Double Take Seduction – by Lisa Rayne #5
“And even though I saw Justin first, and if I had a choice, it’d be Justin I’d want to go out with, these two knuckleheads feel they have the right to make the choice for me.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Yeah, it is.” She glanced at her vibrating phone and hit the ignore button when she saw Marcus’s name on the screen. “Besides, I could never go out with Julian now that I’ve seen you two together.”
Mac tucked her bottom lip between her teeth. “It’s not about me. I just don’t want either of them to get hurt or for them to be at odds with each other. Especially not over you. It would make everything awkward.” She broke eye contact. “It’s just better if we all remain friends.”
She stared at her friend silently for several minutes. “Yeah, okay,” she said curtly and turned to the mirror.
They’d leave it at that for now. Clearly, Mac wasn’t ready to discuss her feelings. Maybe she hadn’t even admitted them to herself.
Mac left, and Ryder touched up her lipstick.
Another drink sounded really good right now.
More drinks and dancing would be no substitute for how she’d originally planned to end her evening, but she’d been told to stand down.
Not something she was used to doing. Life was too short not to go for all your dreams and desires.
If she saw it and wanted it, she went for it.
She thought about the soft smile and planes of muscled athleticism she’d hoped would be coming home with her tonight and clenched her thighs together. She’d never do anything to hurt Mac, so she’d play Switzerland with the twins. At least ... she’d try .
Trying turned out to be harder than she expected.
When she returned to the table, her attraction to Justin proved too strong to ignore, and Mac’s unease over her becoming some kind of twin-wrecker took all the fun out of the evening.
She needed to ditch the Three Amigos. She couldn’t take much more of them tonight.
Her phone buzzed, and she picked it up from the table to see another message from Marcus.
She really needed to hire that lawyer quick, fast, and in a hurry.
She hit the button to dim the phone display.
She’d had enough ex drama for the day, too.
Taking it as a sign she needed to make an exit, she reopened the phone and pulled up a rideshare app.
“Something wrong?” Justin felt Ryder tense beside him when she’d checked her phone.
Whatever that message was had intensified her already dwindling mood. He watched her hands as she pulled up the Uber app.
He placed two fingers on the inside of her wrist to get her attention. “Hey,” he said softly. “Talk to me.”
A small thrill coursed through him when goose bumps pebbled up her forearm and her pulse sped up beneath the pads of his fingers. She glanced down at them but didn’t pull away.
“Marcus, again?” Kenzie asked.
Ryder nodded.
“Who’s Marcus?” he and Jules asked at the same time.
“Her ex,” Kenzie supplied. “He’s fighting her over the house they built on the lot she bought when she first moved here.”
He didn’t like the sound of that.
“No matter,” Ryder finally said. “Look, guys, it’s been fun, but Imma head out.”
“You’re not taking an Uber,” he said, perhaps a little too forcefully based on the say-what? look Ryder shot him. “I’ll give you a ride home. We’re not letting you get in the car with some stranger this time of night.”
“ No. ” This time it was Kenzie and Jules who spoke at the same time.
Kenzie glanced at Jules before telling Ryder, “I’ll take you home. No problem.”
Ryder stood. “Don’t be silly. The night’s still young. No reason you can’t stay and enjoy the rest of it.”
Kenzie stood as well.
“Sit down, Mac,” Ryder insisted. “I’m not getting in the car with you, and your twins are safe.” She strode off without looking back.
“What was that about?” He stared at Kenzie.
She plopped back down. “I fucked up.”
His and Jules’s eyebrows rose. Kenzie rarely ever cursed.
“But she’ll be alright. She’ll talk to me in a few days.” She stared wistfully after her friend. The sadness on her face suggested she wasn’t quite sure about that.
Jules’s hand went to her neck and rubbed.
Justin stood. “Look, I’m not going to let her take a rideshare home.” Before Jules could say anything, he raised his hands preemptively. “I’m just going to give her a ride home and drop her at the door. That’s it. I get that nothing’s changed.”
Jules nodded then redirected his attention to Kenzie. Jules was better suited to make her feel better. Those two had always been closer than she and him.
He rushed outside and spotted Ryder checking her phone. “Cancel it.”
She looked up. “What?”
“Cancel the ride. I’m taking you home.”
“Oh really? Doesn’t Julian have dibs on taking me home?”
He flinched.
“Yeah. I know. Go back inside, Twin. I’ve been given strict instructions not to get in between you and your brother.” She looked back at her phone, checking the arrival time of her driver. “As if I ever would,” she mumbled, still looking at the screen.
He gently took the phone from her hand and cancelled the ride. Grabbing her other hand, he headed them toward the parking lot. “We’ll talk about it on the drive.”
The warmth of her palm against his settled him as they walked.
The simple pleasure of holding hands with this woman surpassed the entirety of the best five dates he’d ever had.
Though her quiet stoicism made clear she’d not let go of whatever was bothering her, she continued to hold his hand until he assisted her into his car.
Watching her slide into his low-slung, luxury sports car gave him a very nice view of those long, gorgeous legs and pretty feet accented by glittery, silver nail polish and see-through heels.
Need swamped him. But since he’d just promised to keep his hands to himself, he looked away at the too-tempting thought of what those beautiful legs would feel like wrapped around his hips.
When they merged onto the highway, she looked over at him. “So? You want to tell me about this game you and your brother play?”
“It’s not a game.”
“Sounds like a game to me.”
His hand tightened on the gearshift at her blasé comment. “It’s a rule we put in place as the result of a fight we had over a woman. We unknowingly ended up dating her at the same time. Turns out we’d not only both been dating her but also sleeping with her.”
“Ouch,” she said, sounding genuinely sympathetic.
They were in their late thirties now. The embarrassment surrounding the reason for the rule had long since dissipated, but talking about it made him feel exposed, nonetheless.
“When I first found out, I blamed Julian, thinking he had to have known.” He shifted gears and changed lanes.
“I’d thought myself in love with Vivian.
The riff lasted almost a year. Eventually, we discovered the woman had done it intentionally, setting out to experience what it would be like to bed twins.
Jules and I made up, of course, but we decided to put a plan in place to guarantee no woman ever came between us again. ”
“So I’m obligated to fuck Julian because some ho in your past got her jollies by being a lowdown bitch?”
He suppressed a grin at her blunt comment. “You’re not obligated to fuck either of us.”
“It’s a high-handed way of making the decision for a woman. It assumes the woman herself doesn’t have a preference. And I do.”
He jerked his gaze to hers.
“Eyes on the road,” she commanded before she looked away. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter anyway.”
It did to him. “It matters.”
“Nah. But it would have been nice if you guys had considered that some women don’t find you interchangeable.” Wrapping her arms around herself, she leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes. She was done talking to him.
Taking her skinny dress straps into consideration, he turned down the air conditioner.
What she’d said did make him think. He hadn’t noted it at the time, but she’d called him by name when she and Kenzie first arrived at the bar.
She’d known which twin he was. No hesitation.
No doubt. Most people outside his family couldn’t do that.
She’d only called him Twin when she’d gotten upset.
Well, damn. Kenzie hadn’t been the only one who’d fucked up tonight.
When they got to her house, she refused to let him walk her to the door. So he waited in the car until she got inside and he saw a light come on upstairs. Sitting there staring at what he assumed was her bedroom window, he pondered what it would take for him to get a do-over.
Tucking her phone into the side pocket of her leggings, Ryder padded barefoot to her home office to work on a design proposal for the new library center in development a few miles from her house.
She’d fallen in love with the library project after reviewing the plans.
The building’s setting amongst mature trees and floor-to-ceiling windows with direct views to the outdoor spaces reminded her of the main Altadena library back home.
She was waiting on the lawyer she’d hired to call with an update on the latest offer to Marcus.
In the meantime, she’d keep her mind occupied with her attempt to win her first commercial contract.
A few hours later, she had her hands full of swatches and boards as she cleaned up the mess she’d made during her creative hyperfocus, and of course, that’s when her phone rang.
She dropped everything onto the nearest chair to free her hands, rushing not to miss the call in case it was her lawyer.
The deep voice on the other end was anything but.
“Don’t hang up this time. Please ,” Justin said.