What it all meant, I had no idea.

But my eyes strayed to the collar of his compression shirt and stayed there longer than they should have.

“You all right?” he asked randomly.

That time, my smile was genuine as I nodded.

“Sure?” Rip even went as far as to ask.

“Yeah,” I told him. “I’m just tired is all. I slept like crap last night.”

Those blue-green eyes watched me, and I figured he had a decent idea why that had been the case. Just as quickly, his eyes shifted to the giant clock on the wall. “Get home. I got this, and then I’ll head out too. We got enough done.”

I looked at him, pushing the words I’d heard out of his mouth minutes earlier out of my head. “Are you sure?”

It was his turn to nod.

“Okay. I was—” My phone rang from the back pocket of my pants, and I pulled it out and squinted at the screen. Then I stuck it back into my pocket.

His gaze had followed my hand, and his face was smooth when he tipped his chin up, his eyebrow going in the same direction. “You gonna get that?”

“No.”

The corners of his mouth moved maybe a millimeter.

“My sisters have been calling me for the last two hours, even though they know I’m here,” I explained. “They got to Houston earlier and—” I cut myself off, realizing what I was doing. This wasn’t my other coworkers I rattled my business off to. I waved my hand in front of me and shook my head. “Anyway, I guess I’ll get going then if you don’t need me anymore.”

Rip’s little frown hadn’t gone anywhere, but he nodded.

I took a step back, ready to turn away. “If you want to come by my house tomorrow after all, I won’t let anybody bother you too much either,” I offered him, knowing he wouldn’t commit himself. “If not, I’ll see you Monday. Have a good weekend.”

At least I had invited him, like I always did.

“Luna,” he called out before I got another step.

I stopped, half expecting him to tell me there was something else he needed. “Yeah?”

My boss stood there, hands on his hips, watching me with that gaze that I never completely understood.

I grinned at him. “You all right, boss?”

I watched his whole body exhale before his mouth twitched and he said in that low, grumbling voice, “Decide what you want as a favor.”

“What’s that?”

The next expression he gave me, I did understand. It was his Luna’s an idiot face. Then he repeated himself.

And even after he repeated himself, I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. So I asked him once more. “I don’t understand what favor you want me to decide on,” I told him slowly, like it was him who wasn’t understanding what he was saying.

Because that was the exact case.

I had used it up yesterday. He wasn’t exactly a spring chicken anymore, but he wasn’t that forgetful either.

Swiping at his eyes with the meaty part of his palm, he sighed my name. “Decide on a new favor.”

“What new favor?”

Rip rubbed his face again, shaking his head as he did. “Your other one didn’t count. Pick something new.”

Eh… what?

He must have read the question on my face because Ripley muttered, “Luna, the other one doesn’t count. Ask for something else.”

A memory of Rip coming to stand behind me, of telling my cousin to shut up, filled my brain. The relief of it could still fill my mouth. But I could never take advantage of him. I would never want to in the first place. “Rip, I never wanted the favor. You don’t owe me anything.”

The handsome, stunning man let his hands drop.

“I don’t need a new favor. You did more than I could have asked for. That was what I wanted.”

He gave me that laser-like stare that I loved and hated at the same time. “I don’t care,” he tried to tell me in that we’re not talking about this anymore voice.

“Rip—”

His shot me that Luna is an idiot look again. “It doesn’t count.”

“But I don’t want anything else.”

“And I don’t wanna owe you shit, Luna,” he insisted, watching me closely. “Something else, all right? You can come up with something.”

I opened my mouth but felt my eyes narrow on their own. “Ripley, I don’t want you to owe me anything. It was one thing I said for you. That’s all.”

That hand of his went up to tug at the collar of his compression shirt, showing me the skull there. His breath was deep. “I’m telling you how it’s gonna be. Pick something else. Me going with you to that funeral isn’t gonna be it.” He pinned me with a look that almost might have taken my breath away. “That was nothing. Understand me?”

Of course he thought it was nothing. He was the one who didn’t understand. “It wasn’t nothing to me,” I told him quietly.

My boss, this man standing in front of me, didn’t say a word. He didn’t move. He didn’t twitch. He didn’t flinch.

He didn’t argue.

He just looked at me.

And all I could do was give him a flimsy smile back to show him that it had been more than enough. I didn’t want him to feel like he owed me. He didn’t.

“It doesn’t count, Luna. Not today, not tomorrow. Pick something else or I will. You got me?” he asked me in that calm, cool, steady voice, piercing me with that unflinching gaze.

It was my turn to stare. My turn to watch him. Because I knew that tone and that voice and what it meant.

I might let people get away with a whole lot of things sometimes, but this wasn’t someone with an attitude problem calling me a bitch.

This was my boss feeling indebted to me when he had no reason to. When I didn’t want him to.

But all I could get out was his name before something moved across that hard face.

I definitely couldn’t miss the way his chest expanded as he settled his irises on me mercilessly. “I pay back my debts, and what we did doesn’t count.” He tipped his chin up and started to turn away from me. Done. He was already done with me. “Go home.”

I stood there for a moment and watched as he moved toward the chests, pulling a rag out of his pocket to wipe his hands as he did.

I sighed.

“Night, Luna,” he called out over his shoulder, just a hint louder than a normal speaking voice.

“Night, Rip,” I replied, shaking my own freaking head.

What was going on with him?

Chapter 10

“Look at her. It feels like just yesterday we were talking about whether she should get started on pads or tampons,” my best friend said with a sigh from her spot beside me.

I couldn’t help but snort as I looked down the table in the same direction, eyeing Lily at the head of it, surrounded by a handful of her friends and our two sisters. Apparently, at twenty-six, I was too old to sit on that end at the restaurant I had reserved months ago. On my half, there was me, my friend Lenny, her grandfather, her grandfather’s best friend, Mr. Cooper, and Lydia—the extended family we had made since I’d left San Antonio.

I’d been feeling pretty melancholic all day, and it had gotten worse when my sister had walked across the stage at the giant arena where her high school graduation was held. I loved all of my sisters, but Lily… Lily was the baby. She was the best of all of us.

I was happy for her, but it still made me sad that my little sister was growing up.

Fortunately, Lenny had snuck a blow horn into the arena despite going through security somehow—I wasn’t sure how, but I was going to ask later—and the minute that thing had gone toot toot and given everyone within a hundred feet an earache, I hadn’t been able to help but feel joyful, just freaking happy and proud.

My little sister had graduated high school, and like our other sisters, in the top 10 percent of her class, with a three-fourths scholarship to a public university in Lubbock.

That thought especially made my chest fill with pride when I watched her lean back in her chair and laugh her butt off at something someone close to her had said.

“Don’t remind me. I’ve managed not to cry, and I want to keep it that way,” I said to my closest friend.