“Nice,” Rubi said, feigning impression, then wrinkled her nose. “I bet you have to be on call a lot.”

“No, not much.” He’d done just what Rubi had expected—contradicted himself in an effort to appear important. “One of the perks of having my own practice.”

“Right, right,” she said, her voice thick with appreciation, giving him one last stroke before she pulled out the knife. “Oh, but, now wait.” She tilted her head and pushed a casual lightness into her tone. “You have your own practice, but you don’t set your own schedule?” She chuckled at her upcoming joke, much the way John had laughed at his own. “Man, that secretary really has you by the balls, doesn’t she?”

John’s grin fell. Confused indignation filled his eyes. And Rubi reveled in popping the man’s inflated ego.

She turned to Wes. “You really do have it good. Work hard and play hard all at the same time, loving every minute of it. And all when it suits you. The killer money doesn’t hurt either.” She leaned into him, slid both hands around his arm and stared up at him like a starstruck groupie. “And you have me.”

He had an I-know-what-you’re-up-to quirk to his mouth. “No doubt. I wake up every morning thinking what a lucky bastard I am.”

Just because she was having so much fun, Rubi lifted to her toes and kissed him, eyes open—as were his—sharing a silent message of we’re in this together.

When she lowered, he pulled his arm from her grip and circled Rubi’s shoulders, tugging her toward the kitchen. “I’m going to introduce Rubi around, Uncle John.”

“Why don’t you let me do that?” Both Wes and Rubi turned toward the voice.

A middle-aged woman stood beside John. Hair a mix of blonde and gray, Rubi guessed she was in her late fifties. Her eyes were blue, and Rubi could see a lot of Wes’s handsome face in this equally handsome woman—the high cheekbones, the beautifully shaped mouth, her eyes.

“I’m Susie Lawson,” she said, her smile warm and genuine. “Wes’s mother.”

Great. She’d just sniped family in front of Wes’s mother. Just another episode in Rubi’s version of how not to win friends and influence people. But she had to admit, poking John’s ego had alleviated her immediate panic and placed her in a “safe”—or at least safer—emotional zone.

She held out her hand to Susie. “Rubi.”

“Aren’t you refreshing?” The woman’s smile deepened with the same mischievous sparkle Rubi had often seen in Wes’s gaze as it darted to meet her son’s. A silent communication passed between them, one Rubi couldn’t read. She led Rubi toward the kitchen. “Let’s see who else we can set straight tonight.”

Rubi bit her bottom lip, then glanced down at Wes’s petite mother. “I don’t know what Wes has said, but you should know I’m really not good with the whole family thing.”

Wes’s mother’s gaze was filled with flash and humor as she patted Rubi’s arm. “Oh, sweetheart, I think you may be more of a natural than you realize.”

Twenty-Three

Wes watched Rubi stroll away with his mother. He smiled as something shifted inside him. Something deep and warm and un-freaking-bearably sweet.

He’d just fallen in love with the woman. All over again.

“She’s certainly gorgeous.” His sister’s voice drew his gaze. “You won’t have to worry about forgetting that—or reminding anyone else.”

Wes refocused on Whitney with some crazy-ass fizzy brew messing with his stomach. “But the best thing is”—he took the beer Whitney held out to him and met her gaze with a smile of fresh confidence—“she’s even more beautiful on the inside.”

She didn’t hide a flash of suspicion. “Sure you’re not just blinded by love, bro? You’ve always been a closet romantic.”

“Don’t tell her that. Romance freaks her out.”

“How’d you convince her to come? I thought she said no way.”

“She did,” Wes said. “Then changed her mind and just showed up today while I was at the VA with Wyatt.” He glanced at Whit and shook his head. “What a cluster that almost turned out to be.”

He relayed the story about Melissa and the kiss.

“And you still convinced her to stay? You must have a serious way with words.”

“Me? Way with words?” He lifted the backs of his fingers to her forehead as if testing her temperature.

Whitney batted his hand away. “True. I forgot who I was talking to.” With her gaze on Rubi and his mom again, a sly grin edged her mouth up, and Whitney cut her gaze toward Wes with a slight lift of her chin. “This ought to be entertaining. Let’s see if she can slice a few inches of those two.”

Wes hoped it was entertaining in a good way. He’d always believed Rubi could handle herself in any situation, but this new vulnerability around family was more than a little unnerving.

He and Whitney both took a drink from their bottles, watching as his mother introduced Rubi to his cousin Martin—the I-made-partner-last-month-what’s-new-with-you CPA, and his cousin Sam—the check-out-my-latest-Mercedes attorney. Both men, about five years older than Wes, turned from their conversation and focused directly on Rubi with a deer-in-the-headlights sort of shock.

“They’re frothing at the mouth,” Whit said, her voice droll with disgust. “Not a surprising start.”

“Give her a minute,” Wes said. “She likes to make them feel comfortable before she plunges the knife.”

Martin and Sam chatted easily with Rubi for a few moments. Wes caught a word or a phrase, but nothing more. Whitney must have been just as diligently struggling to hear the conversation, because she wrapped her fingers around his wrist and pulled him toward a snack table closer to the group. Wes kept his back that direction, facing Whitney as he speared a piece of salami with a toothpick.

“Russo Industries is owned by my father,” Rubi was saying, “and even though he and I aren’t close at all, he is all over that rig Wes built for Wyatt. It is a truly cutting-edge design, let me tell you. Dolph cherry-picks every project, and when he believes in a product, you can bet he’s going to send that inventor into the stratosphere as a rising star. But I’m having a hard time convincing Wes to entertain the idea. He’s so focused on getting Wyatt back on his feet, selling the rig is the furthest thing from his mind.”

“Fascinating,” Martin said with all his manufactured sophistication. “What would something like that go for? Hypothetically, of course.”

Rubi laughed. “Oh, I couldn’t even fathom. There would be an initial purchase, then typically royalties based on the number of units sold. We’re talking multimillions.”

Wes was imagining the look on his cousins’ pompous faces when Whitney spewed beer across his shirt. He jumped back. “What the—?”

He caught himself before he roared Fuck across the house, brushing at his now wet shirt. Whitney choked on a laugh, one hand covering her mouth.

“I’m fine.” She put up a hand to the observers. “Sorry. Wes just made me squirt beer from my nose laughing. Nothing new.”

Wes glanced over his shoulder and caught Rubi’s eye. The sparkle there sent the message that she knew he was listening and she was having fun.

When she turned away, Wes glanced down at his shirt, then back at Whitney. “What was that about?”

She took a step closer, her eyes watery from holding back laughter. “You should have seen their faces when she said millions. They both went as white as fish bellies.” She pulled herself together, wiping at her eyes, then sobered suddenly and pinned him with a gaze that had a way of being so intense. “Wait, is that true?”

He lifted a shoulder, glanced down at his beer. “She knows better than I do, and she knows her father’s business. But she’s the brilliant one, not me.”

“Not crazy at all,” Rubi was saying. “Wes doesn’t need the work, the money, or the fame. He’s already at the top of the stunt game, getting the best, highest-paying jobs in the industry, working with the top stars. I mean, he got that black eye while he was out with Jason Bolton last week. He works side by side with Jax Chamberlin every day. Tom Cruise, Jason Statham, Bruce Willis, Vin Diesel, you name a big star, Wes knows them all. He taught freaking Angelina Jolie how to fall off a building and not kill herself.

“Really, how much higher could he go in his chosen field? I mean, he’s working the latest Bond movie now. And we all know only the best of the best are chosen for a Bond film,” she said with authority. “In fact, he’s been asked to act on several occasions—by Daniel Craig himself—but Wes loves the thrill of the stunt more. I really admire that.”

Whitney’s big blue eyes lifted to Wes. “Fuuuuuck,” she whispered. “She’s good. Did you coach her?”

“Oh no. That is all Rubi.”

“Is it true?”

He shrugged, grinned. “She’s taking some creative license.”

“You sure as hell wouldn’t know it.”

“I’m beginning to think she’s a fucking savant.”

Whitney took another sip of beer, watching their mother steer Rubi away from the cousins, who both looked distraught and pissed.

“Okay,” Whit said, “here’s a good test.”

Wes sent a sideways glance toward Rubi as she and his mother approached his father. “Man,” he said, “she’s not wasting any time.”

“Mom likes her,” Whit said, “and believes she can hold her own with Dad, or she wouldn’t introduce them so soon.”

Wes grew a little nervous. Shifted on his feet. “I can’t hear.”

Rubi shook his father’s hand. He didn’t smile—he was a stoic kind of guy—and then crossed his arms. Within thirty seconds, Rubi had their man-of-few-words father talking. Even gesturing.

“Holy shit,” Whitney said, her voice soft and filled with awe. “He’s stringing sentences together. I haven’t seen Dad talk that much since…since…I don’t even know.”

A single surprised laugh popped from Wes’s throat. “Fucking A,” he said. “She’s got him talking about the crops.”

Whitney gave him a what-the-fuck look. “You sure she’s a city girl?”

God, the woman floored Wes. It was always something new with her. “I mentioned on the drive here that he was pissed about a problem with those new sensors he put in. It’s probably a programming glitch; otherwise, I can’t imagine how she got him talking.”

Rubi and his dad were speaking freely now, back and forth. Then she said something that made Dad crack a grin. Then, miracle upon miracles, he laughed. Whitney’s jaw dropped the same time as Wes’s.

Their mother turned her head just enough to catch Wes’s gaze—as if she’d known he’d been watching the whole time—and winked.