“She’s in,” Whitney said, awed disbelief in her voice. “Holy shit, she’s fucking in.” Whitney gripped Wes’s arm, drawing his gaze from the conversation to find Whitney’s eyes intense on him. “I want to know how she did that. I’m giving that trick to my next boyfriend before he meets Dad.”

That hit Wes funny, and he laughed loud and long. Christ, he felt good. So damn happy. So relaxed. So…complete. He turned and glanced at Rubi and found her—and his parents—smiling at him.

When she ended the conversation and started toward Wes, he opened his arm at his side to circle her shoulders. Rubi walked right into the embrace—no hesitation, no veil on that beautiful face. She was open, happy, and calm—at least as far as he could tell.

Wes kissed Rubi’s hair, then lifted his bottle toward his sister. “This is my sister, Whitney.”

Whitney shook Rubi’s hand. “That’s a record,” Whitney said, tilting her head toward her father. “You had him melting in five-point-two minutes.”

Smiling, Rubi asked, “How long does it usually take?”

Wes and Whitney exchanged a glance, grinned, and said, “Years,” at the same time.

That brought a round of laughter. “Welcome, Rubi. You’ve had a long day, so I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.” She set the beer down on the closest table and slapped Wes’s arm. “Good instincts, bro.”

She wandered toward the kitchen, slipped behind the counter, and started cleaning up.

Wes turned and circled Rubi’s waist. “Impressive wouldn’t come close to describing what you just pulled off within twenty minutes of walking in the door.”

“Exhausting might work.” Her gaze lifted from his chest to his eyes. “I’m sorry, but I feel like I’m going to fall over. And I’m dying to lick that beer off your—”

“Sweetheart…” Wes’s mother approached and laid her hand on his back. Rubi bit the inside of her lip but couldn’t completely hide the sexy grin. “Rubi’s got to be tired after her day. Settle her in the guest room on the second floor, would you?”

His gaze searched Rubi’s, but he couldn’t read it. “Mama, I think Rubi might be more comfortable—”

“That sounds blissful,” Rubi said to his mother. “Thank you so much.”

“Absolutely. I’m glad you’re here.” His mother leaned in and gave Rubi an intimate hug. Then turned to Wes with a familiar I-mean-business glance. “You’re in Wyatt’s old room, son.”

Wes did the only thing he could. He nodded with a soft “Yes, ma’am.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Wes’s sweet, reverent words kept playing in Rubi’s head. And kept her smiling.

She lay in the comfy queen bed, surrounded by down pillows, down blankets, and colorful quilts, staring at the ceiling in the dim light cast from the private bathroom. She was overwhelmed by the complex day. She’d gone from nonstop invasions of privacy in LA to a cocoon of safety in Missouri—if not exactly tranquility. Downstairs, things had quieted. The kids had been the first to disappear, then slowly the multiple voices.

In the quiet, without the ocean waves to soothe her, thoughts overwhelmed her mind, emotions swamped her heart. She was truly exhausted but far too wound up to sleep.

She’d had different ideas for unwinding tonight, and they hadn’t included being alone in bed. That little quickie in the car hadn’t been near enough to satisfy her. She was beginning to feel like a nymphomaniac. She’d always walked away from other men satisfied with one fuck. But with Wes, the more she got, the more she wanted.

Rubi picked up her phone on the nightstand and texted Desiree.

RUBI: Can you put in another offer on Dolph’s house?

After a couple of minutes her phone vibrated:

DESIREE: Of course. Same amount as the last offer?

Rubi chewed on her thumbnail a moment.

RUBI: Up it half a million. But that taps me out.

DESIREE: Done.

She rolled to her side and cuddled a pillow close to the front of her body. Nothing would come of the offer, she was sure. But Wes was right; she couldn’t win if she didn’t play. Maybe Dolph would mix up the offers, and Rubi would get it by accident.

A click sounded, and Rubi glanced at the door. Wes slipped into the room—all clandestine and half-naked. Rubi propped herself up on her elbow and took in every last inch of skin above the waistband of his cargo shorts. “There is a God.”

Wes grinned at her with a finger to his mouth, silently shushing her. Took one more glance down the hall and closed the door quietly. He turned toward the bed. “All the relatives are finally gone,” he said, his voice a whisper. “Kitchen’s clean. Whitney took the girls home to Tori and was going to check to see how Wyatt is settling in.” He lifted a knee to the bed, leaned forward, and braced his hands beside her, then bent his elbows to lower himself until his lips barely touched Rubi’s in a tender, lingering kiss. “And Mom and Dad went to bed—right after issuing a stern ‘Stay in your own room, Wesley.’”

Rubi laughed and lifted her hand to stroke his cheek. “Sounds like they expected you to buck the system. My very own rebel.”

“I’ll be anything you want…as long as I’m yours.” Grinning, he slid onto the bed, lying on his side, mirroring Rubi. “You impressed the hell out of my entire family—even the hard-to-impress. I have to know, what were you talking to my dad about? He’s usually a pretty stoic guy.”

“I’m going to help him get his sensor software back online tomorrow.”

Wes’s gaze glittered with a strange mix of emotions that lifted Rubi to the ceiling. Maybe a little awe? A little pride? A little joy? “Crap. You can do that?”

“Silly boy.” Rubi scraped her fingers into his hair and stretched her neck to kiss him again. “I have all kinds of tricks up my sleeve.”

“How did sensors come up, of all things?”

“Your mom. She suggested that I might be able to help him with some problem in the fields. I told them that the extent of my agriculture knowledge was my weekly stroll down the produce aisle at the grocery store. But then he told me about the sensors he’s installed that monitor the soil.

“After he explained how they worked, I knew I could help. The software is open source, free, and written in C. Coding at this level is just a matter of copying and pasting existing code to create what he really needs. Tomorrow, he’s going to watch me add pieces to monitor other things—soil temperature, ammonia levels, moisture levels, and barometric pressure. Then if he wants to add something more later or change the sensors for each crop, he’ll be able to do it himself. It will save him thousands of dollars every year in water and fertilizer and crop yield.”

“Oh my God.” Wes went all drama queen and fell back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, his voice one of the-world-as-we-know-it-is-over. “You’re going to be his new favorite. That’s so wrong. I’ve been vying for that spot for almost thirty years, and you tango right in and steal it out from under me. Or, well, actually Wyatt.” He turned his head and pointed at her. “But I was getting close to nudging him out.”

She shifted closer, sliding one thigh over his, pressing one hand flat low on his belly and sliding upward, feeling all the supple muscle, indentations, and planes of his chest. “That’s kinda cool. I’ve never been anyone’s favorite.”

“Yes, you have.” His gaze darted to hers as he grinned. “You’re my favorite.”

Wes gripped her waist and flipped her in bed. Rubi squealed and laughed. Wes covered her mouth and cut a glance toward the door. “Shh.”

When he lifted his hand from her mouth, she sobered and curled her fingers into the waistband of his shorts. “Why am I your favorite?” She tried to push back the insecurity brimming, but it overflowed into her voice. “I mean, really, Wes. I get the impression you’ve been choosing women like Melissa all your life. So…why me? Why now? A fling until you move on to your next good girl? If it is, it is,” she said as if it wouldn’t matter. As if it wouldn’t jab a dagger in her heart. “I’m just kinda out on a limb here and would like to know what to be prepared for.”

His expression sobered, and something came over his gaze—something tender and deep and so very loving. He shifted off her body and lay next to her, head propped on his hand. His other hand slipped beneath the T-shirt she’d put on for bed, and he spread his fingers wide over her belly. With his palm centered over her belly button, his fingertips brushed her rib cage.

“That night I saw you at the airport…something clicked for me,” he said, voice soft with a hint of vulnerability. “I didn’t know exactly what, but I knew the relationship I was in with Kayla didn’t have what I needed. She was…is…a beautiful person. A beautiful woman. I just needed something different and knew it would have been selfish for me to stay with her while I was trying to figure that out.”

His gaze followed his hand as he caressed her stomach, then occasionally darted up to meet her eyes. “You had such a vibrancy about you that night. The Ferrari. Your flirty outgoing personality. Your friendship with Lexi. It just all kinda…I don’t know…hit me. I didn’t think it then, in that moment, but after I broke up with Kayla and gave it some thought, I knew that’s what I wanted in a woman. What I’d been missing in a woman.”

Rubi lay quietly, listening. Every beat of her heart felt impossibly hard and deep. And a shiver of anxiety sizzled over her nerve endings. She’d never been this intimate with a man. A strange thought considering how many she’d given her body to. But this was different. So different. This was intimate in an emotionally risky way, and a coil of heat and cold mixed in her belly.

“When Jax told me about Lexi, God, I thought he was out of his ever-loving mind.” Wes’s eye roll made Rubi laugh softly. It diffused some tension. “Then I met her and…shit…she was everything Jax ever wanted all wrapped up in one woman. And for the first time in my life, I thought, why can’t I have that too? You know, everything I’ve ever fantasized about in one woman? And then…you were back. In my life every day. And I got to see what you were really made of. Honestly, I was blown away. I expected you to be just another beautiful Hollywood brat. I expected to tolerate you because you were Lexi’s best friend.”

He lifted his hand from her stomach, cupped her jaw, and turned her face toward his. “And before I knew what happened, you’d turned into my best friend. After a couple of weeks, I didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything unless you were going to be there. For another couple of weeks, I spent every moment with you looking for some major problem, something to turn me off so I could get over what I thought was an infatuation and start looking for the right woman instead of focusing on someone who wasn’t right for me at all.

“But I couldn’t, because the fact is that you are to me what Lexi is to Jax—everything I’ve always hope for and dreamed of all in one mind-blowing package. And that’s when I realized that I’d been choosing the wrong type of women all my damned life.”