“Nope. I’d have remembered it. No doubt about that.” Ryan’s words were barely uttered between his still slightly parted lips. His gaze never left hers.
“Ryan?” Kara interjected.
If he heard her, he didn’t acknowledge it.
Lindsey held her breath, unable to break her gaze from his, mesmerized even more by his deep voice than she had been by his good looks. His words flowed over her skin in the same way Alejandro’s did, as if he too spoke another beautiful Latin language.
Her skin warmed, and her cheeks once again heated and flushed for the umpteenth time tonight. What the hell was wrong with her? If she didn’t know any better, she’d think she was in heat or something like some kind of animal. How could two people drive her so utterly mad with lust in such a short time? And one of them was in the other room. Her mind screamed the words as though through clenched teeth.
“Ryan.” Kara tried again to break the spell.
Finally, he glanced her way, but made no effort to move into the room farther.
“I think you have met. Didn’t you? Weren’t you with Justin the night we met? At Boot Scooters? In May?” No one spoke. “Lindsey was with me that night.” She looked up at the ceiling, trying to recall the details, a fact Lindsey only conjured from her peripheral vision. Her gaze was still locked on the mystery clone in the doorway. “Maybe you didn’t actually ‘meet’ now that I think about it, but she was with me. Ryan?”
“We didn’t meet, no. Are you sure she was with you?”
“I was,” Lindsey muttered. “What difference does it make?” Why was everyone acting so weird?
The black hole she’d fallen into kept getting wider.
“Well,” Kara continued, ambling slowly over toward Ryan, “the bar was crowded. It was late, dark, loud.”
What the hell is Kara rambling about?
Kara directed all her energy toward Ryan. She tugged his arm and pulled him to the other side of the island where Lindsey still sat propped on a stool. She’d threaded her feet around two legs of the chair and now gripped them with all her might as if the pressure might cause reason to return to her otherwise upside-down existence. To no avail. The wooden stool legs dug into her shins, probably leaving an indentation, but the world still spun off its axis.
“Shouldn’t have made a difference,” Ryan whispered in Kara’s direction out of the side of his mouth. He didn’t take his gaze from Lindsey, and now leaned against the cool surface of the island, his face only a foot from hers.
If someone would please throw that glass of ice water over her sometime soon, she’d surely wake from this bizarre dream. Her legs began to tremble and even her fingers shook. She gripped the edge of the counter to steady herself.
“I’m Ryan. Justin’s brother. Pleased to meet you.” He didn’t move a millimeter. “Not sure how I managed to not notice you at the bar that night, but…”
He looked at her like he could eat her. She sensed he had placed her on a pedestal to rival most famous statues. Like she belonged to him, and he to her.
Alejandro… Hello, earth to Lindsey.
“I guess we were both too busy making sure Kara and Justin collided.”
“I guess.” He didn’t believe the words. His brow furrowed as he merely muttered them. But why? Again, what difference did all this make?
Kara gripped Ryan’s arm, trying to get his attention. Lindsey finally managed to separate her gaze from its locked position on this new object of her ever-increasing lust. She looked at her friend, confusion warring with her ability to reason.
“Ryan. Everyone else is in the living room, including Kara’s date, Alejandro.”
That got his attention. Finally he broke the spell, yanking his face toward Kara. His eyes spoke volumes. His mouth opened and closed, but no words came out.
And that’s when the other three men walked into the room.
*
Meanwhile…
“Dude. I can’t believe it. You stud.” The moment the ladies had left, Alejandro was regaled with questions. Starting with Justin. “Did you know immediately? When are you going to tell her? Are you staying in the States, then?” The three men stood and came together in the center of the room.
Alex’s head started to spin, a permanent grin pasted to his face. The last fifteen minutes had been intense since he’d arrived with Lindsey only to find he’d been correct concerning his suspicions about this farm and its inhabitants. He’d known as soon as they opened the car door. There were dozens of wolves living and working in the area. He could even hear some in their natural form running in the woods behind the house, calling to each other.