a point of following through on commitments.

  He wasn’t a cheater.

  Never in his life had he ever been a cheater, and he was never going to be one in the future.

  And it bothered him that all these strangers thought he was one.

  He shrugged it off and stood up. No sense in staying here any longer. He wasn’t going to get any other phone numbers. And they couldn’t come back to this club either since some of the same people might be here next week and would remember.