It’s In His Kiss

Sephy stepped off the machine. ‘Can’t think of a better legally addictive stimulant, can you? Oh, crap,’ she put a hand up to her mouth, feeling all kinds of stupid. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to –’

‘Use the “A” word?’ Ryan shrugged. ‘An addict is what I am – what I’ll always be.’

‘Put a “recovering” in front of it and we’re all good here,’ Sephy said, and then was immediately worried. Aside from having Daisy’s best interests at heart, she wasn’t sure she should be telling Ryan how to talk about, or deal with, his problems. ‘Okay,’ she muttered, ‘Not my place, so sorry again.’

‘Relax. No offense taken. Come on. I know a great place around the corner that’s opened up. Or did you come in here for a quick workout before needing to be somewhere else?’

As Sephy eased into a couple of light stretches to cool down she determined to ignore the fact that she could feel Ryan’s eyes making a slow sweep of her again. Straightening up she confessed, ‘Actually I came in here hoping you would be around so that I could talk to you.’

The smile that lit up his face held such a potent reminder of the charming bad-boy she used to know that Sephy caught her lip between her teeth. She was under enough stress to be feeling like one sharp shock away from a meltdown as it was, so she pushed down the fear he was flirting with her.

As his eyes came up to meet hers she returned his stare steadily. Ryan’s old modus operandi had been to hide pain under slow, sure, wicked smiles and easy flirtation, so maybe that was what he was doing now.

‘I wanted to see how you were,’ she said, hoping her serious tone would cut through the mask.

‘Me? I’m fine.’

‘You are?’ Sephy searched his face for signs, but found it hard to get past that swagger of his. ‘Look, Heathstead is a small town. I heard about the breakup with Michelle and so I wanted to check. But if you say you’re fine…’

Ryan simply shrugged and went with, ‘Her loss, isn’t it?’

‘I guess.’ She supposed these days she didn’t deserve more than the ‘nothing touches me’ casual approach from him, but it irked that she recognised the attitude as one she had once mimicked to the max. ‘It must be hard, though,’ she pushed.

Ryan looked around the gym and then brought his gaze back to hers and lowered his voice. ‘You think I’m about to head for the nearest betting shop to numb the pain?’

‘Am I being silly? Do you really have this locked down?’ she pressed.

That slow grin teased as he leaned in and whispered, ‘How about if I admit that I’m going to extra meetings at the moment?’

‘Good.’ She took a subtle step back because it had been a long time since Ryan had whispered into her ear and it felt weird. ‘Is it helping?’

‘Well it’s certainly helping me not to gamble, at any rate.’

‘Great.’ Sephy pointed to the changing rooms. She could see she wasn’t going to get anywhere checking up on him in his place of work. ‘I’ll go grab my bag and we can head out for that coffee.’

Twenty minutes later Sephy peered over the top of her latte at Ryan and realised that agreeing to have coffee with him had upped the level of complication between them. Until now she had only met with him while Michelle, who had seemed nice enough, was there, or, with Daisy.

She decided he was going to have to put up with her butting in and came right out with, ‘Have you told Ethan about what’s happened?’

There was a flash of surprise in his eyes, but she couldn’t afford to let this go. Not if there was a chance he was struggling and had no one else to lean on. If Sephy had to step up and be there for him, well, hadn’t she had already implied she would, by agreeing to Ethan’s plan to help his brother all those months ago?

‘Ethan trusts me,’ Ryan said. He took a sip of his cappuccino, set it down on the hammered aluminium surface of the café table and added sombrely, ‘I understand why you might not.’

‘I’ll admit that this isn’t entirely comfortable territory for me.’

‘Trust me, it’s no picnic for me either. You think I want my ex stopping by to check I’m getting over a breakup simply because she doesn’t know me well enough to know whether or not I’ll relapse?’

‘Do you know yourself well enough to know whether or not you’ll relapse?’ she shot back.

Ryan laughed and the laughter seemed to relax something in him. ‘You know, I really never imagined you acting as my conscience. Although I admit you’re much prettier than the one I have.’

Again with the flirting and again she hoped it was simply a defence mechanism.

‘How about instead of seeing me as your conscience,’ she asked carefully, ‘you see me as a friend who has a vested interest in making sure you’re okay?’

‘How about you let me take you to dinner tonight and we discuss further how okay I am?’ Ryan replied, without missing a beat.

Sephy’s latte went down the wrong way. She hadn’t got this wrong. He was totally flirting with her. As she grabbed the napkin he held out to her, she blinked back her watering eyes, took in his giant grin and dragged in a steadying breath.

‘Ryan, I didn’t come here for a date. I came to check you were okay. For Daisy.’

At the mention of their daughter his face turned serious. ‘I’m not going to mess that up.’

‘Okay. Well, that’s good, then.’

‘So it’s a “no” to dinner?’

‘You’ve only just stopped seeing Michelle.’

‘Usually a woman thinks it’s a bonus when the man she accepts a dinner invitation from is single.’

‘I am not going to go out to dinner with you.’

She tried not to worry that she was making things harder for him, not easier. Luke had told her Ryan wasn’t her responsibility, but if she wanted him to have a good relationship with Daisy, he kind of was.

Sephy glanced to his hands holding his cup and making it look small. They were nice hands. They were hands that had travelled over every inch of her body, she remembered, taking a quick sip of coffee.

But they weren’t Luke’s hands, is that what it came down to?

Surreptitiously she swept her gaze over Ryan. The man managed a gym. He worked out. What was the matter with her that when she looked objectively at his body she didn’t see it in those banners sexing up her lingerie line?

‘You know, I thought it would be hard to see you like this,’ Ryan said, breaking into her inventory of his model looks.

‘This?’ she asked, hoping he wasn’t about to call her on her looking him over and use it to up the flirting.

‘You’re so different from how you were when we were –’

Oh. She couldn’t help the smile. ‘You mean when we were the ultimate cliché?’

He laughed. ‘I guess we were. The poor little rich kids running around town partying.’

‘It would be easier to look back on and not cringe if we had been much younger than we were.’ Sephy cleared her throat and raised her gaze to his. ‘We stayed with each other longer than we should have, Ryan. We fell into a lifestyle and had no one to pull us out of it.’

‘I guess having Daisy finally pulled you out of it,’ he said, nodding as he stared down at his coffee.

‘Having her made me grow up, yes.’

‘I wish I could tell you that if I’d stuck around I’d have grown up too.’