No. I wasn’t mad over that at all. Not even Hector’s niece’s lollipop took the edge off my anger.

So it was because of that, that I wasn’t paying even a little bit of attention as I walked toward the building, holding the paint pen for Miguel’s wife’s car in one hand and clutching my purse in the other.

And it was because I wasn’t paying attention that when someone hollered, “Hey!” I froze.

Turning in the direction of where the voice was coming from, I spotted a man standing just on the other side of the fence, right by a lowered red pickup truck. Forty-ish with a handful of tattoos spotted across one arm, I blinked and said, “Hey.”

The man grinned. “Can you do me a solid?”

I took a step forward. I had no reason to be mad at him or take it out on him. “Depends on what it is.”

His grin spread wider. “Can you get, ah, Ripley out here?”

I dropped my pleasant expression. “Who?”

“Ripley,” the man repeated, that grin going nowhere.

Never, not once, had Rip ever had anyone come over. Well, except for that one guy who I had caught him talking to, but… I hadn’t gotten a good look at the man. Was this one standing in front of me the same one as before?

I didn’t know, but if it wasn’t…

“I don’t know a Ripley,” I told him quickly.

His grin was this gap-toothed thing that magically got even bigger. “All right. Well, my name’s Gio, and I’ll be sitting out here for another—” He glanced at his watch. “—twenty minutes.” He winked.

I raised both my eyebrows. “Nice to meet you, Gio.”

He smiled and said, “Nice to meet you too, Luna.”

I was pulling open the door of the shop when I realized what exactly he’d said.

He’d called me by my name. I didn’t wear coveralls with my name on them, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have left the shop with them on. I was too paranoid for that.

How did he know my name?

Inside, I looked around the main floor for the biggest man at the shop but didn’t see anyone with the height or the right hair color. I didn’t need to look at my watch to know that I had twenty minutes to eat—eat whatever Rip had brought me—before I needed to get back to work. Or at least, should get back to work. I worked so much overtime it didn’t matter if I took another fifteen minutes, but as lonely and quiet as my home was, now that was where I would rather be.

Up the stairs, I heard two voices coming from the break room. Sure enough, Ashton was in there talking to one of the other guys, and right at the end of the table, sitting there quietly by himself, looking through a magazine, was Rip.

I smiled at the other two guys and watched as Rip lifted his head, watching me in return.

I kept the smile on my face as I opened the refrigerator and immediately found a glass container sitting on the top shelf with my name scrawled on a Post-it. Through the side, I could see what looked like noodles, beef, and vegetables—exactly what my lo mein should have looked like when I had made it.

Grabbing one of the plastic forks from a drawer, I pulled out the seat right beside Rip and took it. Popping the top off the container, I lowered my voice as quietly as I could, knocked my knee to the side until it hit Rip’s, and whispered, “There’s someone named Gio outside asking for you. I told him you didn’t work here, but he said he was going to wait out there for another twenty minutes five minutes ago.”

I could feel Rip freeze.

Then I saw him out of my peripheral vision lift his head and give me a funny expression that had his cheek going up that millimeter. “You told him I don’t work here?”

I picked up my fork and speared a piece of beef with it before whispering, “Yup.”

You couldn’t trust anybody these days, hello. Not even your own—Stop.

Rip shook his head before he shoved his chair back and got to his feet. I flashed him a closed-mouth smile that I was pretty sure he recognized as not being totally authentic.

But he lifted his hand up, and before I could even blink, his fingers pinched a loose strand of hair off my cheek and tucked it behind my ear, the pad rubbing against the sensitive skin right behind it.

And just that quickly, his hand dropped. “Watch my food for me, yeah?” he asked.

Had he just tucked my hair behind my ear or was my anger making me delusional?

I managed to get out a nod before he disappeared through the door. I only sat there for maybe five seconds staring after him before I turned my attention back down to my food and stuck a piece of beef in my mouth.

It was just as delicious as the chicken last week had been.

Chapter 20

I knew I’d made a mistake when the guy called me “sweetie” twice in a row.

Because I was pretty sure the man I was on a date with couldn’t remember my name.

If I was going to be honest with myself, the pool of pity and hurt and anger that I had been swimming in for the last few days didn’t help anything either. As much as I told myself to suck it up and handle what I had learned about my sisters—as much as I told myself to forgive them—I hadn’t. Not yet. I hadn’t even been able to tell Lenny about any of it, much less Lily. I was so… just… on edge. I hadn’t said a word to anyone over it.

So that entire situation didn’t help anything at all.

It didn’t change a single thing either, which was why I hadn’t cancelled the date I had been set up on.

Like a whole lot of things in my life, it was turning out to be a giant mistake. A giant freaking mistake.

That knowledge only settled even more in my head when my date kept glancing around the round table we were sitting at, and asked, “You sure you’re not married?”

I only barely held back a frown. “Yes.” I paused. “Why?”

He was taller than me, with dark black hair and a smirk I had thought was okay when I saw it on my phone—Lydia had sent me a sneaky picture of him. Apparently, he was a physical therapist at the same clinic that she worked at. You would have figured that by making his living dealing with people, he would have been warm, but he was just kind of… aggressive and not charming at all.

He’d tried to kiss my cheek the instant he’d come over, and I wasn’t about that life. I liked making people feel comfortable and welcomed, but I didn’t want some stranger putting his saliva on me. If we had been friends, that would have been a different story.

But this guy and I were not.

“Some guy has been staring over here like he wants to kill somebody for the last thirty minutes,” my date answered, still flicking his gaze around Mickey’s.

“I’m not married,” I confirmed, not bothering to tell him that I hadn’t had a boyfriend in years either, so the chances of me having a jealous ex stalking me were slim to none.

The man’s eyes locked on something over my shoulder. “You sure?” he asked for confirmation again, shifting around in his seat. Squirming, he was squirming.

“Yeah.” I almost turned completely around to see who he was talking about but decided not to.

We were only thirty minutes into this date, and I was about ready to get home.

If I was going to be honest with myself, I’d been ready to get home before I’d even left it.

“Huh,” the guy hummed before tearing his gaze back to my direction. “What were we talking about before?”

That confirmed it. He had no clue what my name was. That was for sure. “You were telling me about your job,” I responded, hearing the enthusiasm in my voice. Not.

He shrugged. “Oh. Nothin’ much to tell. That was it. Lydia said you… paint?”

“Yeah.”

“Like art?”

I knew for a fact I had told him specifically what kind of painting I did fifteen minutes ago when he’d first asked me this exact same question. I decided to spell it out for him. “No. Cars. Trucks. Automobiles.”

He blinked. “No shit?”

“Yeah,” I confirmed, watching his face as he got really thoughtful. He was attractive, but there was something about him that was just….

“Like you paint cars a different color?” he asked.