So was that what this was?

Was I being tested by this beautiful man so if I passed, I could hopefully find one just like him that did like me the way I wanted to be liked?

“Is it the avocado, Ruby?” Aaron asked slowly, taking another bite and frowning as he did it.

Swallowing the questions and the frustrations inside of me, I tried to remember I had to be fair. I had to. So I told him, weak, weak, weak, “No, I like avocado.”

Even with his cheeks stuffed full of toast, tomatoes, cheese, avocado, and bacon, he blinked. “You sure?”

Why? Why? Why couldn’t he have been normal? Handsome but not stunning. Nice but not kind. Understanding but not so patient. Thoughtful but not so much.

I should have gone home. I really should have gone home so I could have had a fighting chance of moving on with my life once this week was over. I didn’t need to add a person to my obsessive personality.

But I didn’t do any of that.

“I’m sure,” I promised him, forcing myself to pick up my toast and take a bite.

Maybe this was my test. Maybe I just needed to get through this week as best as I could, and then I’d know I could handle anything. I could be his favorite friend and eventually, at some point, move on and find someone else who might not be so handsome or sweet, but he could be honest and share things with me. And that would be enough. He could still be normal handsome. Who said he couldn’t?

“Ruby—” he started to say before the sound of a phone ringing inside the house cut him off.

There was a home phone in the house? I wondered, knowing I hadn’t seen one.

Aaron cursed, setting his plate on the side table and getting to his feet. “I’ll be right back,” he said to me, giving me a tight expression before practically jogging back inside.

I hadn’t really planned on being nosey and eavesdropping on whatever conversation was about to take place on a phone I hadn’t even known existed, but curiosity got the best of me. Mostly because I wanted to see where the heck the phone had been the entire time. But something bothered me as Aaron headed straight to a cabinet directly beside the refrigerator that I had never opened before, like he knew exactly where it was, and pulled out a corded white handset, bringing it up to his ear.

I guess that shouldn’t have been surprising considering he’d been the one to put up the groceries the second day we’d been there. Maybe he’d looked around the house, or maybe this was the same place that they had all stayed at when they’d come to San Blas last year. That would make sense.

The thing was, I kept watching him as he answered, in a voice that was intentionally low, “Hello?”

I might not be as athletic as Jasmine or as smart and outgoing and pretty as my mom and sister, but I’d inherited my dad’s excellent hearing, vision, and teeth. I wore earplugs every single time I went to a concert and I could usually hear just about everything. So even though Aaron was basically whispering as he reclined against the kitchen counter with the phone to his ear, I heard him and I watched his facial expression, and the tone of his voice change instantly. I mean, instantly.

We’d had our beef the night before, but it was nothing like the tension that strummed through his body, and I definitely hadn’t thought it was possible for him to scowl and frown as he said to whoever was talking to him, “What do you want?”

If that wasn’t abrasive, I didn’t know what was.

His features didn’t change even a little bit as he replied to the voice on the other end, “I’m fine. I’m sure Colin told you I was fine when you talked to him.”

Who was Colin?

“Look,” he basically growled after a moment, making me lean toward the glass panel separating the deck from the living area like that would get me closer to the action going on inside. “If I had wanted to see you while I was home, I would have. Sorry.”

I’d already known Aaron had sarcasm down stat, but he’d never sounded more insincere ever. Who was he talking to? Who would have the home’s phone number anyway?

“I’m at the beach house—”

The beach house. Not a beach house. Wait a second….

“—I need to go. If you want to talk, call Colin or Paige—”

I knew that name. Paige was his sister’s name. Was Colin his older brother? It had to be. So who—

“I’m going now. Bye,” he ended the call abruptly, still talking and sounding like a totally different person from the warm man I’d gotten to know.

He stood there. All long and lean, his body strung completely tight. It wasn’t until his head drooped forward and his hands went up to lace behind his head that I turned around, my heart beating quickly.

I tried to process everything. A phone call. Aaron’s entire personality changing like Jekyll and Hyde. Him mentioning his sister and who I could only imagine was his brother. The beach house.

He’d never once mentioned renting the house, had he?

He’d brought up several times having a decent relationship with his dad, so there was no way that could have been him on the phone, but… had it been the woman he’d repeatedly called his “birth mom” who had “left?”

My mind was running a mile a minute as I tried to think. Think, think, think.

A brief memory of the T-shirt he’d worn the first morning flicked through my thoughts. Hall Auto. He’d never mentioned what his dad did exactly, only that he had employees and that his brother and sister worked for him.