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I grab the container of brownies, pulling them toward me as I give her amay I?look.
She nods. “That’s your dinner.”
I smile. I’ll make her something else. She’s not eating just brownies for dinner. But it’s been a day. I pop the container open and pull a thick brownie with gooey frosting out. “Cian never had to hide anything,” I answer her question. “Thank God we went from the animal park in Florida to the animal park and petting zoo in Louisiana. He always had plenty of animals around. If he hadn’t, I’m sure he would’ve filled the house with ridiculousshit. We would have had chinchillas or something. But, as it was, he got his fill of otters and alpacas and tigers. Even penguins in Autre.”
I’d known Fiona O’Grady for years and lived with giraffes and emus in my backyard in Florida but I was still surprised to find a colony of endangered penguins in the tiny bayou town in Louisiana.
I feel Ruby’s eyes on me as I bite into the brownie and lick frosting from my thumb.
I take my time swiping the chocolate from my finger with my tongue.
I don’t care what she says, or tries to tell herself, the girl likes my tongue. And my thumb.
She clears her throat before she asks, “You like animals, right?”
We’ve never talked about either of us having pets, and I’m aware again of the other thing we haven’t talked about. There’s a lot about my past, my family, that she doesn’t know. Things she probably should know.
“Of course,” I say. “But taking care of a handful of Royals, who never follow a plan, was enough. I left all the animal wrangling to Fiona. And then Colin by default.”
“You never helped?” she asks. “I know a lot about Princess Fiona and her animal rescues. She’s done everything from breaking up puppy mills to rescuing endangered tigers from illegal trade in Texas. But you were around for all of that. You never got pulled in to help?”
“Oh, I helped.”
First, it’s nearly impossible to say no to Fiona O’Grady. She was born a princess after all. Second, she has a heart of gold. She asks for things like help rescuing abused and neglected animals. Who can say no that?
I hold out my right hand, flexing my fist and showing off the scar across the back of my knuckles. “Got a little too close to the wrong end of a tiger one time.” I turn the hand over and show her a scar running up my forearm. “And an emu decided I looked tasty another time.”
She gasps and grasps my hand, studying one scar then the other. “Oh my God, that is so cool.”
I chuckle. “It’s so cool that I’mscarred?”
She looks up at me as she runs her thumb across the scar. “I’ve seen these before, of course, but I assumed you got them fighting or rock climbing or something like that.”
That makes sense. “I have few from that stuff too,” I say, pointing to a scar on my wrist that came from a mountain in India.
She runs her finger over it too. “They’re all cool,” she says. “Your family—well, the O’Gradys—are fascinating. The things you’ve all done, the way you just all dive in to fix problems and save people and animals and do the hard work, is amazing. I know you joke about them being spoiled, but all of the princes and princesses have truly gotten their hands dirty with things that matter to them. And all of the bodyguards—their best friends—have been right there beside them.”
I don’t say anything. I just give a slight nod. It’s true. But we don’t do any of it to be “cool” or for praise. It’s just all the right thing to do. I’ve never even punched anyone who didn’t really deserve it.
Suddenly, Ruby leans over and presses a kiss to the back of my knuckles. “Very cool. And very sexy.”
The touch of her lips to my skin sends heat sizzling up my arm. My gaze drops to her mouth again. “I know what you mean. All day long in that bar, I’ve wanted to grab you and kiss you. Your big heart and natural inclination to build community is sexy as fuck, Ruby.”
She is so not the woman I ever expected to fall in love with.
I never wanted to fall in love at all. But if I had entertained the notion, I would have guessed I would have been drawn to a woman with a stable, almost boring family and past, someone who did ‘normal’ things like dinner with her grandparents, and liked to bake and, I don’t know, knit? Someone who would counter my nightmare family story, someone who could balance the chaos that comes with my life and job.
But no, it’s Ruby.
A woman whose backstory is a hodgepodge of places and people and who attracts chaos because people in need find her like little floating metal shavings to a powerful magnet.
She gives them a place to stick. She grounds them.
She makes me feel like a powerful magnet, too.
God, I love her so much.
It’s not just physical between us.