I valiantly fought a shiver. “Stuffed? Please. It was… it was… barely a mouthful.”
“Turns out you’re no better at measuring dicks than you are at measuring snow, Kearns. But if you talk sweet, I might let you see if you can ‘drive’ this.” He waggled his eyebrows.
My jaw dropped. “You’re disgusting.”
“And you’re—” Ryder’s smile deepened as he lifted both hands to cup my cheeks, but as soon as he touched me, his smile faded. “—freezing. Damn it, Colin.” He scowled as he reached for the buttons on my shirt.
“Hey!” I smacked at his hand, but he ignored me. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
“Despite all evidence to the contrary?” He huffed out a breath. “You take care of lots of things, Kearns, and lots of people… but I’m starting to wonder whether you take care of yourself at all.”
“You’ve ignored me for three years.” I shivered again, and I wasn’t sure if it was from his nearness or from the damp chill sinking into me. “You don’t like me.”
“I already told you, I noticed you plenty. Too much. I noticed how you care about people. I’ve noticed how dedicated you are to the job. I’ve noticed how much you compromise, even when you shouldn’t. And if I disliked you, Marvel Interiors and Richards Renovations wouldn’t work together on nearly as many projects as we do… Not with you as lead designer, anyway. We’re not exactly hurting for work.”
I blinked. I’d known, of course, that if I’d said a negative word to my bosses about Ryder, Marvel wouldn’t give Richards as much business… but it had sort of slipped my mind that, all this time, Ryder had chosen to take that business.
While I was distracted, Ryder finished unbuttoning my shirt and pulled it down my shoulders. He rolled it up in a ball and threw it in the corner.
“Kick off those shoes,” he commanded, and when I’d done that, he unbuttoned my pants and stripped those efficiently too. Then he pulled off his own shirt and slipped it over my head. The hem glided down all the way to my thighs, and the fabric was warm from his body.
And holy freaking freak, his body.
I felt like a teenager watching his first porn, the sight of his huge biceps and rippling abs got me that excited, and I was pretty sure any lingering dampness on my skin burned off thanks to the heat generated by his tattoos.
“I’m pretty sure you don’t dislike me either,” Ryder said softly. His big hands chafed my arms. “Do you?”
I swallowed and notched my chin higher. “Why ask me when you seem to know all the answers?”
He smiled. “Maybe because I’d like to hear the truth out of you, for once?”
I pressed my lips together. Under no circumstances would I give this man my truths all willy-nilly. That way lay madness.
Ryder led me past the coffee table and pushed me down on the floor close to the fireplace. The faux sheepskin rug I’d lamented when Ruby had insisted on it (the same way she’d insisted on everything) actually felt nice against my nearly bare legs.
Ryder poured a shot and slid it across the table to me. “Truth or shot?”
“Pfft. Neither.” I was weak and chilly and wanted this man desperately, but I wasn’t going to cave that easily.
“Come on,” Ryder insisted. “It’s New Year’s Eve, remember? If you can’t be honest on New Year’s Eve, baby, when can you?”
Baby? Had he just… Did he actually…
What the actual, living fudge was happening right now?
I picked up the shot glass and downed it in one swallow.
“Gahhahaha.” The alcohol singed my esophagus, the flames spread through my veins, and I shuddered. “My turn to ask a question, then. Why do you call me Kearns?”
4
Ryder
I wasn’t going to tell him the reason I called him by his last name was because I sometimes caught myself calling out his first name when I jacked myself off in the privacy of my own home. Thankfully, I lived in a cabin on the lake where the nearest neighbor couldn’t hear my shout. There had definitely been times I’d made more noise than I’d intended. So when I’d shown up at a jobsite the following week and seen Colin’s adorably stern face, I’d had to call him by his last name to keep from accidentally sounding like I wanted to fuck him.
But I wanted to call him Colin. I wanted to whisper the name into his ear late at night when he’d fallen asleep on the sofa in front of the fire, call his name first thing in the morning when reading a funny news headline, growl his name when I pushed deep inside his body and felt the tight, hot squeeze of him around me.
“Because of Winn Dixie,” I grumbled, dropping my ass down on the fuzzy rug beside him. The fire crackled as it caught the kindling under the logs. “Your turn.”
He pinched his lips together. “Unacceptable response. I demand a real answer.”
I sighed. How was this man good-looking when he was both happy and frustrated? It wasn’t really fair.
“I was trying to remain professional by calling you Kearns,” I admitted. “Colin seemed too… too…”
“Accurate?” he suggested.
I huffed. “Funny man.”
“Legal and appropriate?” he tried.
“Intimate!” I finally blurted.
Colin’s eyes widened and his cheeks darkened. “However do you mean?”
I loved when he sounded like a flustered granny. It reminded me of the time he was commiserating with a client about her hectic schedule and he’d warned, “Take care you’re not burning the candle at both ends. A little birdie told me you were in the family way.”
He was charming and real even though he drove me up the wall. I’d tried for years to break through his tough outer shell, but for some reason he’d always kept things arctic cold between us. I was tired of being ignored and argued with when I didn’t feel like I’d ever done anything wrong.
“I want you,” I said, throwing up my hands before reaching to pour myself a shot of the peach moonshine. “And you treat me like I’m the dirt on your fucking shoe.”
His eyes went even wider. “Do not.”
The stubborn response made me snort. “Truth or shot?” I asked, refilling the glass after throwing back a shot of my own.
His set his jaw and reached for a trinket from the nearby coffee table. It was a purple flamingo skeleton which was, shockingly, perfect for the decor in the tacky room. “Truth,” he said, pointing the flamingo’s beak at me.
“Why do you keep taking jobs with clients who have terrible taste?”
Colin frowned. “That’s rude.”
“Let me rephrase. Why are you such a pushover when your clients insist on choosing the ugliest shit?”
He flicked his fingers along the stupid flamingo corpse without realizing what he was doing. “I like this little guy,” he said softly. “It’s kinda quirky. How can you not like a quirky flamingo skeleton?”
I added, “With a tiara and holding a tiny skeleton Emmy Award.”
Colin’s laughter was like the dawning of a brilliant sun—it lit up the entire room and my whole heart. I grinned at him stupidly. “Point taken.”