Chapter 2
TWO
Addison
I wanted a cardigan. No, I wanted an oversize hoodie and a pair of sweats and my hair in a messy knot on the top of my head while digging into a bowl of steaming hot ramen because the salad I’d scarfed down a few hours ago wasn’t nearly enough to hold me over. And while I slurped up the piping hot soup, I wanted to listen to Ridge talk. I wanted to feel his gaze on my face.
I wanted to smile and have him tell me there was a green onion dangling on my lip and have the two of us laugh about it.
In a perfect world, all of that would be coming true.
What I didn’t want was to be practically naked while I sat in front of him, the air-conditioning making my nipples hard, the room so dark and uncomfortable that it felt like I was in a straitjacket and there were bars between us.
The only thing that made it better was his eyes.
My God, Ridge had kind eyes. They were the first thing I’d noticed when he met me at the bottom of the stage. They were a cobalt blue with navy flecks around the outer edge.
A combo of shades that was so rare together.
I wished I could see the color of them now while he shifted in his seat, getting ready to answer the question I’d just asked.
A question I was dying to hear the answer to.
“Why am I interested?” he said. “Telling you you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen is easy. That’s the obvious answer, but it’s not my answer even though it’s true.”
His charm went beyond his appearance despite him being the handsomest man I’d ever seen. It went deeper than his words.
It was his gentleness I could feel.
A tenderness that I wouldn’t have expected in a man like him.
“Keep going,” I encouraged.
“You know, it’s one thing to find you attractive, it’s a whole other thing to want to know your story. To look at you and wonder how you take your coffee and what you order for breakfast. To want to know what type of outfit makes you feel the sexiest—not what I find the sexiest on you. To want to know what you do when you crawl into bed at night, whether you read from a tablet, or scroll your phone, or shut it all off and cover your eyes with a mask.” He moved his arms to his chest. “It took only a second of looking at you, and that’s what I was thinking. To know there was something far deeper in those light-brown eyes than what I was seeing on the surface.” He paused. “That’s the how. That’s the why. And that’s the when.”
A response that completely took me off guard.
Most guys my age would have stopped at the beautiful part and would have used hot instead. But I had a feeling Ridge was older, somewhere in his thirties, not his mid-twenties, like me.
“If you learned all of that about me,” I said, “what would it tell you?”
He shook his head. “It’s not what it would tell me. It’s what it would show me.” He set his hands on his thighs, clenching them for a second before they lay flat. “I’m not looking to change you, Addy. I just want to get to know you better.”
Another shocker.
As though I were an end piece with straight edges and a dip in the middle and he was the next row, measuring to see if his bubbled-out piece fit with mine.
But why?
That was what I couldn’t understand.
I was an actress onstage, and he was paying for a show. How did he know he would even like what was beneath those light-brown eyes?
Still, I had to give him applause for his creativity. “You’re more than just a handsome face, Ridge. Has anyone ever told you that before?”
He laughed.
Not just a chuckle. He really laughed. And the sound was so sweet that it made me laugh.
“I like you.”
His admission came when we were both almost silent.
“You can’t like me in a place like this. Feelings are forbidden.”
“I’ll like you when we’re outside of this place. In fact, I’m positive I’ll like you even more.”
My hair fell into my eyes, and I didn’t push it back. “I doubt that.”
“Why don’t we leave and find out?”
I stared at him, at the little parts of his face that I could make out in the faint light. Ash-brown hair that was longer and messy on the top, like I’d just run my hands through it. Scruff that fell past his jawline and onto his neck. He hadn’t taken the time to shave that part before he went out, which told me he didn’t care enough. He hadn’t come here to meet a woman; he’d come to celebrate with his friends, so shaving wasn’t exactly needed. Below his face was an outline of muscle that I could see through his clothes, a style that was more Malibu than LA.
And his scent, I couldn’t get enough. It was uncommon, like his eyes. An aroma that reminded me of a place where the trees met the waterline. A little earthy, a little salty, and a little spicy.
What Ridge was showing me was that he was everything I looked for in a man … if I was looking for one.
I needed to get through this season of my life, the next couple of months being the most complicated with everything I had going on—starting with the fact that I was working here—and then maybe I could consider dating.
Intrigued? Yes.
Enjoying myself? Absolutely.
Mentally prepared for something? That was where things became muddy.
“I can’t leave,” I told him. “I’m scheduled to work until closing.”
“But I paid for the entire night, which means you’re not on the stage and you’re not out on the floor. In your boss’s eyes, they’ve already lost you for this shift. Why would it matter if you left?”
He had a point. It wouldn’t matter, especially because I would technically be spending the rest of the evening in here with him and the club had already gotten their cut of what Ridge had paid me.
But could I really leave with him?
Did I want to?
“Where would we go?” I glanced down at my body. “When I’m dressed like this?”
“Did you wear that to work?”
Another point.
Of course I hadn’t worn this. I’d changed after I arrived.
I didn’t know what I was thinking. He somehow got my brain all twisted around—and I wasn’t thinking.
“All I have with me are workout clothes. Yoga pants. A tank top. A zip-up sweatshirt?—”
“Since I’m assuming you don’t want to come back to my place—even though I make one hell of a mac and cheese”—he laughed—“we can go to this little hole-in-the-wall restaurant that’s not far from here. They have the best ramen I’ve ever had in my life.”
My eyes bugged, my mouth hanging open for several seconds before I voiced, “Did you just say ramen?”
“I did.”
Out of all the food choices, he had gone with one of my favorites and just what I was craving.
How did he know?
Was he somehow inside my head?
“Sigh,” I drew out. “It’s impossible for me to turn down a good bowl of ramen.”
“It’s like I read your mind …”
The only things missing were the sweatpants, although yoga pants were just as cozy, and the messy knot—I’d opted to leave my hair down even though it reeked of the strip club. There was so much perfume sprayed in the back room where we all got ready that when I left each shift, I smelled like I worked at a scent shop. Everything else—the company, the ramen, the iced green tea—was beyond perfect.
Maybe too perfect.
Which was why I hadn’t kept my eyes off Ridge, stealing glances at him at every red light while I’d driven us to the restaurant and the whole time we’d been here.
Where were this man’s flaws?
What was off about him? Because something had to be off. He couldn’t be this fabulous … could he ?
“My daughter loves it here,” he told me, twirling some sun noodles around his chopsticks. “We come almost every Sunday. We’ve tried different ramen places around town, but this is her favorite.”
“She has good taste. The ramen is incredible.” I savored the soft-boiled egg, my eyes closing as I chewed. “I’d want to come here every Sunday too.”
He smiled, running his thumb across his lips.
Why was that simple movement—that pure, innocent swipe—so sexy?
“That’s our day-date day—that’s what she calls it. We go to the park, we come here for lunch, and then we go to the horse barn.”
I recrossed my legs, my knee briefly grazing his. “She rides?”
“She recently got into it. Little did I know, when she first started, it would take up so much time. Gymnastics was a few hours a week—tops. Swimming was the same. But my little one doesn’t want to just ride, she wants to help bathe the horses and brush them and feed them, and we end up being there until dinner.” His finger stilled by the corner of his mouth. “ Daddy, they need my tender touch, or they can’t do their horsey-riding things , she tells me.” He shook his head, smiling. “How can I say no to that? She has a soft spot for animals, and I have a soft spot for her cuteness.”
As though my heart hadn’t already been pounding, it was now on the verge of exploding. Not just from the voice he used when he imitated her, but his whole demeanor.
“I don’t mean to talk about her.” His hand touched my arm, the warmth of his skin almost a shock compared to how cool it was in the restaurant. However, it wasn’t the temperature that sent vibrations through me. “I know it must be boring to hear about someone else’s kid.”
I knew he’d made a statement that I needed to respond to. I just couldn’t yet.
There was something besides words that was taking over my body.
A feeling that had come out of nowhere.
It started in the spot that he’d held for only a second and traveled.
To my chest.
To my stomach.
To— oh God —that throbbing place between my legs.
“It’s not boring at all,” I whispered.
“Do you have kids?” He held the porcelain spoon on top of the soup, waiting for my answer.
“No. I’m only twenty-four. That’s not to say I’m too young for kids—I’m certainly not—but I’d like to be closer to my late twenties before it happens. And I want it to happen. I want lots of kids.”
He chuckled. “How many is lots?”
I finished a bamboo shoot and gave him a grimace with lots of teeth. “Four to five. I’ve always wanted to be a mom, and I want a giant family.”
“That’s a hefty range all right.”
I wiped the corners of my mouth and returned my napkin to my lap. “It was just my sister and me growing up. We’re six years apart, so by the time I hit middle school, she had already graduated and was off for premed. Even though we’re super close, the age gap gave me only-child vibes. I guess it had its perks, but I want something different for my kids.”
He moved his spoon around, but didn’t take a bite. “Did you grow up around here?”
“I’m from the Bay area.”
“And what brought you south?”
“College brought me, and the weather made me stay. Let’s face it, the beaches are far better here.”
“Does that mean you surf?”
I exhaled. “I like to. I’m just not very good. But I’m game for anything on the water—paddleboarding, boating, Jet Skiing, parasailing. Put me near an ocean and give me lots of sun, and I’m a happy girl.”
His head bounced to a silent beat. “I like that.”
“Why are you so tan? Did you just travel somewhere exotic, or do you like the beach as much as I do?”
He set his spoon down. “I used to travel a lot, and then I became a father, and that changed, mostly because my daughter’s mother has a job that takes her out of town more often than she’s home. And then my dad got sick, and I didn’t want to go too far in case something happened. So, no, I haven’t recently been anywhere exotic, unless you count Malibu, and in that case, I’m there all the time.”
“Do you go there to surf?”
“No.” He clasped his hands by the side of his bowl. “I go there for work.”
I couldn’t even guess what kind of employment that would be. He wore a nice watch, but I couldn’t tell if his clothes were designer or if he’d bought them from Target. And since he and his friends had taken a party bus to the club, I had no idea what he drove.
Curiosity got the best of me, and I said, “What do you do?”
He chuckled. “Something that pays me plenty.”
I laughed with him. “I suppose I deserve that answer.”
“I work in the hospitality industry.”
I could probably push and get an exact explanation and title, but that would require me to open myself up a bit more. Now that we were outside the club, I found it easier to be myself, to say the things I wouldn’t have while we were in that private room. There, I needed to keep things as impersonal as possible. But here—here felt different. It felt weirdly natural. It felt easy with a heavy side of spark.
“How’s your dad now?” I raised my hand. “And if you don’t want to go into it, it’s okay, I get it.”
He was silent for a moment. “He’s gone.”
I could hear the pain in his voice.
“Ridge, I’m so sorry.” My hand found its way to the top of his arm. “I feel awful that I asked. I didn’t mean to make you talk about it.”
“Don’t feel awful. If I didn’t want to talk about it, I would have danced around the question—something I’m learning you’re very good at.” He winked.
But even with a gesture as cute as the one he’d just made, I could see how much the loss of his dad upset him.
“The good news is that he’s no longer in pain,” he continued. “Now, my siblings and I are just finding our own way of dealing with it. It happened three months ago, so it’s still fresh.”
“I can’t even imagine,” I said softly. “The thought …” I lowered my head. “I can’t even go there.”
“It’s rough.”
“How many siblings do you have?”
My hand left his arm when he took a drink of his iced green tea. “A younger sister and an older brother.”
“Do they live around here?”
I was surprised by how many questions I was asking. It seemed, once I got a taste, I needed more.
Like this ramen.
But where the soup had started to cool, Ridge was scalding hot.
“Their houses are less than a mile from mine, and we’re coworkers. Time spent together is something we’re not lacking in my family. We’re close in many ways.”
“I’m jealous. My sister lives in Dallas, and I don’t get to see her nearly enough. One day, I’m hoping she’ll transfer hospitals and come here to work—or at least somewhere in California so she’d be easier to get to.”
The waitress refilled our glasses, and as soon as she was gone, he asked, “What kind of medicine?”
“She’s an anesthesiologist, and let me tell you, she sees some wild shit.”
His hands unhooked, and he lifted his spoon, taking a mouthful of the broth. “How wild?”
There was only one other couple in the restaurant, so I didn’t really have to keep my voice down, but I lowered it while I said, “There’s a woman who’s addicted to swallowing batteries. Every month or so, she ends up in the emergency department with a battery or two or four”—my eyes widened—“in her stomach. And the thing is, she knows it requires surgery to get them out, yet she still swallows them.”
“Man”—he took a bite of a noodle and covered his mouth with his hand—“I can’t understand why she would swallow something so dangerous.”
“From there, things get a little spicier.”
“Like?”
I chewed my lip. “Broken light bulbs.”
“You’re telling me someone swallows a broken light bulb?”
I giggled. “No, I’m telling you someone uses a light bulb to get off and it happens to break in the process.”
He went silent. “You’re fucking kidding.”
“And the pieces of glass have to be surgically removed.”
“Dude, no.”
I devoured some fried nori. “But it gets worse—kinda. Because what I didn’t know—and maybe you don’t either—is that the butt acts like a suction cup, so once something is in there and the end is lost, you can’t go searching for it. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.”
“Surgery is the only way to get it out?”
I slowly nodded. “Yep.” I stirred the rest of the broth with my chopsticks. “This one lady had that happen during a vacation in Bali. She didn’t want to go to the hospital there, so she flew home—all of those hours sitting on a plane and probably having a layover and going through customs—with a dildo up her tush.”
“Jesus Christ.” He couldn’t stop laughing.
“I’ll stick with my job that pays like shit because no, thank you . Between the super-sad cases and the wild cases, I don’t know how she does it.”
“Whatever her reason is, I’m glad she does. We need people like her.”
“We do.” I quieted for a moment while I finished the last of my soup. “Bet you didn’t think we’d be discussing that tonight.”
“I didn’t anticipate tonight looking anything like this.” His hand landed on top of mine. “But I’m glad it did.”
His eyes were telling a much deeper story.
A story that didn’t just hit me at every angle.
It wrapped around me and squeezed the shit out of me.
“Ridge …”
“Tell me you’re not having fun. Tell me you haven’t laughed your ass off. Tell me I’m nothing like the man you assumed I was.”
I took a deep breath, taking in the blue of his eyes. Why did they have to be so beautiful? “I’m definitely having fun. I’ve most definitely laughed my ass off.”
I tried to force myself to look away, and I couldn’t. There was something drawing me to him, and I didn’t know what it was. His sweetness? His patience? The way he spoke about his daughter? His good looks? All of it?
“And you’re right, I don’t know what I assumed, but this wasn’t it.”
The table we were sitting at was tiny, a high-top that couldn’t have been more than a foot and a half wide, so it was easy for him to lift his hand and put it on my cheek. His thumb stroked my lips the same way he’d done to himself earlier. And each swipe sent a fire through me.
But that fire wasn’t burning; it was igniting, and those tingles were shooting straight through me.
“If you tell me there’s a green onion on my mouth, I might die,” I admitted.
“There isn’t.”
I should have felt relief in hearing that.
But I didn’t.
I was too worked up.
Too turned on.
Too … wet for this man.
My eyes closed for a second as a sensation passed through my body, one that was more intense than any kind of jolt I’d ever experienced before.
“What was that?” he asked when my lids opened. “I felt a shiver move through you.”
My head shook, but his hand stayed. “My way of reminding myself that I need to breathe.”
His chuckle was deep. Sexy. Gritty. But comforting at the same time. “You want me to kiss you. That’s why you’re having a hard time breathing.”
I was sure my face was reddening. “I never said those words.”
“You didn’t have to …”