Resisting Ryder(48)

“You just can’t be alone, can you?” Ryder laughed. “Pretty soon you’ll invite your family out and then the rest of the city of Coleville.”

“No way,” Stormy giggled. “I left that place for a reason.”

Ryder sat down next to her on the couch and put his arm behind her back. His penetrating hazel eyes seemed to pierce right through her.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Stormy asked. “All intense.”

“I just can’t believe you’re really here,” he mused. “It doesn’t feel real.”

Stormy pinched his arm. “I’m here. This is real.”

“I could just stare at you for days,” he said, smitten.

Stormy remembered a time when she felt the same way about Jett, but she knew for her own good she needed to stop comparing the two. It wasn’t fair.

“That’s creepy and sweet all at the same time,” she replied. “But now I’m always going to be wondering if you’re just admiring my extraordinary beauty or if I have something stuck in my teeth.”

He leaned down and kissed her lips softly. He traced her delicate jawline with his finger and then nuzzled his nose into her hair, breathing her in.

Stormy wasn’t used to getting this much attention from guys, and she wasn’t sure where it was all coming from. For years she had been single without so much as a second look from anyone as she pined day after day, month after month for Hayden. The minute Jett fell in love with her, he insisted on marrying her. The minute Jett married her, Hayden became obsessed with trying to get her back. And the moment she was widowed and met Ryder, he fell hard for her.

What’s so damn special about me? She wondered. As far as she knew, she was the same girl she’d always been, but for whatever reason, Jett set off some sort of domino effect.

“You’re intoxicating,” he said. “I don’t know what it is about you, but you’ve just drawn me in.”

“Oh, geez,” they heard a guy’s voice say from the opposite hallway. Zander was strutting towards the kitchen from his room. “Give me a break.”

“Shut up, man,” Ryder said to Zander. “I think I’ve seen your smooth moves in action more times than I’d care to admit.”

Zander laughed as he rifled through the refrigerator and pulled out some leftovers.

“How you liking LA so far, Stormy?” he asked.

“So far so good,” she said. She still felt a little shy around Zander for some reason, maybe because she felt like she was on his turf. She figured it would be a while before she could truly make herself feel at home in the condo with him there.

“How long are you staying here?” he asked.

“Oh, uh, um,” she stammered.

“As long as she needs,” Ryder interjected. “She has to find a job and then an apartment. She’s a nurse. Know of any nursing jobs?”

“Um, check the hospital, man. I don’t know,” Zander said with a mouthful of some sort of food. He grabbed his plate and took it back to his room.

“He pretty much hangs out in there all day,” Ryder said. “He’s harmless, really. Take everything he says with a grain of salt. I think he was dropped on his head as a baby or something.”

Stormy laughed. “Does he work at all?”

“He’s our secretary,” he said. “He spends most of his days doing things for the club and most of his nights down at the bar, getting hammered and cruising for a good piece of ass.”

“How are you two even friends?” she asked. “You seem like polar opposites.”

“We were both recruited at the same time,” he said. “We just sort of clicked. We were both scared and trying to prove ourselves. We had some good fights, but we came out of it as best friends. We’ve lived together ever since.”

“Ah, I see,” she replied. “Brooklyn and I always talked about living together, but she’s too crazy for me. We’d probably fight like cats and dogs. She’s a lot like Zander.”

“When you live with someone, you just have to make adjustments,” he said. “It’s give and take. You get used to things and you figure out a way to make it work.”

“Jett was the first person I ever lived with outside of my family,” she said. “I thought it was going to be weird at first, but it was just effortless. We clicked somehow. It was almost too easy.”

Ryder winced at the mention of Jett’s name.

“Sorry,” she said as she saw the pained look on his face. “Should I not talk about him with you?”

She figured he was still grieving. That or he didn’t want to be reminded of the man she loved more than anything in the world.