Page 58 of Tangled Up In You

Fitz dragged his eyes up from the water bubbling at the surface, visibly thrown. “What?”

“Nashville. What do you love about it?”

He closed his eyes, leaning his head back so that his Adam’s apple pushed forward.

Not helping.

“The food. The music. The feel of being outside on a warm spring night.” He lifted one shoulder in a lazy shrug. “It feels more like home than home does.”

“Is it your mom’s side or dad’s side?”

“What’s that?”

“Your family there,” she said. “In Nashville.”

“Oh.” Fitz lifted a hand and dragged his fingertips through the bubbles. “Um…mom.” He smiled, but it didn’t look happy. “Nashville isn’t really Robert Fitzsimmons’s style.”

“What’s he like?”

He exhaled a dry laugh through his nose. “Rich.”

“Really?” She laughed incredulously. “That’s the only way you’d describe your father?”

“Well, no,” he said, dragging a hand through his wet hair. “He’s also disciplined. I’m sure I’ll grow up to be a very productive member of society, thanks to him.”

“That doesn’t sound very warm and cuddly.”

“That’s not really his way,” he said.

Ren hadn’t known him long, but she liked to think she was figuring him out and knew when it was time to stop pushing. “Okay, next question. What’s—”

“No,” he interrupted. “It’s my turn now.”

She swallowed. “Okay.”

“What do you find attractive in a person?”

She didn’t even have to think. “Kindness. In the eyes, especially.”

“Kindness, huh?”

Ren grinned at him. “Broad shoulders and big hands don’t hurt, though.”

Fitz laughed. “There it is.”

She gnawed her lip, dropping her gaze to his neck, because she couldn’t look him in the eye when she asked, “What about you?”

He gave a little shrug and stretched an arm across the back of the hot tub. “I like people who are good.” She looked away from how the movement elongated his muscle, his pectoral twitching just below the surface of the water, and squeezed her legs together again. “Opposites attract, you know.”

She stared at him, knowing he expected her to call him out for this self-flagellation disguised as cockiness. “That wasn’t the answer I was expecting,” she said instead. Glimpses of his genuine depth still took her by surprise.

“You thought I was going to say boobs or asses or something like that.”

It took all her strength to not cross her arms over her chest. “Obviously.”

“Right,” he said darkly, “because I get in everyone’s pants.”

“If you say so.”

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