Yeah.

My heart went even faster, but I ignored it. It wasn’t like this was news. Who the hell else would it have been?

I held my breath. Leave me alone. “Thank you, but you didn’t have to. I told you yesterday—”

“I didn’t forget,” he cut me off.

Hell. “But you don’t have to feel guilty or try to make anything up to me—”

“I’m not trying to make anything up to you,” he butted in again.

That got me to stop talking. Because… why else would he do it? For the hell of it? He suddenly wanted to buy someone a rose, and I just happened to be the only woman he could get one for?

He slammed the drawer closed with his hip. “You liked it?”

Did I like it? Why the hell wasn’t my heart slowing down any? “Yes,” I told him truthfully. “It’s beautiful, but you don’t have to—”

“Good,” he cut me off for the third time.

Oh, man. “Mr. Ripley—”

“Rip.”

We weren’t going there. “Please don’t buy me anything anymore.”

His grunt wasn’t what I would ever call convincing.

“There’s nothing to feel bad about,” I kept going.

He just grunted again, but he kept looking at me, kept that expression on his face too. The one I didn’t know what it meant.

“I need to get started on my day, but all I wanted to do was thank you and tell you that you didn’t have to,” I said.

Ripley’s gaze seemed to shift over my face before settling on my ears. He was looking at my heart earrings. I just knew it.

I gave him a tight smile I was well aware he would know was fake, but oh well. Just as I turned around to head back to my room to start my day like I had said, the man called out behind me.

“What time are you leaving today?”

I stopped but didn’t turn around to look at him. Leave me alone. “The latest I can stay tonight is six. I have plans.” And by plans, I meant a date. With a total stranger.

I didn’t miss how he didn’t explain why he was asking.

But honestly, I went back to my room so fast, I didn’t get a chance to wonder why any longer than I had to.

* * *

I knew it had been an extra dumb idea to show up to the bar when the second question my date asked was “How old are you?”

He was a decent-looking guy.

My date leaned back in his chair and muttered, “Huh,” his expression funny after I told him.

Something about it didn’t sit right with me, that or I was just picking up on things I should have let go. “Why?”

“Thought you were younger,” the man had the balls to respond with.

I raised my eyebrows, positive I definitely wasn’t liking where this was going, but… I could give him the benefit of the doubt. As much as I had been telling myself I was fine, I hadn’t been. Not really. “What? Am I too old?” I tried to joke.

He shrugged.

Shrugged?

Was he for real?

The partial smile I had on my face just fell right off. “How old are you?”

He was still watching me a little too closely as he said, “Thirty-four.”

Thirty-four? Thirty-four and I was too old?

“You look younger than twenty-six though.”

“Oh.” I hoped I sounded as sarcastic as I felt. “Thanks?” Man, I was grumpy. I wasn’t sure I’d ever been so grouchy before.

His eyes slid around the bar for a moment before coming back to me, looking me over like… well, I wasn’t sure what, but I didn’t like it.

“So,” I tried grasping for straws at that point because all I wanted was to go home. All I had to do was text Lenny a message that said RED and she’d call and save me. The second that option filtered through my brain, I reminded myself that I was supposed to be trying. I had to try. I had to want someone else to buy me flowers, and not because they’d hurt my feelings. “Have you been married before?” I asked him.

The man snickered, his gaze moving around the room again. “For about a minute ten years ago. Dumbest mistake of my life. You?”

I shook my head, not sure how to take his comment about it being a mistake.

“Thank God,” he mumbled, making a face as he said it like there would have been something wrong with me being divorced.

I opened my mouth just as the chair beside mine got dragged backward. My hands stopped, and I looked over, wondering who was taking the chair without asking, when my eyes zeroed in on the knuckles holding onto the back of the seat. I might have been able to recognize his fingers even if l

etters on knuckles wasn’t something everyone had.

Especially not on knuckles connected to dinner plate-sized hands… hands connected to wrists that were covered by a familiar elastic, tight shirt.

I was pretty sure my mouth must have been partially opened as Rip fell down into the seat hard, his legs spreading wide in a V-shape instantly, his attention straight on the man across from… us.

Across from us.

Ah.

What was he doing here?

“Is this over now?” my boss drawled easily, crossing his arms over his chest as he leaned back in the chair, somehow making himself look even bigger by spreading out.

The other man frowned. “You lost?”

“Rip,” I started to say, ignoring the man I was supposed to be on a date with, if you could even call it a date since he’d made me pay for my Sprite. “What are you doing here?”

The other man glanced at me. “Who the fuck is this?”

I ignored him again, but Rip wasn’t paying any attention to me. He was staring at my date with a deceptively lazy expression. But there wasn’t a single thing easygoing about his next words. “Time for you to go.”

Time for him to go?

The other man made another face before focusing on me and asking, angrily, “You got a boyfriend?”

Me? A boyfriend?

“I’m none of your business,” Rip kept talking. “You can go home now.”

I wasn’t sure why I reached over, but I did, and touched my boss’s forearm, earning his attention. “What are you doing here?” I just about hissed at him.

Those blue-green eyes slid toward me, still lazily, and his cheek moved just enough to tell me that might have been considered a smile. “Ending this bullshit-ass date you’re on,” he stated, confusing me even more.

“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” the man asked with a scowl.

His words triggered Rip, because his gaze swept over to the side and he gave the guy a blank look I was pretty familiar with. “You.”

“Me?”

“She’s not interested,” Rip claimed calmly.

The guy decided to include me in the conversation again by swiveling his gaze toward me. “Is he for real?”

I decided to ignore him and tapped my fingers on the bigger man’s forearm. “What are you doing here?”

That cheeky expression fell off, and he just… stared at me. All of him just… focused. Too focused. On me.

“Are you his fucking girl?” the other guy demanded, his pitch going higher.

His girl? Rip’s girl?

My “no” came out at the same time Rip said, “What do you think?”

What do you think?

Was this man, who I hadn’t spoken to in two weeks up until yesterday, implying that I was his girl?

“No,” I told Rip, tapping his forearm again through the material of his compression shirt. “What are you talking about?”

“She is?”

Rip’s expression didn’t falter for a second, but it was the man he had his attention on. “Did I stutter?”

“Are you fucking serious?” the man spat, shoving his chair back before giving me an angry look. “You know what? I don’t have time to deal with this kind of shit. You can fuck off, and she can—”

Rip got to his feet so fast, it was a blur. “You like having all those teeth in your mouth? Or you good with going home, missing a few of them?”

“Fuck—” the other man started.

“Trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to finish that sentence,” Rip spit slowly. “I’ve broken fuckboys like you for fun, and now you’re giving me a reason to. You don’t wanna go there. Trust me.”