Page 23 of Rugged

She glanced away. “Oh, um…not long. A few months. It’s a…transition job for me.”

She sounded uncomfortable. Looked it, too. I smelled the tinge of anxiety that belied an untruth. But what would she be lying about?

Ah. I remembered what she’d said about her real profession and jumped in to put her at ease. “Lyssa is a special effects designer.”

“No kidding!” Marina exclaimed. “Like, for movies?”

Lyssa nodded. “Yes.”

I kicked myself for not already knowing the answer. Istill had a thousand things to learn about the female I was going to spend the rest of my life with–the first being how to convince her of the fact that she was mine.

“So, who do you work for?” Willow asked. “Can you do that remotely?”

Again, Lyssa seemed uncomfortable. “I, uh, worked for a company in Hollywood, but I quit recently before I came here.”

Rob sent me a look.

Like me, he caught her hesitation. Almost as if she didn’t want to share something. But it could be anything. Maybe she got fired instead of quit. Maybe she just didn’t like being grilled by my pack mates.

Maybe this was all moving too fast for someone she just met yesterday. She thought she was having a wild fling, and I brought her in to meet the family. I guess that could be awkward.

I should get her out of here. We needed to get to know each other out of the sheets. In them, too.

But Rob was in grilling mode now. “How do you like ranch life? What does Mitch have you doing over there?”

Lyssa’s eyes widened, and she made a jerky movement that resulted in spilling her coffee on the kitchen floor. “Oh, whoops!” She looked around wildly for a towel.

“No worries.” I grabbed one from the oven door handle and mopped it up, trying to put her at ease. Mymate was getting jumpy. I didn’t want her to regret coming here with me. “Okay, enough grilling of my girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend?” She turned her face up to mine, surprise etched in the rise of her dark shapely brows.

Oops. Did I freak her out? At least I hadn’t saidmate.

I gave her a lopsided smile, trying to ease the tension. “Hot date? New friend? What do you prefer?”

Our gazes tangled and held, and a more confident smile widened her cheeks. “I don’t know. Let’s go withhot date. Lyssa is all about hot dates.”

It was cute that she talked about herself in third person. Weird, but cute.

“Well, everyone.” I looped my arm around Lyssa’s waist. “I’m going to take my hot date on a hot date. Or something. While I also work,” I added and lifted my hat off in Rob’s direction.

“Yeah, speaking of work, let’s just chat in my office for a minute,” Rob said.

I looked to Lyssa.

Willow plopped onto a high stool in front of the island and patted the one beside her for Lyssa. “We’ll keep her company.”

“You good?” I asked, making sure.

She sank onto the stool and nodded, holding up her mug.

“She’ll be fine,” Marina vowed. “We’ll tell her about the time you fell off your horse.”

Lyssa’s mouth fell open.

“She’s kidding,” I told her with a wink. “Never happened.”

It had, actually, when I first arrived. I was a farm boy from a Nebraska pack, not a cowboy. I grew up riding tractors, not horses. Of course, if it made Lyssa smile, I didn’t mind Marina poking fun at my expense.

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