Page 9

Chapter Nine

Griffin

I blinked.

Then blinked again.

She’d spoken English, to be sure, but I felt like my brain was moving at a glacial pace, because there’s no way Ruby Tate would’ve asked me to do ... that.

“I’m sorry, what?” I swiped a hand over my mouth. “You want me to what?”

“Never mind, this was a terrible idea.” With a furious shake of her head, Ruby started to brush past me, headed back in the direction of the door.

Gently, I hooked my hand in the crook of her elbow and steered her back around to face me. “Easy, birdy, I don’t have nearly enough information for you to say anything of the sort.”

Her cheeks were bright pink, and she couldn’t hold eye contact, just tiny little darts up and then down, landing anywhere in the house except on my face.

“Sit,” I commanded. But like, nicely. Not in a dick-ish sort of way.

Ruby did as I asked, easing herself onto the overstuffed couch that my agent was ready to threaten me over. She propped her elbows on her thighs and sank her head into her hands, shoulders moving on a deep, rib-inhaling sigh.

God, what happened during those drinks?

Who was this strange little woman?

In the kitchen, I poured some very expensive wine into two very expensive-looking wine goblets and walked them back to the couch just as Ruby dropped her hands and studied me with big, wary eyes.

“I’ve never met anyone who looks at me like you do,” I told her, taking a seat but leaving a cushion empty in between us.

She took the wine with a slight furrow in her brow. “Like what?”

“Like you’re terrified of what I’m going to do next.”

“That’s because I am,” she said, sniffing the wine before taking a tiny sip.

“How’s the wine?”

“Drier than I expected, but I don’t mind. Dry red is about all I drink.”

I took a sip and grimaced. “Yes, I can see why. I love my alcohol to taste like ashy, wet cardboard too.”

She sighed quietly, then set the wineglass down. “I don’t think any sort of alcohol will help right now, but thank you.”

“Talk,” I instructed firmly. “I’m going to need more explanation, Ruby Tate.”

“No, it was silly and impulsive.”

“Two words I’d wager no one would ever use to describe you,” I said.

She tilted her head. “No, you’re right.”

“With the addition of this most unexpected question, am I allowed to ask about your drinks with Jimmy the hooker?”

“He’s not a—” Then she stopped, pinched her eyes shut for a moment, drawing herself upright and clenching her hands in her lap. When her eyes opened again, the decisiveness was clear and bright. “Yes, you’re allowed to ask.”

“Oh, goodie.” I took another large swallow of the wine and decided to set it down by hers, because it tasted like there was actual dirt lining my throat. “How were your drinks with our friend James? I can’t call him Jimmy anymore; it’s too easy.”

“Can I redirect your line of questioning a little?”

I swept my hand between us in a magnanimous gesture. “By all means.”

“Maybe you could ask why I hired ... James.”

I nodded slowly. “I could do that. You’re going to answer honestly if I do?”

Ruby nodded as well. Shorter and jerkier than mine, but enough so that I believed her.

“Okay. Why did you hire an escort, Ruby?”

She took a deep breath and finally met my gaze evenly. “I didn’t hire him for sex.”

“Excellent, because that’s incredibly illegal and I don’t think you’d last long in jail.” Then I assessed her with a shrewd look. “Actually, I take that back. You’d probably go in there and have all those women wrapped around your little finger on day one.”

Her reaction made me realize just how often Ruby sighed in my presence.

It was a lot.

“Oh yeah,” I continued. “You’d be holding court by the end of the first week. Ruling with an iron fist. No mercy. They’d be bending over backwards to be in your favor.”

“Are you done yet?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Hang on. Let me picture you in orange.”

Ruby started to get up, and I laughed, asking her to wait. She froze, that wariness back in her eyes. Holding up my finger, I paused for a second, then nodded. “Okay. Now I’m done.”

“I’m thrilled to hear that.” Seeing one of her eyebrows arched imperiously, I had to fight to hide a grin. Picking on her was fun. More fun than I’d had in a while. “I hired him for confidence. Take me on a few practice dates. Teach me what to do when you want something ... specific from a man. And then he was going to talk me through those specific things,” she answered delicately.

Sitting back on the couch, I extended an arm, much like I’d done on the bench. “Like sex.”

“Sort of,” she hedged. “I don’t ... I don’t have much experience, and what experience I do have isn’t good.”

Her eyes met mine, and hell if I didn’t feel it like a lightning bolt down my spine.

Arm dropping off the back of the couch, I leaned forward and kept my gaze steady on hers. “Someone hurt you, birdy?” I asked quietly, steadily, no hint of the violent reaction churning and thrashing under the surface. “You can tell me who.”

I might not have given any outward hints, but there was a flicker in her eyes that told me she heard it anyway.

“Not physically,” she answered. “You can stow the caveman reaction for the time being.”

Hands clenched in tight fists, I managed to sit back again. “I can understand wanting more experience, in that case.”

She nodded. “I need someone to make me ... sexier. More worldly. Help me get enough confidence where I don’t feel like I’ll jump out of my skin if someone touches me.”

“And you think I can help you with that?” I asked in a rough voice.

After a visible swallow, Ruby nodded again, more slowly this time. “When I was out with ...”

“Jimmy James the hooker,” I finished.

She gave me a long look, but the edges of her mouth curled up slightly. “James. I didn’t feel comfortable. Not even a little. He tried to talk to me and ask me questions, and I could tell he was smooth and used to being charming with women, but ...” Her shoulders shook slightly.

“But he gave you the ick.”

Ruby blinked. “Yes. He did.”

I nodded gravely. “You can’t ignore the ick when it happens. There’s no overcoming that with the opposite sex.”

She leaned forward, urgency lighting her eyes. “I always feel like that, Griffin.”

My brows lowered. “Always?”

Then she paused, sucking in a sharp breath. “Except with you, much to my surprise.” Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. “I’m not attracted to you, don’t worry. It’s nothing like that.”

“Nothing?” I asked with a slight grin.

“No. You are not even remotely my type.”

“Please, don’t feel like you need to spare my ego.”

“Your ego will be just fine no matter what I ask of you,” she said confidently.

I blew out a slow breath. “And that is?”

“I’m asking you to help nerdy birdy, who only knew how to watch the boy she crushed on from up on a tree branch.”

Her eyes. Holy shit. I couldn’t look away, but the brutal vulnerability in her face made me want to shift backward or something. Hide from what I was seeing there.

“Sometimes I think I’m still stuck in that tree.”

It was that discomfort in the face of her naked emotions that pushed me to say what I said next.

“God, I wish you’d had better taste than to crush on my brother. This is really killing the vibe for me.” I motioned to my face. “I look exactly like him. Didn’t you have a little crush on me too?”

“No. You annoyed me too much.”

“Gee, thanks.”

She leaned forward again, like she couldn’t help herself. “Don’t you see? That’s what makes this perfect. You’re safe. You need something to do while you’re here, and in two weeks you’ll be gone.”

I wasn’t even sure Ruby knew what she was asking of me. It felt huge. Massive. World altering. And the weight of it felt like more than I could carry for someone like her.

Ask me to steal a football from someone to win a game? I’m your fucking man.

Take some almost-naked pictures for a magazine cover? Not a problem.

I could do a whole lot of things well, with money and pressure coming from all angles. But for some reason, this quiet, tiny woman asking me to help her was terrifying, because for the first time, she was looking up at me like I was something—someone—important.

Before saying anything, I studied her for a moment. “I’m not sure I’m the best person for this.”

“Why not? You know what men want, you know women ...,” she said. “Lots of women.”

“Not lots,” I muttered. “A healthy amount for a single, moderately attractive man—”

“Professional athlete who makes millions of dollars a year,” she supplied. “You’re confident. You wouldn’t be doing this for money, so there’s no legal gray area. And most importantly ...” She locked eyes with me in such a way that I actually felt a little breathless. “You won’t fall in love with me.”

I reared back, my head spinning. “That’s the most important thing?”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you doing all this so you can fall in love?” I asked, almost violently curious despite my best efforts. “Isn’t that what you’d want from all this?”

Ruby shook her head. “No. I have no interest in love.”

“Really?”

The skepticism in my tone had her crossing her arms. “You don’t believe me?”

“No, I just ... I’m shocked, is all.” My gaze tracked over her face, and sure enough, she looked really fucking serious. “Most women—”

She held up her hand. “Please stop right there. Any time a man starts a sentence with ‘most women,’ he’s probably wildly off base with whatever is going to come out of his mouth.”

I shifted slightly in my seat. “Not wildly. I thought my imagined harem of women and the feminine understanding that brings is why you wanted my help.”

Ruby ignored me. “Besides, I am not most women.”

“That is abundantly clear.”

By the look on her face, she didn’t appreciate my dry tone. I chuckled under my breath. “Sorry. Okay, so you don’t want love, you just want ...”

“I want to know what it all feels like,” she said quietly. “My hope is that experiencing something, even for a short time, is enough to satisfy the part of me that feels like I’m missing out. It doesn’t mean I need it forever.”

Every once in a while, someone unwittingly hits on a truth you can’t really put a name to yourself.

That’s how I felt about everything.

I hated missing out on things. Experiences or parties or trips. That’s why feeling stuck in one place, feeling chained down, brought out the worst side of me. Why I accepted stupid dares like climbing a bell tower while I was drunk and naked because my friends didn’t think I would. When that feeling curled around my insides, I stopped thinking about what might happen next. Because if I ignored it, if I shoved it down, I felt like a little kid who pressed his nose to the window but wasn’t allowed out.

Was that how Ruby felt? If she saw a couple together?

Like she was separate. Kept apart. Maybe it was something in her own brain that held her back, or whatever had happened to her in the past. But I hated the idea that she did.

For whatever reason, whatever part of my teenage years involved her sitting quietly in the background, I hated the idea that Ruby Tate felt like less in any single way.

There it was.

The spike of interest, the spiraling sensation of challenge that wrapped itself around my spine. Ignoring this offer was all but impossible, now that I’d gotten a glimpse of what she’d been hiding. It was too delicious. Too intriguing to pass up.

Teach her how to make a man want her?

Let’s fucking go. I’d have the single men of Colorado falling at her fucking feet before I packed my bags.

I leaned forward in the same way she had, and to my surprise, she held her ground. “So that means you won’t fall in love with me either, yeah?” She opened her mouth to speak, and I gently laid a finger over her lips. Her head snapped back, and I brushed my finger over my thumb, where my skin still tingled from the softness of her bottom lip. “I’m extremely lovable, so you might want to think this over.”

She rolled her eyes. “I think I’m safe.”

“Lessons,” I said slowly. “You’re going to do whatever I say, and we’ll get you ready for your Librarians Gone Wild phase by the end of the two weeks, huh?”

“If you ever call it that again, I will slap you.”

“Kinky, but not my thing, birdy.” I stood from the couch and set my hands on my hips. Warily, she stood as well. “I’m usually the one who likes to do the spanking, but we can talk about those things later, once we’ve gotten to know each other better.”

Her cheeks were flame red. “That is not what I need to learn from you.”

“I’m always open to renegotiating,” I said generously.

Ruby sniffed. “Regardless. I think we can still be friendly and professional. I just ... I just need some guidance, is all. A friend would tell me I’m not doing anything wrong and I shouldn’t change who I am, but ... maybe I need someone who’s willing to use a firmer hand.” The words dangled in the air, and the moment she realized what she’d said, Ruby pinched her eyes shut. “Do not make a spanking joke; you know that’s not what I meant.”

“I am aware, yes,” I said magnanimously.

She sighed. “So you’ll help me?”

Stroking my jaw as I studied her, I didn’t even attempt to stifle the bright flame of interest. A game plan started forming in my head before I could stop it. I stuck my hand out between us. With a deep breath, she placed her much smaller hand in mine, and a grin immediately spread over my face. This was going to be fun.

“Ruby, you just got yourself a teacher.”