Chapter 12

“She kissed me,” Evan said, shooting a look at Riley. He reached for her hand and towed her around the island to where Carl had set the tacos. “Let’s get something to eat. I’m starving.” He took the lid off the aluminum tray to expose tortillas, beef, pico de gallo, sour cream, guacamole, black beans, and Spanish rice. Evan’s stomach growled, as he hadn’t eaten since the billionaire brunch that morning. He couldn’t wait to tell Riley some of the stories from that meeting-slash-meal.

Carl left the kitchen, his footsteps quite loud on the stairs as he went up. Evan didn’t care. Carl wasn’t the boss of him, and he couldn’t dictate who Evan saw or liked or kissed.

Riley glanced out the doorway, and Evan braced himself for the questions. “You promised him you wouldn’t kiss me?”

“Tonight,” Evan clarified. “I was, I don’t know. Putting the ball in your court.” He cut a look at her out of the corner of his eye, but he couldn’t get a read on her with such a short look. “I feel like I’ve maybe come on too strong, and I didn’t want to freak you out.”

“Well.” She picked up a corn tortilla and spooned some sour cream onto it. “You did say you were going to call me and call me and call me. Almost sounded like a stalker.”

Evan scoffed, half a laugh in the sound somewhere. “I see what you mean. That wasn’t as romantic as I was hoping it would be.” Though, saying he wouldn’t give up on calling her was romantic for a song. He filed the lyrics away, hoping he’d remember to write them down later. He didn’t have to write things down immediately when they came to him. If the lyrics were good, he’d remember them. If not…well, he didn’t need lyrics even he couldn’t remember. Then no one would remember them.

Riley put her hand on his, and both of them stilled. “It was actually really romantic.” She looked up at him, sending Evan’s pulse crashing around his ribcage again. “I’m serious when I say most men stop calling after a couple of dates.”

“I really can’t imagine that,” he said as genuinely as possible. “I meant everything I said earlier.”

“I know you did.” She gave him a small smile, and they went back to assembling their food. “So.” She exhaled as she reached for a brown paper bag Evan hadn’t even seen his brother bring in. He wasn’t sure how long Carl had stood there and watched him kiss Riley, either. He’d probably spoken to him once or twice before Riley had jumped out of his arms.

“So,” he said as she took the chips and salsa over to the dining room table, along with her plate of tacos. He followed her and sat right across from her at the table.

“I’m not a brunette,” she said, her green eyes dancing with mischief.

“Oh, I see what tonight is. Confessional.” He bit into one of his tacos, glad they could talk about serious things and still tease.

“That’s right,” she said. “After my last break-up, I decided to go for a new look.”

“What color is your hair?” he asked.

“Red,” she said. “Sometimes I brighten up the blondes in it, and sometimes I don’t. So it goes from auburn to like, shockingly red sometimes.”

He tilted his head, trying to see her with red hair instead of the gorgeous mane of dark hair she currently sported. “I can’t see it.”

“And this isn’t my real hair. Well, some of it is. But I have extensions.”

Didn’t matter to Evan. He wanted to fist her hair in his fingers while he kissed her again. And again. So he simply nodded and took another bite of his taco.

“Okay,” she said with a big sigh. “What about you?” She dipped a chip and popped it into her mouth.

“What about me?” he asked.

“Oh, come on. I just told you a lot of stuff. How guys dump me all the time. So much that I changed how I looked. You’ve got to have something.”

Evan had something. He just wasn’t sure he wanted it on the table right now. But Riley was wearing that sexy swimming suit, and she had just shared some very vulnerable things with him.

“I actually have been married,” he said slowly, gauging her reaction. Anyone could read about his life online. Had she?

Those pretty eyes widened, and he had his answer. “Married? Wow.”

“I mean, I’m forty-two. I have some history.”

“Of course you do.”

“Her name was Kitty. I’m the most embarrassed about that.”

Riley snorted, the sound dying quickly. But her eyes danced with amusement, and Evan shrugged. “We were only married for a couple of years. I was thirty. I’ve been single for fifteen years now.”

“Any kids?” Riley asked, lifting her last bite of taco to her mouth.

“Nope,” he said. Thank goodness. He couldn’t imagine what Kitty would demand if they’d had kids together. As it was, he paid her plenty of money every month in alimony. She had traveled with him, supported him, and he’d paid for everything. But he only had to do it until she turned forty, and her birthday was coming up.

“Any serious relationships since Kitty?” Riley kept her face angled away from Evan, and he found her absolutely adorable.

“Not really serious,” he said. “I’ve been out with a few women, of course.”

“Let me guess,” she said. “You went out with them ‘a few’ times and stopped calling.”

Shock moved right through Evan’s whole system. “I travel a lot,” he said, hearing the excuse in his voice. He kicked himself the moment the words left his mouth, because yes, he did travel a lot.

Riley didn’t.

Why had he vocalized his temporary status on the island?

Riley was smart; surely she’d heard what he’d said, but she didn’t flinch. Just finished her chips and salsa while he wolfed down another taco.

“You want the tour now?” he asked, picking up her plate with his.

“Yep,” she said. “And then you need to change into your swimming trunks.”

Evan smiled to himself as he put their dishes in the sink. “I’m not sure I own swimming trunks.”

“Are you kidding me right now?”

He turned at the same time Riley strode toward him, pushing one palm against his chest. He started laughing and grabbed her wrist. “I’m not kidding.”

“You were wearing swimming trunks the other day,” she said. “When you showed up at my office unannounced?”

“Unannounced?” Evan made his voice as surprised as possible, while still chuckling. “I called first.” He pulled her tight against him, despite her struggles to get away. She started laughing too and gave up trying to get away from him.

Good thing too, because Evan wanted to kiss her again. He did, their smiles quickly matching up as she met him stroke for stroke. Heat built in his body, especially when Riley’s fingernails moved into his hair.

When he realized how out of control he felt, he pulled away, his breathing ragged and his heartbeat sprinting in his chest like he’d just ridden the lift up to the stage, and he could hear the crowd screaming behind him. They couldn’t see him. He couldn’t see them. The lights were moments away from turning on…

What a rush.

Kissing Riley was better. A thousand times better.

“Okay,” he said, pulling in the deepest breath he could. “This is the kitchen and dining room. There’s a mudroom over here.” He walked further into the kitchen to show her the mudroom. His motorcycle boots sat there. “Garage out there,” he said. “And there’s an outdoor shower this way.”

“An outdoor shower?” she asked. Her hand in his was so comfortable, and Evan turned to open the door opposite of the mudroom.

“Yeah,” he said. “The pool is out here too, so the shower is around the corner here.” He showed it to her. “Pool this way.” They walked around the edge of the house, the sky above them a glorious shade of gold and crimson that took his breath away.

He stepped through the gate to the pool deck, and Riley sucked in a breath. “This is a great pool.”

Evan had a pool at every house he owned, but he knew enough to keep his mouth shut about that. “I like it too,” he said. “We can go back into the house from here too.” He showed her the indoor shower room off the pool, which connected to the foyer.

“My bedroom down there,” he said, pointing past the shower room to the back corner of the house.

“Okay, so go change,” she said.

“Right now?”

“That’s right.” She pressed both hands against his chest. “I want to swim, and you’re not ready.”

“I thought you wanted a tour of the house.”

“I’ve seen what I want to see,” she said.

Evan wasn’t going to argue with her. If she wanted him to change so they could kiss in the swimming pool, he’d do it. He really didn’t own any swimming trunks, but he’d been distracted from telling Riley that he’d borrowed Brett’s that day on the beach. Didn’t matter now, and he changed quickly and returned to the foyer.

Riley wasn’t waiting for him there, but he found her standing in the formal living room, looking at picture of his family. “Did the house come furnished?” she asked.

“Mostly,” he said, looking down at the one thing he took with him everywhere. On every trip. Every tour. He pulled the picture out and set it on every desk in every hotel where he stayed. And now it was here.

“You were a cute kid,” she said, smiling up at him.

“That’s my mom, Chris,” he said. “And my dad, Chris.”

“They have the same name?”

“Yep.”

Riley giggled, leaning into him as if she couldn’t stand on her own. Evan really liked how she made him feel powerful, and strong, and like she needed him. He put his arm around her, because he felt like he needed her too. He hadn’t known it before entering that coffee shop, but he had a Riley-shaped hole in his life that was just now getting filled.

“Where do they live?” she asked.

“Georgia,” he said. “I’m from Georgia, if the band name didn’t give that away.”

“You don’t have a very strong Southern accent.”

“It comes out when I go home,” he said.

“And where in Georgia is home?”

“Green Grove,” he said. “My parents still live in the house where I grew up.” He could still see it in his mind too, though he hadn’t been back for a while. Touring was exhausting, and he thought he probably should go visit his parents at some point. Then he remembered he’d committed to Thanksgiving with them.

His first thought was to invite Riley, but he’d already made a pact with himself not to ask her out again. No way he was inviting her on a family trip during the holidays that was still two months away.

Nope. Not happening.

“It’s a big house,” he said. “Out in the country, near the Appalachian Mountains.”

“I don’t think of you as a country boy at all,” she said.

“We all have a little bit of country in us,” he said.

She cocked her head, finally tearing her eyes from the family photo he’d set on the piano in the formal living room. “Is that one of your songs?”

Evan laughed and tugged her away from the living room. “I don’t normally quote my own lyrics, I promise.”

“Yeah, let’s not make that a habit,” she said dryly.

“Let’s go swim,” he said. “The night is beautiful, and I want to see that swimming suit without that shirt covering it up.”

“It’s a see-through shirt,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Yeah, not quite.” He led her out to the pool, carefully peeling his shirt over his head. Riley made a girly squeak, and he watched her slide her eyes up and down his body. He was suddenly grateful for every squat he’d done, chin-up he’d growled through, and mile Jake had made him run.