Page 12 of Crazy for You

“Really?” Trent eyed him warily.

“Yeah.” Ryan pulled him in and clapped him on the back. Then they stood there, staring at each other. Ryan found himself uncharacteristically at a complete loss for words. Trent. Hell. “I can’t believe it. How’d you find me?” Because he’d spent years, half a lifetime, searching for the half-brother he hadn’t seen since Trent was an infant.

“My parents told me your name.” Trent looked away.

Yeah, Trent’s adoptive parents had been total assholes, to Ryan anyway. They’d labeled him a bad influence and cut him out of his brother’s life after the adoption went through. “Let’s go inside where we can talk.” Ryan led the way to his office and closed the door behind them.

Trent sat in the big chair in the corner, fidgeting with his hands in his lap. “I tried to look you up online a few times, but I never found anything. Then, a few months ago, I saw an article about this place. It had your name and your picture, and when I saw it was in Haven, I knew it had to be you.”

“I looked for you, too. I never stopped,” Ryan said as emotion welled up, squeezing his chest. He’d moved around for the last ten years looking for his brother. Trent was the only living blood relative he had, and it had been like a knife slowly twisting in his gut knowing his brother was out there somewhere. “So where’d you grow up?”

“Outside St. Louis,” Trent said.

His brother had grown up halfway across the country. Ryan still couldn’t quite believe Trent was sitting there. He looked like a pretty okay kid, baggy jeans and over-styled hair like Ryan had noticed on a lot of the local teens. Trent’s hands were soft, like he spent more time in front of an Xbox than out roaming the woods as Ryan had done at his age. Still… “So your parents—they’re okay? You’re happy?”

Trent shrugged awkwardly. Yeah, typical teenager. “They’re all right, I guess.”

“But you had a good childhood?” Because Ryan had always wondered, hoping that Trent had grown up in a stable, happy home. Their mom had OD’ed when Trent was just a baby, sparing him most of the chaos that had surrounded her. As a healthy infant, he’d been adopted quickly. Ryan, eleven when their mother died, had remained in the foster care system until he aged out at eighteen.

“Yeah,” Trent said. “It was good.”

“I’m glad. So you’re what…eighteen now? Are you in college?”

Trent shook his head. “I started college last fall, but it just wasn’t for me. I dropped out and came looking for you.”

Shit. If he’d ever found Trent, Ryan’s goal had been to get into his adoptive parents’ good graces so that he could stay a part of his life, and now he was proving a bad influence before they’d even met.

Fate had a really fucked-up sense of humor sometimes.

Emma arrived at Off-the-Grid for her eleven o’clock meeting with Ryan with her head held high. She might be mortified about how last night ended, but he never needed to know it. She stepped out of her SUV and smoothed her hands over her Artful Blooms logoed jacket and khaki pants. Last night’s almost-kiss aside, right now she was here to talk business. And if she’d left her hair down again today, well, that was because of the chilly weather, not because Ryan had said it looked beautiful. Okay, maybe it was a little bit about Ryan. Or a lot.

With her iPad in hand, she pulled open the front door and walked inside. Ryan—coming out of the kitchen while stuffing a candy bar in his mouth—nearly ran right into her. He pulled up short, his eyes settling on hers with an intensity that sent sparks ricocheting around in her belly.

“Sorry.” He wore a black fleece pullover with Off-the-Grid’s logo on it and a pair of worn jeans. And he smelled delicious, a combination of some kind of woodsy aftershave and chocolate—courtesy of the candy bar.

“No problem.” She clutched the iPad against her chest. Okay, so internally she was definitely not playing it cool right now, but she was reasonably sure her face remained impassive. She’d perfected the art of hiding her feelings years ago. “I thought we should walk the property together first so we can make sure we’re on the same page with landscaping. Then I’ll put together an estimate and some virtual mock-ups that I’ll e-mail you in a day or so.”

A muscle in his cheek twitched. Apparently he hadn’t expected her to launch right into business after the way they’d left things last night. “Okay.”

She turned around and walked back out the front door with Ryan at her heels. “I assume most of what we’re looking at will be here around the main building and out along the road by the sign.”

“Yeah. We want something eye-catching, maybe some nice, bright colors, especially out by the road, but it needs to be low maintenance. We don’t have any money in the budget for grounds keeping this year so Ethan, Mark, and I have got to be able to keep it up ourselves.”

“Okay. I was envisioning some beds along the walkway here, maybe African daisies. They come in pretty purples and yellows, and they’re hardy.”

Ryan shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Long as you stick to the budget, we don’t much care which plants you pick. Just don’t stick us with a bunch of hot pink roses or anything.” He cracked a smile.

“I’ll keep your reputation intact, don’t worry.” She grinned, leading the way around the side of the house. “I can put in some flowering bushes around the edges of the field. If there’s room in the budget, are you interested in reseeding the grass, too?”

“Sure.” Ryan was still watching her intently.

Every time she glanced over and caught him staring, she felt a jolt of awareness. Did he feel it, too? Or was he just uncomfortable because she’d almost kissed him last night? They walked together to the sign by the road and discussed the options there. Then he led her down the path to the ropes course.

“We need to add something to hide that drainage ditch back there,” he said, pointing.

“Done.” She tapped it into her notes and marked the spot on the digital rendering of Off-the-Grid’s property on her iPad. “I can get some inexpensive shrubs in here that will hide the ditch and even look pretty while they’re at it.”

“Great.” His brow wrinkled. “Em?—”

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