“I would have gotten you a drink,” he said, tilting his head toward the coffee shop, “but I didn’t know how picky you were about your iced coffee.”
“You knew I liked iced coffee?”
“Your refrigerator looked like the cold case at a Starbucks.”
“Ah.” Unfamiliar warmth hit her in all the right places. Or the wrong ones, considering. “Thank you for meeting me.”
“You said you needed a hand,” he replied, like that made things non-negotiable.
She grinned through an unexpected pang. “I didn’t mean you didn’t have a choice in the matter.”
His expression softened. “And I didn’t mean to make you think that was the only reason I came. I owe you a lot for putting up with my brothers, but I’m glad to be here.”
“You’re glad?” The delicious warmth of bringing him any sort of pleasure had no place in the conversation, but there it was. She liked the feeling when she shouldn’t have, yet she couldn’t seem to shove it aside. “And here they had me thinking you didn’t like to go anywhere or do anything.”
He winced. “I’m not as bad as they make me sound. I’m not a recluse. I go places. I do things. I just don’t date.”
“Then your family is definitely too hard on you.” Even though she genuinely liked his family, she understood his frustration.
“Yeah,” he said, “but they have good intentions. And it’s gotten worse since my brothers settled down. I don’t think anyone was surprised that Crosby met someone, but he was an utter work-a-holic. Still is, but, he’s definitely less about work than he used to be. And Sawyer—” Ethan rolled his eyes. “Sawyer’s idea of a commitment was seeing the same woman twice, and we’re not sure that ever happened before Kelsie. I think hell froze over is a fair assessment of that situation, but Sawyer adores her. We all do.”
Somewhere deep inside, she felt a sad flutter. She didn’t want to settle down—and never had—but stepping into Ethan’s family for an afternoon had given her a glimpse into a world she hadn’t seen before. Growing up, her parents were too occupied by the wealth-and-society circuit to be the type of people one saw in Hallmark or Folgers commercials. Rue loved her brother, and in many ways he was her best friend. But while they maintained the long-standing traditions they’d begun years ago, they’d gone their separate ways as adults—he to Europe, and her to everywhere else. It wasn’t that she had anything against Europe, but she was drawn to the exotic. Still, their richly, hilariously combatant relationship was a mere tip of what she’d seen of the Chase family iceberg. A bit wistfully, she murmured, “I can see how they’d all want that for you.”
“I had it.” With those words, he looked away, and Rue didn’t say anything. There wasn’t much to say, at least not until he met her eyes and changed the subject. “So why was I summoned?”
“Ah.” Relief flooded her. Definitely a safer topic—one without land mines. “I have an ongoing project I’m working on, and it requires more than two hands. I usually have a friend help me out, but she had a thing come up, so…” She grinned.
Some of the wariness faded from his eyes, replaced by curiosity. “I’m intrigued, and increasingly suspicious.”
He was intriguing and increasingly hot, was what he was. “There’s an animal rescue I work with. They’re small and nonprofit and have a budget of about zero, so to help them out, I go in and take glamour shots of the animals. Every time the new pictures are posted, there’s a big surge in…adoptions…”
She stilled. All of the color had drained from Ethan’s face. The man redefined white as a sheet.
“What did I say?” she asked.
“I thought you were a catalog photographer. And a travel ninja or adrenaline junkie or something.”
“Actually, I’m the assistant to a catalog photographer.” As much as she wished she could walk away from that particular gig, a smile toyed at her lips. “It’s not my dream job. The world is a big place, and I want to see it all. I want to photograph it all. I want to tell stories through pictures. Do you have any idea how many people are born in this city and never leave it?”